Israel
By Hamodia Staff
YERUSHALAYIM -
Finds from the Beit Nattif excavation. (Itai Aviv/Israel Antiquities Authority)
One of the largest ceramic oil-lamp workshops in Israel has been discovered in Beit Shemesh, a trove of hundreds of lamps, two bearing symbols of the menorah and stone lamp molds for their production which were made about 1600–1700 years ago, according to archeological estimates.
The discovery of the lamps, used for lighting in ancient times, surprised the archaeologists not only because of their quantity and quality, but also because it solved an archaeological mystery connected with them:
In 1934, archaeologist Dimitri Baramki, an inspector on behalf of the Department of Antiquities during the British Mandate, discovered a water cistern in the region of Beit Shemesh. On excavating the cistern, he was surprised to uncover an ancient ‘treasure’ a huge quantity of intact oil lamps bearing animal and plant motifs and geometric designs. The lamps a