Beit Guvrin National Park - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

Beit Guvrin-Maresha National Park is a national park in central Israel

Israel

The State of Israel is a parliamentary republic located in the Middle East, along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea...

, 13 kilometers from Kiryat Gat, encompassing the ruins of Maresha

Maresha

Tel Maresha , also Marissa, is an antiquity site in Israel's southern lowlands. The tel was first excavated by the British archaeologists Bliss and Macalister on behalf of the Palestine Exploration Fund...

, one of the important towns of Judah

Kingdom of Judah

The Kingdom of Judah was a Jewish state established in the Southern Levant during the Iron Age. It is often referred to as the "Southern Kingdom" to distinguish it from the northern Kingdom of Israel....

during the time of the First Temple, and Beit Guvrin

Beit Guvrin

Beit Guvrin may refer to:* The ancient city of Maresha, now an archaeological museum, in Israel* The adjacent Roman and Byzantine city of Eleutheropolis, referred to as Beit Guvrin in Jewish scripture.* Beit Guvrin, Israel, a Kibbutz founded in 1949....

, an important town in the Roman era, when it was known as Eleutheropolis

Eleutheropolis

Eleutheropolis was the Greek name of a Roman city in Israel, some 53 km southwest of Jerusalem. Its remains still straddle the ancient road to Gaza. The site— already rendered as Baitogabra in Ptolemy's Geography— was called Beit Guvrin and Bet Gubrin in the Talmud...

.

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

History

Beit Guvrin replaced Maresha as the seat of power of Rehoboam

Rehoboam

Rehoboam was initially king of the United Monarchy of Israel but after the ten northern tribes of Israel rebelled in 932/931 BC to form the independent Kingdom of Israel he was king of the Kingdom of Judah, or southern kingdom. He was a son of Solomon and a grandson of David...

, who fortified it against Egyptian attack. In 112 BCE, Maresha was conquered by the Hasmonean

Hasmonean

The Hasmonean dynasty , was the ruling dynasty of Judea and surrounding regions during classical antiquity. Between c. 140 and c. 116 BCE, the dynasty ruled semi-autonomously from the Seleucids in the region of Judea...

king, John Hyracanus I. During the Roman and Byzantine periods, it had a large Jewish population. Under Roman rule, it was granted the status of a “city of freeman.” Beit Guvrin thrived until the Bar Kochva revolt in 132-135 CE. According to Josephus Flavius, it was conquered by the Roman general Vespasian

Vespasian

Vespasian , was Roman Emperor from 69 AD to 79 AD. Vespasian was the founder of the Flavian dynasty, which ruled the Empire for a quarter century. Vespasian was descended from a family of equestrians, who rose into the senatorial rank under the Emperors of the Julio-Claudian dynasty...

Maresha

The earliest written record of Maresha was as a city in ancient Judah. After the destruction of the First Temple the city of Maresha became part of the Edomite kingdom. In the late Persian period a Sidonian community settled in Maresha, and the city is mentioned in the Zenon Papyri (259 BC). During the Hasmonean wars, Maresha was a base for attacks against Judea and suffered retaliation from the Maccabees

Maccabees

The Maccabees were a Jewish rebel army who took control of Judea, which had been a client state of the Seleucid Empire. They founded the Hasmonean dynasty, which ruled from 164 BCE to 63 BCE, reasserting the Jewish religion, expanding the boundaries of the Land of Israel and reducing the influence...

. After John Hyrcanus captured and destroyed Maresha the region of Idumea remained under Hasmonean control. In 40 BC the Parthians devastated completely the "strong city", after which it was never rebuilt.

Maresha was first excavated in 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 strata were identified by them on the mound. Many of the ancient city's olive presses, columbariums and water cisterns can still be seen.

Burial caves

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

Cerberus

Cerberus , or Kerberos, in Greek and Roman mythology, is a multi-headed hound which guards the gates of the Underworld, to prevent those who have crossed the river Styx from ever escaping...

guards the entrance to the underworld

Underworld

The Underworld is a region which is thought to be under the surface of the earth in some religions and in mythologies. It could be a place where the souls of the recently departed go, and in some traditions it is identified with Hell or the realm of death...

; 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.

Bell caves

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 bell caves were dug during the Arabian Period for chalk

Chalk

Chalk is a soft, white, porous sedimentary rock, a form of limestone composed of the mineral calcite. Calcite is calcium carbonate or CaCO3. It forms under reasonably deep marine conditions from the gradual accumulation of minute calcite plates shed from micro-organisms called coccolithophores....

to cover roads. The walls of are beige colored limestone. There are numerous bell caves within the park grounds and events are held in one of them. It is large (over 60 feet high), airy and easily accessible.

Saint Anne's church

Saint Anne's church was built in the Byzantine period and restored by the Crusaders in the 12th century. The Arabic name for the church is Sandahanna. The church has three big windows and its apse is well preserved.

Amphitheater

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 structur, built of large, rectangular limestone

Limestone

Limestone is a sedimentary rock composed largely of the minerals calcite and aragonite, which are different crystal forms of calcium carbonate . Many limestones are composed from skeletal fragments of marine organisms such as coral or foraminifera....

ashlars. It was in use until destroyed in the Galilee earthquake of 363

Galilee earthquake of 363

The Galilee earthquake of 363 was a severe earthquake that shook the Galilee and nearby regions in 363 CE.-Impact:* Tzippori was severely damaged.* Nabratein and the Nabratein synagogue were destroyed....

Mosaics

Byzantine mosaics depicting birds and animals were discovered on the hilltop in 1924.

External links

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