How do I read these coordinates?

Hello friends :),

I’m trying to digitize information from Dorsey, D The Roads and Highways of Ancient Israel (1991), a work which documents over 200 Iron Age routes. It does so by listing the Iron Age ruins that the roads once connected, giving the coordinates for each site. For example, from pg. 145:

'Anahum, 1799 2009 #374; 10 dunam Iron I and II site
Kh. Za`tara, 1796 2035, #375
Kh. Abu Ghannam, 1801 2057, #376, guarding the southeastern end of the Jenin pass

The only information the book seems to give about its coordinate system is mentioning that they are provided in “the Palestine-Syrian grid of coordinates… to assist readers who wish to follow the discussion on modern maps of Israel” (page xii)

The only other work I can find (being limited to English) which uses the same coordinates is Ancient Sites in Galilee: A Toponymic Gazetteer (2004) (http://books.google.com/books?id=Vt-IvRhCEyYC&pg=PA197).

It lists sites in the following format (pg. 131):

Site 31: Joret el-Ward

Israel grid: 1694 2051
UTM grid: 7054 5915

but this work too speaks very vaguely about what system is being used (pg. 18):

Reference point according to the Israel grid:
The marking is in the center of the site, as in the Israel Survey.
Reference point according to the UTM grid:
Unlike the Israeli grid, the UTM grid is the division of the earth’s globe into a unified, comprehensive grid of coordinates.

My question is, how can I convert these numbers into lat/long or otherwise locate them on an online map? Thank you,

Brandon

Brandon,

The coordinates are in the Old Israeli Datum, a.k.a. Israeli Cassini Soldner.

The full coordinates of Kh. Abu Ghannam in Old Israeli Datum/ICS are 180100 10205700, which translates to 32.445277 N 35.317636 E in WGS84.
You can see that the Survey of Israel has marked the place as “ח’רבת אבו ע’נם”, which is an accurate translitaration.

Back when a position was were taken from topo maps, the coordinates were given in 100’s of meters and the 10000000 additional Northing was usually omitted.

Zeev

The site amudanan.co.il may prove useful as it provides the old Israel grid alongside newer systems.

Thank you for the replies! That’s exactly what I needed. Based on that info, I found out you can use twcc.free.fr, select “Israel 1923” and convert the numbers:

'Anahum, 1799 2009 = 179900 1200900
Kh. Za`tara, 1796 2035 = 179600 1203500
Kh. Abu Ghannam, 1801 2057 = 180100 1205700

Click convert and voilà!

In places where the book gives 3-digit numbers, same principle:

Ras Abu Humeid (Tel Hamid), 139 ****145 = 139000 1145000

Thanks again! The amudanan overlays are amazing!

Following this thread, I’ve contacted the Amudanan developer and provided him with code that will allow direct entry of ICS coordinates.
Now you can use a URL such as http://amudanan.co.il/?lon=180100&lat=1205700&map=pef to locate Kh. Abu Ghannam on the PEF map of 1880
I hope you will also find it useful.

If you have the original coordinates in an excel file, it is possible to have a column of such hyperlinks.

Zeev