Ancient "Portal To The Underworld" Discovered In A Cave In Israel

Archaeologists have discovered evidence of an ancient portal to the underworld near Jerusalem. The place contains ancient skulls, lamps, coins, and artefacts that span thousands of years, according to a study published in the Harvard Theological Review.

Te'omim Cave, located in the Jerusalem Hills of Israel has been studied since 1873. The experts have long suspected that the spring water that flows through the underground system was considered healing to those who used the cave between 4000 BCE and the fourth century CE.

The cave is a source of both legends and historical dramas. The place also served as a hideout for Jewish rebels during the Bar Kokhba revolt in the 2nd century CE, Vice reported.

The researchers have been excavating the cave 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.

They discovered a number of curious items including pieces of three human skulls, 120 oil lamps, ancient pottery and weapons from the Bronze Age dating some 2,000 years before the oil lamps, carefully arranged together and hidden deep in the rocks' crevices.

Eitan Klein and Boaz Zissu, archaeologists with the Israel Antiquities Authority and Bar-Ilan University respectively now "propose with due caution that necromancy ceremonies took place in the Te'omim Cave in the Late Roman period and that the cave may have served as a local oracle (nekyomanteion) for this purpose."

The researchers said that necromancy ceremonies took place in the cave during the Late Roman period and that the cave may have served as a local oracle.

"This whole area underwent a radical transformation following the crash of the Bar Kokhba Revolt," explained Professor Boaz Zissu.

Professor Zissu further explained, "Previously, this was a Jewish area, then following the vacuum created in this region, Roman pagan elements entered, and these might be new rituals performed by new Roman pagan settlers."

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," the researchers said in the study. "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."

"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," the team added.

The researchers tried to identify magical practices and said that it was not easy. "Magical practice is used in ritual acts that are undertaken, mainly by individuals, to achieve a desired effect. Sometimes the practices should be carried out in a specific location or require the use of specific material culture. Therefore, to locate magic in the archaeological context, we must trace material evidence for those practices."

"The findings and their specific archaeological contexts provide a better understanding of divination rites that were probably held in the cave and shed a more tangible light over the spells of the Greek and Demotic Magical Papyri," the researchers added.