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

Hejaz Hejaz is a Historical region, historical region of the Arabian Peninsula that includes the majority of the western region of Saudi Arabia, covering the cities of Mecca, Medina, Jeddah, Tabuk, Saudi Arabia, Tabuk, Yanbu, Taif and Al Bahah, Al-B ...

(northwestern

Saudi Arabia Saudi Arabia, officially the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA), is a country in West Asia. Located in the centre of the Middle East, it covers the bulk of the Arabian Peninsula and has a land area of about , making it the List of Asian countries ...

), southern and central

Jordan Jordan, officially the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, is a country in the Southern Levant region of West Asia. Jordan is bordered by Syria to the north, Iraq to the east, Saudi Arabia to the south, and Israel and the occupied Palestinian ter ...

, southern

Canaan CanaanThe current scholarly edition of the Septuagint, Greek Old Testament spells the word without any accents, cf. Septuaginta : id est Vetus Testamentum graece iuxta LXX interprets. 2. ed. / recogn. et emendavit Robert Hanhart. Stuttgart : D ...

and the Sinai, 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, professor, academic and archaeology, archaeologist. He served as president of Hebrew Union College from 1947 until his death, and his pioneering work in biblical archaeolo ...

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 Hebrew Bible, biblical King Solo ...

in the southern

Arabah The Arabah/Araba () or Aravah/Arava () is a loosely defined geographic area in the Negev Desert, south of the Dead Sea basin, which forms part of the border between Israel to the west and Jordan to the east. The old meaning, which was in use ...

valley. Glueck identified these wares as Iron Age II Edomite pottery. 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 millenniu ...

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

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

Research history

Description

References

Further reading