Caves of Maresha and Bet-Guvrin in the Judean Lowlands as a Microcosm of the Land of the Caves

Under the Judean lowlands, some 3,500 chambers honeycomb the soft chalk beneath the vanished towns of Maresha and Bet Guvrin. Cut across two millennia and more, from the 8th century BCE to Crusader times, at a crossroads of routes toward Mesopotamia and Egypt, they served as cisterns, oil presses, baths, dovecotes, stables, hideaways, places of worship and burial grounds. This subterranean microcosm was inscribed as UNESCO World Heritage in 2014.