The Negev region, situated in the southern part of present-day Israel, has a long and varied history that spans thousands of years. Despite being predominantly a semi-desert or desert, it has historically almost continually been used as farmland, pastureland, and an economically significant transit area.
The ancient history of the Negev includes periods of Egyptian and Nabataean dominance, the rise of local cultures such as the Edomites, and notable agricultural and architectural developments during the Byzantine and early Islamic eras.
Historical regions of the Negev
For historical purposes, the Negev can roughly be divided into four subregions: The biblical Negev (yellow), referring to the small, semi-arid northeastern Arad-Beersheba Valley (see Tel Arad and Tel Be'er Sheva). Only this area is referred to as the "Negev" in the Bible, as according to biblical historiography, the holdings of the Judeans in the Negev were confined to this region. The northern Negev (green). In biblical times, it was inhabited by the Philistines and from the 6th century B.C. by Idumeans and the so-called "Post-Philistines," whose ethnic identity remains a matter of debate. This region is also predominantly semi-desert, but it was already intensively used for agriculture during biblical times and developed, especially in the post-biblical period, into one of the most important agricultural regions of Palestine. The northern boundary is indistinct and defined differently by various scholars across disciplines. The border shown on the map corresponds to the Ottoman Beersheba District, which is both one of the northernmost and one of the most commonly used boundaries in historical accounts. The central Negev (orange) is even drier; in the Bible, this area was therefore called the "Desert of Zin". In the northwest, it mainly consists of sand dunes; the rest is predominantly composed of the Negev Highlands, which, as recent research suggests, were probably called "Mount Seir" in the Bible, previously thought to be located east of the Jordan River. Finally, the southern Negev (red) has no special name in the Bible. It is the driest region of Palestine, with consistently less than 100 mm of rainfall per year. Originally, it was important mainly for its mineral resources, but starting from the time of the Nabateans, it was also used for agriculture.
Bronze Age and Early Iron Age: The copper miners of the Negev Highlands
Bronze Age and early Iron Age: Regional history
According to Egyptian written records, during the Bronze Age (up to the 13th century BCE) and the early Iron Age, it was the Shasu nomads who lived in the Negev and the Sinai Peninsula under Egyptian rule. Since these are referred to, among others, as the "tribes of the Shasu of Edom," it is assumed that from this ethnic group, the Edomites emerged later, and subsequently, the Idumeans (see below).
The Egyptians operated a copper mine in the Timna Valley, as evidenced by a Hathor temple from that period. After the Egyptians withdrew, another group took over the copper mine. This group also constructed a fortress-like road station at the Yotvata oasis, notably using the casemate building technique, and established another copper mine at Khirbet en-Nahas.
In the Beersheba–Arad Valley, a complex of several casemate buildings also emerged in the 12th century BCE, known as Tel Masos, the region's first capital (until it was replaced by nearby as the new capital from the 10th to the 8th century BCE.). From Tel Masos and Yotvata, this architectural style spread throughout the Negev region between the 11th to 8th centuries BCE, with sites like Tel Esdar, Khirbet en-Nahas, Beersheba and Arad adopting similar structures. Additionally, during this time, many more farms, known as "haserim" ("enclosed homesteads"), developed, especially along the streams and brooks up to the vicinity of the Philistine locations Nahal Patish and Tell el-Far'ah (South). Gazit notes that there were 36 Haserim of at least 0.25 hectares in size in the 11th century alone in the region, along with many smaller farms. Moreover, in the same period, about 60 small casemate buildings appeared in the Negev Highlands.For examples, see Many of these sites also had additional smaller buildings, totaling several hundred. These settlements were likely involved in operating the copper mines, which is supported by the presence of copper slags from the Arabah in Negevite pottery.
These archaeological finds are primarily interpreted in two different ways. Initially, biblical archaeologists interpreted the casemate buildings in the highlands as the garrisons mentioned in 2 Samuel 8:14, which states that King David built garrisons "throughout all Edom", which is why they are still referred to as "fortresses" today. This interpretation was gradually abandoned in the early 1990s: Archaeologists, noting that Yotvata, Tel Masos, and the copper mines were built and operated more than 100 years before David's time, emphasizing that the buildings in the Negev were clearly no "fortresses," and showcasing distinct architectural styles and ceramics different from those in the Judean settlement area, proposed alternative theories. They suggested that either the ancestors of the Edomites built the Negev localities and operated the copper mines, governed by the "Tel Masos chiefdom", or that alongside these nomadic people, a third, unknown sedentary people also lived there, with one of these two groups controlling the copper mines. However, in 2023, Tali Erickson-Gini once again advocated the older "Israel hypothesis," claiming that this interpretation had been consciously "swept under the rug" by archaeologists. At 5:50 – 6:18.See also 47:15 on the character of this lecture: "I know, a little bit is controversial. Some of it is coming from different ideas that were around for maybe up to 10 or 20 years ago. I think that if you talk to every researcher, you probably will get a little bit different idea – or maybe a lot different idea – than what I just told you about. But from my knowledge of these places, where they're placed along the roads, the topography, I don't think that there's any doubt that we're talking about something to do with some kind of fortifications in the Negev highlands in control of this region between Edom and the area of Judah, the united monarchy."
Early Iron Age: Agricultural history
The high number of Early Iron Age buildings in the Negev Highlands, with surveys identifying nearly 450 in total, is surprising given the area's low rainfall, typically less than 200 mm/year.Cf. However, the Negevites appear to have developed innovative agricultural techniques to cope with these conditions:
They built their buildings near the small wadis of the Negev Highlands, where they carved cisterns into the rock to capture and store winter rainwater. They also constructed terraced fields along these wadis, designed to channel flowing water from the wadis and running water from the wadi slopes to plants and slow drainage, thus maximizing moisture retention and minimizing soil erosion. Michael Evenari demonstrated at his experimental Avdat farm that this farming method could successfully grow even grapes with less than 100 mm/year of rainfall.
However, interpretations differ regarding the timing of terrace construction. It is clear that the majority of the millions of wadi terraces still found in the Negev today originated in the Byzantine and Early Islamic periods (see below). However, excavated blades, silos and threshing floors from the Iron Age, along with new Radiocarbon and OSL datings, suggest that some terraces were built as early as the Iron Age or even earlier.
Conversely, research teams led by Israel Finkelstein investigated ancient dung heaps in the Negev mountains and at the Timna mines and discovered that in the central Negev, small livestock primarily grazed on wild-growing winter and spring plants, while in the Timna area, they were mainly fed hay and grape pomace. Accordingly, they suggest that the practice of crop cultivation in the Negev mountains during the rainy season might have started later. If this is accurate, the Iron Age Negevites likely lived in the Negev mountains during the rainy season, practicing only livestock farming there. During the summer, they moved south to mine copper and imported grain and grape pomace from the Philistines and Judeans in the north. If one accepts the early dating of the agricultural terraces instead, it appears that Negevite society was structured such that they lived in the Negev mountains during the rainy season, engaging in crop and vine cultivation to stockpile supplies. During the summer, they moved down to the copper mines, mined copper, and fed their animals with the stored hay and grape pomace.
Later Iron Age: Regional and economic history The political situation of the Negevites and their neighboring peoples as well as territorial fluctuations at this time largely depended on the surrounding political superpowers:
Following Hazael's conquest of the region of Palestine in the 9th century, the Judeans in the north grew stronger and expanded into the Beersheba-Arad Valley, as indicated by ceramics found in Arad and Aroer and ostraca found in Arad.Especially Arad ostraca 24 ("Now I send (this message) in order to solemnly admonish you; today the men (must be) with Elisha, lest Edom should go there [to ra`mat negeb; location uncertain].") and 40 ("... the evil tha[t] Edo[m did(?)]"). Quoted after The subsequent conquest of Palestine by the Assyrians in the 8th century brought a political and economic upswing for the Negevites (like the Philistines and in contrast to the Judeans). They expanded further east in the Beersheba-Arad Valley, beyond the borders shown on the map above, to places such as Horvat Qitmit, Horvat Uza, Horvat Radum, Mizpe Zohar, and the Gorer Tower. However, it was the conquest of Palestine by the Babylonians in the 6th century BCE that had the most significant impact on regional history. The Judean region north of the Negevites was almost completely destroyed, after which the Negevites advanced north into the more fertile Central Palestine. It is likely this invasion that the pronounced hatred for "Edom" in the later biblical texts originates from. This regional situation remained for the next few centuries: According to Diodorus Siculus and Josephus, even in the 1st century BCE and CE, the border between Judea and the Negevites ("Idumaea") was at the same level, namely "between Beth-zur and Hebron" or "near Gaza."Diodorus Siculus, Bibliotheca Historica xix 94 f, 98.Josephus, Contra Apionem II.9 116.
The economic background of this relocation appears to have been that deforestation had made further copper mining impossible: From the 12th to the 9th century BCE, copper mining was gradually intensified to such an extent that by the 9th century, a total of 460 tons per year were being extracted solely at Khirbet en-Nahas. This, however, led to an overexploitation of natural resources, which eventually brought copper production to a complete halt, as indicated by the analysis of charcoal remains.