If you stick a spade in the ground anywhere in Israel, there’s a good chance that you will uncover some ancient artifact.
Israel, which in its long history has been overrun by dozens of foreign armies, is a prime place for such discoveries, each group having left behind some relic that has remained buried beneath the sands of time.
But in revealing these ancients relics, the questions arises as to what you are going to do with them. Typically, a cluster of government organizations will descend on the location to decide whether what you have uncovered is worthy of preservation. If it is, then the question arises as to how it is to be preserved. Will it stay in the place where it was found, or be removed to a museum? Alternatively, will it be covered over for good, allowing a modern developer to build over it?
These questions have recently arisen around the ancient city of Beit Shemesh in the center of the country, adjacent to route 38. At the end of 2018, an archaeological dig revealed a large settlement that was apparently used as a center for the production of olive oil. This was a major discovery since the site was dated as flourishing during the late First Temple period, around the eighth to seventh century BCE. This made the site particularly significant in that it is clearly connected to the Biblical period as mentioned in the second Book of Kings.
What was surprising to the archaeologists was that this site went against the perceived assumptions of the period – that after the Assyrian king Sennacherib (2 Kings, Chapters 18 and 19) had plundered much of the kingdom of Judea, destroying many of the fortified cities including Beit Shemesh, the cities were left as ghostly reminders of the vicious Assyrian invasion. The dig in Beit Shemesh clearly shows that this city, at least, was revived, under the aegis of the Assyrian or Babylonian empires and indeed flourished as an important economic center for the kingdom of Judea.
“It’s significant,” explains Dr. Yehuda Govrin, chief archaeologist on the site, “that the development of the area took place lower down, at the foot of the Tel. Any rebuilding of the Tel might have suggested a potential rebellion. But lower down, development was permissible.”
