3,000-Year-Old Egyptian Burial Cave Discovered Intact At Palmachim Nature Reserve

 

 In a remarkable discovery which occurred accidentally last week at the Palmachim nature reserve, a popular coastal recreation site near Rishon Letzion, a burial cave from the time of Egyptian Pharaoh Ramses II was discovered. The cave contains dozens of intact objects including candles in the places where they were lit, amphorae and human remains.

The unusual discovery was made last Tuesday during works conducted by the Israel Nature and Parks Authority to develop a garden at the nature reserve. A tractor accidently hit a rock, revealing the ceiling of an ancient burial cave.

Dror Citron, inspector of the Israel Antiquities Authority, was the first to identify the cave, which was apparently broken into for the first time since it was closed by people about 3,300 years ago – during the reign of Ramses II, also known as Ramses the Great, the Egyptian king who some identify with the story of the Exodus.

The cave was carved in the shape of a square, and in the center of its ceiling was a pillar. Archeologists from the Israel Antiquities Authority said it was “a discovery of a lifetime.”

“It’s not every day that you see an Indiana Jones set – a cave with tools on the floor that haven’t been touched in 3,300 years. We are talking about the Late Bronze Age. These are precisely the days of the famous king, Ramses II. The fact that the cave was sealed, and not looted in later periods, allows us, with the scientific means available today, to extract a great deal of information from the objects and materials that survived on them, and which are not visible to the eye, including organic materials,” Dr. Eli Yanai, an expert on the Bronze Age at the Antiquities Authority, said.

Yanai added that the cave can provide archeologists with a complete picture of burial customs in the Late Bronze Age. The objects found on the floor of the cave included dozens of intact pottery in different shapes and sizes along with small bronze vessels that have been placed there as burial offerings during the ancient ceremony.

“Among them, there are deep and shallow bowls, some of which are painted red, set (bowls with a high leg) cooking pots, jugs and clay candles that contain oil for light,” Dr. Yanai said.

He noted that some of the jars were produced on the coasts of Lebanon and Syria. He added that next to the jars, they found small pitchers, which were imported to Israel from the area of ​​Tyre, Sidon and other port cities on the coast of Lebanon.