Ein-Gedi (Israel)
Of the biggest animals one can note a gazelle. The gazelle from ancient times has been considered a symbol of beauty and swiftness. («Tzvi,» «Tzvia» from Hebrew means also «love,» «beloved»). Eretz Ha-Tzvi – the Land of the Gazelle was the name given to the land of Israel in the ancient days.
There are many ibexes in Ein Gedi. Gracious jumps of this fearless animal admire a viewer.
Leopards also still inhabit the Ein Gedi Mountains. They hunt after wild pigs hiding in the reed bushes. Although wild pig is armed with four sharp fangs, it is friendly and almost never attacks people.
But leopards are sly: instead of taking all the strain of the labour of hunting they find food in kibbutz: they catch chicken, cats and rabbits. Kibbutz is also visited by Libyan cats in search of food. Foxes and hyenas also do not neglect getting the food for free. The most dangerous inhabitant of this area for humans is a carpet viper. It is active during the night time, lying in wait for careless travelers who lie down to sleep on the mere ground. There is another venomous snake – a Palestinian viper. All the other snakes do not do people any harm and feed on mice and lizards. Lizards in the Dead Sea zone are huge, some of them reaching a length of 75 cm.
In these places not only the fauna impresses the visitors. Botanists count up to a thousand species of plants! Along the river banks there are many “lovers of water:” tamarisks, oleanders, different kinds of reeds including the famous papyrus, long time ago and for good destroyed in Egypt. In the dryer places there is flora characteristic to savannas. Ziziphus spina-christi tree grows here, branches of which are covered with sharp pricks. These pricks are called “Needles of Christ,” because, as the tradition has it, it is of this very tree that the thorny crown of Christ was made.
There are many species of acacia tree also wide spread here. Its foliage is usually spread over in the likeness of a large umbrella, which protects the roots from drying up and allows to collect big quantity of the night dew. Timber of acacia wood is very solid; that is why the Ark of the Covenant, in which the tablets with the Ten Commandments were kept, was made of it.
A tree with subtle apples of Sodom also grows here. This plant has overhanging branches, thick wide leaves and big beautiful fruit. But as soon as one bites this delicious-looking fruit, that turns into a handful of dust: the seeds fly out of the burst peel and are taken away by the wind.
Plants of Alkali soils also abound here. In moisture-full stalactite caverns one can see a plant looking like a fern: “The Hair of Shulamit.” And in the oasis itself there are the Shulamit Spring and a cavern bearing the name of this heroine of the Song of Songs.
The most ancient human settlement in Ein Gedi dates from the Chalcolithic period. Above the spring, walls of a big building with a circle podium in the main room (which could be the remains of an ancient heathen temple) can still be seen. Some researchers state that the treasures found in the Matmon cavern are related to this very religious construction. On the territory of Ein Gedi traces of four fortresses are discovered related to the time of Jewish kings as well as remains of a farm and water supplying systems. Tools, seals with phrases in Hebrew and a hoard of silver also found in this culture layer are related to the same period of time. The Tel Goren mole hill of the same period is believed by archeologists to belong to VII BC, the time of the reign of the Jewish king Ishayahu (Joshua 15:62). The city that used to stand here was evidently destroyed in 586 BC, at Babylon’s invasion of king Nebuchadnezzar and was rebuilt when Jews came back from their Babylonian captivity in V BC. At that time, the settlement remained small; it grew only at the time of the Hasmonean rulers. In II BC, representatives of the sect of Essenes settled in Ein Gedi; most likely, this was a sister-group of the Qumran sect, who was later, according to Joseph Flavius, destroyed by the Sicarii of Masada during the Jewish wars. Later, Romans built a military base here, in which the first cohort of Thrace was placed. At those times, there were big Roman bath houses here, ruins of which one can see here even today. In the caverns of Ein Gedi and in the caverns of the Hever Spring, adjacent to the oasis, rebels of Bar-Kohba hid. At the period of Mishna and Talmud, another Jewish settlement was built, from which ruins of a synagogue with a six-pointed star still remain. On the mosaic floor of the synagogue there is a big inscription in Hebrew; a bronze menorah was also found here. The settlement was later annihilated by Arabs.
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