460 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1941 



various precious products from Arabia,^' undoubtedly giving in ex- 

 change the copper and iron ingots and finished metal objects pro- 

 duced in Ezion-geber. 



In addition to the fact that the entire first town of Ezion-geber, 

 which for convenience we shall call Ezion-geber I, represented a 

 carefully integrated industrial complex, the excavations have shown 

 that it was built completely anew on virgin soil. It experienced no 

 gradual growth and development but was built at one time, within 

 the space of a year or two, from a preconceived and carefully 

 worked-out plan. Surveyors, architects, and engineers had evidently 

 looked over the north shore of the Gulf of 'Aqabah in advance with 

 a view to the particular requirements they had in mind. They were 

 industrial scouts, and chose a town site which no builders would 

 have selected in the normal course of events for the founding of a 

 settlement. They needed, as we have seen, strong and continuous 

 winds, coming from a known direction to provide drafts for fur- 

 naces. They needed also sweet water to drink, a central point com- 

 manding strategic commercial and military cross roads, and access 

 to the sea. Great quantities of copper and iron ore were present in 

 the WadI el-'Arabah, and provided the most important impetus for 

 the building of the first town on the site known today as Tell 

 el-KLeleifeh. 



The town site chosen, intricate plans for the establishing of a very 

 complicated factory complex must have been drawn up. A great 

 deal of specialized technical skill was necessary. Thick and high 

 walls of sun-dried bricks had to be erected, with flues and air chan- 

 nels in them, and with allowances made for the weight of the wall 

 above them. The angle of the buildings had to be chosen carefully 

 to get the full benefit of the winds from the north. Bricks had to 

 be made by the thousands, and laid by expert bricklayers. In no 

 period in the history of the subsequent towns, each built on top of the 

 ruins of the previous one, were bricks as excellently made and skill- 

 fully laid as during the first period. Certainly not in the poor little 

 town of 'Aqabah several miles to the east, which in modern times 

 has superseded Ezion-geber. All the bricks were laid in complicated 

 systems of headers and stretchers, with the corners of the walls well 

 bonded together. One reads today of new towns, planned in ad- 

 vance, and springing up as if by magic on previously bare soil with 

 the aid of modern transportation facilities and mechanical equipment. 

 Ezion-geber, however, still remote from civilized points today, was 

 a long and difficult journey from them in ancient times. It took the 

 writer 13 days on camelback, several years ago, to travel from the 

 south end of the Dead Sea, which is already comparatively far from 



w I Kings 10 : 2, 13, 15. 



