A quick post for today, highlighting a couple of things. First, the Past Horizons blog has reported some interesting archaeological finds recently.

One concerns the copper mines at Timna which I touched on long ago in my PhD as an example of how Egyptian and Levantine cultures might interact and share cultural values.

Now originally when this was found, there was a theory that these represented “King Solomon’s Mines”, dating from the 10th century BC (Iron Age). But fairly soon it became clear that the original extraction work had gone on much earlier, in the Late Bronze Age, certainly back to the 13th century and possibly 200 years earlier still. So originally the mines were worked during the period of Egyptian control of the Levant, though certainly it carried on into the Israelite monarchy period. So if King Solomon ever exploited these resources, he was continuing a long tradition, not starting a new one.

But the next assumption was that the enterprise was fundamentally run as an Egyptian colonial outpost, with Egyptian overseers directing a local workforce. This assumption has now been challenged by careful exploratory work. It now seems that the Egyptian presence was considerably smaller in scale, and probably represented a trade outreach rather than any kind of direct control. The Hathor temple shows clear signs of reuse of an earlier holy place, and virtually no Egyptian writing has been found. So the new picture is much more nuanced – the endeavour seems to have been a shared activity between different groups, and it is likely that the technical know-how concerning mining was provided by local groups rather than imported from The Beloved Land.

Finally, I have registered both Scenes From a Life and The Flame Before Us with the audiobook auditioning service ACX. The basic idea is that potential readers flock along to the site, select books which they like and are suited for, and audition for you. Any royalties are split between author and reader. It’s a nice idea, so let’s see what happens next. Should you know anybody keen on going in to such a venture, the two project links are Scenes From a Life and The Flame Before Us.