Posted on 04/08/2019 12:26:30 PM PDT by SunkenCiv
Around 2,400 years ago, the great city of Elusa arose in the heart of the Negev Desert, at the crossing point of two great trading routes: the Incense Road and the biblical Way of Shur. Elusa presumably began, as desert cities do, with a village built around an oasis. That particular area is rich in groundwater. At first a village of pagans worshipping Venus, Aphrodite (locally named al-Allat) and the like, the people there would convert to Christianity in the 4th century C.E.
We can be confident that this particular set of ruins in the heart of what is now an Israeli army firing zone is the actual Elusa (Haluza to Hebrews and al-Khalasa in Arabic) because archaeologists have now found an inscription in Greek naming the place, the Israel Antiquities Authority announced on Wednesday.
Much is unknown about the inscription other than its existence, but it seems to date to Emperor Diocletian's reign, around 1,700 years ago, when the great 10th Roman Legion was being moved from inside Israel to Aqaba, which led to a lot of development in the region, the archaeologists explain.
While innumerable ancient sources name empires and cities, finding an actual inscription in place with a city's name is extremely rare. The ancient Romans for one used milestones along their roads, but evidently nobody in antiquity felt a need to be reassured that "You are now entering Jerusalem" or "You are here, in Gath." Archaeologists have to rely on other clues to identify ruins they find - including local tradition, which can be dead wrong. (Take the theory that Mt. Sinai is in Saudi Arabia mainly because locals say so; that doesn't hold any water at all.)
(Excerpt) Read more at haaretz.com ...
FIFY
Wouldn’t be any elysian fields in the Negev without a lot of irrigation. Oh wait, climate change.
Dang,
She’s a Real,,
Is that a,,
You?
She could tell me the moon was made of green cheese and I’d believe her, just because, you know...
Something must have been lost in translation. Obviously, no one is firing on the site now.
I think it's just Haaretz, firing on Israel.
:-))
I’m guessing that it is a military base. And perhaps includes areas with weapons training (artillery, tanks, etc.)
“With the cooperation of the Israeli military, excavations have revealed an actual metropolis, albeit not that civilians can visit it on a whim, it being in the firing zone. “We can say right now that it’s a huge place, over 450 dunams [111 acres] in area,” Erickson-Gini says.”
Elusive Alusa.
Fiji Hill wrote:
“”At first a village of pagans worshipping Venus, Aphrodite (locally named al-Allat) and the like, the people there would convert to Christianity in the 4th century C.E AD.”
FIFY”
More on Al-allat:
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1989-03-07-me-45-story,amp.html
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