Chalcolithic Treasures: Beersheba and the Negev

Sidebar to: Before History: The Golan’s Chalcolithic Heritage

Fertile Finds

A circle of cult objects, carefully arranged around an overturned basalt bowl (top), was discovered in a shadowy pit dug into the floor of a subterranean chamber at Bir es-Safedi, just a few miles southwest of Beersheba. An ivory blade frames a male figurine at left, and an ivory box, decorated with perforations that create a floral pattern, appears at right. At upper right, a second bowl leans against the wall of the pit; to its left is the head of a small figurine. Excavations led by French archaeologist Jean Perrot in the Beersheba region in the 1950s uncovered the oldest ivories ever discovered in Palestine.1

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