From the publisher The Middle East is the oldest region where myths were recorded, five thousand years distant from us. The combination of Sumerian, Akkadian, Hittite, Canaanite, Egyptian and, finally, Jewish myths within one book is due to the geographical, political, economic and cultural proximity of these peoples. This allows us to consider the Hebrew Bible as the result of the religious and mythological development of not just one people, but the entire Middle East and adjacent Egypt, the country of the biblical Exodus. The artistic retelling of myths is accompanied by historical and cultural commentary. For historians, philologists, art critics and a wide range of readers.