Edom and the Horites

Alice C. Linsley

Edom is the name given to a territory in modern Jordan that was ruled by the Horite clans of Seir (Gen. 36) and Esau the Elder who married Adah. Esau the Elder was a contemporary of Seir the Horite and likely either his brother or a cousin.

Esau the Younger married Oholibamah. The younger Esau was probably Jacob's half-brother, rather than his twin.

The territory over which they ruled was rich in copper and within the Horite caste there were highly skilled metal workers.  The patroness of their mines and smelting operations was Hathor, the virgin mother of Hor who was called "son of God." The Horites were a caste of ruler-priests who were devoteed of Hor (Horus in Greek).

Copper rich Edom (BAR photo)

The Horite metal workers of Edom used the same techniques as the Horite metal workers who lived in the Timna Valley in the Wilderness of Paran. Esau the Elder's son Eliphaz married Seir's daughter who was named Timna.

The soil at Timna is also reddish-brown. Some scholars believe that there must have been a Timna in Edom as well in Paran, but it is more likely that the Horites controlled the metal working industries from Egypt to Jabal Harun (Aaron's Mountain) in Jordan. Timna is a Horite name.

Timna metal working shop

Edom is a variant of the Hausa odom which mean reddish-brown and the Hebrew adam which also means reddish-brown, the color of the soil from which God made the first man. The original context of the story of the creation of Adam is Nilotic. Adam is derived from the root DM which refers to blood (dam in Hebrew). This is a reference to the color of the soil from which Adam was made. Abraham's ancestors lived where red soil that washed down from the Ethiopian Highlands. These soils have a cambic B horizon. Chromic Cambisols have a strong brown or red colour. The copper in the hills of Edom resembled the soil color of ancient Kush. The oldest known Horite temple at Nekhen, dating to 4000 B.C., is located in the part of the Sudan that was ancient Kush.

Esau is called "Edom" and the rabbis made much of how he sold his birthright for a pot of red stew, but this idea comes from a later period than Esau who lived approximately 1800 to 1730 B.C. (Middle Kingdom of Egypt).

According to Yoruba oral tradition, Esu was the third king of Ketu. The kingdom of Ketu is in the present-day Republic of Benin.  Abraham's cousin wife was Ketu-ra.

Earlier Coppersmiths

Abraham interacted with the Hivities and Hittite clans of Het who are listed in Genesis 10.  HT is the Hebrew and Arabic root for copper - nahas-het. Nahash means serpent. As an adjective it means shining bright, like burnished copper. So the clans of HeT were Bronze Age coppersmiths. The serpent image was sacred for them, just as it was for Moses and the people of Israel in the wilderness.

Genesis 23:3-20 tells us that the descendants of Heth were living in the land of Canaan where Abraham lived. He bought a burial site from them. They considered Abraham “a prince of God” among them (Gen. 23:6)

The Hittites spread into Anatolia and introduced iron work there. They didn’t call themselves “Hittites” (an anachronism) but Nes or Nus (Nuzi), and their language was called Nesli. They were Afro-Asiatic metal workers and the root of their original name is NS.

Related reading:  Tamar of Timnah; The Afro-Asiatic Metal Workers