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Ramat Rahel is a truly unique site:
looking south, you will see Bethlehem, the City of David, and the Church of
Nativity. Looking north, you will see the old city of Jerusalem, the place where
David was buried and where the Church of the Holy Sepulcher reminds us of the
crucifixion and the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Looking east, you will see the
road leading to the Death Sea, in the west the Elija-Monastery and the Rephaim-Valley
heading towards the Judean mountains. With this most impressive panorama you
have all the central places of the Bible before your very eyes, the whole story
of salvation from the Old and the New Testament.
In Ramat Rahel is an ancient mound
of ruins expanding approximately 190 by 200 meters which has only been
excavated to a third.
Ramat Rahel is one of the most
underetimated sites in Juda and this is probably, because the site has not
been mentioned in the Bible, at least not in detail. But it could also be, because its importance
has not yet been investigated. At the moment several hypothesis are competing.
The size and the economic, military and
political function of the site in times of the Judean and Israelite kings, as
well as in the Persian period is still controversial. The only fact that is
absolutely certain is that the site has played an important role. The
extremely luxurious architecture, like beautiful joined capitals in proto-Aeolic
style, window balustrades consisting of a row of stone colonettes and decorated
with palmettes and the unusual amount of seal impressions on jar handles (more
than 450 lemäläk seal impressions; more than 220 jehud seal impressions) leave no doubt that we are dealing with an extremely
important site.
In the Byzantine period there existed also an very important center for the adoration of the holy
Mary.
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