Khirbet en-Nahas

Black Ruin

The Arabic name means "ruin of copper," and the site earns it: about ten hectares of ground in the Faynan district of southern Jordan, buried under slag from ancient smelting, with a square fortress standing in the middle. T. E. Levy of the University of California, San Diego began excavating there in 2002 with M. Najjar, formerly director general of Jordan's Department of Antiquities, and the final report appeared in 2014.

The reason it matters is chronological. Before this work, the standard account had the kingdom of Edom forming late — in the eighth to sixth centuries BC, under Assyrian pressure — which made every biblical reference to Edom as an organised power in David's or Solomon's day look anachronistic. Levy's team dated the copper production directly. Their 2008 paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences reported major smelting in the tenth and ninth centuries BC, and stated plainly that "the new radiocarbon dates push back by 2 centuries the accepted IA chronology of Edom."

What That Does and Does Not Settle

Edom appears in Scripture long before the Assyrian period. Genesis 36:31 lists kings who reigned in Edom before any king reigned over Israel. Numbers 20 has Edom refusing Israel passage and coming out against them with a strong hand — an organised polity able to field a force. 2 Samuel 8 has David garrisoning Edom, 1 Kings 11 has Hadad the Edomite as Solomon's adversary, and 2 Kings 8 has Edom revolting from Judah. For decades the standard reply to all of that was that there was nothing in Edom then to garrison or to revolt.

That reply is no longer available in the form it used to take. Something substantial and organised was operating in the Edomite lowlands in the tenth and ninth centuries BC. It is worth being exact about the shape of this result: it removes a chronological objection. It does not confirm a single biblical episode. Nothing from Faynan names Edom, names a king, mentions Israel or dates an event, and Levy's team have never claimed otherwise. The correct sentence is that an organised polity existed early enough for the biblical picture to be possible. The sentence "archaeology confirms David's conquest of Edom" is a considerable overreach, and the three main parties to this argument would reject it for three different reasons.

The Argument, Still Running

I. Finkelstein opened the objections in Tel Aviv in 2005 and, with E. Piasetzky, pressed them in Radiocarbon in 2006 and Tel Aviv in 2008: the stratigraphic provenance of some of the dated samples is insecure, and samples associated with the fortress gate gave ninth-century results. E. van der Steen and P. Bienkowski published a methodological critique of the Bayesian modelling in Antiquity in 2006, arguing that the modelled ranges came out both wider and consistently earlier than the plain calibrated dates, which is the opposite of what the method should do. Levy and Najjar answered in Tel Aviv the same year. I. Finkelstein and L. Singer-Avitz took up the pottery in 2009, and J. M. Tebes published an independent reassessment of the chronology in 2021.

P. Bienkowski has since made the most systematic published case against the whole model, in the Bulletin of the American Society of Overseas Research in 2022. His argument is not about dates alone: he holds that nomads are visible at Faynan, in the Wadi Fidan cemetery, but that their material culture is entirely unlike that of the copper-production sites, and that tooth chemistry indicates most of the people buried there did not work in the industry. The elite buildings at the site, on his reading, appear suddenly with no transition from nomadism, and a gap of about a century separates the end of Faynan's boom from the first settlement in the Edomite highlands — so the kingdom of Edom did not grow out of this at all. He locates its real origin in Assyrian-driven intensification from the late eighth century.

Where the argument now stands is worth stating carefully, because it has moved. Nobody now disputes that there was an early Iron Age industrial boom in the Arabah; I. Finkelstein has conceded that the copper industry led to the rise of a desert polity. What remains open is the precise dating of the fortress, whether the operators were local or run from the Beersheba valley, and whether any of it is Edom rather than Midian, Amalek or Teman. An article that told a reader this was settled — in either direction — would not be telling the truth.

Scripture references

• Genesis 36:31 — Kings reigned in Edom before any king reigned over Israel
• Numbers 20:14-21 — Edom refuses Israel passage and comes out against them with a strong hand
• 2 Samuel 8:13-14 — David puts garrisons throughout Edom
• 1 Kings 11:14-16 — Hadad the Edomite raised up as an adversary to Solomon
• 2 Kings 8:20-22 — Edom revolts from under the hand of Judah and makes a king over itself

Sources

• Holding institutionLevantine and Cyber-Archaeology Laboratory, University of California, San Diego — T. E. Levy's laboratory at UC San Diego — the excavating body, and the home of the Edom Lowlands Regional Archaeology Project · The excavating institution's own site, which hosts the project's publications. The excavation was run in partnership with Jordan's Department of Antiquities, with M. Najjar as co-directorSupports: Who excavated Khirbet en-Nahas and under what auspices
• ScholarshipT. E. Levy, T. Higham, C. Bronk Ramsey, N. G. Smith, E. Ben-Yosef, M. Robinson, S. Munger, K. Knabb, J. P. Schulze, M. Najjar and L. Tauxe, "High-precision radiocarbon dating and historical biblical archaeology in southern Jordan" — Thomas E. Levy and colleagues · Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 105:43 (2008), 16460-16465. Reports major smelting in the tenth and ninth centuries BC and states that the dates "push back by 2 centuries the accepted IA chronology of Edom"Supports: The redating of copper production at Khirbet en-Nahas
• ScholarshipT. E. Levy, R. B. Adams, M. Najjar, A. Hauptmann, J. D. Anderson, B. Brandl, M. A. Robinson and T. Higham, "Reassessing the chronology of Biblical Edom" — Thomas E. Levy and colleagues · Antiquity 78:302 (2004), 865-879. The first excavation report from the 2002 season and the opening statement of the early-Edom case · paywalledSupports: The excavation and the original chronological claim
• ScholarshipI. Finkelstein and E. Piasetzky, "Radiocarbon and the History of Copper Production at Khirbet En-Nahas" — Israel Finkelstein and Eli Piasetzky, Tel Aviv University · Tel Aviv 35:1 (2008), 82-95, following Finkelstein's opening critique in Tel Aviv 32:1 (2005), 119-125. The counter-model on the dating · paywalledSupports: The published objections to the tenth-century dating
• ScholarshipP. Bienkowski, "The Formation of Edom: An Archaeological Critique of the 'Early Edom' Hypothesis" — Piotr Bienkowski, University of Manchester · Bulletin of the American Society of Overseas Research 388 (2022), 113-132; summarised for general readers in The Ancient Near East Today 11.3 (2023) · paywalledSupports: The systematic case that the kingdom of Edom did not grow out of the Faynan copper industry
• ScholarshipT. E. Levy and M. Najjar, "Some Thoughts on Khirbet En-Nahas, Edom, Biblical History and Anthropology: A Response to Israel Finkelstein" — Thomas E. Levy and Mohammad Najjar · Tel Aviv 33:1 (2006), 3-17. The excavators' reply, cited so both sides of the exchange are here · paywalledSupports: The excavators' answer to the dating objections
• EncyclopediaWikipedia: Khirbat en-Nahas

Further reading

• T. E. Levy's laboratory, University of California, San Diego
• P. Bienkowski, "The Emergence of Edom: Recent Debate", The Ancient Near East Today

Reflect

For years the standard objection to Edom in David's day was that nothing was there. The objection turned out to rest on nobody having dug. Where are you treating a gap in your knowledge as a settled fact?