Timna Valley

The Timna Valley (תִּמְנָע, timˈna(ʕ)) is located in southern Israel in the southwestern Arava/Arabah, approximately north of the Gulf of Aqaba and the city of Eilat. The area is rich in copper ore and has been mined since the 5th millennium BCE. During early antiquity, the area would have been part of the Kingdom of Edom. A large section of the valley, containing ancient remnants of copper mining and ancient worship, is encompassed in a recreation park. Ramon Airport is located near the entrance to the Timna Valley. Copper has been mined in the area since the 6th or 5th millennium BCE. Archaeological excavation indicates that the copper mines in Timna Valley were probably part of the Kingdom of Edom and worked by the Edomites, described as biblical foes of the Israelites, during the 10th century BCE, the hypothesized period of biblical King Solomon. The current dating came into being with a new understanding regarding nomads and their ability for an advanced polity and advanced technologies, shrugging off years of architectural bias among archeologists. Mining continued by the Israelites and Nabataeans through to the 1st and 2nd centuries CE during the Roman period, and then, after the 7th-century Arab conquest, by the Umayyad Caliphate, until the copper ore became scarce. The copper was used for ornaments, but more importantly for stone cutting, as saws, in conjunction with sand. The recent excavations dating copper mining to the 10th century BCE also discovered what may be the earliest camel bones with signs of domestication found in Israel or even outside the Arabian peninsula, dating to around 930 BCE. This is seen as evidence by the excavators that the stories of Abraham, Joseph, Jacob and Esau were written or rewritten after this time, seeing that the Biblical books frequently reference travelling with caravans of domesticated camels. Scientific attention and public interest was aroused in the 1930s, when Nelson Glueck attributed the copper mining at Timna to King Solomon (10th century BCE) and named the site "King Solomon's Mines".

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Related concepts (8)

Edom

Edom (ˈiːdəm; Edomite: 𐤀𐤃𐤌 ; אֱדוֹם , lit.: "red"; Akkadian: 𒌑𒁺𒈪 , 𒌑𒁺𒈬 ; Ancient Egyptian: ) was an ancient kingdom in Transjordan, located between Moab to the northeast, the Arabah to the west, and the Arabian Desert to the south and east. Most of its former territory is now divided between present-day southern Israel and Jordan. Edom appears in written sources relating to the late Bronze Age and to the Iron Age in the Levant. Edomites are related in several ancient sources including the Tanakh, a list of the Egyptian pharaoh Seti I from c.

Prehistory

Prehistory, also called pre-literary history, is the period of human history between the first known use of stone tools by hominins 3.3 million years ago and the beginning of recorded history with the invention of writing systems. The use of symbols, marks, and images appears very early among humans, but the earliest known writing systems appeared 5,000 years ago. It took thousands of years for writing systems to be widely adopted, with writing spreading to almost all cultures by the 19th century.

Midian

Midian (ˈmɪdiən; מִדְיָן Miḏyān; Madyan; Μαδιάμ, Madiam) is a geographical region in Western Asia mentioned in the Hebrew Bible and Quran. William G. Dever states that biblical Midian was in the "northwest Arabian Peninsula, on the east shore of the Gulf of Aqaba on the Red Sea", an area which contained at least fourteen inhabited sites during the Late Bronze and early Iron Ages. According to the Book of Genesis, the Midianites were the descendants of Midian, who was a son of Abraham and his wife Keturah: "Abraham took a wife, and her name was Keturah.