Midian (; Mīḏyān ; ; , Madiam) is a geographical place mentioned in the Hebrew Bible and Quran. William G. Dever states that biblical Midian was in the "northwest Arabian Peninsula, on the east shore of the Gulf of Aqaba on the Red Sea", an area which he notes was "never extensively settled until the 8th–7th century B.C." According to the Book of Genesis, the Midianites were the descendants of Midian, who was a son of Abraham and his wife Keturah: "Abraham took a wife, and her name was Keturah. And she bare him Zimran, and Jokshan, and Medan, and Midian, and Ishbak, and Shuah" (Genesis 25:1–2, King James Version). Neither Midian's nor the Midianites' existence are attested in antiquity outside of Biblical sources. Land or tribal league? Some scholars have suggested that the name "Midian" does not refer to geographic places or to a specific tribe, but to a confederation or "league" of tribes brought together as a collective for worship purposes. Paul Haupt first made this suggestion in 1909, describing Midian as a "cultic collective" () or an amphictyony, meaning "an association () of different tribes in the vicinity of a sanctuary". Elath, on the northern tip of the Gulf of Aqaba was suggested as the location of the first shrine, with a second sanctuary located at Kadesh. Later writers have questioned the identified sanctuary-locations but supported the thesis of a Midianite league. George Mendenhall suggested that the Midianites were a non-Semitic confederate group, and William Dumbrell maintained the same case: Religion It is uncertain which deities the Midianites worshipped. Through their apparent religio-political connection with the Moabites they are thought to have worshipped a multitude, including Baal-peor and the Queen of Heaven, Ashteroth. According to Karel van der Toorn, "By the 14th century BC, groups of Edomites and Midianites worshipped Yahweh as their god;" this conclusion is based on identification between Midianites and the Shasu. An Egyptian temple of Hathor at Timna continued to be used during the Midianite occupation of the site (terminal Late Bronze Age / Early Iron Age); the Midianites transformed the Hathor mining temple into a desert tent-shrine. In addition to the discovery of post-holes, large quantities of red and yellow decayed cloth with beads woven into it, along with numerous copper rings/wire used to suspend the curtains, were found all along two walls of the shrine. Beno Rothenberg, the excavator of the