| Beit She'arim National Park | |
|---|---|
 Facade of the "Cave of the Coffins" | |
  Location in Israel | |
| Location | Haifa District,Israel |
| Nearest city | Haifa |
| Coordinates | 32°42′8″N35°7′37″E / 32.70222°N 35.12694°E /32.70222; 35.12694 |
| Governing body | Israel Nature and Parks Authority |
| Official name | Necropolis of Beit She'arim: A Landmark of Jewish Renewal |
| Type | Cultural |
| Criteria | ii, iii |
| Designated | 2015(39thsession) |
| Reference no. | 1471 |
| Region | Europe and North America |
Beit She'arim Necropolis (Hebrew:בֵּית שְׁעָרִים, "House of Gates") is an extensive rock-cutnecropolis located near the ancientJewish town ofBeit She'arim,[1] 20 km east ofHaifa in the southern foothills of theLower Galilee. Part ofBeit She'arim National Park, the site includes the necropolis and remains of the town. Used from the first to fourth centuries CE, its peak occurred in the late second century when theSanhedrin, led byJudah ha-Nasi, relocated to Beit She'arim, and his family was interred there.[2] In 2015, the necropolis was designated aUNESCOWorld Heritage Site.
The necropolis is carved out of softlimestone and contains more than 30 burial cave systems. When 20th-century archaeologists first explored thecatacombs, the tombs had already fallen into great disrepair and neglect, and thesarcophagi contained therein had almost all been broken into by grave robbers in search of treasure. This pillaging was believed to have happened in the 8th and 9th centuries based on the type ofterracottaoil lamps foundin situ.[3] The robbers also emptied the stone coffins of the bones of the deceased. During theMamluk Sultanate (13–15th centuries), the "Cave of the Coffins" (Catacomb no. 20) served as a place of refuge for Arab shepherds.[4]
Claude Reignier Conder of thePalestine Exploration Fund visited the site in late 1872 and described one of the systems of caves, known as "The Cave of Hell" (Mughārat al-Jahannum).[5] While exploring a catacomb, he found there a coin of Agrippa, which find led him to conclude that the ruins date back to "the later Jewish times, about the Christian era."[6]Benjamin Mazar, during his excavations of Sheikh Abreik, discovered coins that date no later than the time ofConstantine the Great andConstantius II.[7]
Although only a portion of the necropolis has been excavated, it has been likened to a book inscribed in stone. Its catacombs,mausoleums, and sarcophagi are adorned with elaborate symbols and figures as well as an impressive quantity of incised and painted inscriptions inMishnaic Hebrew,Jewish Palestinian Aramaic,Palmyrene Aramaic, andKoine Greek, documenting two centuries of historical and cultural achievement. The wealth of artistic adornments in this, the most ancient extensive Jewish cemetery in the world, is unparalleled anywhere.[8][9]
According toMoshe Sharon, followingYechezkel Kutscher, the name of the city was Beit She'arayim or Kfar She'arayim (the House/Village of Two Gates).[10] The ancientYemenite Jewish pronunciation of the name is also "Bet She'arayim", which is more closely related to theAncient Greek rendition of the name, i.e. Βησάρα, "Besara".[11]
The popular orthography for the Hebrew word for house,בֵּית, is "beit". TheKing James Version has "beth", the effort being now to replace both with "bet".
The national park is managed by theNational Parks Authority. It borders the town ofKiryat Tiv'on on the northeast and is located five kilometres west of themoshav named after the historical location in 1926, a decade prior to its archaeological identification.[12] In early modern times the site was the Arab village ofSheikh Bureik;[10] it was depopulated in the 1920s as a result of theSursock Purchases, and identified as Beit She'arim in 1936 by historical geographerSamuel Klein.[13]
Pottery shards discovered at the site indicate that a first settlement there dates back to theIron Age.[14]
Beit She'arayim was founded at the end of the 1st century BCE, during the reign of KingHerod.[15] The Roman Jewish historianJosephus, inThe Life of Flavius Josephus, referred to the city in Greek as Besara, the administrative center of the estates ofQueen regnant ofCyrenaicaBerenice II in theJezreel Valley.[16]
After the destruction of theSecond Temple in 70 CE, theSanhedrin (Jewish legislature and supreme council) migrated from place to place, first going intoJabneh, then intoUsha, from there intoShefar'am, and thence intoBeit She'arayim.[17][16] The town is mentioned in rabbinical literature as an important center of Jewish learning during the 2nd century.[14] RabbiJudah ha-Nasi, head of the Sanhedrin and compiler of theMishnah, lived there. In the last seventeen years of his life, he moved toSepphoris for health reasons, but planned his burial in Beit She'arim. According to tradition, in Beit She’arim he owned land he received as a gift from his friend, the Roman emperorMarcus Aurelius Antoninus.[citation needed] The most desired burial place for Jews was theMount of Olives inJerusalem, but in 135 CE, when Jews were barred from the area, Beit She'arim became an alternative.[18] The fact that Rabbi Judah was interred there led many other Jews from all over the country and from theJewish diaspora, from nearbyPhoenicia[14] to far-awayHimyar inYemen,[19] to be buried next to his grave.
Almost 300 inscriptions primarily inGreek, but also inHebrew,Aramaic, andPalmyrene were found on the walls of the catacombs containing numerous sarcophagi.[14]
From the beginning of the Early Islamic period (7th century), settlement was sparse.[20] Excavations uncovered 75 lamps dating to the period ofUmayyad (7th-8th centuries) andAbbasid (8th–13th centuries) rule over Palestine.[14] A large Abbasid-periodglassmaking facility from the 9th century was also found at the site (seebelow).
There is some evidence of activity in the nearby village area and necropolis dating to theCrusader period (12th century), probably connected to travellers and temporary settlement.[14]
A small Arab village calledSheikh Bureik was located above the necropolis at least from the late 16th century.[21] A map byPierre Jacotin fromNapoleon's invasion of 1799 showed the place, named asCheik Abrit.[22]
The October1922 census of Palestine recorded Sheikh Abreik with a population of 111 Muslims.[23] At some time during the early 1920s, the Sursuk family sold the lands of the village, including the necropolis, to theJewish National Fund, viaYehoshua Hankin, aZionist activist who was responsible for most of the major land purchases of theWorld Zionist Organization in Ottoman Palestine.[24][25] After the sale, which included lands from the Arab villages of Harithiya, Sheikh Abreik andHarbaj, a total of 59 Arab tenants were evicted from the three villages, with 3,314 pounds compensation paid.[26] In 1925 an agricultural settlement was established on the ruins of Sheikh Abreik by theHapoel HaMizrachi, a Zionist political party and settlement movement,[27] but who later abandoned the site for a newer settlement inSde Ya'akov.
The archaeological importance of the site was recognized in the 1880s by theSurvey of Western Palestine, which explored many tombs and catacombs but did no excavation.[28] In 1936,Alexander Zaïd, employed by theJNF as a watchman, reported that he had found a breach in the wall of one of the caves which led into another cave decorated with inscriptions.[29] In the 1930s and 1950s, the site was excavated byBenjamin Mazar andNahman Avigad. Excavations resumed in 2014.[30]
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Since 2014, the excavations at the site have been conducted[clarification needed] by Adi Erlich, on behalf of theUniversity of Haifa's Institute of Archaeology, and are ongoing as of 2021.[31] Erlich is focusing her excavation on the actual ancient town, which occupied the hilltop above the well-studied necropolis, and of which only a few buildings had been previously discovered.[31]
A total of 21catacombs have so far been discovered in the Beit She'arimnecropolis, almost all containing a main hall with recesses in the wall (loculi) andsarcophagi that once contained the remains of the dead. These have since been removed, either by grave-robbers, or byAtra Kadisha, the governmental body responsible for the reburial of exhumed bones at archaeological sites. Most of the remains date from the 2nd to 4th century CE. Close to 300 sepulchral inscriptions have been discovered at the necropolis, most of which engraved in Greekuncials, and a few in Hebrew and Aramaic. Geographical references in these inscriptions reveal that the necropolis was used by people from the town of Beit She'arim, from elsewhere in Galilee, and even from further afield in the region, likePalmyra (in Syria) andTyre.[32] Others came fromAntioch (in Turkey),Mesene (South Mesopotamia, today in Iraq), thePhoenician coast (Sidon,Beirut,Byblos, all in today's Lebanon), and evenHimyar (in Yemen), among other places.
Aside from an extensive body of inscriptions in several languages, the walls and tombs have many images, engraved and carved inrelief, ranging from Jewish symbols and geometric decoration to animals and figures from Hellenistic myth and religion.[33] Many of theepigrams written on behalf of the deceased show a strong Hellenistic cultural influence, as many of them are taken directly fromHomer's poems.[34] In one of the caves was discovered a marble slab measuring 21 × 24 × 2 cm. with the Greek inscription: Μημοριον Λέο νπου πατρος του ριββι παρηγοριου και Ιουλιανου παλατινουα ποχρυσοχων [Translation: "In memory of Leo, father of the comforting rabbi and Julian, the palatine goldsmiths"].[35] Access to many of the catacombs was obtained by passing through stone doors that once turned on their axis, and in some cases still do.
In October 2009, two new caves were opened to the public whose burial vaults date to the first two centuries CE.[36] Catacomb no. 20 and no. 14 are regularly open to the public, but most catacombs remain closed to the public, with a few being opened on weekends upon special request and prior appointment.
TheJerusalem Talmud andBabylonian Talmud cite Beit She'arim as the burial place of RabbiJudah the Prince (Hebrew: Yehuda HaNasi).[37] His funeral is described as follows: "Miracles were wrought on that day. It was evening and all the towns gathered to mourn him, and eighteen synagogues praised him and bore him to Bet Shearim, and the daylight remained until everyone reached his home (Ketubot 12, 35a)."[38] The fact that Rabbi Judah was buried here is believed to be a major reason for the popularity of the necropolis in Late Antiquity. Catacomb no. 14 is likely to have belonged to the family of Rabbi Judah the Prince. Two tombs located next to each other within the catacomb are identified by bilingual Hebrew and Greek inscriptions as those of "R. Gamliel" and "R. Shimon", believed to refer to Judah's sons, thenasiGamaliel III and thehakham Rabbi Shimon.[39] Another inscription refers to the tomb of "Rabbi Anania", believed to be Judah's student Hanania bar Hama.[40] According to the Talmud, Judah declared on his deathbed that "Simon [Shimon] my son shall be hakham [president of the Sanhedrin], Gamaliel my son patriarch, Hanania bar Hama shall preside over the great court".
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In 1937, Benjamin Mazar revealed at Beit She'arim a system of tombs belonging to the Jews ofHimyar (nowYemen) dating back to the 3rd century CE.[41] The strength of ties between Yemenite Jewry and the Land of Israel can be learnt by the system of tombs at Beit She'arim dating back to the 3rd century. It is of great significance that Jews from Ḥimyar were being brought for interment in what was then considered a prestigious place, near the catacombs of theSanhedrin. Those who had the financial means brought their dead to be buried in the Land of Israel, as it was considered an outstanding virtue for Jews not to be buried in foreign lands, but rather in the land of their forefathers. It is speculated that the Ḥimyarites, during their lifetime, were known and respected in the eyes of those who dwelt in the Land of Israel, seeing that one of them, whose name was Menaḥem, was coined the epithetqyl ḥmyr [prince of Ḥimyar], in the eight-character Ḥimyari ligature, while in the Greek inscription he was calledMenae presbyteros (Menaḥem, the community's elder).[42] The name of a woman written in Greek in its genitive form, Ενλογιαζ, is also engraved there, meaning either 'virtue', 'blessing', or 'gratis'; however, its precise transcription remains of scholarly dispute.[43] The people of Himyar were buried in a single catacomb, in which 40 smaller rooms orloculi branched-off from a main hall.[44]
In 1956, a bulldozer working at the site unearthed an enormous rectangular slab, 11 × 6.5 × 1.5 feet, weighing 9 tons. Initially, it was paved over, but it was eventually studied and found to be a gigantic piece of glass. Aglassmaking furnace was located here in the 9th century during theAbbasid period, which produced great batches of molten glass that were cooled and later broken into small pieces for crafting glass vessels.[14][45]
Anelegy written inArabic script typical of the 9–10th century and containing the date AH 287 or 289 (AD 900 or 902) was found in theMagharat al-Jahannam ("Cave of Hell") catacomb during excavations conducted there in 1956. The sophisticated and beautifully worded elegy was composed by the previously unknown poet Umm al-Qasim, whose name is given inacrostic in the poem, and it can be read in Moshe Sharon's book orhere on Wikipedia.[46]
Moshe Sharon speculates that this poem might be marking the beginning of the practice of treating this site as the sanctuary of Sheikh Abreik and suggests the site was used for burial at this time and possibly later as well.[10][47] He further notes that the cave within which the inscription was found forms part of a vast area of ancient ruins which constituted a natural place for the emergence of a local shrine. Drawing on the work of Tawfiq Canaan, Sharon cites his observation that 32% of the sacred sites he visited in Palestine were located in the vicinity of ancient ruins.[47]
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