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He was always careful to observe the strict rules of desert etiquette. "When you come into Bedouin territory," he explains, "you've got to find their camp and check in. You ask for the sheik and tell him who you are and what you're up to. He's almost always friendly, usually too friendly. He has his people prepare a tremendous feast, just as Abraham killed a calf for his guests. You sit around the fire, stuffed with food and talking endlessly. Then you are taken to the guest tent and covered against the cold with the tribe's best blankets. Your hosts mean well, but the food is sometimes odd—sheep's eyes are something I never got used to. And the blankets are full of bedbugs. A guest of the Bedouins always gets covered with bites."
And if keeping peace with the Arabs had its elements of unpleasantness, coming to terms with the desert itself was every bit as difficult. Over the course of his archaeological career, Glueck estimates, he has eaten his own weight in sand. Recurrently parched and hungry, he figures that he has lost a cumulative total of 1,000 Ibs. But the slim rabbi with the emphatic eyebrows always emerged from his Bedouin robes in perfect health.
Once Glueck won the freedom of the desert, though, he found himself in an archaeological paradise. He wandered through the ancient lands on the far side of the Jordan, Bible in hand, and everywhere he found traces of ancient people. Usually potsherds told him who they were. Other explorers may have reported a ruined fortress on a hill and a low tell beyond it. If inscriptions were lacking, as they generally were, only vague guesses, based on general appearance, could set the age of the find. Glueck was the first to determine that the fort was built in the reign of a specific king of Judah, or that the tell, dated from the age of Abraham, perhaps 1,300 years earlier. All that he needed was a look at the potsherds; sometimes he could identify them from the altitude of a camel back.
How Did They Live? As his experience increased, Glueck developed an almost infallible knack for finding sites of ancient communities. First he looked for springs or waterholes. In that dusty land, every source of water is sure to attract settlers. He also followed the trails of modern Bedouins. "The coun try has not changed," he says, "so they still use the same paths that were followed in ancient times." He kept asking himself how they lived. "Were there caravan routes going through? You have to have a good reason for each settlement."
And always there was the evidence of the Bible. The Old Testament names numerous "cities," tells roughly where they stood, and suggests where to look for more. When the Israelites under Moses were pressing toward the Promised Land, they asked permission to pass through Edom and Moab on the shore of the Dead Sea, promising to stay on the "king's highway," and not to drink the water of the country. Still the King of Edom refused, forcing the Israelites to detour through the dangerous eastern desert.
Edom and Moab were almost unin habited when Glueck started his survey, but he was sure that if they were strong enough at the time of the Exodus to repel the redoubtable Israelites, they must have been well armed and well