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Mines/Israel

Timna Valley mine

Timna Valley mine, Israel. Heritage site, underground, mining copper.

Why Timna Valley is famous

Copper activity over 6,000 years. Its golden era ran from the end of the 14th century to the dawn of the 9th century BCE, with Egyptian-led expansion in the late 14th to mid 12th century BCE and a peak in the 10th century BCE, with centralised production at Slaves' Hill and Timna 30.1,2

Story cards

Timna Valley today

Where copper is mined todayMining in Israel

Where next

Mines

An example ofWadi Faynan (Khirbat Faynan)Another ancient copper centre: Faynan worked from the Chalcolithic to a Mamluk phase.3ExamplesTonglushan copper mineChina's Tonglushan is both a copper mine and an archaeological site, like Timna's 6,000 years of copper.1

Trade routes

Shipped throughArabah copper (Timna and Faynan) to Pi-RamessesEgypt controlled Timna from the end of the 14th to the mid-12th century BCE.4

Sources

  1. Timna Park history of copper mining
  2. Wikidata entity Q1973199
  3. Wadi Faynan copper mining World Archaeology
  4. Luria D., Copper technology in the Arabah during the Iron Age and the role of the indigenous population in the industry PLOS ONE (via Europe PMC)

From the Prospector Trails mining history dataset: each fact links to the source it was checked against. Figures are as the source gives them, in the money of their day. Not investment advice.

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Cover photos from Wikimedia Commons: Chuquicamata from the ISS by Alexander Gerst (ESA), CC BY-SA 2.0. Pictures: Timna in de Negevwoestijn; rotspartij "de zuilen van Salomo", Poll, Willem van de / Europeana (Public Domain Mark 1.0).