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Not far from Qumran, Hyrcania sits on top of a barren mountain looking out over the Wilderness of Judea. The ruins there include a Hasmonean and Herodian fortress, a cemetery where Herod buried his executed political prisoners (or worked them to death), an aqueduct and still later a Byzantine monastery. The site has never been excavated. Lately, however, an excavation of a different sort was undertaken, not among the ruins on top of the mountain, but in a mysterious ancient tunnel beneath it.