A vivid glimpse of the early years of one of the prestigious American Schools for Oriental Research, when a dozen students traveled the Middle East each winter. This report documents some of the troubles they faced.

Although written before the modern discoveries that define Ancient Near Eastern studies today, Paton’s historic foray into the history of Syria and Palestine served to start a continuing discussion that remains active today. Covering the Babylonian, Aramaean, Egyptian, Hittite, and Assyrian empires, Paton demonstrates what was known of the history of the region with the limited resources of nineteenth-century explorations.