Beno Rothenberg

Beno Rothenberg (בנו רותנברג, October 23, 1914, in Frankfurt am Main – March 13, 2012, in Ramat Gan, Israel) was an Israeli photographer, archaeologist, and one of the founders of archaeometallurgy.

Early life and education
Beno Rothenberg was born in a wealthy Hassidic Jewish family in Frankfurt am Main on October 23, 1914. He emigrated to British Palestine (the "Land of Israel" or pre-state Israel) with his family in 1933, where he started right away his studies of mathematics and philosophy at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

Military career; early work as photographer
Three years after his arrival in Palestine, he joined the Hagana. In 1945 he bought a camera, taught himself photography, and became a press photographer. During the Second World War he served with the Royal Air Force Meteorological Service in Egypt. During the 1948 War of Independence, he was assigned as a photographer to an armed brigade under Yitzhak Sadeh.

Photography, philosophy and poetry
Rothenberg is considered as one of the important photographers of the last pre-state and early post-independence years of Israel, who resonated with the romantic pioneering spirit of the time, and had access to important Israeli personalities of whom he took remarcable portraits. His artistic talent, coupled with his equal passion for scientific exploration, gave his illustrated books their specific quality and made them very popular. In the same vein, Rothenberg also published a number of notable philosophy articles, along with a book of poetry.

Scientific work


Once he signed on in 1952 as photographer for the archaeological survey of the Negev desert, he entered the field of activity he would dedicate the rest of his life to. For the next several decades, he documented archaeological work in Israel, while also resuming his studies at the University of Frankfurt, where he received his PhD in 1961.

Rothenberg took about 32,000 photos from 1947 to 1957. They are now preserved in the Meitar Collection at the National Library of Israel.

His photography led him to work with American archaeologist Nelson Glueck in the 1950s surveying biblical sites for King Solomon's mines. He became an expedition supervisor and an administrator of the field team. His first major work was a survey of the Sinai Peninsula in 1956. He later worked with Yohanan Aharoni, whose scientific approach influenced Rothenberg and created frictions with Glueck, who was more inclined towards biblical literalism. Rothenberg went on to lead excavations uncovering the expansive Egyptian-controlled ancient copper mines at Timna Valley, part of the Arava Valley in the Negev Desert. The Arava Expedition he headed found a "vast ancient industrial landscape around" there as well as a temple dedicated to the Egyptian goddess Hathor from the 14th-12th centuries BCE, which together overthrew the prevailing view of the mines being founded by King Solomon of biblical fame. The major Arava Expedition was followed in 1956 and later in 1967-78 by a survey of the Sinai Peninsula, which fundamentally changed what was known about that region.

In 1968, Rothenberg joined American Theodore Wertime, "on a long reconnaissance journey through Turkey, Iran and Afghanistan in search of the origins of pyrotechnology".

Though he worked for many years in the Tel Aviv University, he did not get a permanent position there, and in 1973, Rothenberg together with Mortimer Wheeler founded the Institute for Archaeo-Metallurgical Studies at the University College London to support his work. He partnered with academic institutions in the UK and Germany, establishing archaeometallurgy as an academic field.

Rothenberg trained many students who became leaders in archaeometallurgy. He lectured into his nineties, and gave his last lecture in 2008, at 94. Rothenberg died in Ramat Gan at the age of 97, on March 13, 2012.