LEVY WAS BORN IN HOLLYWOOD , CALIF ., and grew up in the San Fernando Valley , “ always anxious to get out of there ,” he says . A family friend , an anthropologist , often regaled his family with stories of working in West Africa . Enchanted by those tales , a teenaged Levy took off for his first dig . “ It was in a very exotic place called the Pacific Palisades ,” he deadpans , “ in the Santa Monica Mountains .”
Though it wasn ’ t far from home , being out in nature searching for cultural artifacts was “ the coolest thing ,” Levy says . His fate was sealed just a couple of years later , on a spring break dig in Arizona , when he was so excited that the team had found human remains that he asked to stay up all night to keep excavating .
After graduating from high school in 1971 , Levy left for Israel determined to join either an archaeological dig or a kibbutz , one of the country ’ s many farming communes . He ended up doing both . “ To this day ,” he says , “ the only things I can do really well are archaeology and milking cows .”
That said , he hasn ’ t milked many cows since . He came back to the States for an undergraduate degree , then went to England to pursue a doctorate ( where he met his wife , Alina ), before returning to Israel . He first explored the northern Negev , digging in a desert area near the Gaza Strip along the main wadi , or dry riverbed system , that empties into the Mediterranean . He identified the Negev ’ s first chiefdoms , dating to the Copper Age , and created the first Bedouin museum in Beersheba , ensuring the Bedouin ' s nomadic culture would be preserved even as more and more members moved to established towns and villages .
A bit of a nomad himself , Levy spent time in Jerusalem until 1997 , when he found himself in yet another desert , this time in Jordan . He fell in love with the country on his first Jeep ride there . And it was in Jordan , at the site of Khirbat en- Nahas ( Arabic for the “ ruins of copper ”), that he made discoveries featured in the NOVA / National Geographic documentary Quest for Solomon ’ s Mines .
Khirbat en-Nahas is located in desolate lowlands south of the Dead Sea known today as Jordan ’ s Faynan district . The Old Testament identifies the area with the Kingdom of Edom , a mighty foe of ancient Israel conquered by its first king , David , and inherited by his son , Solomon . Ruins of 100 ancient buildings sit amid 24 acres of black slag , or waste from smelting metal . Ancient mines and mining trails abound , as well as the bones of presumed miners . Working with UC San Diego students and his longtime Jordanian research partner , Mohammad Najjar , Levy dug through more than 20 feet of the slag , down to virgin soil . Using high-precision radiocarbon dating and the latest statistical analyses , the
32 TRITON | SPRING 2018