Khirbet et-Tannur is a Nabataean site dating from the second century B.C. to the fourth to sixth centuries A.D. located on a hilltop above the Wadi el-Hasa near Khirbet edh-Dharih, 70 km north of Petra along the King’s Highway. In 1937, Nelson Glueck excavated Khirbet et-Tannur on behalf of the American Schools of Oriental Research and the Department of Antiquities of Transjordan, but died before completing a final report. Now, in two extensively illustrated volumes, the results of Glueck’s excavations are finally published, based on previously unstudied excavation records and archaeological materials in the ASOR Nelson Glueck Archive at the Semitic Museum, Harvard University.

Volume 2 offers a systematic reorganization of Glueck’s original excavation records and presents detailed specialist analyses of the Khirbet et-Tannur faunal and botanical remains, metal, glass, lamps and pottery collected by Glueck in 1937 and now preserved in Semitic Museum’s ASOR Nelson Glueck Archive, along with fresh examinations of the Nabataean inscriptions and altars from the site.

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Khirbet et-Tannur is a Nabataean site dating from the second century B.C. to the fourth to sixth centuries A.D. located on a hilltop above the Wadi el-Hasa near Khirbet edh-Dharih, 70 km north of Petra along the King’s Highway. In 1937, Nelson Glueck excavated Khirbet et-Tannur on behalf of the American Schools of Oriental Research and the Department of Antiquities of Transjordan, but died before completing a final report. Now, in two extensively illustrated volumes, the results of Glueck’s excavations are finally published, based on previously unstudied excavation records and archaeological materials in the ASOR Nelson Glueck Archive at the Semitic Museum, Harvard University.

Volume 1 is devoted to the architecture of the temple, the dating of its successive phases, its sculptural decoration and iconography,and to a discussion of Nabataean religion, including the evidence for its connections with the religion of Iron Age Edom and its continuation at the temple of Khirbet et-Tannur well into the Christian era, before the A.D. 363 earthquake brought an end to the site. The volume closes with observations about iconoclasm at Khirbet et-Tannur, Khirbet edh-Dharih and Petra.

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