Har carcoma

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Har carcoma

Har Karkom ( Hebrew הר כרכום har karkōm "Safranberg", Arabic جبل عديد, DMG Ǧabal ʿAdīd ) is an archaeological site in Israel . It is located in the southern district .

location

Har Karkom is a ridge in the southern Negev , visible from afar , on the northern edge of Wadi Nachal Paran , about 4.5 km long and between one and 2.5 km wide. It is difficult to access because of its 300 m steep cliffs. The summit plateau of the central Table Mountain rises 847 m above sea level. Two paths lead to this plateau: one leads up over steps that were already carved in antiquity, the other climbs up the slope in a zigzag; there are numerous rock carvings and stone settings. About 7 km north of Har Karkom there is a spring (Beʾer Karkom).

history

Paleolithic

In the area of ​​Har Karkom there are numerous sites from the Mesolithic . Because there were workplaces for flint processing, there are tees as well as high-quality hand axes. In addition, traces of huts were found that were assigned to this period.

Bronze age

Har Karkom has been an important cultic center since the end of the Copper Age and then in the Early and Middle Bronze Ages. Numerous rock carvings, mazebas , tumuli and stone circles and possibly the remains of a temple date from this time . After the Middle Bronze Age, the place was abandoned for around 900 years.

Research history

The prehistorian Emmanuel Anati first visited the Har Karkom in 1954 during a survey of the rock carvings in the southern Negev. In 1980 a joint research project was started by the Centro Camuno di Studi Preistorici, the Israeli Antiquities Administration and the Archaeological Survey of Israel, financially supported by the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The team, led by Anati, carried out a survey of the site until 1983. Since then, Anati has identified Har Karkom with Mount Sinai or Horeb of the Hebrew Bible , regardless of the fact that there is no evidence of human presence on the mountain, especially in the Late Bronze Age to Iron Age I. Therefore Anati comes to a new chronology of the early history of Israel and dates the exodus from Egypt to the late 3rd millennium BC. Chr.

He tentatively assigned the two phases of intense cultic activity in the Bronze Age to the time of the Patriarchs (Bronze Age Complex II) and the time of Moses (Bronze Age Complex IV). In 1994 Anati discovered a cave that was inhabited by a hermit in the Bronze Age, and used as a parallel a cave stay of Moses mentioned in the Bible ( Ex 24.18  EU ).

  • "Cave of Moses"

  • Stone carving, interpreted by Anati as panels of the ten commandments

  • , 12 upright stones of Anati with Ex 24.8  EU associated

In around 30 years of field work, under the direction of Anatis, around 1300 archaeological sites were recorded in an area of ​​around 200 square kilometers and some of them were excavated on a trial basis.

Anati's hypotheses represent a minority opinion; Israel Finkelstein is one of the outspoken and early critics . While Anati announced in 2010 that the Vatican would soon join his opinion that Mount Sinai lies in the Negev and is identical to Har Karkom, Finkelstein stated that he saw no connection between the Bronze Age findings from Har Karkom and the biblical Exodus story: “Through To wander the desert with the Bible in one hand and the spade in the other, that is an undertaking from the 19th century that has no place in modern science. "

UNESCO world heritage

In 2000 the archaeological site of Har Karkom was entered on the tentative list of UNESCO World Heritage Sites because of its rock carvings (criteria iii and iv). These petroglyphs were created over a very long period of time, starting with the Neolithic, through the Copper Age, Early and Middle Bronze Ages, ancient times ( Nabataeans ) up to the Byzantine and early Arab times.

Web links

literature

  • Emmanuel Anati: Har Karkom: Archaeological Discoveries in a Holy Mountain in the Desert of Exodus . In: Thomas E. Levy, Thomas Schneider, William HC Propp (Eds.): Israel's Exodus in Transdisciplinary Perspective: Text, Archeology, Culture, and Geoscience . Springer, Cham et al. 2013, pp. 445–456.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ James K. Hoffmeier: Ancient Israel in Sinai: The Evidence for the Authenticity of the Wilderness Tradition . Oxford University Press, New York 2005, p. 125.
  2. ↑ Emmanuel Anati: Har Karkom: Archaeological Discoveries in a Holy Mountain in the Desert of Exodus , Cham et al. 2013, p. 449.
  3. ↑ James K. Hoffmeier: Ancient Israel in Sinai: The Evidence for the Authenticity of the Wilderness Tradition . Oxford University Press, New York 2005, pp. 125f.
  4. ↑ Mount Sinai Rediscovered
  5. ↑ James K. Hoffmeier: Ancient Israel in Sinai: The Evidence for the Authenticity of the Wilderness Tradition . Oxford University Press, New York 2005, p. 126.
  6. ↑ James K. Hoffmeier: Ancient Israel in Sinai: The Evidence for the Authenticity of the Wilderness Tradition . Oxford University Press, New York 2005, p. 126.
  7. ↑ Emmanuel Anati: Har Karkom: Archaeological Discoveries in a Holy Mountain in the Desert of Exodus , Cham et al. 2013, p. 450.
  8. ^ Israel Finkelstein: Raiders of the Lost Mountain - An Israeli Archaeologist Looks at the Most recent Attempt to Locate Mt. Sinai . In: Biblical Archeology Review 14, 4/1988, pp. 46-50.
  9. ↑ Steve Linde: 'Vatican to accept that Mt. Sinai is in Negev, not Egypt' . In: The Jerusalem Post, May 30, 2010.

Coordinates: 30 ° 17 ′ 17 ″  N , 34 ° 44 ′ 42 ″  E