Kadesh-Barnea played a prominent role in the Israelites’ desert wanderings following the Exodus from Egypt, according to the Bible. In some cases, the Bible apparently refers to this place as Kadesh. The Israelites stayed at Kadesh; Miriam, Moses’ sister, died and was buried there (Numbers 20:1). When, at God’s command, Moses sent a man from each tribe to scout out the Promised Land, they returned to report at Kadesh (Numbers 13:26). However, there may have also been another site (or sites) known as Kadesh. For instance, when the king of Edom refused the Israelites passage through his territory, Moses sent messengers to him from Kadesh (Numbers 20:14). But this site could hardly be Kadesh-Barnea, as Edom is situated in southern Transjordan far from the Sinai Peninsula.
Since the 19th century, travelers and scholars have attempted to locate and identify the site of Kadesh-Barnea. From the beginning, the focus has been on Tel Kadesh-Barnea (known at that time by its Arabic name, Tell el-Qudeirat), located in the northeastern part of the Sinai Peninsula not far from the present-day border between Egypt and Israel. It is situated in the center of a wide valley, a short distance from a spring, known as Ein el-Qudeirat, which provides an ample supply of water. The valley was cultivated in ancient times and still provides food to the local Bedouin. Three more springs that provide smaller amounts of water are located in the region. Quite possibly, the Biblical name Kadesh-Barnea refers to all four oases and not only to the ancient mound. In any case, the main settlement developed on the mound near the spring Ein el-Qudeirat.
The identification is difficult because the Biblical text emphasizes the importance of the site in the story of the sojourn of the Israelites in the desert, but fails to give accurate data on its location.
Since the beginning of the 20th century, however, a consensus has crystallized among scholars that Kadesh-Barnea is to be located in the Ein el-Qudeirat oasis. It is in fact the only suitable site in the vast, desolate and barren desert that could fit the Biblical references. Moreover, one of the springs south of Ein el-Qudeirat is called in Arabic En Qadeis, apparently retaining the Biblical name “Kadesh,” and this resemblance seemingly clinched the identification.
Also considered significant, the Biblical references hint that Kadesh-Barnea was situated along a main desert route. For example: “It is eleven days’ journey from Horeb by way of Mount Seir to Kadesh-Barnea” (Deuteronomy 1:2). And again: “When we departed from Horeb, we went through all that great and terrible wilderness, which you saw along the way of the mountain of the Amorites … and we came to Kadesh-Barnea” (Deuteronomy 1:19).
The first archaeological investigation at Kadesh-Barnea was carried out in 1914, on the eve of World War I, by two young researchers: Leonard Woolley, the British archaeologist who later gained world fame in his excavations of Ur in Mesopotamia, Carchemish and Alalakh, and T.E. Lawrence, who likewise acquired world fame as “Lawrence of Arabia” for his activities in the Arabian Peninsula as a British officer during World War I.
Woolley and Lawrence conducted a regional survey on behalf of the Palestine Exploration Fund that included the oasis of Kadesh-Barnea, where they discovered a fortress crowning the top of the site. Before leaving, they cut a sounding in one of the fortress rooms.1
In 1956, when Israel briefly occupied the Sinai Peninsula, Moshe Dothan of the Israel Department of Antiquities carried out soundings in the fortress.2 Between 1976 and 1982, Rudolph Cohen of the now Israel Antiquities Authority directed large-scale excavations at the site. The full report of the excavation was published by Hannah Bernick-Greenberg after Cohen’s death.3
Shortly after Cohen’s excavation of the site, the region of Kadesh-Barnea was returned to Egypt as part of the peace agreement with Israel. No further field research has been conducted on the ancient mound and its vicinity since then.
Cohen had excavated in the main eight-towered fortress (or “rectangular fortress”) that Woolley and Lawrence had come upon more than half a century earlier. Beneath it, Cohen uncovered an earlier settlement, which he described as the “oval fortress” and which was labeled Substrata 4b–4a. Cohen’s excavation established beyond doubt that the Substrata 4b–4a settlement underlying the eight-towered, rectangular fortress dated to the tenth–ninth centuries B.C.E. (Iron Age IIA), the time of the Israelite monarchy, centuries after the date usually assigned to the Exodus.
The eight-towered, rectangular fortress lasted, with modifications, until the fifth century B.C.E. (the Persian period, when the Persians ousted the Babylonians who had conquered Judah in the early sixth century B.C.E.).
But what lay below the earlier settlement of Substrata 4b–4a, in the period before the tenth century B.C.E.? The report of Cohen’s excavation indicates that below the remains of this settlement lies another, even earlier settlement (dubbed as “pre-fortress occupation, Substratum 4c”). In this occupation level, Cohen recovered flimsy remains that included a thin layer of ash and narrow walls preserved to a height of only one course. No chronologically diagnostic artifacts were directly associated with this earlier level.
However, one of us (LSA) suggested that various finds found dispersed in later strata should be associated with this earlier settlement, and they provide evidence for a pre-Iron IIA occupation.4 These earlier finds include local pottery sherds that date to the end of the Late Bronze Age (c. earlier part of the 12th century B.C.E.) and the Early Iron I period (end of 12th and 11th centuries B.C.E.). In addition, two seals and two seal impressions in Egyptian style were uncovered in later strata. Egyptologist Stefan Münger indicated that stylistically they should all be dated to an earlier time than the tenth century B.C.E. fortress.5
Especially important were the discoveries of two nearly complete vessels and 18 body fragments of pottery known as Qurayyah Painted Ware, named for a site in northwestern Saudi Arabia where it was found and identified. We will discuss this pottery below. At this point, we note that the spatial distribution of this pottery shows that the vessels were not concentrated in a specific part of the site, but were rather scattered in different areas and in different strata, not in a secure stratigraphical context. This is an additional indication that they originate in the assumed earlier stratum.
The beautiful vessels of Qurayyah Painted Ware were either handmade or produced on a slow wheel; they have thick walls and are well fired. The pale clay contains coarse temper, and they are usually covered with a cream-to-brown slip and painted in red and black.
Vessels of this pottery group were first discerned about 40 years ago in the Hejaz (in the northwestern part of the Arabian Peninsula) and in the Hathor temple at Timna, the copper mines north of Eilat. At that time, they were defined as Midianite Ware.6 Over the years, more vessels of this group have been found in a number of other sites in northern Hejaz and in the southern regions of western Palestine and Transjordan. In an attempt to avoid a name associated with an ethnic group (Midianite Ware), and based on the data from Qurayyah in the northwestern Arabian Peninsula, where the richest assemblages of this pottery group as well as the kilns probably used in their production have been discovered, British excavator Peter Parr suggested the name “Qurayyah Painted Ware,” a term that is widely accepted today.7 Petrographic and chemical analyses demonstrated that the pottery vessels found at sites in southern Palestine and Transjordan to the east had been manufactured at sites in the Hejaz—most probably in Qurayyah or Tayma in Saudi Arabia, south of the Jordanian border.
As argued by one of us (LSA), the Qurayyah Painted Ware was in use during the latter part of the Late Bronze and the Iron I periods, from the 12th to the 11th centuries B.C.E.,8 about the time of the Exodus from Egypt according to those who attribute some historicity to this central Biblical event.
This early settlement at Kadesh-Barnea was probably a way station along the Darb el-Ghazza, the main trade route from the Red Sea to the Mediterranean coast. This route was used to transport the copper mined at Timna to the north and to Egypt. The distribution of the Qurayyah Painted Ware in southern Canaan and Transjordan—and its presence at Kadesh-Barnea—also indicate strong connections, commercial and cultural, with the Hejaz in the northwestern Arabian Peninsula and with the desert tribes living there.
The massive eight-towered, rectangular fortress erected in the last decades of the eighth century B.C.E. covered nearly the entire mound. Its walls were more than 16 feet thick. It had four projecting towers in the corners and a projecting tower in the middle of each side—eight towers in all.9
The fortress was destroyed by fire, and a large assemblage of pottery vessels was found sealed beneath the destruction debris. Based on the pottery, it seems that the site was destroyed by the Babylonian army of Nebuchadnezzar, either at the end of the seventh century B.C.E., when the Coastal Plain of Canaan was conquered, or at the beginning of the sixth century B.C.E., when Judah was subjugated. Scattered remains of the Persian period, labeled Stratum 1, were unearthed above the ruined fortress.
That this is the site the Biblical author(s) had in mind when referring to Kadesh-Barnea seems reasonable. There is no viable alternative to this site. Whether the site they had in mind was the period of the later Iron Age fortress or the earlier settlement associated with the Qurayyah Painted Ware is less clear.
This is as far as the first two authors of this article (LSA and DU) will take us. The following represents the views of the third author (HS).
What happened on Mt. Sinai is a matter of faith, not historical investigation. Whether there was an actual mountain that Israelite tradition identified as Mt. Sinai, however, is a matter of history. And that is where we start.
Archaeologists often disagree with one another. But on one fact they seem to agree. During the period when the Exodus was supposed to have occurred, there is no evidence of occupation in the entire Sinai Peninsula. The Israelis had the opportunity to scour the place between 1967, when it was conquered during the Six-Day War, and 1982, when it was returned to Egypt. As one leading Israeli archaeologist has put it, “Nowhere in Sinai did we or our colleagues find any concrete remains of the stations on the Exodus route, nor even small encampments.”a
Harvard’s Frank Moore Cross, who died in 2012, was America’s leading Biblical scholar, archaeologist and paleographer for a generation; he persuasively argued that even if the Israelites on the Exodus had included only a few hundred people, “They could not have survived for a generation in uninhabited Sinai—unless one takes at face value the legend of the heavens raining manna and the migration with miraculous frequency of myriads of quail” (Exodus 16:4–36).b
So where did the Israelites encamp before taking off for the Promised Land?
The Bible tells us. According to the Biblical text (Exodus 2:15), after Moses killed an Egyptian overseer and Pharaoh learned of it, Moses fled. Where? Not to Sinai, but to Midian, where he found work 044 tending flocks of a Midianite priest named Jethro. He soon married Jethro’s daughter Zipporah, who bore him two sons.
While tending Jethro’s flocks in Midian, Moses received the call at the Mountain of God (Horeb or Sinai) (Exodus 3:1). And thus began the trek to the Promised Land.
This so-called “Midianite Hypothesis” as to the location of Mt. Sinai has recently found support in excavations in the northwestern corner of Saudi Arabia, just south of the Jordanian border. In contrast to the empty Sinai at the supposed time of the Exodus, Midianite territory in this area of Saudi Arabia was thriving.c Settlements dating to this period were found all over, according to surveys conducted by Peter Parr.
It was here that Parr found the characteristic Midianite Ware, later called Qurayyah Painted Ware—the same pottery found at Kadesh-Barnea and dated to the period when the Exodus is traditionally dated. If the Israelites were in Midian, as the Bible says they were, there is no reason to doubt that they proceeded to Kadesh-Barnea. In short, Tell Kadesh-Barnea is the site the Bible refers to in Exodus and Deuteronomy.
Kadesh-Barnea, Tell el-Qudeirat, hasn’t been excavated since the 1980s, but a new pottery analysis indicates a settlement was there at the time of the Exodus.
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C.L. Woolley and T.E. Lawrence, “The Wilderness of Zin (Archaeological Report),” Annual of the Palestine Exploration Fund (1914–1915), pp. 52–71.
2.
M. Dothan, “The Fortress at Kadesh-Barnea,” Israel Exploration Journal 15 (1965), pp. 134–151.
3.
R. Cohen and H. Bernick-Greenberg, Excavations at Kadesh Barnea (Tell el-Qudeirat) 1976–1982, IAA Reports 34 (Jerusalem: Israel Antiquities Authority, 2007).
4.
L. Singer-Avitz, “The Earliest Settlement at Kadesh Barnea,” Tel Aviv 35 (2008), pp. 73–81.
5.
S. Münger, “Stamp Seals and Seal Impressions,” in Cohen and Bernick-Greenberg, Excavations at Kadesh Barnea, pp. 237–243.
6.
P. Parr et al., “Preliminary Survey in Northwest Arabia, 1968,” Bulletin of the Institute of Archaeology, University of London 8–9 (1970), pp. 193–242; B. Rothenberg, “An Egyptian Temple of Hathor Discovered in the Southern Arabah (Israel),” Bulletin Museum Haaretz, Tel Aviv 12 (1970), pp. 28–35.
7.
P. Parr, “Contacts between Northwest Arabia and Jordan in the Late Bronze and Iron Ages,” in A. Hadidi, ed., Studies in the History and Archaeology of Jordan, I (Amman: Department of Antiquities, Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, 1982), pp. 127–133.
8.
L. Singer-Avitz, “The Qurayyah Painted Ware,” in D. Ussishkin, ed., The Renewed Archaeological Excavations at Lachish (1973–1994), vol. III (Tel Aviv: Tel Aviv University, 2004), pp. 1280–1287; L. Singer-Avitz, “Kadesh-Barnea,” Tel Aviv 35 (2008), pp. 73–81; L. Singer-Avitz, “The Date of the Qurayyah Painted Ware in the Southern Levant,” Antiguo Oriente 12 (2014), pp. 123–147.
The dating is based on a number of sites: Qurayyah Painted Ware has recently been found in Tayma in the Arabian Peninsula by a Saudi-German expedition that dates mainly to the 12th–11th centuries, and its main phase of production came to an end before the end of the 11th century (A. Hausleiter [with a contribution by M. Daszkiewicz], “Pottery Groups of the Late 2nd/Early 1st Millennia BC in Northwest Arabia and New Evidence from the Excavations at Tayma,” in M. Luciani and A. Hausleiter, eds., Recent Trends in the Study of Late Bronze Age Ceramics in Syro-Mesopotamia and Neighbouring Regions: Proceedings of the International Workshop in Berlin, 2–5 November 2006, Orient-Archäologie 32 [Rahden/Westf: Verlag Marie Leidorf, 2014], pp. 399–434). The Hathor temple in Timna was in use until the time of Ramesses V in the 12th century, while the activity in the copper mines apparently came to an end even later. Two vessels were uncovered in the contemporary small fortress of Yotvata, located in the Aravah, a short distance to the north of Timna. Among the sites situated further north where specimens of this pottery were found we shall mention the beautiful vessels found in Lachish, in the foundation fills of the Judean Palace-Fort, and in a Late Bronze tomb in Tell Jedur in the Hebron Hill.
Significantly, as in Kadesh-Barnea, isolated fragments of Qurayyah Painted Ware were discovered in various sites in the context of later strata. This fact caused some scholars to conclude that this pottery group continued to be produced and used after the 11th century B.C.E. We believe that this is not so.
9.
Cohen interpreted the remains as belonging to two different fortresses built one on top of the other. The lower fortress, in his view, was surrounded by a thick, massive wall and was labeled Stratum 3; the upper one was surrounded by a casemate wall and was labeled Stratum 2. As shown by one of us (D. Ussishkin, “The Rectangular Fortress at Kadesh-Barnea,” Israel Exploration Journal 45 [1995], pp. 118–127), only a single fortress was erected here, as suggested at the time by the earlier excavator, Moshe Dothan. The massive wall of Cohen’s earlier fortress is simply the massive foundation—in other words, the substructure—of the superimposed casemate wall, all forming parts of the same fortress wall.
