A World Below

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It is commonplace in archaeology: An excavation provides more questions than answers. That is certainly true at Maresha.

The site is mentioned several times in the Bible, the first time in Joshua, in connection with the division following the Israelite entry into the land. To Judah was assigned Maresha, a town “with its villages” (Joshua 15:44). However, the earliest remains recovered at the site (known at the beginning of the 20th century by its Arabic name, Tel Sandahanna) date to the eighth century B.C.E. While it is 031 theoretically possible that earlier remains may be discovered in the future, it is more probable that the text of Joshua was written at a later date when Maresha had already been established.

Occupation at the site was confined to the mounded tell during the Biblical period. It was a village of a mere 6 acres. In the Hellenistic period (third–second centuries B.C.E.) Maresha expanded to a lower city that surrounded the tell, enlarging the town to 80 acres, a more than 13-fold increase!

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The most amazing aspect of the site is that in the Hellenistic period a series of extraordinary underground cave complexes was created—or rather quarried—under the buildings of Maresha. So far, more than 170 of these underground cave complexes have been identified that include thousands of caves.

Of course it is the geology of Maresha that makes this possible. But the phenomenon seems not to have occurred elsewhere—at least not on this scale.

Maresha is located 24 miles southwest of Jerusalem and 18 miles east of the Mediterranean coast, in the area known as the Shephelah, between the central mountain range and the coastal plain. This area of Judah is the low hill country.

Geologically, Maresha is unusual. It lies on a layer of hard limestone over softer chalky material. The hard limestone cover prevents the relatively softer, compact and homogenous chalky material from eroding.

The process for creating the cave complexes was rather simple. The limestone crust is up to about 10 feet thick. The ancient stonemasons would first create an opening in this hard upper crust, either as a shaft or as steps. Once they had penetrated into the chalky material, it was possible to hew out large underground chambers that were relatively stable.

When the underground rooms were larger than 6 feet wide, the ceilings were strengthened by quarrying them as vaulted arches or by creating (unexcavated) pillars as supports.

The idea for these underground cave complexes no doubt originated when the city expanded from the small 6-acre village to the 80-acre lower city in the Hellenistic period (although at least one of the rooms of one cave, SC 75, was created already in Iron Age II). The new lower city was thoughtfully laid out in insulae, what we would call city blocks. The houses and shops of each insula were separated by streets and narrow alleys.

The building materials for the structures on the surface were rectangular blocks of chalk quarried from beneath the buildings. The subterranean cave complexes were thus an integral part of the buildings and streets on the surface.

Each complex contains several clusters of caves. The entrances into these systems are via openings or quarried staircases through the floors of the dwellings, their courtyards or in openings between buildings.

To build and maintain the structures that were 033 above the surface required a continuous supply of stone blocks from the soft chalky layer beneath. These blocks above the surface would have to be replaced due to wear and tear, and this would in turn require further quarrying beneath the surface.

The cave complexes are little short of architectural marvels, consisting of room after room. I have already mentioned the vaults and pillars. Another feature: Some of the staircases have beautifully carved banisters, reflecting the high-quality standards of the local population.

The cave complexes had a variety of functions. Aside from their use as a major source of building material for the city, many caves also had an industrial function. The olive oil industry was an important industrial enterprise at Maresha and was often conducted in these underground complexes. To date, 27 olive press factories have been discovered.

Areas of the cave complexes were also used as columbaria for raising doves.^a So far, we have found 85 columbaria. Doves were used both as sacrificial animals and for food. Their droppings were used as fertilizer. Niches for the doves are generally found in the upper portion of the cave walls, which prevented predators from having easy access to the nests.

Many of the cave complexes were plastered. These were most likely used as water cisterns for the collection and storage of rain water. In many of these systems, the drainage channels to them are obvious. Some of them have banisters leading down the stairs to the cistern. Rope marks at the top of the staircases often locate where vessels were lowered to collect the water.

We have also found a number of baths—for 034 bathing but possibly also for ritual immersion, similar to later Jewish mikva’ot. Some of them are small rooms that appear to be designed so that an individual can sit inside them, with water channels leading into them. Two baths, discovered on the tell and in my opinion misidentified by earlier excavators, contain staircases leading down to what appear to be areas for immersion.

Some of the cave complexes contain troughs, suggesting that these areas were used as stables for animals. The height of the troughs indicates that the animals were probably donkeys. U-shaped handles carved into the walls were used to tether the animals in these areas.

The discovery of many loom weights in the cave fill reveals a domestic textile industry. True, these loom weights could have originated in the dwellings above the surface and been discarded into the underground areas at a later date. The presence of industrial-sized vats quarried into subterranean 035 walls, however, probably for dyeing, suggests that at least part of the textile operation took place underground.

Much of the subterranean area was no doubt used also for storage. The storage niches and silo-shaped rooms are evidence of this.

One of the great mysteries of these caves involves the condition in which we found them. Almost all of the thousands of subterranean rooms were filled with tons of debris that appear to have been dumped into them from the dwellings above. This debris almost reaches the ceilings, even in rooms that had no direct access to the surface. In some of these underground rooms we removed more than 30 feet of fill before reaching the bedrock floor. The material excavated contained unstratified debris, including pottery sherds as well as thousands of whole vessels, coins, jewelry, Greek, Aramaic and Hebrew ostraca (inscriptions on broken pieces of pottery), animal bones, amphora stamps and figurines, as well as building stones from the dwellings above. Why the inhabitants would bother to go to such an effort to fill up all of these caves remains a mystery.

But this lack of stratigraphy turned out to have an important advantage. It means that there is no reason to excavate this fill material stratigraphically; there were no occupational layers to separate and identify. Anyone could excavate this material. You didn’t have to know anything about how archaeologists carefully excavate stratum by stratum, layer by layer.

This provided the opportunity for the Dig-for-a-Day program of the Archaeological Seminars Institute to use Maresha as its key site. These caves could be excavated by people with no training who wanted to experience archaeology for a day—or less. This program allows untrained people, often families of all ages, to excavate unstratified fill guided by professionals.^b More than one million people over the past 27 years have enjoyed the thrill and excitement of participating in an archaeological excavation through this program. And the fees from the program have underwritten the entire excavation, including the processing of all the finds.

During the Hellenistic period, Maresha was ethnically mixed, not surprising given the city’s history. In the eighth century B.C.E., it was a Judahite village. After the Babylonian conquest of Judah in the sixth century B.C.E., Judah was severely weakened, and it appears there was an incursion of Edomites from the south into this area, to such an extent that they became the dominant ethnos in Maresha. The region then became known as Idumea—Greek for Edom. Later in the sixth century, the Babylonians were defeated and replaced by the Persians, only to be themselves conquered by Alexander the Great in the mid-fourth century B.C.E. This conquest introduced Greek culture to Maresha. After Alexander’s death in 323 B.C.E., his empire was divided principally between two of his warring generals, Ptolemy and Seleucus. The Ptolemies dominated Egypt, and the Seleucids dominated Syria, with Palestine becoming a battleground 036 between them. When the Ptolemies dominated the area in the third century B.C.E., Maresha became the central city of the region.¹ As such, it was the seat of various government offices until the Seleucids defeated the Ptolemies at the battle of Paneas in 198 B.C.E., at which point the city came under Seleucid control.

The Seleucids used Maresha as a base to launch attacks on Judea, and therefore it became subject to retaliation from the Maccabees (1 Maccabees 5:66; 2 Maccabees 12:35).

This history is reflected in the Maresha tombs.^c The burial grounds outside the city contain mostly early-third- to second-century B.C.E. tombs, reflecting a syncretism of the styles of the ruling Ptolemies, with Phoenician influence. Many of them contain inscriptions reflecting the various ethnic groups that resided in the city. These inscriptions, together with the numerous other epigraphic remains, give us a picture of a multi-ethnic society.

Of the approximately 1,300 names from published ostraca, 30 percent are Nabatean or Arab, 24 percent are Idumean, 28 percent are West Semitic, 9 percent are Judahite (or Judean), 5 percent are Phoenician and the remaining 4 percent are a mixture of smaller groups.²

It is especially interesting to look at the intergenerational names in the tombs. There is an almost complete integration of ethnicities starting in the late Persian period and continuing through the Hellenistic period. The intermixture of the tombs of different ethnicities probably reflects the situation in the city. Everyone seems to have gotten along together.

Among the more puzzling finds from the 037 excavation are 17 phalli made of chalk, all of which are circumcised.

This brings up another touchy subject. In about 111 B.C.E. the Hasmonean Jewish ruler of Judea, John Hyrcanus I (137–104 B.C.E.), conquered what was then Idumean Maresha. According to the first-century C.E. Jewish historian Josephus, Hyrcanus allowed the surviving Idumeans to remain in Maresha if the men agreed to be circumcised and to adopt the “laws of the Jews.” Here are Josephus’s words:

Hyrcanus took also Dora and Marissa [Maresha], cities of Idumaea, and subdued all the Idumaeans; and permitted them to stay in that country, if they would circumcise their genitals, and make use of the laws of the Jews [emphasis added]; and they were so desirous of living in the country of their forefathers, that they submitted to the use of circumcision, and the rest of the Jewish ways of living [emphasis added]; at which time therefore this befell them, that they were hereafter no other than Jews.³

While Josephus implies a forced conversion, the Greek historian Strabo (c. 64–24 B.C.E.), who never missed an opportunity to criticize the Hasmoneans,⁴ implies a different picture. He is poignantly silent regarding any forced circumcision. He would certainly have mentioned it if it had occurred. But why would Josephus tell of a forced circumcision if it had not occurred? One guess is that Josephus’s source here (as frequently elsewhere) was the historian Nicolaus of Damascus, who was zealously anti-Hasmonean.

Although Josephus claims that the Hasmoneans “held” the city,⁵ the archaeological evidence points to a limited Judean presence at best as seen by the lack of any meaningful Judean remains post-111 B.C.E. Early excavators Frederick Jones Bliss and R.A.S. Macalister discovered 25 Hyrcanus coins in their excavations on the tell,⁶ statistically marginal at best when seen in the context of the more than 1,300 coins we have discovered so far.

Now back to the phalli. All of them predate the Hasmonean conquest of Maresha.

The depiction of a phallus without a foreskin in the Hellenistic world was considered indecent and 038 was usually an object of ridicule. To conceal their circumcision, Jews who wanted to live in the world of the Hellenistic gymnasia (where men worked out in the nude) often underwent an operation known as epispasm, a kind of foreskin restoration. The Roman historian Tacitus (56–117 C.E.) viewed circumcision as abominable and summed up its sociological significance: “They [the Jews] adopted circumcision to distinguish themselves from other peoples by this diversity.”⁷

That the phalli found at Maresha date prior to the Jewish (Hasmonean) conquest of the city is evidence of the probability that the Idumeans, along with many other peoples in the region, already practiced circumcision. Jeremiah 9:24–25 refers to Edomites (ancestors of the Idumeans), Ammonites, Moabites, desert dwellers and Egyptians, in addition to Judahites, who were circumcised. The third-century B.C.E. Zenon papyri refer to circumcision as a marker that identified runaway slaves from Maresha, long before the supposed forced conversion of the Idumeans referred to by Josephus.

In short, the phalli from Maresha are probably not Judean. Josephus’s version of the event needs to be reconsidered. The conversion of the Idumeans may well have been voluntary. The phalli from Maresha indicate that circumcision was practiced here before the Judean conquest of the city. It is quite possible that those Idumeans who remained in Idumea eventually accepted or were understood to have accepted the Judean symbolism of the act. It became part of a broader acculturation process with their Judean neighbors.

The Idumeans not only practiced circumcision but they also had ritual purification baths. Amos Kloner, professor emeritus of Bar-Ilan University, who led the Maresha excavations until 1999, has identified approximately 20 small rock-cut chambers as ritual purification baths.⁸ The discovery of such baths at an archaeological site is customarily interpreted as something particularly Judean, serving as a kind of ethnic marker. These baths at Maresha, however, predate any archaeological evidence of Jewish mikva’ot discovered in Judea.

One of the other mysteries of the site has been the discovery of more than 400 ceramic vessels that were punctured for no apparent reason.⁹ The default explanation of any puzzling archaeological phenomenon is often “cultic.” I think that is true here. The practice resembles later Jewish Levitical laws of purity. These laws state that if, for example, a person comes in contact with a corpse, that person is in a temporary state of impurity (e.g., Leviticus 22:4–6). If that person should touch another 039 person or a ceramic vessel, that impurity is passed on. In the case of a ceramic vessel, it can no longer be used and therefore must be broken.

But if this rule applied in Idumea, why not just destroy the vessel? Why puncture a hole in it?

One day, while excavating with one of the Dig-for-a-Day volunteers, we discovered one of these punctured vessels. I shared my dilemma with the man who had uncovered the bowl. Why wasn’t the vessel destroyed? Why only punctured? “Simple,” he replied. “Just look up Mishnah Kelim 2–3.” When I returned home I checked his reference in the Mishnah, the earliest codification of rabbinic law. The Mishnah states that a pierced clay vessel is considered broken; it is therefore pure and insusceptible to impurity, providing that the hole is large enough to disable the intended use of the vessel. It is then permissible to repair and reuse the punctured vessel. This might explain this strange phenomenon of punctured vessels at Maresha if it were not for the fact that the Mishnah was not redacted until 074 about 200 C.E. Our Maresha examples are much earlier—from the third–second centuries B.C.E.—and at a site that was predominantly pagan.

Since no literary or archaeological evidence of this practice has been discovered in a Jewish context from this period, the question arises: Were the Idumeans involved in a purification ritual (albeit with symbolism unknown to us today) centuries before the Jews?

The final question I will discuss relates to the Edomite and later Idumean god, Qos. Depictions of Qos at Maresha are schematic or aniconic. Several depictions like this are incised on some of the walls of the subterranean complexes. Others were found on stone reliefs. Does this suggest something akin to a non-corporeal deity?

Another strange thing about Qos relates to the Bible: He isn’t there. This is in contrast to the Moabite god Chemosh who is mentioned eight times in the Bible and the Ammonite god Milcom who is mentioned three times. Is the absence of any reference to Qos in the Bible a case of benign neglect?

Can we put all this together? The discovery of 17 circumcised phalli from a period before the Hasmonean conquest of Maresha, ritual immersion baths, vessels punctured for no apparent reason and therefore perhaps interpreted as connected to a cultic/ritual practice, aniconic images of the deity, and a Biblical relationship with the Edomite/Idumean deity that can be characterized as non-antagonistic. Is all this just coincidental?

Or does all this suggest the possibility of a connection between Idumean and later Judean rituals prior to the Hasmonean conquest of Maresha in 111 B.C.E. and centuries before some of these religious rituals became evident in Judea?

Was there a Judaizing tendency in Idumean society at Maresha even before the Hasmonean conquest of the city? Or were these proto-Pharisaic rituals, as it were, practiced by a small minority of Judeans residing in Maresha at that time?

As I said at the beginning of this article, although archaeological excavations provide us with new answers, just as often they provide us with new questions. So it is at Maresha.

It is commonplace in archaeology: An excavation provides more questions than answers. That is certainly true at Maresha.