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Beit Guvrin-Maresha National Park in Israel

Friday, 20 December 2024 - 11:00 am (CET/MEZ) Berlin | Author/Destination: Levant / Levante
Category/Kategorie: General, UNESCO World Heritage, Union for the Mediterranean Reading Time:  7 minutes

🔊 Listen to this Post Beit Guvrin-Maresha National Park is a national park in central Israel, containing a large network of caves recognized by UNESCO as a World Heritage Site. The national park includes the remains of the historical towns of Maresha, one of the important towns of Judah during the First Temple Period, and Bayt Jibrin, a depopulated Palestinian town known as Eleutheropolis in the Roman era. However, Maresha and Bayt Jibrin are not part of the UNESCO site, which covers only the cave network. It is located 13 kilometers from Kiryat Gat.

Archaeological artifacts unearthed at the site include a large Jewish cemetery, a Roman-Byzantine amphitheater, a Byzantine church, public baths, mosaics and burial caves.

The national park includes the remains of the historical towns of Maresha, one of the important towns of Judah during the First Temple Period, and Bayt Jibrin, a depopulated Palestinian town known as Eleutheropolis in the Roman era.

Maresha was first excavated in 1898–1900 by Bliss and Macalister, who uncovered a planned and fortified Hellenistic city encircled by a town wall with towers. Two Hellenistic and one Israelite stratum were identified by them on the mound. Many of the ancient city’s olive presses, columbaria and water cisterns can still be seen. Both Maresha and Beit Guvrin/Eleutheropolis were excavated after 1989 and 1992 respectively by the Israeli archaeologist Amos Kloner. Important finds at the latter site were the amphitheater built by the Roman army units stationed there, a large Roman bath house, and from the Crusader period a fortress integrating the walls of the Roman amphitheater and bath house, as well as an attached church.

The Sidonian burial caves were the family tomb of Apollophanes, the leader of the Sidonian community in Beit Guvrin. The Sidonian caves are the only ones that are painted inside. The caves were burial caves for the Greek, Sidonian and Edumite inhabitants of Beit Guvrin. The first and largest cave has paintings of animals, real and mythic, above the niches where the corpses were laid. A cock crows to scare away demons; the three-headed dog Cerberus guards the entrance to the underworld; a bright red phoenix symbolizes the life after death. The Tomb of the Musicians is decorated with a painting showing a man playing the flute and a woman playing the harp.

There are about 800 bell-shaped caves located in the area. Many of the caves are linked via an underground network of passageways that connect groups of 40–50 caves. The largest bell caves are in the east part of the park. They have been dug since prehistoric times, the excavations reaching their zenith in the Hellenistic period and during the Byzantine and Early Arab Period, when blocks of chalkstone extracted from the caves were used for construction work (buildings, etc.). The bell caves consist of limestone in their upper-layer (to a depth of about one to two meters), beneath which is rock consisting solely of a beige-colored, soft chalkstone, utilized by its early inhabits for carving caverns and dwellings. There are numerous bell caves within the park grounds and events are held in one of them. They are large (over 60 feet (18 m) high), airy and easily accessible.

The National Park is known for some of the best preserved columbaria from the Hellenistic and Roman periods. One of the largest is located on the west side of Tell Maresha (Khurbet es Sandahannah), described by Conder and Kitchener in their Survey of Western Palestine, and formerly known by its local inhabitants as Es Sûk. It has been carved underground from the soft chalkstone endemic to the area, and built with tiers of niches capable of housing hundreds of brooding pigeons.

There are a number of cave-like dwellings carved from the chalkstone bedrock, some of which display a vast extension of networks and passageways, with staircases descending down into the depth, made with step-like balustrades, and replete with cisterns for storing water and millstones for grinding olives. These caverns and dwellings, though not situated on the eminence of the Tell itself, were considered part and parcel with the city of Maresha itself, as they were later enclosed by a wall that encompassed both the city and its expanded suburbs. The largest and most impressive of these caverns and dwelling places is that built near the Tell on its southeast side, and which the locals knew by the name Mŭghâret Sandahannah (The Cave of Saint Anne). Today, in Modern Hebrew, the same cave dwelling is called Mavokh (Maze).

Saint Anne’s church was first built in the Byzantine period and then rebuilt by the Crusaders in the 12th century. The ruin is known in Arabic as Khirbet (lit. “ruin”) Sandahanna, the nearby tell (mound) of Maresha being called Tell Sandahanna. The freestanding remains of the apse are well preserved.

The remains of a Roman amphitheater were uncovered in the mid-1990s. The amphitheater was built in the 2nd century, on the northwestern outskirts of Beit Guvrin. This amphitheater, in which gladiatorial contests took place, could seat about 3,500 spectators. It had a walled arena of packed earth, with subterranean galleries. The arena was surrounded by a series of connected barrel vaults, which formed a long, circular corridor and supported the stone seats above it; staircases led from the outside and from the circular corridor to the tribunes. It was built for the Roman troops stationed in the region after the suppression of the Bar Kochba rebellion. The amphitheater is an elliptical structure built of large rectangular limestone ashlars. It was in use until destroyed in the Galilee earthquake of 363.

Read more on parks.org.il – Beit Guvrin National Park and Wikipedia Beit Guvrin-Maresha National Park (Smart Traveler App by U.S. Department of State - Weather report by weather.com - Global Passport Power Rank - Travel Risk Map - Democracy Index - GDP according to IMF, UN, and World Bank - Global Competitiveness Report - Corruption Perceptions Index - Press Freedom Index - World Justice Project - Rule of Law Index - UN Human Development Index - Global Peace Index - Travel & Tourism Competitiveness Index). Photos by Wikimedia Commons. If you have a suggestion, critique, review or comment to this blog entry, we are looking forward to receive your e-mail at comment@wingsch.net. Please name the headline of the blog post to which your e-mail refers to in the subject line.

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