Since the dawn of history, our ears have been accustomed to lies, and our minds have been saturated with a storehouse of assumptions. We have made truths seem strange and turned false stories into facts.” These words, written four thousand years ago by the Phoenician historian Sanchuniathon, remain relevant today. War has been a constant in human civilization. Books have told us about the violent upheavals that shook the world thousands of years ago, helping to change the course of history, most of which burnished the image of the victor. Only a few books have touched on the terrifying aftermath of that merciless fighting, the bloodshed, and the devastation that war leaves behind. We view history books as a close approximation of events as they actually happened. Certain constants, which appear in the works of all historians who lived during a specific period, and whose accounts have been published in various translations and books throughout the ages, are nothing less than the truth. We do not ask who told their story. The ruling authority has always been the historian, because only through him can we penetrate the world he chose to present to us. Over three thousand years of epic narrative, the historian's role was not to tell us how his king behaved, but to convince us to believe what he wrote. Wars were fought to defend "good" against "evil," but when it came to the way the battle was waged, it was surprising how similar "good" and "evil" were. Both sides used exactly the same means to kill each other. In the end, "good" triumphed, because every god (and every history book) always sided with "good," and it was the victorious party.