About

The Negev, place after place

The Negev is more than half the area of the State of Israel, and it is full of things worth knowing.

Here, an hour's drive from one another, are the first planned city in the country; a trade route two thousand years old that is a World Heritage site; communities that arrived from dozens of countries, and each of them built itself a home; and tens of thousands of stone mounds that misled the researchers for a hundred years.

Shvil HaNegev gathers this, place after place. Every place has its card: what happened there, who was there, and how we know it. Every statement has a source. Everything is open and free, in six languages, and also for the ear — one can stand in the place and hear it.

There are those who will come to see, and there are those who will read from afar. Both will know the south as it is.

Shvil HaNegev is a historical trail in the Negev that begins in Beersheba: a line in the field, signs along it, and beside them this collection.

Every point has a permanent address, which does not change even when the name changes, so that a code printed on a wall will go on working twenty years from now.

The beginning of the city

The collection deals with the beginning of Beersheba: what tells how this place became a place — the wells, the stream, the market, the railway, the Ottoman buildings, the tel, and the people who lived here before there was a city here and after there was.

Three roots lie at its foundation: the Bedouin, the Hebrew of the patriarchs, and that of Hagar and Ishmael. All three are of this house, and none of them is the background of the other.

In the places where two traditions speak of the same thing, both stand on the same page, in the same weight of type, and each is attributed to its own source. The card lays what there is before the reader.

How the collection works

The sources are open for consultation at the foot of every page. A tradition is given as a tradition, in the name of the one who gives it, and where scholarship is divided the card says that it is divided and names the names.

A place that has been demolished remains in the collection: half of the historical value of a place is what no longer stands in it.

The collection is published under an open license and is linked to Wikidata, so that the material will remain available also to whoever holds it after us.

Photographs and drawings

Every photograph carries on its page its credit and its license. A photograph whose license is not recorded does not enter the collection.

Where there is still no free photograph, a drawing may appear. A drawing is not documentation, it is not counted among the photographs of the collection, and it comes down the moment there is a photograph.

Corrections, additions and memories

Whoever has found a mistake in a card, knows of a free photograph, holds a document or a photograph from a family archive, or remembers the city at close hand — we would be glad to hear. A correction backed by a source enters, and the source is recorded.

Data sources and credits

The collection rests on open collections, and this is what it took from each of them.

• © OpenStreetMap contributors ODbL 1.0 — Open Database License The map data, the map tiles, and some of the locations of the points.
• Wikidata CC0 1.0 — Public Domain Dedication Permanent identifiers, coordinates, years and names in further languages. The collection also mirrors its cards to it.
• Wikimedia Commons רישיון נפרד לכל קובץ — רשום בעמוד התצלום Some of the photographs. The license and the photographer of each file are recorded on the page on which it appears.
• PikiWiki — Israel free image collection project נחלת הכלל או CC BY — לפי הקובץ Historical and contemporary photographs of Beersheba and the Negev.
• Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, G. Eric and Edith Matson Photograph Collection No known restrictions on publication Photographs of the Land of Israel from the first half of the twentieth century, among them Beersheba. The Library of Congress states that it has no knowledge of any restriction on publication, and that it is not the rights holder; the wording of the notice is kept by us verbatim for each item, with the date on which it was checked.
• American Colony Photo Department / Matson Photo Service — Library of Congress Public domain
• American Colony Photo Department / Matson Photo Service — Library of Congress Public domain
• Benno Rothenberg, אוסף מיתר — הספרייה הלאומית CC BY 4.0
• American Colony Photo Department / Matson Photo Service — Library of Congress Public domain

Every photograph carries on its page its credit and its license.