The recently concluded excavations at Tell el-Kheleifeh (Elath) show that the last settlement there extended from about the end of the sixth or the first part of the fifth century B.C. down to the fourth century B.C. Among the ruins of this last period of occupation, which had possibly two phases, were found numerous black-glazed Attic sherds, belonging in the main to the fifth century B.C. They testify to the existence then of a thriving trade between Palestine and Greece, which, to be sure, was already well known from other excavations in Palestine and Transjordan. It was not known, however, that this trade extended so far inland and southward, nor that it penetrated as it must have, into interior Arabia. These Attic sherds, however, reveal trade connections not only between Elath and Athens, so to speak, but also between Arabia and the Aegean area.

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