ABSTRACT
Cisjordanian states to participate fully in the struggle for control of the important caravan route passing right through Transjordan from south to north. This major route was already open by the mid-tenth century as far north as Khindanu on the Middle Euphrates:
This picture, sketched by a ruler of Sukhu around 750 BCE, can be projected a couple of centuries earlier, thanks to the analysis of imports from north and south Arabia mentioned in Assyrian inscriptions that concentrate on the area of Khindanu more or less from 950. Despite the clear interest of the new ethnic states in the goods transported along the caravan route, that route was firmly under the control of the tribes of camel drivers of the inner desert: Ishmaelites, Midianites and Amalekites. Their centre lay not in Transjordan, but in the Hijaz; and beyond them were other tribes, as far as the extreme south of the Arabian Peninsula. These tribes were considered both closely related and hostile, with whom there was no prospect of agreement or peaceful coexistence. Israelite genealogies reflect a perceived (though remote) genetic affinity with these, especially through stories of separation (Hagar and Ishmael sent into the desert by Abraham, Gen. 21.9-20; the expulsion of Keturah and her sons, including Midian, ‘to the east country’, Gen. 25.1-6), aiming to fix their homeland well inside the desert, beyond Palestinian agropastoral territory proper. Ishmaelites occupied a large part of the central Hijaz, but especially the Wadi Sirhan, that wide, long depression connecting central Arabia (Dumat al-Jandal) with the hinterland of Amman. The list of Ishmael’s ‘descendants’ (Gen. 25.12-14) includes not only Duma and Teima, whose location is certain, but also two groups closely connected to the Wadi Sirhan: Nebayot and Qedar. Those groups will acquire great power and fame in the
Neo-Assyrian period, especially the seventh century, while Teima will reach its climax during the reign of Nabonidus, towards the middle of the sixth century. Seen from Palestine, the Ishmaelites are a very large complex of important tribes, located at the crossing point of caravan routes coming from southern Arabia. Midianites occupied the Northern part of the Hijaz, the al-Hisma plateau, stretching from the Red Sea to the West and the present border of Jordan to the North. The typical ‘Midianite’ painted pottery is found in large quantities in the major north-Arabian urban sites of Quranya and Teima, and other smaller sites in the same area, but also (as imports) in the Edomite area of Timna and Tell el-Kheleifeh, and in the Negev (Tel Masos) and beyond. This occurrence in stratified contexts ensures a dating in the thirteenth-twelfth century (not ruling out an extension into the early centuries of the first millennium). From their centre in the northern Hijaz, the Midianites turned towards Palestine on frequent occasions, since their main occupation, apart from the caravan trade, consisted in extensive livestock stealing, enabled by their mobility and speed (through the use of dromedaries). In this way, they could easily operate well inside Cisjordan and then escape safely. As the beginning of Gideon’s story runs:
Finally, the Amalekites settled more permanently in southern Cisjordan, occupying the Negev: the first phase of Iron Age I sites in the valley of Beer-sheba (Tel Masos IIIB and Beer-sheba IX) is probably to be assigned to them. They controlled the transverse caravan route from Edom to Gaza, the short and final, but strategically crucial, stage of the ‘Mediterranean’ branch of the major caravan route from southern Arabia; they also made raids in the central highlands to steal cattle and crops, activity that led to sharp conflicts with Israelite tribes (see §4.4-5). Information on the Ishmaelites and Midianites is given in biblical texts of quite late redaction, coinciding with their peak in the seventh to sixth centuries – a development documented in both Assyrian and Babylonian texts and from the scanty information obtained from archaeology in Saudi
Figure 20. Palestine in a larger context: distribution of ‘ethnic states’ in Iron Age I
Arabia, an area still inaccessible to scientific research. But the archaeological data on the emergence of North-Arabian tribes in the early Iron Age (Midianites and Amalekites) confirms the basic accuracy of this picture. The opening of caravan routes and the use of camels widened – a great deal – the horizon of exploitation of new territories during the Iron Age, in comparison with the restricted world of the Late Bronze Age. But, on the other hand, the network of diplomatic relations – exchanges of gifts, dynastic marriages, messengers and traders, soldiers and administrators – that had brought Palestine to the centre of the intensive exchange between the big powers of the time (Egypt, Hatti, Mitanni, Assyria, Babylon) had collapsed. In the new age, Egypt maintained some formal claims to control, but without being able to translate them into concrete action. In the North, once the Hittite rule collapsed, we must wait until the emergence of the Assyrian empire before we have again another external power able to assume the control of this part of the Near East. Already around 1100 Tiglath-Pileser I showed the Assyrian interest in the Levant, but it was limited to the Phoenician costal towns, without any consequences for the kingdoms of the hinterland. The picture remains the same in the time of Ashurnasirpal II, in the middle of the ninth century. This state of affairs means that from 1150 to 850 all of the Levant had the opportunity to develop its internal political dynamics with no outside interference. This development spread progressively and consistently throughout the entire Syro-Palestinian strip; but the capacity for consolidation seems to have been greater in the north than in the south, and on the coast than inland. The area occupied by the Israelite tribes, located as it was inland and in the far South, could not attain to any miraculous priority.
