Mysterious 2,500-year-old burials hint at human trafficking in ancient Israel

Some 2,500 years ago, a group of young women met their tragic destiny in the middle of the Negev as they were led by one of the trade caravans that crossed the Middle East for millennia, possibly to be sold as temple prostitutes, a new excavation by the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA) has revealed. The site, a mass burial structure, was discovered in 2021 by Dr. Martin David Pasternak, but it was disclosed to the public for the first time on Wednesday.

The area was first surveyed within the framework of a salvage excavation ahead of construction works near the Tlalim Junction. As the excavation progressed, the archaeologists soon realized that the site, featuring the remains of dozens of people and a wealth of unique artifacts from the mid-first millennium BCE, had no parallel in Israel or the entire region.

“We know that human trafficking happened in the area for millennia until very recently,” IAA senior researcher Dr. Tali Erickson-Gini told The Times of Israel in a phone interview. “We are all familiar with the biblical story of Joseph being sold to a caravan of Midianites, then to the Ishmaelites, and finally to Egypt. However, archaeological finds testifying to the phenomenon are rare. Our discoveries seem to be connected precisely to that human trade.”

One of the first unearthed artifacts was an alabaster vessel.

“I recognized it as a container used to transport frankincense and myrrh common in the south of the Arabian peninsula between the 8th and the 2nd century BCE,” Erickson-Gini said. “Then, we realized that the architecture of the small building we uncovered was typical of the 5th and 4th centuries, which allowed us to pinpoint the period more precisely.”

Soon, the archaeologists discovered that dozens of people had been buried there.

“The building was surrounded by piers, and in between them, we found close to 60 individuals, plenty of rings, bracelets, and jewelry, mostly in copper and bronze, as well as Egyptian and Phoenician-style scarabs and other objects,” Erickson-Gini said.

An additional seven skeletons were found in another small structure nearby.

The archaeologists also unearthed some 40 flint tools. Research by Dr. Jacob Vardi, an IAA expert on flint tools, revealed that similar pointless arrowheads were previously uncovered in burial contexts from the same period in modern-day Yemen and Oman.

“Historical sources tell us that arrowheads were used for divination,” Erickson-Gini said. “The Hebrew Bible, for example, describes how the king of Babylon practiced divination by shaking arrows.”

The researcher explained that several other elements suggest that the site witnessed divination and other elaborate funerary practices.

“We could tell that they were grinding incense,” Erickson-Gini noted. “Incense like frankincense and myrrh was obtained by treating resins from trees that grew in the southern part of Arabia or the Horn of Africa.”

Burning incense was common during funerals.

“What amazed us in this site was that after burning incense, they systematically broke every incense burner, no matter the size or material, thick basalt heavy burners, stone burners, clay burners, even alabaster vessels,” Erickson-Gini said.

According to Erickson-Gini, similar broken vessels had been previously found in excavations, but in those instances, researchers did not find elements linking the phenomenon to burial rituals.

Perhaps the most crucial question to arise from the site revolves around the identity of the buried individuals. The archaeologists found over 65 skeletons, most of whom belonged to women between the ages of 14 and 20. The rest appeared to be men in their thirties and forties.

“An inscription discovered in Yemen dating about 100 years after the tombs in the Negev fell out of use listed dozens of women sold there, including about 30 women bought in Gaza, and others from Egypt, Greece, Moab, Phoenicia and more,” Erickson-Gini said. “Researchers believe that they were sold not just as wives, but also as temple prostitutes.”

The practice of employing prostitutes in temple and cultic rituals was common in the ancient world, including in Canaan and Babylon.

The Hebrew Bible repeatedly mentions the practice among the peoples surrounding the Israelites.

“We have a 3rd-century-BCE papyrus from Egypt that mentions a woman from Ammon, or modern Amman, brought to be a temple prostitute in Yaffo,” Erickson-Gini noted.

According to the researcher, the ages of both the women and men buried at the site support the theory of human trafficking.

“We essentially found a group of young women with middle-aged and older men,” Erickson-Gini noted. “What is interesting is that we did not find skeletons of children or babies, while childbirth was probably the most common cause of death among young women at the time. It suggests that something different was going on.”

“There were many ties between Babylon and southern Arabia in that period,” she added. “We know their temples were built and run following the same principles. Sacred prostitution was an important practice in Babylon. One of its goddesses was Inanna, which basically means the ‘great prostitute.’”

The tombs — which were opened and closed multiple times, suggesting that they were in use for several years — presented another find associated with sexuality.

“We discovered about 10 big cowrie shells, which were traditionally identified with female genitalia,” Erickson-Gini revealed. “Similar shells were found in temples in Jordan and Egypt, always associated with female deities. This is not a coincidence.”

No other known settlement or site existed next to the burial structure. However, it happened to sit at the crossroads of two prominent ancient roads through the Arava — the Scorpion’s Ascent, mentioned in the Hebrew Bible, and the Darb El-Sultan, or the King’s Road.

“These two roads have existed for 5,000 years,” Erickson-Gini said. “What I find fascinating is that we have evidence of both burial and divination practices at crossroads in other ancient sites, especially at T junctions. This offers another argument to support our understanding of the site.”

Other meaningful finds include a cooking pot that, based on the stamp on the handle, came from Judea, and small copper scales that were usually employed to weigh incense against gold or silver.

“We even found a fibula, a form of an ancient pin, that likely came from Southern Europe, and a glass pendant from the 4th or 3rd century BCE that probably was manufactured in the Western Mediterranean,” Erickson-Gini said.

While we might never know for sure who the young women buried in the Negev were and what sealed their fate, future research will likely shed additional light on their story.

“The artifacts and remains that have been uncovered at the site there offer materials to study for years to come,” Erickson-Gini said. “We are just getting started.”