Archaeology in the Land of Midian: Excavating the Qurayyah Oasis

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Located in northwest Saudi Arabia, Midian has long been a land of biblical legend. In the 1800s, Western travelers and explorers described Midian as the desert wilderness that Moses and the Israelites crossed during their Exodus travels en route to the Promised Land. It was also the desert where Moses met and married Zipporah, the daughter of a Midianite priest (variously named Jethro, Reuel, or Hobab), and was initiated into their desert religion (Exodus 2–4). The so-called Midianite Hypothesis, first popularized in the 19th century but now questioned by most scholars, held that Moses was introduced to the god Yahweh […]

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Footnotes

1. See Juan Manuel Tebes, “Yahweh’s Desert Origins,” BAR, Fall 2022.

Endnotes

1. Abdulaziz bin Saud Al-Ghazzi, “The Kingdom of Midian,” in Ali Ibrahim Al-Ghabban et al., eds., Roads of Arabia: Archaeology and History of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (Paris: Somogy Art Publishers, 2010), pp. 210–217; Peter J. Parr, Gerald Lankester Harding, and John Dayton, “Preliminary Survey of N.W. Arabia, 1968,” Bulletin of the Institute of Archaeology, University of London 8/9 (1970), pp. 193–242.

2. For a summary of recent excavations, see Marta Luciani, “Qurayyah,” in Alessandra Capodiferro and Sara Colantonio, eds., Roads of Arabia: Archaeological Treasures from Saudi Arabia (Milan: Electa, 2019), pp. 140–155.

3. Reading courtesy Michael C.A. Macdonald, University of Oxford.