Timna Park

District: Southern

Situation and characteristics

Some 30km/20mi north of Elat is Timna Park, an area of 60sq.km/23sq.miles of fascinating desert landscape, with copper-mines which have been worked from ancient times into the 20th century. An asphalted road runs through the park, leading to bizarre rock formations like the famous Solomon's Pillars, Egyptian copper workings and rock engravings.

The area is reached by turning left off the main north-south road 27km/17mi north of Elat, 2km/1.25mi beyond a road on the left leading to the modern mines.

History

Excavations by Benno Rothenberg of Jerusalem University (1959 onwards) showed that copper was being systematically mined in this area as early as 3000 B.C. (following earlier centuries in which nomads had been picking up lumps of copper ore in the desert and smelting them to obtain the metal) and that, on the evidence of inscriptions, the Egyptians were achieving particularly high outputs of copper in the 14th and 13th centuries B.C. (i.e. under the 18th and 19th Dynasties). The mines were also worked in Israelite times, particularly in the reign of Solomon, and also under Roman and Arab rule. The Israelis began mining here in 1955 but closed the mines down in 1976 as a result of the fall in world copper prices. Mining was resumed in 1980 in workings to the south of the ancient copper-mines.