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Description of  The Road Taken: An Archaeologist s Journey to the Land of the Bible (Royal Inscriptions of the Neo-Assyrian Period)

In this fascinating book, Seymour (Sy) Gitin recounts his lifes journey, from his childhood in 1940s Buffalo, New York, to a storied career as an archaeologist working and living in Israel. Over the course of his life, Sy served as a rabbi in Los Angeles and as US Air Force Chaplain, starred in an Israeli movie, trained as an archaeologist, and eventually became the Director of the W. F. Albright Institute of Archaeological Research in Jerusalem, an institution he led for thirty-four years. As an archaeologist, Sy encouraged American participation in the archaeology of ancient Israel, fostered the development of the Palestinian archaeological community, and conducted valuable field work at Tell Gezer and Tel Miqne-Ekron. His tale is full of entertaining vignettes involving the people that he encountered along the way, including many of the pioneers in the fieldW. F. Albright, Nelson Glueck, Yigael Yadin, Benjamin Mazar, and Trude Dothan, as well as current protagonists William G. Dever, Israel Finkelstein, and Amihai Mazar. Read more