Camels in the book of Bereshit

Bereshit 12:16 records that Pharaoh gave camels to Avram (Avraham) as a present. Later when Avraham sent his servant to find a wife for Yitzhak, camels are mentioned repeatedly, 24:10-64. Yaakov also had camels, 30:43, 31:17,34, 32:8,16 and camels are referred to when the Yishmaelites took Yosef to Egypt, 37:25. All of these references to camels have been questioned since Albright (1960) claimed that the camel was only domesticated in the land of Israel around 1000-1100 BCE, long after the lives of the patriarchs. This claim has been buttressed by a study from Sapir-Hen and Ben-Yosef (2013) who using radiocarbon dating argue that the first significant appearance of camels in the Aravah Vallay (an area a little north of Eilat) was not earlier than the 10th century BCE. How could Avraham, his servant and Yaakov have had camels?

Before reviewing some of the evidence not referred to in the above studies, it should be mentioned that, as pointed out by Sarna (1989, p. 96), in the book of Bereshit, the camel is not the main animal used for travelling, but rather it was a sign of prestige, as for example Avraham’s servant took the camels to impress the family of the prospective bride to Yitzhak. In the book of Bereshit, when an animal is needed for regular work, then a donkey was used: Avraham travelled to the akedah with a donkey, 22:3, Yosef's brothers travelled with donkeys to Egypt, 42:26, and Yosef sent supplies to his father with donkeys, 45:23.

Landa (2016, p. 107) notes that if the camels were added anachronistically to the Torah, then one would certainly have expected camels to be referred to when the brothers went to Egypt to get supplies and when Yosef sent back supplies. One can add that when Avimelekh gives Avraham presents after abducting Sara, he gave sheep and oxen, but not camels, 22:14. Again if camels were added to the Torah anachronistically, then one would certainly have expected that Avimelekh would have given camels to Avraham just like Pharaoh had given camels to Avraham in similar circumstances. Landa also points out that horses are first mentioned in Egypt when the Egyptians were offering their animals to Yosef to get food, 47:17, but Pharaoh did not give Avraham horses since horses seem not to have yet arrived in Egypt. However, if one claims that camels were added to the Torah anachronistically, then why were horses not added as well?

What is the archeological evidence concerning camels? Bulliet (1975) has an extensive discussion on the history of the camel, and he discusses Albright’s dating of camels. Bulliet notes (pp. 45,56) that the camel was most likely in Somalia between the years 2500-1500 BCE, and "that the domestication process first got under way between 3000 and 2500 BCE,” which is before the time of Avraham. Furthermore, he notes (p. 60) that camel hair was found in a cord in an Egyptian gypsum work from around the year 2500 BCE. Also, a bronze figurine from before 2182 BCE which was on a foundation which had "strong Egyptian influence" appears to have a picture of a camel. In addition, he notes (p. 62) that there are drawings of camels on a pot found in Greece and on a seal found in Crete both of which date to around 1500 BCE. Furthermore, (p. 64) in a list of rations found in a northern Syria, Alalakh, from around the 18th century BCE there is a reference to food for camels. Bulliet concludes (p. 65):

The most satisfactory explanation of this circumstance is that the camel was known because it was brought into the area by traders carrying goods from southern Arabia but that it was not bred or herded in the area. It is worthy of note whereas the citations from the Bible associating camels with Abraham and his immediate descendants seem to fit the generalized pattern of later camel use in the area, they could also fit a pattern in which camels were very uncommon. The largest number of animals mentioned in those episodes is ten, and those ten are probably most of what Abraham had since they were sent with his servant with the apparent intention of creating a sufficiently wealthy impression to entice the father of a woman of good family into letting his daughter cross the desert to marry Isaac. No man, incidentally, is described as riding a camel, only women, who seem to have perched atop camp goods instead of riding in an enclosed women's traveling compartment as was later to be the norm.

This does not mean, necessarily, that Abraham or his descendants were mixed up in the Arabian incense trade, although they lived in such great proximity to the main route from Syria to Arabia that such involvement might have been possible. It means simply that in the nineteenth and eighteenth centuries BCE when Abraham and his immediate descendants appear to have lived, camels were already known in small numbers in the northwestern corner of the Arabian desert the western Arabian trade route branched out to go to Egypt or further into Syria. Local tribes in the area may have owned a few of the animals, perhaps as articles of prestige, without being heavily involved in breeding them….

(pp. 66,67) The probable sequence of events seems to have been that by 2000 BCE incense was reaching Syria with some regularity along the western Arabian land route. Some Semitic speaking tribes saw the potential benefits of this trade and became interested in it at its northern extremity. In Biblical parlance these would be the Ishamaelites who appear in the story of Joseph as traders of incense. Other tribes, probably later, undertook to follow the trade back to its source and this became the nucleus of Semitic settlement in southern Arabia. Again in Biblical parlance these would seem to be the children of Abraham's son Jokshan (Bereshit 25:2, Arabic Yuqtan progenitor of the south Arabian tribes). When the Semites had arrived in sufficient numbers, they overwhelmed the indigenous inhabitants of southern Arabia, and became themselves masters of the land and the incense trade.

 

The entire process, it has been argued, took place without the benefit of camel transport, the camels making their appearance only at a much later date from parts unknown. But it has been demonstrated that the camel was already in use during the period in question and that its probable homeland was southern Arabia. It is much more reasonable, therefore, to assume that the camel was the main carrier of the incense route from the very beginning, or nearly so, and the Semitic tribes came to know the camel in this way in very small numbers. In other words, the presence of camels in the Abraham story can be defended and story treated as primary evidence of camel use without disrupting Albright's contention that camel-breeding nomads did not exist in Syria and northern Arabia at that time.

A short time after Bulliet's study, Compagnoni and Tosi (1978) reported finding camel bones, camel dung and camel hair in ruins of a settlement in southeastern Iran, Shahr-I Sokhta (today province of Sistan in eastern Iran) that dates to around 2500-2600 BCE. They also provide a table (p. 98) which lists findings of camel bones in southern Turkmenia and representation of camels in Kashan (central Iran) from 3000-3500 BCE. They also note (p. 100) that in a finding off the coast of Abu Dhabi "representations in relief on tombstones and osteological finds of camels are dated as early as 2500 BCE, have revealed a convergence between Iran and Oman, in the more highly evolved farming communities, in the domestication process of C. bactrianus (two-humped camel) and C. dromedaries (one humped camel)." They write, (p. 99) "In conclusion, in the third millennium all archaeological evidence points to the fact that the dromedary (one humped camel) occupied an area lying between Oman and Sind (eastern Pakistan) to the east and North Africa and Palestine to the west."

Potts (2004) reviews the presence of the two humped camels in the Middle East (Camelus Bactrianus) and he concludes (p. 161), "in view of the ever increasing body of evidence for ties between Central Asia and Elam (western Iran), and between Elam and Assyria and Mari (eastern Syria on the Euphrates) in the early 2nd millennium BCE (between 2000 BCE and 1500 BCE), it is entirely possible that this was the period in which the peoples of the Near East first became aware of Camelus Bactrianus."

These two findings show that camels would have been known in Haran (northern Syria) when Avraham’s servant came and would explain how Yaakov acquired camels.

A more recent finding is from Steinkeller (2009) who discusses a tablet that has been dated to Ur III period, during the reign of Shulgi (approximately 2094-2047 BCE), maybe 100-200 years before Avraham. The tablet records a gift to the King of Ur of various animals, and Steinkeller (p. 416) writes that there is a "strong possibility that the herbivore (on the tablet) in question is the two-humped Bactrian camel." Avraham was from Ur, and we see that camels existed in his locale. Furthermore, the fact that the camel was given as a gift accords with the references to camels as being animals of prestige in the book of Bereshit.

An even more recent finding is Maria Guagnin et al (2023, p. 2) who write:

A tradition of large, naturalistic camel engravings has recently been documented across northern Saudi Arabia. This tradition is represented at sites such as the Camel Site in Jawf Province, where life-sized camels were carved in high relief. Analyses of the reliefs at this site, coupled with archaeological 

surveys and excavation show that use of the site overlapped with the mid-sixth millennium BCE.

These engravings would indicate that camels lived in northern Saudi Arabia several thousand years before Avraham lived, and from the figures in the article, it looks like the camels were one humped camels. 

Accordingly, these new finds show that camels (one humped and probably two humped) were known and used by humans, though probably not on an extensive scale, and not in all places, in the time of Avraham. Avraham could then have received camels as a gift from Pharaoh, and it was from these camels that his servant had camels to take to find a wife for Yitzhak.

Bibliography:

Albright, William Foxwell, 1960 (first published, 1949), The archaeology of Palestine, Harmondsworth, Middlesex: Penguin Books.

Bulliet, Richard W., 1975, The camel and the wheel, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.

Compagnoni, Bruno and Maurizio Tosi, 1978, The Camel: Its distribution and state of domestication in the Middle East during the third millennium B.C. in light of finds from Shahr-I Sokhta, in Approaches to Faunal Analysis in the Middle East, edited by Richard H. Meadow and Melinda A. Zeder, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, pp. 91-103.

Guagnin, Maria, Ceri Shipton, Finn Stileman, Faisal Jibreen, Malek Al Sulaimi, Paul S. Breeze, Mathew Stewart, Amy Hatton, Nick Drake, Deepak Kumar Jha, Fahad Al-Tamimi, Mohammed Al-Shamry, Mishaal Al-Shammari, Andrea Kay, Huw S. Groucutt, Abdullah M. Alsharekh, Michael Petraglia, 2023, Before the Holocene humid period: Life-sized camel engravings and early occupations on the southern edge of the Nefud desert, Archaeological Research in Asia, Vol. 36, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ara.2023.100483.

Landa, Judah, 2016, Camels in the Bible, Jewish Bible Quarterly, 44:2, pp. 103-115.

Potts, D.T., 2004, Camel hybridization and the role of Camelus Bactrianus in the ancient Near East, Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient, 47:2, pp. 143-165.

Sapir-Hen, Lidar and Erez Ben-Yosef, 2013, The introduction of domestic camels to the southern Levant: Evidence from the Aravah Valley, Journal of the Institute of Archaeology of Tel Aviv University, 40:2, pp. 277-285.

Sarna, Nahum (1923-2005), 1989, The JPS Torah Commentary: Genesis, Philadelphia: The Jewish Publication Society.

Steinkeller, Piotr, 2009, Camels in Ur III Babylonia, in Exploring the longue durée: Essays in honor of Lawrence E. Stager, edited by J. David Schloen, Winona Lake, Indiana: Eisenbrauns, pp. 415-419.