Midianite pottery, also known as Qurayya ware is a ware type found in the Hejaz (northwestern

Saudi Arabia Saudi Arabia, officially the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA), is a country in Western Asia. It covers the bulk of the Arabian Peninsula, and has a land area of about , making it the fifth-largest country in Asia, the second-largest in the A ...

), southern and central

Jordan Jordan ( ar, الأردن; tr. ' ), officially the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan,; tr. ' is a country in Western Asia. It is situated at the crossroads of Asia, Africa, and Europe, within the Levant region, on the East Bank of the Jordan Rive ...

, southern Palestine and the

Sinai Sinai commonly refers to: * Sinai Peninsula, Egypt * Mount Sinai, a mountain in the Sinai Peninsula, Egypt * Biblical Mount Sinai, the site in the Bible where Moses received the Law of God Sinai may also refer to: * Sinai, South Dakota, a place ...

, generally dated to the 13th-12th centuries BCE, although later dates are also possible.N. Glueck, 'Some Edomite Pottery from Tell el-Kheleifeh, Parts I and II', ''Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research'', 188 (1967), 8-38.

Research history

Midianite pottery was discovered during the 1930s by

Nelson Glueck Nelson Glueck (June 4, 1900 – February 12, 1971) was an American rabbi, academic and archaeologist. He served as president of Hebrew Union College from 1947 until his death, and his pioneering work in biblical archaeology resulted in the disco ...

in his surveys in southern

and his excavations at

Tell el-Kheleifeh Tell el-Kheleifeh (also Tell el-Chulefi) is an archaeological site in Jordan at the head of the Gulf of Aqaba immediately northwest of the city of Aqaba. Its older identification with the 10th-century port from the biblical King Solomon narrative ...

in the southern

Arabah The Arabah, Araba or Aravah ( he, הָעֲרָבָה, ''hāʿĂrāḇā''; ar, وادي عربة, ''Wādī ʿAraba''; lit. "desolate and dry area") is a loosely defined geographic area south of the Dead Sea basin, which forms part of the bord ...

valley. Glueck identified these wares as Iron Age II

Edomite pottery Edomite pottery, also known as 'Busayra Painted Ware' and 'Southern Transjordan-Negev Pottery' (STNP), is the name given to several ware types found in archaeological sites in southern Jordan and the Negev dated to the 7th and 6th centuries BCE. It ...

. During his surveys and excavations in the Arabah in the late 1950s and 1960s, Beno Rothenberg found similar decorated wares; and after the discovery at

Timna valley The Timna Valley (תִּמְנָע, ) is located in southern Israel in the southwestern Arava/Arabah, approximately north of the Gulf of Aqaba and the city of Eilat. The area is rich in copper ore and has been mined since the 5th millennium ...

of the several Egyptian findings belonging to the 19th and 20th Dynasties, Rothenberg dated this pottery to the 13th-12th centuries BCE. Petrographic studies carried out on some of the Timna wares led to the conclusion that they originated in the Hejaz, most probably in the site of Qurayya.B. Rothenberg & J. Glass, 'The Midianite Pottery', in J.F.A. Sawyer & D.J.A. Clines (eds.) ''Midian, Moab and Edom: The History and Archaeology of Late Bronze and Iron Age Jordan and North-West Arabia'', JSOT Supl. 24, Sheffield: JSOT Press., 1983, 65-124; P.J. Parr, 'Pottery of the Late Second Millennium B.C. from North West Arabia and its Historical Implications', in D.T. Potts (ed.) ''Araby the Blest. Studies in Arabian Archaeology'', The Carsten Niebhur Institute of Ancient Near Eastern Studies Pub. 7, Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum Press, 1988, 73-89; ibid. 'Qurayya', in ''Anchor Bible Dictionary'', vol. 5, 1992, 594-596; J.M. Tebes, 'Pottery Makers and Premodern Exchange in the Fringes of Egypt: An Approximation to the Distribution of Iron Age Midianite Pottery', ''Buried History'' 43 (2007), 11-26.

Description

Midianite bowls bear some resemblance in form with the Iron Age

Negevite pottery Negevite pottery, Negev pottery, Negebite ware, etc. are the names given to a hand-made ware, i.e. without using the potter's wheel, found in Iron Age sites of the Negev desert, southern Jordan, and the Shfela of Israel. However, its use was not lim ...

bowls, who in turn resemble Edomite pottery in their decoration.

Research history

Description

References

Further reading