Dr. Nelson Glueck, archaeologist and president of the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion, whose preliminary explorations of Israel’s Negev desert have disclosed hundreds of ancient settlements which once made the desert bloom, will make the first complete square-mile by square-mile archaeological survey of this area from Beersheba to the Gulf of Aqaba.
This was announced here by Louis M. Rabinowitz, philanthropist and bibliophile and founder of the Louis M. Rabinowits Foundation which, with the College-Institute, sponsored Dr. Glueck’s expeditions into the Negev during the summers of 1952 and 1953. Dr. Glueck will return to the Negev early in June and will continue at work on the project under the same sponsorship for several summers until the complete Negev triangle has been intensively explored, Mr. Rabinowitz said.
The discoverer of King Solomon’s copper mines, which are producing are today for the State of Israel, Dr. Glueck said that his new discoveries show that modern Israelis, if they will learn from the ancients, can transform the Negev wasteland into a thriving and populous part of their country. “Nabataean settlements, Roman roads and Byzantine cities dot the so-called ‘desert’ of the Negev in southern Israel,” he said.
JTA has documented Jewish history in real-time for over a century. Keep our journalism strong by joining us in supporting independent, award-winning reporting.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
