Faynan

Overview

Faynan is a copper-ore district in the Wadi Faynan of southern Jordan, on the eastern side of the Arabah about 50 km south of the Dead Sea, and one of the largest ancient copper mining regions in the Near East. Its ores were worked from the Chalcolithic period into the Islamic era. The modern name preserves the ancient name Punon, a station of Israel's wilderness journey (Numbers 33:42-43) with which the district is identified; in the Roman period the mines were known as Phaino.

Archaeological Evidence

The German Mining Museum in Bochum began intensive research in the district in 1983. Since 1997, Thomas E. Levy of the University of California, San Diego, working with Jordan's Department of Antiquities, has directed survey and excavation across the district, with Erez Ben-Yosef among his doctoral students. The largest site is Khirbat en-Nahas ("ruins of copper"), the largest Iron Age copper production center in the southern Levant, with a fortress, buildings and extensive slag mounds. High-precision radiocarbon dates published in 2008 placed major smelting there in the 10th and 9th centuries BC, pushing the accepted Iron Age chronology of Edom back by about two centuries. The same technological sequence appears at Timna Valley across the Arabah, indicating a single industry spanning both regions.

Biblical Significance

Faynan lies in the lowlands of Edom. Its 10th-century production is part of the evidence for an organized Edomite society in the time of David and Solomon, a position that remains debated.