In the year 722 BCE the Israelite masses were taken by the Assyrian army and led off to exile. The legends surrounding the whereabouts of these Ten Lost Tribes are so numerous, so persuasive and so enchanting, there is hardly a place under the sun that has not been searched by explorers in their quest to uncover their "True" journey and location. When the longing for their lost, far-away brothers overwhelmed the, the communal heads and rabbis of the remaining tribes of Judah, Benjamin and Levi composed letter and sent them out by messenger to the Ten Tribes. These messengers generally vanished as well, and all traces of them seem to have disappeared in a cloud of uncertainty and mystery. Dr. Shachan has followed in the footsteps of these messengers and returned. He tells us of the people of Pashtunistan in Afghanistan, which is made up of tribal clans whose names and genealogies relate to the Ten Tribes.He has rediscovered the remnants of the Nephtalite kingdom and pinpointed the location of the Ten Tribes in central Asia. He has found traces of the kingdom of Kaifeng in China. He has documented the path of the Ten Tribes through India and followed them to Japan, even including a glossary of Hebrew terms used in Japanese. Today relics of the culture, customs and commandments of the Mosaic Law are still in evidence among different nations and tribes. Ten of millions of inhabitants of the world still claim that they are descendants of the Ten Tribes 2,700 years after their exile.
About the Author: DR. AVIDGDOR SHACHAN, educator, author and historian, is a specialist in studies of the Holocaust and of Jewish Martyrs and Heroes. Dr. Shachan has served as the Supervisor of Colleges for Israel's Ministry of Education and Culture, a post he held for twenty years. Dr. Shachan has been the recipient of a myriad of awards, including the prestigious Jabotinsky Prize. In order to carry out his research, he traveled widely for four years to distant countries of central Asia. He examined hidden scrolls, studied the concealed references of crumbling maps, and perused original translated manuscripts of the chroniclers of the history of the Greeks, the Romans, the Arabs, the Jews, Britons, Chinese and Japanese. He studied the testimonies of tourists, adventurers, warriors and missionaries to follow their tracks and in doing so uncovered astonishing and wondrous facts. Dr. Shachan published his findings in the acclaimed Hebrew text "Towards the Sambatyon River- a Journey in the footsteps of the Ten Tribes". This is the English version.