The Rev. Archibald Henry Sayce was a pioneer British Assyriologist and linguist, who held a chair as Professor of Assyriology at the University of Oxford from 1891 to 1919. He wrote a great amount of books, and 'Patriarchal Palestine' is one of the most famous. Excerpt from the book: 'Throughout I have assumed that in the narrative of the Pentateuch we have history and not fiction. Indeed the archaeologist cannot do otherwise. Monumental research is making it clearer every day that the scepticism of the so called 'higher criticism' is not justified in fact. Those who would examine the proofs of this must turn to my book on 'The Higher Criticism' and the 'Verdict of the Monuments'. There I have written purely as an archaeologist, who belongs to no theological school, and consequently readers of the work must see init merely the irreducible minimum of confidence in the historical trustworthiness of the Old Testament, with which oriental archaeology can be satisfied'.