What was the route of the ancient road connecting the Kingdom of Judea to the neighboring nation of Edom as described in the Bible? Recent research by a group of Israeli scholars has shed new light on the issue.
It suggests at least two itineraries existed, as hinted in the biblical text, and reveals the ancient inhabitants of the land of Israel’s deep knowledge of their territory.
“I had been working in the southern Judean Desert on a different road connecting Arad and Jordan in the Early Bronze Age,” said Ben-Gurion University of the Negev archaeologist Dr. Eli Cohen-Sasson, the lead author of the study on the Edom road recently published in the academic journal Palestine Exploration Quarterly.
The Early Bronze Age covers the period between 3300 BCE and 2000 BCE, which is earlier than the setting of most biblical text.
The research sparked an interest in other systems of roads, especially after Cohen-Sasson came across a site that was already known but never properly studied, Nahal Gorer.
Cohen-Sasson and his colleagues noted that pottery artifacts, which experts usually use to date remains, all belonged to the same period – ninth- or eighth-century BCE, during the Iron Age II (1200 BCE-586 BCE) – and started to examine what could have been the nature of the site.
“We read a lot about the road to Edom mentioned in the Bible,” Cohen-Sasson said.
The connections between Israel, Judea and Edom are discussed several times in the biblical text. The road is explicitly cited in the third chapter of the Book of II Kings.
“The king of Moab rebelled against the king of Israel,” reads a passage. “So King Jehoram promptly set out from Samaria and mustered all Israel. At the same time, he sent this message to King Jehoshaphat of Judah: ‘The king of Moab has rebelled against me; will you come with me to make war on Moab?’ He replied, ‘I will go. I will do what you do: my troops shall be your troops, my horses shall be your horses.’ And he asked, ‘Which route shall we take?’ [Jehoram] replied, ‘The road through the wilderness of Edom.’”
According to the Jewish tradition, the Edomites were descendants of Esau (Eisav), son of Judaism’s patriarch Yitzhak and brother of Ya’acov.
The kingdom of Edom extended to an area covering part of modern southern Israel and Jordan. Moab was also located in modern Jordan on the eastern bank of the Dead Sea.
The question of the itinerary of the road had already been explored by archaeologists.
In the 1950s, legendary Israeli archaeologists Yohanan Aharoni and Beno Rothenberg identified two Iron Age sites that they believed were located along the road, connecting the areas of the Negev Desert, the Judean Hills and the Judean Desert, as well as some strongholds located along the Judean border.
But according to Cohen-Sasson, the route they proposed was highly illogical and had unnecessary detours.
“Why would someone spend an extra half day traveling when they did not have to?” he asked.
However, what Cohen-Sasson and his colleagues found in Gorer allowed them to propose an alternative interpretation, also based on the work of Israeli geographer Menahem Markus, who had previously suggested that what Aharoni and Rothenberg found were actually two separate roads.
“When we started our work, we realized that the site proved that there were two roads because Gorer stands exactly at the intersection between them,” Cohen-Sasson said.
The southern Judean Desert presents several sites and fortresses dating back to the Iron Age, which were believed to be connected by the roads.
The structure at Gorer was believed to be about 14 by 14 meters large, with a six- by six-meter tower.
“It was too small to be a fortress,” Cohen-Sasson said. “It was more like an outpost.”
Another important element to consider is that the site was located at a very strategic position that gave a unique opportunity to monitor the surroundings, he said, adding: “This shows us that ancient Judeans had a very good understanding of the topography of their territory.”
That the roads to Edom were in fact more than one should not come as a surprise, Cohen-Sasson said.
“It seems to be already implied in the Bible,” he said. “If the road had been only one, why would the king of Judah ask his fellow king of Israel which one to take?”