•  
  •  
 

Abstract

Recent excavations at the mouth of Paneas Cave revealed new chapters in the history of the site. The cave is located at the western end of the sacred precinct of the Roman city of Paneas, previously excavated by Zvi Ma’oz, who exposed there an ashlar-built wall with niches, extending from the cave southward and proposed that this was the location of a temple built by King Herod. The new excavations proved that the area in front of the cave was first established as a built compound only in the last third of the first century CE, when Agrippa II had ruled the city. This ruler built an open court that served as a hosting and dining facility, designed in the lavish style of contemporary compounds in Rome, called Nymphaeum-Triclinium, such as the one at Sperlonga. The compound at Paneas included a court bordered by walls with niches on the west and east, a small pool and water installations in the middle of the court, overlooking the water-filled cave with a huge rock in its center, probably carrying a statue. A large aqueduct ran beneath the compound’s floor and kept it from being flooded by the water flowing out of the cave. After Agrippa II’s death, the compound was used once again for sacred rituals, as mentioned in written sources of the fourth century CE. When Christianity became the main religion, at the end of the that century, a large building was erected on-site, including a gathering hall paved with a mosaic floor, and a small chapel to its north, overlooking the cave. The new structure incorporated parts of the Roman compound, with a large wall added on its southern end with three openings. An earthquake in the sixth century CE destroyed most of the fifth-century building, but the chapel was preserved with minor changes. South of it was an open courtyard with adjacent rooms, one of them probably serving as a dining hall. An ashlar stone with many engraved crosses was found at the entrance leading from the courtyard to the dining hall. It seems that the place was used as a monastery or a pilgrimage site and existed until the mid-eighth century CE. Later, between the fourteenth and sixteenth centuries, a small settlement existed at the site; however, it was mostly deserted and pillaged for building stones.

Download

Share

COinS