MARESHA
At a high point in the park is Tel Maresha, the
highest city in the Judean Lowlands. It was fortified by King Rehoboam of Judah following
the campaign to the region of the Egyptian Pharaoh Shishak. It was abandoned after the destruction of the
First Temple in 586 BCE ,
when the Jews left for Babylon .
The city was resettled and reached its height during the Hellenistic period (third-second centuriesBCE ), when
it was inhabited by the Edomites. The Hasmonean king, Yochanan Hycanus
conquered the city in the second century BCE
and forcibly converted its inhabitants it Judaism. During the Roman period the
inhabitants of Maresha abandoned it, building the city of Bet Guvrin nearby and transforming the latter
into the capital of the region of western Idumea.
The city was resettled and reached its height during the Hellenistic period (third-second centuries
Tel Maresha was found by archeologists Bliss and Maclister
of the British Exploration Fund in 1900.
The Ottoman Turks allowed them to excavate several tells in the area on
condition they returned everything to its former state afterwards.
The “Polish
Cave ”
This cave was dug during the 4th-3rd
centures BCE and may have
originally been a quarry. It was later
converted to a columbarium for raising pigeons.
During World War II it was visited by Polish soldiers from the Free
Polish Army. They engraved the year of
their visit, 1943, the words “Warsaw ,
Poland ” and the
eagle symbol of the Polish Army into one of the supporting pillars.
The columbarium cave
![]() |
The columbarium cave
|
This was built in the shape of a double cross and is the largest
in the country. It has more than 2,000
niches. The blue colour which can be
seen is a bacteria called Cianobacteria, which develops where there is a small
amount of light and a lot of moisture. The
pigeons raised were used for food and fertilizer. The columbarium went out of use at the end of
the 3rd century BCE and
the niches were used for storage. 85
such columbaria were found in the area, with tens of thousands of niches.
The bath cave
This comprises of a flight of stairs and 2 small rooms with seats
for the bathers, who showered in jets of water emerging from the bedrock
wall. The bather was invisible to the
slave pouring the water. At least 20
such bathing caves have been found in Maresha.
The olive oil plant
This is one of 22 subterranean olive oil plants from the 4th-3rd
centuries BCE , discovered so far
at Maresha. In most of them there is one crushing installation and 2 or 3
lever-and-weights presses for extracting the oil from the olive mash. Growing olives and producing oil was an
important part of the economy of the area in ancient times. The olives were harvested in the autumn and
the plants worked around the clock for the next 2-3 months producing oil.
The dwelling house
The house, partly reconstructed, was used as a dwelling and for
trade during the Hellenistic period The
ground floor occupies about 1,600 square feet and its rooms were arranged
around a small central courtyard. Ascent
to the 2nd floor was by a flight of stairs. The walls of the house survived to a height
of 5 feet. They were plastered to
preserve the soft limestone. Under the
floor of one of the rooms 25 coins were discovered, with the latest dated 113 BCE . The
house was probably destroyed that year when Maresha was conquered by the
Maccabees. There are cisterns underneath
the house in which rainwater, collected from the alleys, roofs and courtyards,
was stored. It flowed through ceramic
pipes along the length of the stairs.
Dwelling house and underground system
These are from the Hellenistic period. Through the northern house one may descend to
a bath, remarkable in both its design and state of preservation. The underground route leads to a group of
cisterns, continuing through the columbarium to additional rooms and
cisterns. The olive oil plant and its
adjacent changers are underneath the fourth and last house. In the past, the many underground chambers
were used separately, there was no passageway connecting them.

No comments:
Post a Comment