Crossing Ancient Sacred Landscapes: Contacts and Continuities in the Ancient Desert Cults and Beliefs of Northern Arabia and the Arid Southern Levant

Exploring the sacred landscapes of northern Arabia and the southern Levant from prehistory to the Early Islamic period, the book examines cults, ritual traditions, funerary practices and beliefs across deserts and borderlands. Combining archaeology, epigraphy, rock art and digital humanities, it traces long-term continuities and transformations.

Crossing different landscapes and periods has been a major feature of the desert cults and beliefs of the Middle East, from prehistory to modern times. This book aims to study the sacred landscapes of northern Arabia and the southern arid margins of the Levant in ancient times throughout the longue durée, adopting an interdisciplinary approach at the intersection between archaeology, history, epigraphy, rock art research, and digital humanities.

Top-rated international scholars joined in a seminar held at the University of Oxford in December 2023 to present several case-studies with synchronic and diachronic analyses of the cultic and mortuary traditions of modern southern Jordan/Israel and northern Saudi Arabia, from the Neolithic to the Early Islamic period. The studies are particularly interested in the cultural continuity of cultic and ritual manifestations throughout large geographical spaces. These cults and beliefs cut across different landscapes and periods. Crossings were synchronic, with religious traditions, oral narratives, cultic material culture, and funerary architecture, crossing diverse geographical landscapes and socio-cultural entities of different complexity. Crossings were also diachronic, with certain features of the material culture and architecture crossing through different temporal periods.

Preface

Introduction. Across different times and landscapes: Cults and afterlife beliefs in Northern Arabia and the arid Southern Levant in the longue-durée – Juan Manuel Tebes and Michael C.A. Macdonald

Chapter 1. Borders in the desert: The archaeology and epigraphy of the arid Southern Levant and North-West Arabia and their context, from the nineteenth century to the present – Juan Manuel Tebes and Michael C.A. Macdonald

The Archaeology and Iconography of Cult and Death

Chapter 2. The immediacy of scarcity: Towards an understanding of the indigenous geonuminosity of Arabia’s landscapes – Hans Georg K. Gebel

Chapter 3. No rest for the dead: An active afterlife in the Neolithic – Bill Finlayson

Chapter 4. Continuities, convergences, truncations, and other trends in Negev cult over the long term: An archaeological perspective – Steven A. Rosen

Chapter 5. A remote sensing perspective on funerary and cultic monuments in the arid regions of Northern Arabia – Michael Fradley

Chapter 6. A reassessment of the ‘local shrine’ and the Hathor sanctuary, Timna (Site 200), Southern Negev – Gaël Carriou

Chapter 7. The rock art of the Negev, Israel: Discussing private and public space – Davida Eisenberg-Degen and George H. Nash

Chapter 8. Speech of tree: The tradition of sacred trees in the Southern Levant and Northern Arabia as archetypal symbolism – Elizabeth S. Bloem Viljoen

The Epigraphic and Textual Evidence for Cults and Beliefs

Chapter 9. Scented smoke over Dadan: Revisiting Julius Euting’s Stone No. 36 – Regine Hunziker-Rodewald, Thierry Grégor and Andrei Aioanei

Chapter 10. Up on the mountain, down in the valley: New clues to the spatial and social organization of religion at ancient Dadan, and to the political-economic context of the late Lihyanite period – Fokelien Kootstra-Ford, Josselin Pinot and Jérôme Rohmer

Chapter 11. Le dieu Kahl à Qaryat al-Faʾw et à Ḥimà: nordarabique ou sudarabique? – Christian Julien Robin and Mashʿal ʿAbd Allāh Āl Qurād with a contribution of Jérôme Norris

Chapter 12. Nabataean royal portraits in the area of the Qaṣr al-Bint temple at Petra – Laïla Nehmé and François Renel

Chapter 13. Ethical waṣiyyas on the Eve of Islam – Ilkka Lindstedt

Chapter 14. Sacred locales in the Qur’an – Nicolai Sinai

• Edited by Juan Manuel Tebes
• Edited by Michael C.A. Macdonald