'Bronze Age trade links Levant, Egypt, Mesopotamia, southern Europe'

AMMAN — The Bronze Age was a period of intensive contacts in the Levant, Egypt, Mesopotamia and southern Europe. It rapidly developed interconnectedness between different parts of the region and Syria was one of the commercial hubs connecting Mesopotamia, Anatolia, Egypt and Palestine.

Some Early Bronze red burnished jugs found in northern Palestine present morphological features vaguely reminiscent of contemporary vessels from the Urukian colonies in northern Syria, noted French Professor Emeritus Pierre de Miroschedji from the National Centre for Scientific Research.

Miroschedji added that a more significant group of EB IB vessels found in graves at Tarsus suggests the possibility of occasional contacts, probably maritime trade between Syria and Anatolia.

"On the other hand, the relations with Egypt were intensive and widespread and they illustrate a completely diff rent situation since they took place in the framework of an Egyptian colonial enterprise affecting mainly the southwestern part of Palestine," the professor said.

"The interaction between the two countries was a dynamic process. Following an initial phase of sporadic exchanges in the Late Chalcolithic, the relations developed during the EB I at the rhythm of the emergence of the Egyptian state," Miroschedji elaborated.

Faynan in Wadi Araba was another centre of the copper production besides Cyprus, and the expansion of horticulture, the domestication of the donkey as a beast of burden, and the progress in navigation techniques created the fruitful conditions for the establishment of regular exchange relations.

The EB IA saw the first evidence of Egyptian presence along the north coast of Sinai and in a small area at the south of the coastal plain in search of copper and other local products.

The EB IB witnessed a considerable development of the Egyptian presence in many settlements of south-western Palestine which became a de facto Egyptian colonial territory, consequently, from where local products, mainly oil and wine, were exported to Egypt.

"This interaction culminated during the Final EB IB, contemporary in Egypt with Dynasty 0 and the beginning of the First Dynasty. The Egyptian colonial domain was then administered by Egyptian officials probably residing in the Egyptian fortified settlement of Tell es-Sakan and in entrepôts like En Besor and trading outposts like Tel Erani," the professor said.

The Kfar Monash hoard of copper tools and weapons is another testimony of the Egyptian presence in the coastal plain," Miroschedji underlined.

Burials were often the major source of information on the EB I and several scores of tombs, isolated or grouped in cemeteries near settlements, have been excavated. In the Mediterranean zone, they consist of artificial caves accessed through a lateral shaft, Miroschedji said.

He added that each tomb was used for collective burials during a long span of time, presumably by an extended family or clan, so that hundreds of skeletons were sometimes accumulated in disorder.

"In most cases, especially at Jericho at the end of the period, it seems that primary burials were practised. In the semi-arid peripheries, secondary burials in tombs built above ground prevailed. They belong to several distinct traditions," Miroschedji said.

Dolmenic burials exist in the Golan and its western periphery, on the Jordanian Plateau, and in the Jordan Valley while in some areas of the Negev and in southern Sinai are found built tombs in the shape of a circular (Sinai) or a square room; these nawamis and their variants are part of a funerary tradition typical of the southern deserts that can be traced to Oman through the Arabian Peninsula from the EB I onward, Miroschedji underlined.

"Indirect evidence attesting to the importance of funerary rituals is provided by the appearance during the EB I of cultic vessels, sometimes found in tombs. The same vessels might have been used in public rituals. There is evidence of temples within a settlement at Hartuv, and especially at Megiddo."

Presumably these temples were dedicated to a fertility goddess, as in the Chalcolithic and the EB II–III periods," the professor concluded.