A. H. Sayce (1845–1933)

A large number, unusually large, have played a role, by name, in the story told in the Old Testament / Talmud/ Pentateuch.

The Old Testament does not mention China, but that is the only civilized kingdom of the ancient world not mentioned. (The "Sinim" of Isaiah lxix.12 has been excluded.) The brachycephalic flat-nosed obliquitous eyes of the Mongol or Tartar do not appear in the record of stone or text of Egypt, Babylon or Persia.[167]

"Less is known about the ethnology of modern Syria than about the ethnology of the North American Indians". [169]

The skulls of Palestinians and Syrians have not been studied, and the forms in modern Syria remain "uncertain". While the Arab is dolichocephalic {long}, a large proportion of present day Jews are brachycephalic {round}. [171 - because they are Turks/Caucasians!].

The Amorites depicted by the Egyptian sculptors were of a blond white race in southern Palestine. [171] As late as Rehoboam, the inhabitants of Southern Judaea were still predominantly Amorite. [172]

The authors discuss but fail to approve a working definition of "race". "Racial traits once fixed do not disappear, and these traits include not only phyiscal characteristics but mental and moral qualities as well." [172]

The author asks, "what were the affinities and characteristics, the natural tendencies and mental qualifications of the people to whom were committed the oracles of the Old Testament. Theirs was the race from which the Messiah sprang, and in whose midst the Christian Church was first established."… (altro)

Written five years after the re-discovery of the Hittite Empire [108], the author makes much of the fact that the Bible, almost alone, had kept their reputation alive. (There are of course the famous descriptions of Ramses II slaughtering hundreds of thousands of Hittite charioteers, but those accounts are given little credence. [109])
In addition, the scholars have accumulated "already" more Assyrian literature on tablets than contained in the whole of the Old Testament. The author supplants the scepticism which attends Biblical prophecy with the discovery of stone inscriptions. For example, where Isaiah speaks of campaigns against a recalcitrant Israel, the Inscriptions of Sargon are presented to show the actual occurrence of such invasions. [4]
In fact, however, the archeological evidence does not strictly corroborate the Old Testament. Isaiah did not write that a "virgin" would give birth (the word is 'almath', or 'maiden'. [83] There is no King David shown from archeology conquering his neighbors [85, 107], no King Solomon achieving great riches and building a golden Temple in gratitude. No land of "milk and honey". The poverty of the mounds in the middle east is enduring, grinding and relentless. The source of a dozen great Religions of the World, the Levant is cruel and bitter.
Nevertheless, the Biblical references are envitalizing and Professor Sayce, of Oxford, is gentle with the materials. For example, the Moabite Stone erected by King Mesha at Dibon, and purchased by the Prussians from the Arabs and Turkish pashas [83] , only to have them destroy it, and its re-assembly, is discussed. The inscription-- the story in the stone -- is simply the account of war against Moab. The deliverance of the Moabite from the hand of Israel appears to match the Biblical God's vengence.
The inscription found underwater in the Pool of Siloam, which communicates with the Spring of the Virgin in Jerusalem is also reviewed. Neither the inscription nor the fact of its existence sheds any light on a Biblical "event". It lies outside the city's old walls, and tunnels were made in an attempt to deprive beseigers on the outside of the benefit taken to the inside.
The TOC is descriptive, and the Appendix is the Treaty between Egypt and Hitti after the Battle of Kadesh. This may be history's first great treaty, contains a wealth of interest (almost none of Biblical significance other than to show how insignificant the Israelites were).
I have heard many discussions among believers speaking of the physical "proof" of the Bible. To read, to actually read even a believers' description of the "proof" -- the Moabite Stone, the Virgin Spring, the Hittite Treaty -- is to refute the claim. But "belief" is proof against proof.… (altro)

Pyrrhus Press specializes in bringing books long out of date back to life, allowing today’s readers access to yesterday’s treasures.
This is a history of one of the oldest empires in history. From the first chapter:
“Some countries seem destined from their origin to become the battle-fields of the contending nations which environ them. Into such regions, and to their cost, neighbouring peoples come from century to century to settle their quarrels and bring to an issue the questions of supremacy which disturb their little corner of the world. The nations around are eager for the possession of a country thus situated; it is seized upon bit by bit, and in the strife dismembered and trodden underfoot: at best the only course open to its inhabitants is to join forces with one of its invaders, and while helping the intruder to overcome the rest, to secure for themselves a position of permanent servitude. Should some unlooked-for chance relieve them from the presence of their foreign lord, they will probably be quite incapable of profiting by the respite which fortune puts in their way, or of making any effectual attempt to organize themselves in view of future attacks. They tend to become split up into numerous rival communities, of which even the pettiest will aim at autonomy, keeping up a perpetual frontier war for the sake of becoming possessed of or of retaining a glorious sovereignty over a few acres of corn in the plains, or some wooded ravines in the mountains. Year after year there will be scenes of bloody conflict, in which petty armies will fight petty battles on behalf of petty interests, but so fiercely, and with such furious animosity, that the country will suffer from the strife as much as, or even more than, from an invasion. There will be no truce to their struggles until they all fall under the sway of a foreign master, and, except in the interval between two conquests, they will have no national existence, their history being almost entirely merged in that of other nations.
From remote antiquity Syria was in the condition just described, and thus destined to become subject to foreign rule. Chaldæa, Egypt, Assyria, and Persia presided in turn over its destinies, while Macedonia and the empires of the West were only waiting their opportunity to lay hold of it. By its position it formed a kind of meeting-place where most of the military nations of the ancient world were bound sooner or later to come violently into collision. Confined between the sea and the desert, Syria offers the only route of easy access to an army marching northwards from Africa into Asia, and all conquerors, whether attracted to Mesopotamia or to Egypt by the accumulated riches on the banks of the Euphrates or the Nile, were obliged to pass through it in order to reach the object of their cupidity. It might, perhaps, have escaped this fatal consequence of its position, had the formation of the country permitted its tribes to mass themselves together, and oppose a compact body to the invading hosts; but the range of mountains which forms its backbone subdivides it into isolated districts, and by thus restricting each tribe to a narrow existence maintained among them a mutual antagonism. The twin chains, the Lebanon and the Anti-Lebanon, which divide the country down the centre, are composed of the same kind of calcareous rocks and sandstone, while the same sort of reddish clay has been deposited on their slopes by the glaciers of the same geological period.”… (altro)