DOI: 10.33547/Aegypt2025.14
A special southern Levantine Chalcolithic ivory vessel
by: Ianir Milevski 
Avishay Levy Hevroni Martin D. Pasternak Olga Negnevitsky Harel Shochat Liora Kolska Horwitz
in: M.A. Jucha, J. Dębowska-Ludwin, G. Bąk-Pryc (eds), Per vias Aegypti et Orientis Medii. Studies Presented to Krzysztof M. Ciałowicz, Kraków: Institute of Archaeology Jagiellonian University, Archaeologica Foundation, Profil-Archeo Publishing House, 2025, pp. 165-177.
Abstract: This paper presents a special ivory vessel recovered in 2020 during salvage excavations, at the Ghassulian Chalcolithic site (ca. 4300–3900 BC) of Horbat Raqiq (Wadi Zoumeili), located in the northern Negev Desert. The site is characterized by underground chambers dug into the loess sediment, an architectural feature distinctive of the region. In one chamber, three stacked basalt bowls were discovered and within two of the bowls were fragments of an amphoriskos identified by us as manufactured from elephant ivory.
The restored vessel is compared here to the few known contemporaneous ivory vessels and other ivory objects from the Beersheva region. We explore a probable Egyptian source for the raw material, or for the finished vessel, and contextualize this find within what is known of the trade connection between Egypt and the southern Levant during the end of the 5th – early 4th millennium BC. Furthermore, we suggest that this deposition had a probable ritual character.