The discovery in the Negev of several villages dating back 2,500 to 3,000 years to the Judean Kingdom were announced here this week-end by Dr. Nelson Glueck, president of Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion and a prominent archaeologist. Dr. Glueck has just returned from another summer’s archaeological field work in israel.
Dr. Glueck, who has spent some 30 years tracking down Biblical sites in Palestine and Israel, reported the finding of remains of villages north of Makhtesh Ramon in the Negev Desert adjoining the Sinal Peninsula. He reported that some of the building were nearly intact and that the villages were protected by fortresses which kept marauding Bedouins at bay and probably guarded the route of the Queen of Sheba when she visited King Solomon.
The archaeologist expressed the belief that the Patriarchs of the Bible, particularly Abraham, probably lived some 4,000 years ago, not about 3,800 years ago as had been supposed earlier. He said that the discoveries in the Negev proved that there had been a flourishing civilization in that area in the earlier centuries but not several hundred years later.
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