Image Details

PHOTO COURTESY OF EREZ BEN-YOSEF AND THE CENTRAL TIMNA VALLEY PROJECT

TIMNA’S TESTIMONY. Archaeologists have uncovered evidence of copper industry at Timna from the early Iron Age (12th–9th centuries BCE). This image shows remains of furnaces and ore-processing workshops that have been discovered on “Slaves’ Hill” (a large copper smelting camp). The copper industry at Timna and nearby sites can be connected to the biblical Edomites, a nomadic people who lived in the arid region south of the Dead Sea. If not for the copper industry, with its mines and smelting sites, their powerful early Iron Age kingdom would have been largely invisible to archaeologists.