The lords of Avaris: Uncovering the legendary origins of Western civilisation - David Rohl

The lords of Avaris is one man's journey in search of the legendary origins of the Western World.

Our story begins in a small rock-cut tomb below the desolate ruin-mound of Jericho in the Jordan Valley. This is the start of an epic journey of discovery, which ranges across the ancient lands and archaeological sites of the Mediterranean. From Joshua's Jericho to Romulus' Rome, the true chronicle of our -pre-Christian past is uncovered, revealing an extraordinary historical picture, previously unimagined by scholars.

The epic legends of the West, which permeate the writings of Greece and Rome, appear to have been based on the exploits of genuine historical figures and actual events. There really was an 'Heroic Age' of brazen-clad warriors, the last of which fought before the walls of Troy, just as described in Homer's Iliad.

At the beginning of the Middle Bronze Age - two thousand years before the assassination of Julius Caesar in the Roman Senate - a new people appeared on the stage of history to join the great civilisations of Mesopotamia and Egypt. These Indo-European-speaking tribes were chariot-riding warriors from the northern mountains and plains. They became the Hittites, the Aryan kings of Mitanni, the Vedic heroes of the Indus, and the founders of the later empires of Greece, Persia and Rome. Their heroes and heroines are legionary: Inachus, mythical king of Argos; his daughter the beautiful Princess Io who married an Egyptian pharaoh; Danaus, the Hyksos ruler who founded the Mycenaean dynasty which culminated in Agamemnon's ill-fated Trojan War; Cadmus, the bringer of writing to the West; Minos, the Cretan high-king of Knossos who built the infamous Labyrinth; Mopsus, warrior and sage who led a vast Greek, Philistine and Anatolian army into the Levant in a daring attempt to seize Egypt in the time of Ramesses III. All these, and more, are the stuff of legend - but The Lords of Avaris reveals these heroes as flesh-and-bloood characters from our ancestral past.