I read the initial 2002 print of 304 pages. (There are 8 color picture pages in addition to the many drawings and black and white pictures within the 296 text pages.)
This book gets severely detailed, utterly exhaustive (and to most tedious) in its descriptions of potsherds, graves, church architecture and other finds in the archaeological field. Unfortunately, the author doesn't get anywhere near that deep into the history, not to mention the life of the three some one millennium enduring Christian Nubian kingdoms of Makuria, Alwa and Nobadia, claiming that wouldn't be possible, as too little would be known yet. Hmm... The book is basically about the Christian times of Nubia and not really about the "pagan" and Muslim eras, as the title erroneously suggests.
The author seems to be caught in the general bias of not covering some issues. Unfortunately exactly the ones I am interested in and bought the book for. One is the beginning of Christian Imes (time) in Nubia, i.e. somewhat today's area of the country of Sudan. It is apparent that the established Western historians have an axe to grind not to state that these empires turned Christian too early - namely before Europe did. Christianity as an originally Black African religion seems to be not that comfortable. But somehow this book has to deal with certain facts. For example that Christian artefacts have been found in "too early" Nubian graves, "but there is no reason to think these had any religious significance". The flabbergasting reason according to the author: This would have been a pagan custom (to include valuables in graves) and the Christian artefacts are supposedly just Christian by coincidence, because the only interest would have been their material value. ??? I am amazed that the author generally refrains from interpreting anything to the point of writing rather nothing, unless something has to look differently than it appears, when it is to the detriment of his world view. My interpretation would be that the Christian grave artefacts represent the "missing link" from the previous branch of religion to Christianity, in a clearly Christian setting. Otherwise, there would have been artefacts of another religion. As if the Christmas tree and the Easter bunny would suggest to historians in the future that (some) European and American Christians would still be "pagan", because neither is found in the Bible, but in the previous branches of religion... The author is sure lacking any clue on how he came to his most unlikely of all possible conclusions.
The main reason I ordered this book for was to find out about the potential participation of the Nubian kingdom(s) in the crusades, which eventually let to their downfall. As it is EXTREMELY difficult to come by any information on this issue (if you know a source please leave a comment). To thwart any uncomfortable ideas, the author quickly claims, there wasn't any Nubian participation in the crusades. Even though archaeologically, close links to Byzantium and influences by Christian Egypt, Syria, Armenia (and Ethiopia) are listed. Again later in the book, there is talk of a Nubian ruler on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem in 1203-04 who went on to Constantinople which was then under the control of the crusaders. Not even the name of that ruler is provided, nor of which of the three Nubian kingdoms he was the ruler. It is also not elaborated that those Constantinople-ruling crusaders had just arrived in a 4th crusade, which initially had been planned to go to Egypt, Nubia's Muslim-ruled neighbour to the north. Am I too way off to come to the idea that THIS may have been the reason for the Nubian king's "pilgrimage"? But: "Any cooperation between the Crusaders and the Nubians is inherently unlikely." Supposedly, because the crusaders were against any non-Catholic Christians as sick. Yet, again later, the author mentions the Venetian Marin Sanudo who in 1310 and 1320 drew up a plan for a Nubian attack on Egypt from the South. "Unfortunately", the Western help from the North wasn't given as planned. Or maybe the plan was not only to weaken the Egyptian Muslims, but to get rid of the rival and older Christian African Churches with the same stroke. I don't know. That's what I want to find out, by reading such books which I expect to answer these obvious questions. If not known currently, at least I expect not to get mislead by biased but unbased statements. By the way, the above mentioned 4th crusade against Egypt, which turned against Byzantium instead, was instigated by Venice, too. And the next crusade after 1310/20 was what may be called the 8th one against Egyptian Alexandria in 1365, this time instigated by Cyprus - with the fleet coming from, yes, you guessed it, Venice. All of this latter information isn't provided in this book as sick. When it comes to neutral issues, the author is all too happy to reference other sources with opposing opinions in the extensive footnotes. Not so for the two issues of this review. And yes, opposing sources do exist: Once, I have read one which very briefly mentions that like Ethiopia, the Nubian kingdoms were initially exempted from the jihad. But when the Nubians, unlike the Ethiopians, started to help the European crusaders, this decision was reversed.
The bottom line is: If you are interested merely in archaeology, this book offers state-of-the-2002-art information in the five-star category (translating into 4 stars for accumulated dust by now). If you look for anything else, this book is worth probably 2 stars only.
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