BEROSABA
or Beersheba Israel.
A town in
the N Negev, important in the early history of the Hebrews. Remains of a Chalcolithic culture of the 5th millennium B.C. have been discovered on the banks of a wadi
of the same name near the modern town, while the biblical town is being excavated at Tell Sheva (Tell es-Seba'),
4.8 km to the N. To the Hellenistic and Roman periods
belong fortresses built on top of the ancient mound as
part of the limes Judaeae, and remains of the Byzantine
period are scattered in the modern town.
Eusebios (
Onom. 50.1) mentions Berosaba as a large
village 20 miles from Hebron, where a garrison is stationed; the
Notitia Dignitatum (73.22) also refers to it
as a Roman military post. Berosaba figures in the 6th c.
mosaic map at Madaba, in the Byzantine period it was
part of Palestina tertia, and it is frequently mentioned
in the Nessana papyri.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
F. M. Abel,
Geéographie de la Palestine
II (1938) 263; M. Avi-Yonah,
The Holy Land (1966)
120, 133; C. J. Kraemer,
Excavations at Nessana III
(1958) 119-28, 230.
A. NEGEV
