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This book involved lots of travel Trips were ton, DC, and Portugal The basic concept was born during a dinner in Camden, South Carolina, when one of the hosts, Kenneth Harvey, asked me if I’d ever heard of a Lebanese scholar named Kamal Salibi When I said no, Ken offered me four of Salibi’s books About a year later the idea for this novel blossoh, the final story is a blend of fact and fiction

Now it’s time to knohere the line was drawn

As to the nakba, first described in the prologue, that tragedy was all too real and continues to haunt Middle East relations

The monument described in chapters 8 and 34 is based on an actual land New agers and conspiratorialists have debated itsfor decades The press conference in chapter 8 actually happened at Shugborough Hall, and the offered interpretations of the monument are the ones the actual experts expounded The concept of the Ro a map is my invention

Asa record of ancient Jews in a place other than Palestine is not mine In 1985 Salibi detailed this theory in a book titled The Bible Came from Arabia Salibi expounded on his ideas in three other works, Who Was Jesus (1988), Secrets of the Bible People (1988), and The Historicity of Biblical Israel (1998) George Haddad’s experiences in how he noticed a connection betest Arabia and the Bible, detailed in chapter 52, overnes after the publication of Salibi’s first book; to this day the Saudis refuse to allow any scientific digging in Asir

The maps in chapters 57 and 68 are from Salibi’s research The idea that the land proion far reard as Palestine is, to say the least, controversial But as Salibi and George Haddad both noted, the h archaeology One point on language Throughout the book, the terinal Hebrew Bible Little is known of its orthography, gra, rarely spoken, and passed froe in the sixth or the fifth century BCE "Old Hebrew," as opposed to Biblical or Rabbinical Hebrew or some other descriptive label, was chosen simply for reader convenience

The Old Testament inconsistencies noted in chapters 20, 23, and 57 are nothing new Scholars have debated these points for centuries The Bible, though, is, if nothing else, a fluid docueneration seems to leave a mark upon its interpretation

The story of David Ben-Gurion in chapter 22 is accurate The father of e his politics after 1965, beco more conciliatory toward the Arabs Thereafter, he was shut out of Israeli politics until his death in 1973 Of course, his visit to the library was my concoction

The history of Nicolas Poussin in chapter 29 is true His life also made a dramatic shift The fate of his Shepherds of Arcadia is told correctly, and the excerpt from a letter that describes what Poussin may have secretly learned is real Why Poussin created The Shepherds of Arcadia II, the reverse i (which was chiseled on the h Hall), is a mystery

The Guardians are not real Perhaps if they had existed, the Library of Alexandria ht have been saved The physical description of the library offered in chapter 21 is the best available As to how more than half a million manuscripts vanished, the three explanations in chapter 21 are the experts’ best guess The learned men described in chapter 32 all lived, but sadly, thanks to the destruction of the Library of Alexandria, none of their writings have survived The Piri Reis Map (chapter 32) still does exist, and offers a fleeting gliht have been lost

The hero’s quest is fictional, adapted from a mysterious manuscript called The Red Serpent I ca The Teacy