Edom and the Horites

Hebron (where Sarah lived) and Beersheba (where Keturah lived) are in Idumea.
Abraham's territory extended between the settlements of his two wives
and was entirely in the region of Edom or Idumea.

Alice C. Linsley

The Horites were a caste of ruler-priests who were devotees of Horus and his mother Hathor, the patroness of Horite metal workers. The word "Horite" is the English variant of the word Horim, the term Jews use when speaking of their ancestors. Hathor and Horus are archetypes of the Virgin Mary and Jesus Christ. They are the principal characters of the proto-Gospel among Abraham's Nilo-Saharan cattle-herding ancestors.

The Horite rulers of Edom are listed in Genesis 36. Abraham's territory was entirely in the region of Edom. It extended on a north-south axis between Hebron and Beersheba and on an east-west axis between Engedi and Gerar. This region was called Idumea by the Greeks which means "land of  red people."

Horite priests were attached to the rulers of many territories in the ancient world. Some are associated in ancient Egyptian records with the Shasu on Nubia and Edom. Lists of place names in Nubian temples of Soleb and Amara West record six toponyms located in “the land of Shasu.” A monument of Ramesses II claims that he “has plundered the Shasu-land, captured the mountain of Seir”in Edom; a 19th Dynasty letter mentions “the Shasu-tribes of Edom” and Ramesses III declares that he has “destroyed the Seirites among the tribes of the Shasu.” Clearly, the Egyptians regarded the Shasu as a prominent part of the Edomite population which is described in Genesis 36.

The Horites controlled a vast region from Southern Arabia to Syria. Petra reflects Horite belief and the rulers of Petra and the other Nabataean cities had Horus names. Petra is in the red sandstone mountains of Edom, a territory in modern Jordan. According to Genesis 36, Edom was ruled by the Horite clans of Seir and Esau the Elder who married Adah. Esau the Elder was a contemporary of Seir the Horite.

Esau the Younger married Oholibamah. It is possible that Esau the Younger was Jacob's half-brother, rather than his twin. Their father was Isaac, but they would have had different mothers, as Horite rulers had two wives.

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/Ra."

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 Adam is Nilotic. Adam is derived from the root DM which refers to blood (dam in Hebrew; dammu in ancient Akkadian). This is a reference to the color of the soil (adamah) from which Adam was made. 

Abraham's ancestors lived where red soil washed down from the Ethiopian Highlands. These soils have a cambic B horizon. Chromic Cambisols have a strong brown or red color. The copper in the hills of Edom resembled the soil color of the "Red Land" (Deshret/dshrt) of the Nile Valley.

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 when Esau lived, approximately 1980 to 1920 B.C. 

According to Yoruba oral tradition, Esau was the third king of Ketu. The kingdom of Ketu is in the present-day Republic of Benin.  Abraham's cousin wife was Keturah. The Jebusites (Ijebu) who controlled Jerusalem were divided into clans and one clan was called Ketu.

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. 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: Solving the Ainu Mystery; Edo. Edom and Idumea; The Nubian Context of YHWH; Tamar of Timnah; The Afro-Asiatic Metal Workers; Petra Reflects Horite Belief