The remarkable Israeli desert is as rich in topographical diversity as it is in historical importance. Few places on the globe have been the scene of more intense historical dramas, pilgrimages, and wars than the land now called Israel, for thousands of years a crossroads for the civilizations of three continents. Nearly half of this unique area is occupied by the Negev, a desolate, southward pointing triangle of land with an ample history of its own. Some 4,000 years ago, according to the Bible, the Hebrew patriarchs Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob lived at Beer sheba, now the Negev’s principal city. Moses led the Israelites through the Negev after the exodus from Egypt, and King Solomon’s copper mines were located near its southern tip.

During biblical times and for some centuries thereafter, much of the Negev was not the desert that is seen today. Despite a general scarcity of rain (its name comes from a Hebrew word meaning “dry”), the soil was fertile and, with proper planting and cultivation, capable of producing an abundance of crops. The people of Judaea tilled the land for generations, and when Nabataeans from Jordan began to settle there in the first century B.C., they developed so successful an agricultural system that the Negev became a major source of grain for the Roman Empire.

It was not until the seventh century A.D, when the climate became drier, that most of the Negev’s permanent settlements were abandoned and the land reverted to desert conditions. So it remained until the mid 20th century, when the founding of modern Israel brought about a new determination to “make the desert bloom.”

Geographically, the Negev encompasses some 4,700 square miles (12,200 square kilometers). Its northern border extends for about 60 miles (100 kilometers) east from the Mediterranean to the Dead Sea. A natural boundary is formed on the east by the Wadi Araba, a perennially dry river bed that stretches more than 100 miles (160 kilometers) south from the Dead Sea to the Gulf of Aqaba. The Dead Sea and the Wadi Araba both lie in the Rift Valley, an enormous elongated trench in the earth’s crust that begins in Syria, runs southward through the Red Sea, and reaches far down into Africa. The Negev is bounded on the west by the Sinai Peninsula and narrows southward to the Gulf of Aqaba. There, around the port of Elath, Israel’s southernmost city, the Negev comes almost to a point, with its southern tip only about 6 miles (10 kilometers) wide.

Heavily dissected by wadis, the region has been compressed into a series of folds that run northeast to southwest, creating an undulating pattern of uplands and valleys. To the north the landscape is one of rolling hills, with enough rainfall—as much as 12 inches, or 305 millimeters, in some years—to make it the most arable part of the Negev.

Farther south in the central Negev, elevations rise to more than 3,000 feet (900 meters). The most striking features of this area are the elongated, craterlike depressions (called makhteshim in Hebrew) that have been eroded in the tops of many ridges. The largest, Makhtesh Ramon, is 23 miles (37 kilometers) long and as much as 5 miles (8 kilometers) wide. Hollowed out of the upward folds in the terrain, some of these remarkable basins have depths of more than 1,000 feet (300 meters) and steep inner walls that reveal progressively older layers of rock.

Still farther south is the Paran Plateau, a desolate rocky expanse that has frequently been likened to the surface of the moon. Finally, at the Negev’s southern extremity, rise the Mountains of Elath, merging in the west with the mountains of the Sinai Peninsula. There erosion has sculpted the reddish crests into fantastic shapes, among them some impressive cliffs known as the Pillars of Solomon.