14 of 18 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
What's up with this Who's Who?, July 18, 2000
This review is from: Who's Who in the Ancient Near East (Who's Who (Routledge)) (Hardcover)
First, let me say that I bought this book because I was frustrated with the Bible dictionaries I own when it comes to finding information on ancient rulers who are not directly mentioned in the Bible. They do a good job, as one would expect, of putting forth as much as can be known about kings, queens, and the queen mothers of Israel and Judah, but are weak in giving a good overview of the neighboring kingdoms and the genealogy of their rulers.
This WHO'S WHO is written by a scholar who acknowledges that as an Assyriologist she has favored the history of Mesopotamia over other parts of the Ancient Near East. (The few entries there are on Egypt seem to be from the latter part of the first millennium. Routledge must want us to buy their WHO'S WHO IN ANCIENT EGYPT.) Entries are brief (the longest is three columns); most seem to be drawn from one or two sources, the CAMBRIDGE ANCIENT HISTORY being the dominant English language source. Leick chose not to provide translations of the names, probably because the etymology of too many of them remains uncertain. She does not reveal the basis for her English spellings which I would like to have known in case I need to do further exploring; but I assume she follows what's used in the CAH.
Where my trust in the author's expertise breaks down is with the biblical persons she writes about. After acknowledging that the only source for David's biography is the Bible, she writes "Saul's hostility never ceased, but his son Abner made overtures to David by marrying his sister Micah to him." Apart from the pronominal confusion of that sentence (I had to read it three times), there are some factual errors. According to the biblical record, Abner was Saul's cousin, not his son (1 Sam 14:50), and Saul's daughter who was given to David in marriage was named Michal (I've never encountered a different spelling). Leick goes on to say that David captured Jerusalem from the Canaanites (technically not wrong, but "from a Canaanite people called the Jebusites" would have been more precise and would have kept uninformed readers from assuming that the Canaanites existed as a unified nation); and describes Ammon, Moab, and Edom as Israel's "western" neighbors (all are east of the Jordan/Dead Sea). It should also probably be noted that precise biblical citations are rare in this book.
Things I would like to see changed or added in a revised edition of this book: (1) include more detail in the Chronology; (2) add dynasty or succession charts for important kingdoms; and (3) reorient the maps (if they were turned sideways they could be larger and easier to read). And why are the maps in the front of the book and the Chronology in the back? They should be together in an appendix at the back of the book, after the glossary.
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