Mystery all(?)-women tomb in the Negev

SALVAGE ARCHAEOLOGY: Israeli Archaeologists Find Enigmatic 2,500-year-old Burials in the Desert. Dozens of people, possibly all female, were found in an elaborate tomb in the middle of the Negev desert, nowhere near any ancient settlements. Was the goddess of crossroads involved? (Ariel David, Haaretz).

The burials may be connected to Qedarite traders who operated in northern Arabia and the Negev in this period or to the Minaeans, a people who hailed from an ancient kingdom in modern-day Yemen, [IAA archaeologists] Pasternak and Erickson-Gini suggest.

Still, the Negev is a long way away from southern Arabia, so why were the bodies buried here? And why is it mostly (or all) women?

The location and the varied provenance of the artifacts found with the bodies suggests that the women were not from Arabia itself. But they may have been headed there, the archaeologists speculate.

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