This photo was taken from southern end of Khanazir looking north. The entire mound in the foreground belongs to the city, which likely was one of the five cities of the plain. A reservoir may be seen in Wadi Khanazir on the far side of the city (left). To this day water collected in the wadi is used for irrigation.
A total of 413 flint tools were published in Rast and Schaub’s excavation report for the 1975‒1981 dig seasons at Bab edh-Dhra. Most were made from local chert—a sedimentary rock with a high silicone content which gives it a smooth, glassy feel. Chert boulders embedded in limestone rocks are often referred to as flint. A flint tool may be produced by simply picking up a flint boulder and smashing it against a rock. The flakes produced by this method may be used as knives, sickle blades, etc.
The blades are made from multi-colored flint with a triangular cross section and irregular shape.
A more civilized blade requires “knapping.” A hammer stone is struck against the “core,” producing a flake. For more control, a piece of antler or copper may be used instead. When a flint tool loses its sharpness, it may be “retouched” to produce a new cutting edge. Known as “pressure flaking,” a blade is retouched by applying steady pressure to the flint core with with a sharp object.
Another type of flint tool found at Bab edh-Dhra are these tabular scrapers.
The methods described above were used to produce “scrapers.” As their name suggests, these blades were used to scrape the hides of animals but could also be used for butchering. A considerable number of scrapers were found next to an altar in the courtyard of a broadroom temple discovered at Bab edh-Dhra.
Typical for early bronze broadroom temple, the one at Bab edh-Dhra has a courtyard attached with an altar. Flint scrapers were found in the courtyard together with animal bones.
“Canaanean” Blades
Locally produced flint tools from Bab edh-Dhra vary in color and quality. In addition to these, archaeologists also found flint tools manufactured from a uniform, tan-colored chert. These blades were skillfully flaked so as to produce a trapezoidal shape with a hollow flute down the center.
The blades are made from uniform tan colored flint with a trapezoidal cross section and long parallel sides.
Known as “Canaanean” blades, they have been found at other sites in Canaan also. Ernest Wright argued that this style of blade represented an entirely new form of flint production different from that of the preceding Ghassulian culture and was, in fact, one of the criteria used by Wright for distinguishing “Ghassulian” from “Canaanite” in the southern Levant.1Wright writes, “The flint industry, for example, is very different from that of the preceding Ghassulian culture, and it remains virtually the same from the late fourth through the third millennium in both Palestine and Syria. It has been named Canaanean by Rene Neuville, and is especially characterized by the knife with a flat top and trapezoidal section” (Wright 1958, 37). This view has had to be modified somewhat after Canaanean-type blades were found at Ghassulian sites such as Gilat.2Rowan and Levy 1993 This does not invalidate the value of Canaanean blades as markers of Canaanite culture in the southern Levant—the blades are distinctive—but there appears to have been more overlap between Ghassulian and Canaanite cultures during the Early Bronze I period than was previously thought.
Sickle Blades
The majority of the flint blades found at Bab edh-Dhra were used as sickle blades. These were embedded in a curved wooden arm to form a sickle useful for reaping grain. The presence of a large number of sickle blades at Bab edh-Dhra points to the importance of cereal crops as a food source for the inhabitants of the city. These crops may have been grown on the alluvial plains above or below Bab edh-Dhra, and perhaps also in the Wadi Kerak itself, since, as Donahue suggests, the wadi was not the rugged canyon subject to periodic flash flooding that we see today.3Jack Donahue, “Geology and Geomorphology,” in Rast and Schaub 2003, 34
Left: A young Egyptian harvesting barley with a sickle knife. Right: A neolithic wooden sickle with flint blades. The reconstructed sickle illustrates how flint blades were embedded in a wood or bone handle. Bitumen was used to fix the blades in place.
Although the southern Ghor itself gets very little rain, the mountains which rise above the plain to the east are high enough to catch rain. (My thanks to Joel Kramer for pointing this out to me.) Rainfall in the mountains fills the streams in the wadis (Arabic wadi “canyon”) and, more importantly, it replenishes the aquifer. The latter supplies a steady flow of water through springs in the wadi. The southern Ghor is one of the few places in the Jordan Valley well suited for irrigation since it is watered, not by the Jordan, which flows in a deep channel at the bottom of the valley, making it difficult to use for irrigation, but by wadis which come from the mountains. Five wadis converge on the southern Ghor. Their water is captured in reservoirs until today, thus providing a reliable source of water for agriculture year round (see photo of Khanazir above). The remnants of an ancient wall in the Wadi Kerak, approximately 8 miles above Bab edh-Dhra, was likely used in a similar fashion to dam the flow of water coming down the wadi from a spring above.
The name in Arabic means “Spring of the Sowing.” Considerable effort was made to create a reservoir in the Wadi Kerak beneath the spring. The place is marked “House of Marzeah” (betomarzea) on the Madaba Map, and Maiumas (maiumas), both being the names of a notorious Canaanite cult place that involved water rituals and a lot of nakedness. The Romans tried to ban it, but this is a topic for another day.
Wadi Kerak
The Wadi Kerak was created by on an east-west fault line that extends from the Dead Sea eastwards, towards Kerak, known in ancient times as Kir-haresheth, located in the mountains above Bab edh-Dhra. The road through the wadi has always been the primary means of accessing the southern Ghor. Even just a century ago the wadi ran with a perennial stream large enough to provide a permanent habitat for fish.4Jack Harlan, “Natural Resources of the Bab Edh-Dhra Region” in Rast and Schaub 2003, 59 Reports from travelers who passed through the area in the early 1800s also mention acacia and Christ’s thorn trees growing in the lower reaches of the wadi, while also noting that the trees were dying, apparently due to a falling water table.5Jack Harlan, “Natural Resources of the Bab Edh-Dhra Region” in Rast and Schaub 2003, 59 Thick canebrakes grew along the Dead Sea at that time, populated with herds of wild pig and preyed upon by an occasional leopard. All of this had disappeared by the early 20th century. The stream flowing at the bottom of Wadi Kerak was reduced to a trickle while the trees, canebrakes, leopards, and most of the wild pigs were gone.
If we have trouble imagining what conditions were like a century ago, it is even more difficult to imagine what they were like during the Early Bronze period. Jack Harlan, an agronomist at Tulane University, offers the following description of how the region might have appeared during the Early Bronze period.
A higher water table and somewhat more rainfall, together with a gentle exploitation of the resources both in the highlands and the Ghor, leads
to a view of almost luxurious abundance compared to the present situation. Neither land nor water was limiting to the population. Wood was abundant and pasturage ample for the livestock.6Jack Harlan, “Natural Resources of the Bab Edh-Dhra Region” in Rast and Schaub 2003, 61
Erosion
The more favorable conditions which existed in the southern Ghor during the Early Bronze period may be attributed, in part, to the elevated level of the Dead Sea. Geologist Jack Donahue notes that the deep canyon observable today was created by “severe erosion at some point during or after the EB III occupation, either as a result of a rapid drop in the level of the Dead Sea or through tectonic fault movement.”7Jack Donahue, “Geology and Geomorphology,” in Rast and Schaub 2003, 34 As a result of declining sea levels, water flowing in the wadi had further to drop in order to reach sea level, transforming the gentle flowing stream into a rushing torrent capable of producing a lot of erosion.
However, the exact opposite processes were likely at work during the Early Bronze period, with sediment accumulating in the wadi bottom rather than eroding from it. Such conditions could have made agriculture in the wadi possible. Certainly there was agriculture on the alluvial fans beneath the wadi, as there is to this day. Judging by the charred grains and other types of seeds recovered from the occupational strata of Bab edh-Dhra, many different types of crops were sown and harvested, including: barley, wheat, flax, and pulses. In addition to these, the farmers of Bab edh-Dhra grew olives, grapes, dates, and figs.8David W. MacCreery, “The Paleoethnobotany of Bab Edh-Dhra” in Rast and Schaub 2003, 458
1) Sediment accumulates slowly in the valley. Braided river runs in the valley.
2) Erosion forms a channel.
3) Lower sea level results in formation of canyon wall and rapid erosion.
This picture was taken from Bab-edh Dhra overlooking the Wadi Kerak. The steep canyon walls were produced by erosion sometime after Bab ed-Dhra ceased to exist. The canyon was shallower, with gently sloping sides during the Early Bronze period. A spring fed stream runs at the bottom of the wadi year round.
One of the knock-on effects of falling sea levels was the transformation of the sea from a stratified body of water (meromictic), with the upper strata being warmer, less dense, and less saline, to a uniformly saline body of water (holomictic), which is what we see today.9In fact, the the Dead Sea went from meromictic to holomictic as recently as 1979 due to falling sea levels. The salinity of the upper strata of the sea during the Early Bronze period may have approached something like ocean water.10Jack Donahue, “Geology and Geomorphology,” in Rast and Schaub 2003, 34 Falling sea levels also resulted in a lower water table so that springs which formerly exited from locations higher up in the wadi exited further down. It is quite possible that Bab edh-Dhra had access to a freshwater spring in the city during the Early Bronze period.11Jack Donahue, “Geology and Geomorphology,” in Rast and Schaub 2003, 39
If the land around the Dead Sea has subsided, perhaps even catastrophically, due to an earthquake, or if the sea level fell precipitously due to an overall decline in rainfall in the southern Levant, or both, then we may begin to understand how the Garden of Eden became the Gateway to Hell!
Ancient Testimony
Many ancient writers marveled at the scorched land and the “asphalt” lake which gave off such noxious fumes. Tacitus claimed that anything that grew around the sea turned black and withered to dust.
Not far from this lake is a plain which, according to report, was once fertile and the site of great cities, but which was later devastated by lightning; and it is said that traces of this disaster still exist there, and that the very ground looks burnt and has lost its fertility. In fact, all the plants there, whether wild or cultivated, turn black, become sterile, and seem to wither into dust, either in leaf or in flower or after they have reached their usual mature form.12Tacitus, Histories V:7
Strabo also refers to the ashy soil and to “drops of pitch” which emit a foul odor (probably sulphur balls), rocks scorched by fire, and ruined settlements. Whereas Tacitus thought the region was devastated by lightening, Strabo thought it was due to earthquakes and the eruptions of gas.
…therefore people believe the oft-repeated assertions of the local inhabitants, that there were once thirteen inhabited cities in that region of which Sodom was the metropolis… that by reason of earthquakes and of eruptions of fire and of hot waters containing asphalt and sulphur, the lake burst its bounds, and rocks were enveloped with fire; and, as for the cities, some were swallowed up and others were abandoned by such as were able to escape.13Strabo, Geography XVI:2
Both Tacitus and Strabo echo, with some variation, the account recorded in Genesis of a catastrophe which enveloped the whole region. We will follow this line of inquiry further in our next entry.
Kramer, Joel.
Where God Came Down.
Brigham City, Utah: Expedition Bible, 2020.
Levy, T. E.
Archaeology, Anthropology and Cult: the Sanctuary at Gilat, Israel.
London ; Oakville, CT: Equinox, 2006.
Rast, Walter, Thomas Schaub.
Bab edh-Dhra: Excavations in the Cemetery Directed By Paul W. Lapp (1965-67).
Winona Lake, Indiana: Eisenbrauns, 1989.
Rast, Walter, Thomas Schaub.
Bāb edh-Dhrāʻ : Excavations at the Town Site (1975-1981).
Winona Lake, Indiana: Eisenbrauns, 2003.
Wright, Ernest G. “The Problem of the Transition Between the Chalcolithic and Bronze Ages.” Eretz-Israel: Archaeological, Historical and Geographical Studies (1958): 37-45. Link