Archaeologists find ancient cave in Israel that serves as ‘portal to underworld’

Jerusalem

Archaeologists found an ancient cave in Israel that allegedly serves as a portal to the underworld.

In a recent excavation, the archaeologists in western Jerusalem found more than 100 ceramic lamps squeezed into the cave's crevices. They theorised in a new paper that these were most likely used to conjure up dead spirits and their secrets —a practice known as necromancy.

Called the Te'omim Cave, it dates back to 4000 BCE and the fourth century AD, and has been the subject of various research for the past 150 years.

Eitan Klein, from the Israel Antiquities Authority at Ashkelon Academic College and Boaz Zissu from Bar-Ilan University, wrote in the ‘Harvard Theological Review’: "The Te'omim Cave in the Jerusalem hills has all the cultic and physical elements necessary to serve as a possible portal to the underworld.

It is believed that spring water flows through the underground system which allegedly had healing properties.

Secret passageways 

It was only in the 1970s that the researchers unearthed a series of previously-undiscovered secret passageways leading to hidden chambers within the cave.

Their study states that the many long and narrow crevices found in these concealed areas used to house embedded archaeological artefacts such as coins, pottery, metal weapons, and, importantly, lamps and skulls.

Though not many human remains were on display, the researchers found a skull with four late Roman-era lamps tucked deep into a crevice that was particularly hard to reach.

According to researchers, this skull was used as a sorcery weapon to ward off evil spirits.

Ancient writings discovered

The researchers also found writings on the cave wall which suggest that it was around the time of the Roman and Greek eras. By studying those writing, the researchers inferred that the way the flames within the lamps flickered it was considered a way of communicating with demons and spirits from beyond the grave, Daily Star reports.

The writings also indicate that necromancy was commonly practised by witches in tombs or underground shrines, and skulls were a key feature, the study argues.

“Most of the objects discovered in hard-to-reach crevices in the Te'omim Cave, including the oil lamps, the ceramic and glass bowls and vessels, the axe head, and the daggers, were used in one way or another for sorcery and magic in caves perceived as possible portals to the underworld. Their purpose was to predict the future and conjure up the spirits of the dead,” the study noted.

"Because more than 100 ceramic oil lamps but only three human skulls have been found so far in the Te'omim Cave, we hypothesize that the primary cultic ceremony focused on depositing oil lamps for chthonic forces, perhaps as part of rituals conducted in the cave to raise the dead and predict the future," it said.

The excavation has been going since 2009 as part of a collaboration of the Martin (Szusz) Department of Land of Israel Studies and Archaeology at Bar-Ilan University and the Cave Research Center at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

(With inputs from agencies)

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