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Wednesday, July 19, 2023

More on that "underworld portal" cave

SPELUNCIC, CHTHONIC, NECROMANTIC ARCHAEOLOGY UPDATE: New finds show cave near Beit Shemesh may have been seen as a door to the underworld. Oil lamps and fragments of human skull lead archaeologists to believe Teomim Cave was used for necromancy, or communication with dead, some 1,700 years ago (Melanie Lidman, Times of Israel).
Zissu said one of the things that was so strange about excavating the archaeological discoveries from the cave was that there was so little digging. Instead, it was more like fishing the finds out of cracks in the rocks. The digging happened later, during the research phase, as the archaeologists sifted through research about ancient rituals and religions.

“Only later we became aware of other possibilities, that these could be the remains of necromancy rituals,” said Zissu. “We put our finds together with archaeological data from other digs and made this suggestion.”

I noted the announcement of the discovery of the cave, with link to the underlying HTR article, here. A potentially related post is here. This ToS article has some additional background information.

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