The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) added an Israeli site, the caves at Beit Guvrin-Maresha, to its World Heritage list on Sunday.
Alongside many other sites around the world, the United Nations Education, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) elected to inscribe Beit Guvrin-Maresha Caves National Park on Sunday during its 38th session in Doha, Qatar, bringing the World Heritage List total 1,001 properties since its foundation. Beit Guvrin and the Caves of Maresha – located in the Judean Lowlands south of Beit Shemesh and east of Kiryat Gat – contains a “city under a city” characterized by manmade caves, according to a World Heritage Committee statement.
The World Heritage Committee described the caves as excavated from a thick and homogenous layer of soft chalk, including chambers and networks that served various forms and functions. The caves and their chambers “bear witness to a succession of historical periods of excavation and usage stretching over 2,000 years, from the Iron Age to the Crusades,” the committee statement said. Although the original excavations were quarries, many were converted for a variety of agricultural and craft industry purposes, as well as for baths, tombs, places of worship and hiding spots, the committee added.
Among the other Israeli sites to be so designated include Masada; the Old City of Acre; the White City of Tel Aviv; the Biblical Tels of Megiddo, Hazar and Beersheba; the Incense Rout of Desert Cities in the Negev; and Bahai’i holy places in Haifa and the Western Galilee.
The move comes against a backdrop of a more controversial decision to give a similar designation to the Palestinian village of Battir, which lies along the planned route for Israel’s security barrier, raising questions about political rather than objective criteria in the designation process.
In Discovering Jewish History on the Golan Heights, featured in the May 2014 issue of The Tower Magazine, Stephen Rubin wrote of another archaelogical treasure, Umm el Kanatir, and what it tells of Jewish life in the area nearly 1,300 years ago.
[Photo: israeltourism / Flickr ]