The Oxford Handbook reflects the recent progress in Nubian studies, with 55 chapters spanning 1201 pages, including almost 200 pages dedicated to bibliographical references at the end of each chapter and 52 pages dedicated to an index. The volume is structured into three rather uneven parts. The first part, titled “Contexts for Nubian Studies,” consists of four chapters. It contains two histories of research (Chapters 1 and 2) and two studies setting the geological background and presenting the earliest human activities recorded in Nubia (Chapters 3 and 4, respectively). The second part, titled “Nubia: A Deep History,” consists of 40 chapters encompassing all the cultural horizons of what the editors define as “Nubia” (see relevant critique below). These chapters can be divided into seven groups, dealing with: prehistory (Chapters 5–14); the Egyptian conquest of Nubia at the end of the first complex state of Nubia (Chapters 15–20); the Napatan kingdom and its aftermaths (Chapters 21–26); the Meroitic kingdom (Chapters 27–34); the so-called post-Meroitic period (Chapters 35 and 36); the Christian states and cultures of medieval Nubia (Chapters 37–42); and the formation of the post-medieval state, when Islam became dominant (Chapters 43 and 44). Finally, the third part, titled “Perspectives on Nubia,” consists of 11 studies, some of which (e.g., Chapters 46, 47, and 52) could perhaps have been incorporated into Part 1, while others could have been parts of the single periods of “Deep History” that they actually cover (e.g., Chapter 45–prehistory, Chapter 48–Meroe, and Chapters 49 and 50–Napatan and Meroitic). Perhaps the unclear boundaries of this distribution are symptomatic of the nature of such handbooks, which try to present as comprehensive an overview of the main topic as possible.