Archaeology Magazine - September/October 1983 - 30

TelMasos:

Biblical

the

Site

Negev
FRITZ
VOLKMAR
by
inhospitable Negev has never seemed to
afford humanity more than a slender and
The grudging life on its difficult terrain. At the site
of Tel Masos, situated in the eastern Negev, mankind has sought in various periods during four millennia to colonize the difficult landscape. From
Chalcolithic homesteads consisting of little more
than caves to a Nestorian monastery of the Byzantine era, the settlers of the region have secured
themselves briefly against the natural- and the
human- disadvantages of the site. An important
village flourished here during the Early Iron Age;
but this like the other settlements was destined
for destruction, and for more than 1,000 years now
Tel Masos has lain empty, an archaeological testimony to the rigors of desert life.
And yet in spite of its desolate nature- its
Hebrew name means "dry land"- the Negev has long
been a natural transition zone between the cultivated land on one side and the inhospitable deserts
in the south and the east on the other side. Although agriculturally insignificant, it has great importance in terms of commercial geography : since
the Early Bronze Age, the roads from the Judaean
mountains to the Gulf of Aqaba and Egypt, as
well as the connections from the coastal plains to the
eastern desert areas, have run through the Negev.
These trade routes have progressed along the small
number of wells which are scattered throughout it.
Best suited to wandering tribes that leave a
scant trace behind them, the Negev today- as it has
been for much of its history- is preferred by the
Bedouins. Not at all surprisingly, their major place
of settlement is the Tel Masos region, where a
crucially important pair of ground wells exists. These
wells are known by the Bedouins as Bîr el-Meshâsh- literally, "wells of the waterholes"- because
the water is so accessible. Situated on the upper
course of the Wadi es-Seba', these two wells stand
roughly half a kilometer apart, and they have
served for several thousand years as the focal point
of efforts to establish settlements in this region.
The story of Tel Masos is a fascinating one because of the variety of settlements that have come
and gone through the ages. The primitive occupation in the Chalcolithic period (3500-3200 b.c. ) was
succeeded by two settlements fortified in the
Middle Bronze IIB period (1750-1550 B.c.); then
came the Early Iron Age (1200-1000 B.c. ) settlement, the largest village in the area from this

Archaeology

period, which constitutes an important link in the
gradual transition to the final sedentary life of
the Israelite tribes. The finds from the Iron Age settlement are richly various and informative, and
constitute the most important finds reported on here.
A small fortress was erected at Tel Masos
during the reign of Joshia, the last important Judaean
king, but this, like all Judaean strongholds in the
Negev, was destroyed during the conquest by the
Edomites in the first years of the sixth century
b.c. The site then lay vacant for over 1,000 years
until the end of the Byzantine period, or perhaps
even after the Arab conquest. It was then that the
Nestorians- a heretic branch of the Syrian churchbuilt their small monastery, which in turn met a
violent end during the first half of the eighth century.
The name "Tel Masos" does not quite in fact
designate a tell in the usual sense; indeed, hills of
ruins with consecutive settlement layers are relatively rare in the Negev, where agriculture is possible
to only a modest extent. Instead, one typically
finds a more dispersed settlement pattern: the sharp
breaks together with the long interruptions in
settlement history have resulted in the settlement
of different portions of a site. At Tbl Masos, for
example, one finds old settlements around both water
holes, the northern one of which has always been
known and has the name Khirbet el-Meshâsh, while
the southern one was discovered only a few years
ago by Yohanan Aharoni. The important Iron Age
settlement stands to the north of the wadi, while
near the southern well there are remains of a Middle
Bronze IIB Age embankment and settlement. The
remains of the cave dwellings from the Chalcolithic
period were found underneath the Iron Age settlement. About 100 meters farther south, in turn, there
is a small tell which contains both an Iron II Age
fortress and the monastery from Byzantine and early
Arabic times.
All of these ruins, together, are collectively
known as Tel Masos. Excavations were carried out as
a joint German-Israeli project from 1972 to 1975
by the Seminar of Old Tbstament Studies and Biblical
Archaeology at the University of Mainz and the
Institute of Archaeology at the University of Tel
Aviv. The project was directed by Yohanan Aharoni
and Aharon Kempinski from Israel, and by the
author from the German side.
Identification of the site in terms of biblical
references is still uncertain. Aharoni 's efforts to
equate it with Horma remain problematic for a
number of reasons, even though the archaeological
finds seem to fulfill all the requirements. The etiological legend in Numbers 21:1-3 could indeed have
been connected with the Middle Bronze Age settlement; and the remaining biblical mentions pre-

A scarab made of steatite carries the motif of a pharaoh
defeating his foe. Ascribed to the reign of Sethos II
(1204-1194b.c.), this scarab documents ancient ties between
TelMasos and Egypt

Archaeology Magazine - September/October 1983

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Archaeology Magazine - September/October 1983