CARAVAN (אֹרְחָה, H785, traveling group, from אָרַח֒, H782, to travel, KJV “company” (Gen 37:25); KJV “travelling companies” (Isa 21:13); RSV repoints the MT אֳרָחֹ֖ות to read “caravans” (Judg 5:6 [KJV “highways”], Job 6:18 [KJV “paths”], and in Job 6:19 [KJV “troops”]; RSV paraphrases the literal KJV “the way of them that dwelt in tents” as “the caravan route,” Judg 8:11). A band of people, migrants or traders, traveling together for mutual protection through desert or hostile regions, usually with pack animals.

W. F. Albright has argued convincingly for a period of intense donkey caravan activity between Egypt and SW Asia during the Middle Bronze I Age (2100-1800 b.c.). At this time dozens of seasonal settlements dotted the Negeb and Sinai trade routes, esp. along the inland Way of Shur (q.v.) from Beersheba through Kadesh-barnea to Ismailia and Suez. Wells and locally grown fodder provided for donkeys treading the flint-strewn paths. Camels could more easily traverse the sandy coastal route (“Abram the Hebrew: A New Archaeological Interpretation,” BASOR #163 [Oct., 1961], 36-54). The Ishmaelite-Midianite spice caravaneers toward the end of this period took Joseph to Egypt to sell him as a slave (Gen 37:25, 28). Whether Abraham himself, who lived for a while in the Negeb (20:1), engaged in the caravan trade is debatable (see E. A. Speiser, “The Verb SḤR in Genesis and Early Hebrew Movements,” BASOR #164 [Dec., 1961], 23-28).

When haste was essential, the more speedy camels were chosen, which could take more direct routes across deserts, in the cases of Abraham’s servant (24:10, 56, 61) and Jacob’s flight from Laban (31:17). Caravans were organized for raiding purposes (Judg 6:3-5; 1 Sam 30:1-20) as well as for trade and to carry a clan to a new home.

Solomon fortified Arad to protect the caravan route to the spice and incense lands of S Arabia (1 Kings 10:2, 15; IEJ, XII, 144). Pliny noted that a camel caravan took sixty-five days from S Arabia to Gaza Nat. Hist. XII. 32). C. M. Doughty described a huge caravan in 1876 on the Moslem pilgrimage from Damascus to Mecca, and another of 170 camels bearing 30 tons of liquid butter to Mecca (Travels in Arabia Deserta, abridged [1955], 1-46, 294-329).