Maresha Bet Guvrin תל מראשה

Yesterday I went out with my roommate and my neighbour and we decided over a couple of hebrew beers to do a small oneday trip to תל מראשה. This place has a lot of history, apparantly it was built by Jews during the time of the First Temple (which was destroyed ~ 6th cent bc), and was visited during the centuries by Sidonians, Greek, Eqyptians, Jews, Romans, Arabs, Polish,...




ZOOM

So what is so special about this pile of stones? There are some "reconstructed ruins" with basements...





...but those basements are something special... What started out as cisterns, was extended to...



oil plants...





more cisterns, stiegl,...



bath caves,... an infrastructure network was installed, so everything could be reached underground and nobody would have to go to the hot surface...



pigeons were kept for food, cultic purposes and their dung - a bird per niche, 2000 niches in one "columbarium", 85 of them spread "under" the whole city.







These bell caves are also particularly interesting - they got their name due to their characteristic shape. These caves are the remains of the ancient "limestone mines" - the rocks on the surface were quite hard, so the pple dug a small round hole to get into the soft limestone. After reaching it, they cut out blocks of about 30cm height expanding the whole diagonally. The stones were hauled up through the hole in the ceiling with ropes. Sounds like fun.
The caves would be really nice in summer, cool and silent, in winter however there are thousands of children and I was lucky to get this almost empty shot...



On the way back everything became very hazy until it was almost foggy...



... this is not the moon, it is still the sun with greetings from the desert.



The appropriate music for a roadtrip like ours: