BIBLE HISTORY DAILY

Did Midian Have a Brand?

From Qurayyah Painted Ware to Yahweh

Examples of Qurayyah Painted Ware. Marta Luciani, Qurayyah Joint Archaeological Project, CC-BY 4.0.

For decades, archaeologists have known a distinctive kind of pottery as “Midianite Pottery.” These beautifully painted vessels were associated with ancient Arabia yet found at southern Levantine sites, most famously at the copper-mining center of Timna. The pottery has since been identified as coming from a northwest Arabian oasis called Qurayyah, where earlier excavations uncovered kilns and debris that established the site as a center of pottery production. “Midianite Pottery” is now called “Qurayyah Painted Ware” (QPW), since it was produced over such a long period and circulated across a wide geographic area, making the ethnic label “Midianite” too narrow.

QPW displays elaborate geometric designs and stylized animals—such as ibexes, gazelles, lions, ostriches, and lizards—along with human figures. A new study led by Qurayyah excavation director Marta Luciani (University of Vienna) uses archaeological, compositional, and chemical analyses to ask how this local pottery became so recognizable and widely disseminated that it formed its own “brand.”

The team analyzed fragments from one of Qurayyah’s previously uncovered pottery kilns, examining the pottery’s shapes and decorations, minerals visible under a microscope, and its chemical composition through Neutron Activation Analysis. By comparing this data with pottery from elsewhere, they established a chemical and mineralogical “fingerprint” for pottery made at Qurayyah.

The earliest forms of QPW, designated QPW 1–2, were locally produced at Qurayyah from the late Middle Bronze Age to the early Late Bronze Age (from the late 17th to 15th centuries BCE). The researchers divide the pottery tradition that followed into seven phases, QPW 1 through QPW 7, which span more than a millennium. Vessel shapes, decoration, and manufacture techniques evolved from one phase to the next, but the team found that a recognizable production tradition emerged in QPW 1–2 that persisted to QPW 7. By the time of QPW 4, they argue, sustained production, increasing standardization, and regional distribution gave rise to the pottery’s well-known reputation and recognizable visual identity.

The strongest evidence is how far QPW traveled from Qurayyah. Analyzed examples from Tell el-Kheleifeh in southern Jordan and Timna in the Wadi Aravah match the chemical signature of vessels produced at Qurayyah. In other words, at least some of the pottery found hundreds of miles away was made at Qurayyah and transported north. There is also evidence that its distinctive style was imitated elsewhere, giving rise to some of history’s earliest knockoffs.

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The Bible is no stranger to the association of luxury goods with Arabia. Ezekiel’s description of Tyre’s international commerce, for example, lists Arabian merchants bringing spices, precious stones, and gold to the Phoenician port. References to Sheba, Dadan, Midian, and other southern locations likewise belong to a world in which valuable goods moved across long-distance networks.

A desirable pottery brand developed in northwest Arabia, was sustained across generations, acquired value and recognition, and eventually spread to the Levant. Biblical traditions preserve memory of Israel’s God Yahweh emerging from the southern world (Moses encounters Yahweh while living in Midian; biblical poetry associates Yahweh with Seir, Edom, Paran, and Teman) providing an intriguing parallel: Yahweh’s “brand,” too, may have originated in northwest Arabia and spread northward into the Levant.

Lauren K. McCormick is an assistant editor at Biblical Archaeology Review and a specialist in ancient Near Eastern religions, visual culture, and the Bible. She holds degrees in religion from Syracuse University, Duke University, New York University, and Rutgers University, and completed a postdoctoral fellowship on religion and the public conversation at Princeton University.

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