Israeli Archaeologists Hardest To Convince Of Their Heritage of David And Solomon

 Nadene Goldfoot                                            

On March 30, 1934, 12 men of an expedition on camels camped in the Arava Desert.  This country was ruled by the British then. Rabbi Nelson Glueck was their leader, who was also an archaeologist from Cincinnati, Ohio,, later renowned as a man of both science and religion.  By the 1960's he was on the cover of Time Magazine.  They had been riding for 11 days, surveying the wastes between the Dead Sea and the Gulf of Aqaba.  His guide was a local Bedouin chief, Sheikh Audeh ibn Jad, and Jad reflected the tribe of Gad to Glueck.  Glueck wrote his book, "Rivers in the Desert."They had slept on the group covered by their robes, ate unleavened bread and felt like the Israelites fleeing Egypt.                                          

They were surrounded by piles of black slag left over from getting copper out of ancient mines of the past.  The workers could get copper from ore in furnaces.  It was the largest copper mine Gluck had ever seen, though his expertise was on ancient pottery. They picked up sherds that were 3,000 years old.  

    Copper Mines in Timna Valley:   According to archaeologists from the Tel Aviv University, copper mines in Timna Valley that were thought to have been built by ancient Egyptians in the 13th century BCE actually originated three centuries later, during the time of King Solomon in 10th century BCE.  The Timna Valley, often associated with the legend of King Solomon's mines, is located in Israel. The valley is in the southern part of the country, in the Negev Desert region near the city of Eilat. 

       Workers during Solomon's days in the Copper mine

This area was where Solomon, King David's son, lived;  who was renowned for his wealth and wisdom.  Solomon's kingdom stretched from Syria in the north to the Red Sea in the south, uniting the fractious Israelite tribes of Reuben, Simeon, Levi, Judah, Issachar, Zebulun, Dan, Naphtali, Gad, Asher, Ephraim, Manasseh, Benjamin for a short while till they divided after Solomon's death into the North and South, losing the 10 northern tribes to Assyria and later to Babylonia, leaving Judah and parts of Benjamin and Simeon combined to make a larger Judah.  Judah had the capital, Jerusalem, very important.  The expedition was sleeping on King Solomon's Mines.  

H. Rider Haggard in 1885 wrote the novel, King Solomon's Mines that was a sensation, but was set in Africa;  wrong location.  They re-wrote a 1919 story into a 2004 TV series with Patrick Swayze and Sharon Stone.                                                                                      

In the Bible, King Solomon is said to have been rich in precious metals, and to have used vast quantities of copper for 

                                                     

his Temple such as the 'molten sea," a giant basin resting on the backs of 12 metal oxen.    Beneath the  font are twelve oxen, representative of the twelve tribes of Israel. In Solomon's Temple, a large bronze basin (called the Molten Sea) was also supported by twelve bronze oxen.                       

The term, "King Solomon's Mines" is only found by a novelist who used it;  not in the Bible.  

Glueck imagined that captives from the wars of Israel and Edom were sent to these mines to work.  He also imagined a prison camp  when he saw the remains of a wall where laborers were held. He named it "Slaves' Hill.   Glueck said hat proving or disproving the Bible was a fool's errand.  As a matter of fact, however, it may be categorically stated that no archaeological discovery has ever controverted a Biblical reference."  In other words, archaeology didn't have to prove the Bible's account of history, but it did prove it  or at least never disproved it, and then he proudly stated that he had discovered Solomon's copper mines. 

In the 60's-70's, it was fashionable for Jewish archaeologists to disbelieve the bible about David and his son, Solomon.  In 2009, 30 year old Israeli archaeologist, Erez Ben-Yosef went to the ancient Copper Mines of Timna, a place north, way north of Eilat in Timna Valley in he Arava Desert that had the Jordan River as an eastern boundary.  His interest was paleomagnetism, the investigation of changes in the earth's magnetic field over time, and specifically the mysterious "spike" of the 10th century BCE, when magnetism leapt higher than at any time in history, still not understood why. In the 10th century BCE in Israel, the Earth's magnetic field experienced an extreme spike in intensity, reaching the highest levels ever recorded, a phenomenon known as the Levantine Iron Age Anomaly (LIAA). This magnetic anomaly is a subject of significant modern scientific research in archaeomagnetism. The ancient people of Israel did not understand magnetism in a scientific sense, but researchers today use the magnetic signatures locked in ancient burnt materials (such as mudbricks and pottery) from the region to study this historical geomagnetic event and to date archaeological sites and biblical events with high precision.  

He traveled with his colleagues from the U. of California, in San Diego, and they explored, digging and bringing up organic material like charcoal, a few seeds totaling 11 interesting things.  They were carbon-14 dated.  The results turns out that Timna is illuminating the time of the Hebrew Bible of the 10th century BCE that included Solomon. So he left his mark in many ways.  

Archaeology proving the Bible just needed more time to appear.  One said in the article that they may have lived in tents which have disappeared, leaving no trace.  They had been looking for remnants of homes and couldn't find any.  

Recent Israeli archaeological findings that support the biblical narrative include an ancient clay seal from Jerusalem bearing the name "Yadiah, son of Asayahu" who is mentioned in the Bible as a senior official during King Josiah's reign 637 BCE-608 BCE), Egyptian pottery at Megiddo corroborating the biblical account of a battle between King Josiah and Pharaoh Necho, and recent discoveries in the City of David such as an inscribed seal mentioning "Nathan-Melech, Servant of the King" and administrative seal impressions from the time of Kings Hezekiah (720 BCE-692 BCE)  or Ahaz (735 BCE-720 BCE) . These dates were all from Kings of Judah after the division of Solomon's death..  

Resource: The New Standard Jewish Encyclopedia

https://jewishbubba.blogspot.com/2014/05/finding-fortress-of-zion-or-citadel-by.html

Smithsonian Magazine December 2021, most of magazine;      QUEST FOR COPPER, P. 44-to end.