Endnote 15 – Modi’in: Hometown of the Maccabees

This road was part of the internal road network, not marked by milestones, which was paved between the imperial roads. The road appears on the British survey map from the 19th century; see Conder and Kitchener, Survey of Western Palestine, vol. III, p. 73. The eastern mountainous part was identified in the British survey map as a “Roman road” and was referred to as “Ma’aleh Bet Likia” in A. Milstein and A. Tepper-Amit, “Ma’alot Benyamin to Jerusalem—a Military and Topographic Analysis,” in Ze’ev H. Erlich and Ya’acov Eshel, eds., Judea and Samaria Research Studies, vol. 2, no. 4 (Kedumim-Ariel: Research Institute, The College of Judea and Samaria, 1993), pp. 82–83 [Hebrew]. The western part of the road was identified on the British survey map as an “ancient road” and was dated to the Roman period based on its characteristics, manner of pavement and the sites located alongside it; see Conder and Kitchener, Survey of Western Palestine, vol. III, sheet XVII, and Fischer, Isaac and Roll, Roman Roads in Judea, p. 99. The scholars assumed that the entire length of this route was used during the Roman period and constituted an alternative to the two main imperial roads that passed north and south of Umm el-‘Umdan. This route served as a main artery between Jerusalem and the coastal plain in the Crusader period in the 12th and 13th centuries C.E. In the Ottoman period the route was renovated and was in use until it was replaced in the 19th century by the Ramla-Latrun road; see Fischer, Isaac and Roll, Roman Roads in Judea, pp. 85–87, 98–99.