This is a welcome result.
It may or may not have had anything to do with Solomon but it certainly confirms
that a serious mining enterprise contemporaneous with his reign. Thus the existence of skilled miners is
confirmed and their availability to Solomon for projects of his own.
It is remarkable how detailed the narrative around the
Davidic Dynasty actually is. We are
fortunate to have it. It was still the
Bronze Age. Actual transition to iron
and steel happened slowly and took a full thousand years to the day of the long
sword.
It could well be that this became his principle source of
copper which was the currency of the day.
In fact it is hard to imagine his dynasty not ceasing control here.
Proof of Solomon’s mines found in Israel September 3, 2013
New findings from an
archaeological excavation led this winter by Dr. Erez Ben-Yosef of Tel Aviv
University’s Jacob M. Alkow Department of Archaeology and Near Eastern Cultures
prove that copper mines in Israel thought to have been built by the ancient
Egyptians in the 13th century BCE actually originated three centuries later,
during the reign of the legendary King Solomon. Based on the radiocarbon dating
of material unearthed at a new site in Timna Valley in Israel’s Aravah Desert,
the findings overturn the archaeological consensus of the last several decades.
Scholarly work and materials found in the area suggest the mines were operated
by the Edomites, a semi-nomadic tribal confederation that according to the
Bible warred constantly with Israel. “The mines are definitely from the period
of King Solomon,” says Dr. Ben-Yosef.
“They may help us
understand the local society, which would have been invisible to us otherwise.”
Slaves to history Now a national park, Timna Valley was an ancient copper
production district with thousands of mines and dozens of smelting sites. In
February 2013, Dr. Ben-Yosef and a team of researchers and students excavated a
previously untouched site in the valley, known as the Slaves’ Hill. The area is
a massive smelting camp containing the remains of hundreds of furnaces and
layers of copper slag, the waste created during the smelting process.
In addition to the
furnaces, the researchers unearthed an impressive collection of clothing,
fabrics, and ropes made using advanced weaving technology; foods, like dates,
grapes, and pistachios; ceramics; and various types of metallurgical
installations. The world-renowned Oxford Radiocarbon Accelerator Unit at the
University of Oxford in England dated 11 of the items to the 10th century BCE,
when according to the Bible King Solomon ruled the Kingdom of Israel. The
archaeological record shows the mines in Timna Valley were built and operated
by a local society, likely the early Edomites, who are known to have occupied
the land and formed a kingdom that rivaled Judah. The unearthed materials and the
lack of architectural remains at the Slaves’ Hill support the idea that the
locals were a semi-nomadic people who lived in tents. The findings from the
Slaves’ Hill confirm those of a 2009 dig Ben-Yosef helped to conduct at “Site
30,” another of the largest ancient smelting camps in Timna Valley. Then a
graduate student of Prof. Thomas E. Levy at the University of California, San
Diego, he helped demonstrate that the copper mines in the valley dated from the
11th to 9th centuries BCE — the era of Kings David and Solomon — and were
probably Edomite in origin.
The findings were
reported in the journal The American Schools of Oriental Research in 2012, but
the publication did little to shake the notion that the mines were Egyptian,
based primarily on the discovery of an Egyptian Temple in the center of the
valley in 1969. Power without stone The Slaves’ Hill dig also demonstrates that
the society in Timna Valley was surprisingly complex. The smelting technology
was relatively advanced and the layout of the camp reflects a high level of
social organization. Impressive cooperation would have been required for
thousands of people to operate the mines in the middle of the desert. “In Timna
Valley, we unearthed a society with undoubtedly significant development, organization,
and power,” says Ben-Yosef. “And yet because the people were living in tents,
they would have been transparent to us as archaeologists if they had been
engaged in an industry other than mining and smelting, which is very visible
archaeologically.”
Although the society
likely possessed a degree of political and military power, archaeologists would
probably never have found evidence of its existence if it were not for the
mining operation. Ben-Yosef says this calls into question archaeology’s traditional
assumption that advanced societies usually leave behind architectural ruins. He
also says that the findings at the Slaves’ Hill undermine criticisms of the
Bible’s historicity based on a lack of archaeological evidence. It’s entirely
possible that David and Solomon existed and even that they exerted some control
over the mines in the Timna Valley at times, he says. Dr. Ben-Yosef is leading
another dig at the Slaves’ Hill in the winter and is looking for volunteers.
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