One of the largest ancient oil-lamp workshops in Israel has been recently uncovered by the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA) in excavations in Beit Shemesh.
Hundreds of ceramic oil lamps from around the third or fourth centuries AD, including two bearing symbols of the menorah of the ancient Jewish Temple in Jerusalem, were found in the excavation.
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But that was not the only thing uncovered by the IAA.
In 1934, archaeologist Dimitri Baramki, an inspector on behalf of the Department of Antiquities during the British Mandate, unearthed a water cistern in the region of Beit Shemesh.
Baramki recovered a huge quantity of stone lamp molds and a wide variety of pottery figurines depicting animals, horse-riders, women, and birds from the Late Roman period.
Following Israel's War of Independence, many efforts were made to relocate the water cistern but to no avail.
"As part of the Beit Shemesh development program, we examined an area on the edge of the ancient remains of Khirbet Beit Nattif," excavation directors Moran Balila, Itai Aviv, Nicolas Benenstein and Omer Shalev recalled in a joint statement.
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"We uncovered a water cistern that looked, at first sight, like many others in the region. But to our surprise, excavation beside the cistern began unearthing massive quantities of oil lamps, stone lamp molds and figurine fragments."
When the archaeologists entered the cistern, which was still intact, they were amazed to find that they recognized it from photos appearing in Baramki's excavation publication.
This article was first published by i24NEWS.
