Archaeological digging at Bet Guvrin

Believe it or not - I found pottery, bones, sea shell and charcoal in an underground archaeological digging site today :-) We enjoyed very much joining another trip organised by the Visiting Scientist office of the Weizmann Institute. This time we went with a large group to the national park of Bet Guvrin that belongs also to the UNESCO world culture heritage. This place and the neighbour city of Maresha in the Judean Lowlands (south of Jerusalem and close to the Westbank border) has a long and eventful history. Jews used to live there starting at least 3000 years ago. The city was destroyed by Babylonians, later Edomites made it part of their kingdom, then it had an Hellenistic episode until the Hasmoneans conquered Judea. In 40 BCE, the Parthians destroyed Maresha completely. During the Roman era, the inhabitants moved from Maresha to Bet Guvrin. After Jewish and Byzantine epoches, Bet Guvrin was conquered by Arabs. Also Crusaders built a fortress.
Long history short: whoever lived in that region exploited the soft structure of the limestone and dug huge caves into the ground that are now even open for tourists. First, we took part in a real archaeological activity! In fact, groups help there every day. Equipped with hoe and shovel, we helped excavating two basement rooms where ancient inhabitants had stored there belongings or were hiding themselves in times of war. We found really many smaller and few larger pieces of pottery, especially from amphoras. After putting the findings in one bucket and the dirt into many other buckets, we had to carry the heavy buckets out of the basement and then screened them for any smaller pieces that we might have missed. After this exciting activity, we got a tour into one of the fully excavated system of caves, even with an olive press. Another highlight was to crawl through honestly very narrow tunnels, lit only by candles, between several former houses! Underground, we also saw columbaria (many niches for pigeons).
The Sidonian burial caves from the Hellenistic time are beautifully decorated with wall paintings of real or mythological animals.
Furthermore, we entered the impressing, so called bell caves where a small hole into the uppermost hard layer of stone was the starting point for digging out huge volumes of soft limestone.
At the end of the trip, we had a good view from the hill Tel Azeka. Israel is so narrow that we could see on one side the coast line with the cities of Ashdod and Ashkelon (probably we also saw Gaza at the horizon) and on the other hand the Judean mountains nearly up to Bethlehem and Hebron in the Westbank. From the view point we also saw the valley where the battle of David and Goliath is said to have taken place. The Philistines where settling at the Mediterranean coast and the Israelites further in the hills.

It was a very interesting day full of history, archaeology and beautiful nature because now in winter the hills are green and some flowers are blooming.