Рет қаралды 205
The caves of Maresha and Bet Guvrin were inscribed as UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2014 at UNESCO's 38th annual meeting in Doha, Qatar.
The caves now join a prestigious list of some 1,000 sites worldwide, including the Pyramids in Egypt, the Acropolis of Athens, India's Taj Mahal, the Galapagos Islands of Ecuador, the Canadian Rockies and the Rice Terraces of the Philippine Cordilleras.
The caves were inscribed based on Criterion V of the World Heritage Convention, by which they exhibit "an outstanding example of a traditional human settlement, land-used, which is representative of a culture, or human interaction with the environment".
The ancient cities of Maresha (eighth-first centuries BCE) and Bet Guvrin (first-tenth centuries CE) are located near the crossroad of the trade routes connecting Mesopotamia and Egypt and they attest to the variety of cultures in the region and their continuous development over almost 2,000 years. The caves, which are located beneath and nearby these cities, have universal significance due to:
-Various cultural groups that recognized the special characteristics of the soft chalk and knew how to take advantage of it to produce building materials and create caves for various uses.
-The variety of uses to which the caves where put: stone quarries; cisterns; olive oil presses; bath and purification installations; columbaria (dovecotes); wells; hiding places; rituals; stables; storage; burial; and water tunnels.
-The number of caves and their density: approximately 500 caves containing some 3,500 rooms, extending over about 3,000 dunams (about 741 acres; 300 hectares).
The caves that were inscribed are located with Bet Guvrin-Maresha National Park. This area encompasses all the elements found in the thousands of caves that are scattered throughout the Land of the Caves and Hiding Places in the Judean lowlands. UNESCO's inscription of the site as a World Heritage Site requires the state to protect it so that it remains in prime condition as part of global human heritage, for our generation and those to come. Within the national park these cultural assets can best be protected.
Bell Caves (Bet Guvrin)
-"It Bet Guvrin is a land of richness and abundance, and it has many marble quarries....." Bell Caves are so called because of their unique shape resulted from the method of quarrying: first, a round shaft (no more than 0.9m in diameter) was cut through the hard surface rock, known as nari (about three meters thick) to the soft chalk layers beneath it. Then the shaft was enlarged. Rectangular blocks were removed from the caves with ropes. The quarrying of the caves began at the end of the Byzantine period (the beginning of the seventh century CE), and reached its height during the Early Islamic period (the seventh to eleventh century CE). The stones were used in construction and in lime production. Therefore during these periods Bet Guvrin was an important chalk supply center.
Columbaria Cave
-Cave was planned and hewn as a dovecote for raising Pigeons for food, for cult purposes and for their manure which was used as fertilizer.
The Apollophanaes Cave
-this was a family tomb. The deceased were placed in niches and their bones were later removed to enable repeated use of the niches. Colorful decorations describes various figures and animals, real and mythological. Following the discovery of this cave, the colors of the paintings began to fade and they were vandalized, causing their disappearance. Based upon colored photographs of the original paintings, the cast slabs attached to the wall bear the reconstruction paintings.
Timestamps:
00:34 Entrance to Bell Caves
01:15 Bell Caves or Bet Guvrin
07:28 Columbaria Caves (dovecotes)
09:08 The Apollophanaes Cave