3 March 2022
Still quite early in the morning, after having had a look at Yeruham fortress, I entered Yeruham Lake Park. Both are just west of the town. In the 1950s, right after Kfar Yeruham was established, Keren Kayemet L'Yisrael (the Jewish National Fund) planted trees at the site. In the same decade the dam that created the 150-dunam lake―the second-largest freshwater lake in Israel, after the Kinneret―was constructed, with the intention of utilizing the floodwaters of Nahal Revivim for irrigation, and to make a tourist attraction for boating, fishing, bird watching and more. When the plan for agricultural use of the water failed, the site became a liability, first with the infiltration of toxic groundwater, and later with sewage which leaked into it from the nearby oxidization pools. In the early 1990s, Yeruham Park was rehabilitated. The water purification plant was upgraded to produce 800,000 cubic meters of water annually for supplying the lake, and for irrigation of the park areas and the other public parks in the town. As a result, the entire area is like a closed system, transforming effluents into a vital and useful resource locally.
Starting in the 1980s, Keren Kayemet planted additional trees around the lake―pine, cypress, eucalyptus, pistachio, tamarisk, date palm, olive and jujube―as well as large green lawns and a playground.
There are two wells in the Park; Be'er Yeruham (Yeruham Well) and Ancient Be'er Hagar or Hagar's well, also known in Arabic as Bir Rakhma (the Well of Mercy), which I write about here.
A pleasant if strenuous hike involves walking along the lake’s northern shore to the dam, crossing Nahal Revivim―whose valley was one of the ancient routes west―and climbing up Mount Yeruham where―in addition to splendid panoramas across Yeruham and the Negev uplands―there are remains of prehistoric sites from the middle bronze age I period (2200-2000 BCE). Because the area of Yeruham straddles ancient route which passed through the Makhtesh Hagadol, one can find ancient sites from all periods, beginning in the stone age.
That is precisely what I planned. In the bright sunshine with still sharply-cold air I set off from the lake car park―next to which were dozens of tents with the young campers only beginning to eat breakfast―along the newly-paved path along the lake, with its frequent drinking water fountains, benches and lake-observation points, clothed in three warm layers and a scarf and hat.
Having crossed the dry Nahal bed below the dam, I began the ascent, which follows a marked path alongside Nahal Kalanit, a tributary of Nahal Revivim. The climb is quite steep, so while I catch my breath I will let you read about the history of the settlement atop this fairly hard-to-reach peak.
Towards the end of the Early Bronze period (3050-2400 BCE) there were huge changes in how people lived in the Levant, with large cities depopulating and smaller settlements springing up, as people transitioned from an urban to an agrarian life. Coming at a time of turbulence with old empires collapsing, such as the Old Kingdom of Egypt, it is thought that the onset of drier climatic conditions may have added to the process of de-urbanisation, due to an insufficiency of resources to support the cities. In any event, the population moved to smaller, seasonal, unfortified camp sites, engaging in herding, and becoming nomadic or semi-nomadic. These settlements were often built on hills or mountains.
Having said that, it is not so straightforward that we can say that the new settlements were inhabited by the same people. We don’t really know for sure who these people were, but it has been suggested that they may have migrated from the south into the Central Negev. On the other hand, Kathleen Kenyon, one of the most influential archaeologists of the 20th century, who led many excavations in Israel in the 1950s, argued that the population were Amorites―West Semitic tribesmen from the semi-arid margins of the Syrian desert―who overran the entire Levant toward the end of the third millennium BCE, arguing that the archaeological finds are clearly consistent with the descriptions appearing in literary sources concerning these semi-nomadic tribesmen.
The origins of the Amorites are described in the Torah (Genesis 10:15-16): “And Canaan [one of the sons of Ham, son of Noah] begot Zidon his firstborn and Heth and the Jebusites and the Amorites and the Girgashites [tribes of the Canaanites].”
Kenyon’s hypothesis gained ground but was challenged in the 1960s by Paul W Lapp, Director of the American School of Oriental Research in Jerusalem, who saw clear parallels between Negev finds and the cultural remains—including their pottery decoration and forms, burial practices, and skill in metallurgy―of the Proto-European “Kurgan” peoples of the Caucasus. Moshe Kochavi, Israeli archaeologist and a founding faculty member of Tel Aviv University's Department of Archaeology and Near Eastern Studies, who excavated on Mount Yeruham for four weeks in 1963, arrived at the same conclusion independently based on his finds, suggesting a migration of northern Kurgan groups from the Caucasus into the southern Levant. But because cultural traditions continued in features such as rectilinear domestic structures and red-slipped and burnished pottery, Kochavi didn’t see this as a total displacement of the early bronze age population.
Following his excavations on Mount Yeruham, Kochavi was able to distinguish two strata representing two periods of middle bronze age settlement―something extremely rare in such settlements. The older Stratum II suggested a small defensive community subsisting mainly on pastoral nomadism, seasonal agriculture, and limited industry—small-scale pottery production as well as copper smelting and trade. The site was one of the largest permanent settlements among the several hundreds of middle bronze age I sites in the Negev. It covers two dunams, and is protected by deep valleys on two sides and buildings built along the external walls of this permanent settlement, which comprised thirty connected rectangular dwellings around a larger central courtyard. The roof of each house was supported by either a central stone pillar or a row of two or three along its longitudinal line. Stone benches ran along some of the walls of the houses, whose floors were levelled bedrock.
The copper trade was central to the inhabitants of the Negev highlands in the middle bronze age, and several hoards of ingots, weapons and other artifacts have been found from the period. Kochavi found a hoard of seventeen crescent-shaped copper ingots and pieces at Mount Yeruham. It was shown that the copper was mined in the Feinan area, east of biblical Tamar. It is assumed that the settlement must have traded to obtain them, and Kochavi unearthed a cylindrical clay vessel which may have been the smelting vessel. The copper ingots were very pure, and used to produce bronze; such ingots have been found in other bronze age sites in the Negev.
The later Stratum I showed a settlement based only on herding, similar to smaller sites throughout the Negev Highlands. On a hilltop east of the main site, is a large, elliptical compound about 30 metres in diameter, cleared of stones to the bedrock. The stones were used to form a wall, half a metre high, around it, with an entrance from the north. Kochavi postulated it as an Amorite temple. Sadly I didn't have the stamina to cross to the hilltop to see it.
In 1973, Dr Rudolph Cohen conducted three weeks of further excavations at Mount Yeruham. The “wall enclosure” noted by Kochavi turned out to be the outer walls of neighbouring buildings joined together. Cohen has suggested that the culture of the population is differentiated from those both preceding and following it. Although there was continuity from the early bronze age in pottery, he considered that other new aspects of middle bronze age culture―including burial customs and social structure―implied a new ethnic element. But he argued that this new ethnic element neither came from the north (Kurgan) nor the east (Amorite), but from the south and the Sinai, as initially assumed, and may have been synonymous with the Israelites on their journey known as the Exodus. Research in the Sinai has shown that the ground plan of the Negev settlements of the middle bronze age was also employed in the Sinai in the Early Bronze age. However a variation on this hypothesis by other scholars has suggested that these middle bronze age settlers, though nomadic Israelites, were not from the time of the Exodus, but from the time of Abraham, around 2000 BCE.
Anyway, by now I have not only caught my breath, but reached the main site, somewhat out of breath, and sweating. So off came the layers, but retaining my hat of course against the still-bitter wind.
Perhaps foolhardy as it was to be climbing steep, rock-strewn paths alone on a mountain, now at the first summit I decided to leave my backpack, with its water bottle, along with my surplus clothing, in the lea of a middle bronze-age doorpost. It is foolhardy to leave bags lying about in Israel; not because of thieves, but because stray bags are frequently dealt with by army personnel through controlled explosion, and the area is in frequent use by them, as Yonatan informed me, having been stationed at a base a few kilometres further along Nahal Revivim. But I had met nobody so far, and took a chance, whilst I explored the relatively less steep area.
The first site reached retains traces of rectangular and elliptical dwellings on bedrock, sometimes levelled, and the remains of the external wall of the settlement
Flints are abundant, as are pottery shards. A kiln and kiln debris were found at Har Yeruham―the only one from the period found in the central Negev to date.
There are six middle bronze age tumuli (burial mounds) on the ridges around the settlement, each a circular heap of field stones, about five metres in diameter, with the rectangular tomb chamber in the centre. Each housed a single body, it is thought temporarily, before burying the bones elsewhere.
Though there was no sign of human or animal life―save a lone elliptical ground beetle―there was plenty of plant life hanging on in the freezing wind, strewn about in the desiccated rocky earth, much of it in the form of winter flowers.
Top row, left to right: the desert tulip, Tulipa systola (צבעוני המדבר); Zygophyllum dumosum (זוגן השיח);
Second row: Scorzonera judaica (הרדופנין יהודה); Zygophyllum dumosum (זוגן השיח);
Third row: toothed pheasant's-eye, Adonis dentata (דמומית משוננת); white flower is Anchusa aegyptiaca (לשון-פר מצרית);
Fourth row: unidentified species; unidentified Euphorbia species (חלבלוב);
Bottom row: a lone Carabus species beetle (קרבוס); desert stork's-bill, Erodium crassifolium (מקור-חסידה שעיר).
Having successfully retrieved my backpack and clothing, I descended the same steep route I had ascended, although I later found out there was another, easier path I could have taken.
I still had met nobody at all, even though it was now around 10.00 am, and it was only as I reached the dam again that I saw a married Bedouin couple with their flock of goats, a donkey with a saddlebag, and a few lackadaisical dogs. I said hello as they passed by, and sat on a rock to watch their technique.
Perhaps they have one, but to my English eyes it appeared not. Let me explain that in the British isles the shepherd is master of both his dogs and his sheep, and has trained his dogs as eager, reliable and proactive four-legged shepherds in their own right. Constantly communicating his wishes, suggestions and orders by a veritable language of whistles, the dogs ensure that the flock goes safely exactly where―and how―the shepherd intended. Now we return to my observation of the Bedouin. The husband, by jerky arm movements and calls hopelessly suggests a route to the goats, who go where they please, often splitting up, and inevitably going where it is clear is not intended, and almost always―like the ibexes from whom they are perhaps tenuously descended―by impossibly steep routes where there is no discernable human foothold. The Bedouin wife follows some of them, despite being clad from head to foot in a long black gown and, although one cannot see her shoes, they are no doubt what any hiker would deem "unsuitable". The Bedouin husband, who to English eyes, and perhaps unfairly, is no animal husband, leads in another direction, but similarly has to divert to follow his flock. The surly dogs hang about at the rear, bored, looking like louts. The donkey ignores everyone and goes down to the stream-bed in the vain hope of forage or water. Eventually, after much strenuous calling, but no whistling (Bedouin avoid whistling for fear it will call up an evil jinn), the dogs gave me a look of despair and ambled off behind the sheep, like unpaid labourers refusing to do their jobs.
I had emptied my water bottle, and was glad to replenish both it and my thirst at the sensible water fountains by the lake, where I sat awhile watching the wildfowl, before returning to the car park as the last caravan left, the lawns now empty of tents and deserted. And feeling virtuous that it was still only 10.30 am, and the day before me!
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