At this time of year, the weekly Torah readings tell the story of Joseph in Egypt, one that begins when he is sold into slavery by a group of Midianite merchants passing through Israel. In two weeks, Jews in synagogues will read of Moses’ flight from Egypt to Midian, friendship with a Midianite priest, and marriage to a Midianite woman. The same nation appears again in the books of Numbers and Judges—mostly as enemies. But not much is known about them. An ongoing excavation of the Qurayyah oasis in northwestern Saudi Arabia (the probable location of ancient Midian) has shed some light on their territory between the fourth and first millennia BCE. Marek Dospěl writes:
The site is dominated by a massive rock plateau where elite graves may belong to the settlement’s earliest occupants. Over the centuries that followed, the site’s inhabitants developed a fortified residential area, an industrial district, and a cemetery. The virtually uninterrupted occupation of the site in this inhospitable region was possible only thanks to an ingenious system of water collection and distribution. Archaeologists mapped and documented a web of channels and dams that collected and managed seasonal rain runoff, bringing water to Qurayyah’s fields and orchards.
Beginning in the third millennium, these technological advances transformed Qurayyah into a large urban oasis, which had no contemporary parallels in Mesopotamia or Egypt. The site’s growing importance and wealth was also due to the local metallurgical activities and long-distance trade.
Read more on Bible History Daily: https://www.biblicalarchaeology.org/daily/ancient-cultures/the-oasis-of-qurayyah/