<< Our Photo Pages >> Bet Guvrin-Maresha National Park - Ancient Village or Settlement in Israel
Submitted by motist on Wednesday, 14 July 2010 Page Views: 6738
Multi-periodSite Name: Bet Guvrin-Maresha National Park Alternative Name: Eleutheropolis, Beit GuvrinCountry: Israel
NOTE: This site is 1.339 km away from the location you searched for.
Type: Ancient Village or Settlement
Nearest Town: Kiryat Gat Nearest Village: Kibuts Bait Guvrin
Latitude: 31.602542N Longitude: 34.897155E
Condition:
5 | Perfect |
4 | Almost Perfect |
3 | Reasonable but with some damage |
2 | Ruined but still recognisable as an ancient site |
1 | Pretty much destroyed, possibly visible as crop marks |
0 | No data. |
-1 | Completely destroyed |
5 | Superb |
4 | Good |
3 | Ordinary |
2 | Not Good |
1 | Awful |
0 | No data. |
5 | Can be driven to, probably with disabled access |
4 | Short walk on a footpath |
3 | Requiring a bit more of a walk |
2 | A long walk |
1 | In the middle of nowhere, a nightmare to find |
0 | No data. |
5 | co-ordinates taken by GPS or official recorded co-ordinates |
4 | co-ordinates scaled from a detailed map |
3 | co-ordinates scaled from a bad map |
2 | co-ordinates of the nearest village |
1 | co-ordinates of the nearest town |
0 | no data |
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External Links:
Ancient Village or Settlement in Israel. Bet Guvrin-Maresha is otherwise known as Eleutheropolis (the city of freemen) National Park encompasses approximately 5,000 dunams (1,250 acres) of rolling hills in the Judean Lowlands. The hills, approximately 400 Meters above sea level, consist mainly of chalk overlaid with harder rock called nari. For thousands of years people have been cutting into the rock beneath the nari as quarries, burial caves, storerooms, industrial facilities, hideouts and dovecotes.
They dug small openings into the nari, normally no more than two meters thick, and expanded the caves into the softer chalk beneath. Hundreds of such caves were dug at Bet Guvrin and its surroundings, creating subterranean networks of unparalleled complexity.
A prominent city in the period of the Second Temple, located in the southern Shephelah. Ancient Bet Guvrin rose to importance after the destruction of Maresha (Marissa) by the Parthians in 40 BCE. Betabris, mentioned by Josephus (Wars, 4:447) as one of two villages taken by the Romans in 68 CE. "right in the heart of Idumea," may possibly refer to Bet Guvrin. The city began expanding following the Bar Kokhba revolt, during the second half of the second century CE, with the construction of public and administrative buildings. In 199/200 CE, Septimus Severus conferred on it the privileges of a Roman city and called it Eleutheropolis (the city of freemen). The city of that period covered an area of about 160 acres, and topographically it extended mainly over a hill located south of the present-day highway between Bet Shemesh and Ashkelon, with the northern extension of the city built on a low plain. Two aqueducts and an underground tunnel supplied water to the city. The Midrash (Gen. R. 41:10) interprets Mt. Seir of the "Horites" (Gen. 14:6) as Eleutheropolis – an interpretation based on a play of words, since Hori means both "freeman" and "cave dweller" and the Bet Guvrin region abounds in large caves. Severus also granted the new city a large area encompassing the districts of Bethletepha, western Edom, and Hebron as far as En-Gedi, which made it the largest single region in Roman times, with over a hundred villages. Bet Guvrin also had its own system of dating and coinage. The wealth of its inhabitants is attested to by a mosaic pavement of a Roman house from the 4th century CE which depicts a hunting expedition, with representations of animals and the personifications of the four seasons. Public buildings have been uncovered in recent excavations, including a bath house with double arches and a system of vaults made of ashlars with Severan-type stone dressing, and an amphitheater which was built on flat ground on the northwest edge of the city
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