Recent developments in archaeological techniques have enabled modern man to learn more about vanished civilizations and the daily life of past cultures than was conceivable as recently as fifty years ago. This book describes the archaeological evidence that enables us to piece together the material details of the life and customs of the ancient people of Israel. Beginning with their enemies, the Canaanites, of the second millennium, from whom they nonetheless took much of their culture, it describes the pottery which provides the essential basis for chronology from the Bronze Age to the Hellenistic and Herodian periods. It goes on to describe cities, fortifications and architecture, royal buildings such as those found at Samaria and Megiddo, the growth of Jerusalem and the development of religious architecture from primitive open-air sanctuaries to the elaborate temples of the later periods and the monastic buildings of Qumran. Subsequent chapters describe coins, funerary art, weapons, transport, musical instruments, clothes, and the images of Canaanite gods together with their relationship to Egyptian and Syro-Phoenician deities.