Several months before the Hamas attacks on October 7 of last year, Oren Gutfeld and Michal Haber of the Institute of Archaeology at Hebrew University led the first-ever excavations in Hyrcania, the onetime Hasmonean desert fortress southwest of the Dead Sea.

The Hasmoneans, a ruling dynasty who lived in the middle years (140 to 37 BCE) of the Second Temple period, were the same family as the Maccabees of Hanukkah fame who rededicated the Temple after its desecration by Syrian Greek rulers.

Named for Maccabean leader and high priest John Hyrcanus, Hyrcania included a palace and aqueduct-fed gardens. Enlarged by Herod the Great and destroyed in the Great Revolt against the Romans in 66-73 CE, the area was later the site of a Christian monastery built in 492.

Among the finds at Hyrcania are a Byzantine Greek inscription paraphrasing Psalm 86:1-2 and a gold and turquoise ring from the early Islamic period inscribed with the Arabic phrase “God has willed it.”

Gutfeld said that, like most other organized archaeological digs in Israel, excavations at Hyrcania were halted due to the war. But he was hopeful that by Hanukkah the team would be able to return and continue its research.

“We plan to concentrate on the site’s Second Temple-period fortifications and the later Roman camp below that was never excavated or surveyed,” Gutfeld said.

However, because hardly a month in Israel goes by without someone literally tripping over ancient relics, tangible evidence of thousands of years of Jewish history in the Land of Israel continues to surface, even in wartime.

In February, a 2,000-year-old Hasmonean coin was found near the Dead Sea by an 11-year-old hiker whose family has been housed at a nearby hotel since being evacuated from their northern kibbutz after October 7. The coin’s Greek inscription reads “Alexander Basileus [the King],” referring to Hasmonean king and high priest Alexander Jannaeus (104-76 BCE).

Elsewhere, the Israel Antiquities Authority during the summer uncovered a massive quarry in northern Jerusalem dating from the late Second Temple period. The two-and-a-half ton blocks of stone found at the site are typical of royal construction projects, such as the 2,000-year-old Pilgrimage Road linking the City of David to the Second Temple compound.

Another exciting recent find is a 3,300-year-old ship at the bottom of the Mediterranean Sea that sunk while transporting oil, wine and produce. The location of the wreckage far from the coast proves for the first time that ancient mariners could navigate using the stars and sun rather than staying within sight of land.

Jordana Benami