place · L0327
Ein Gedi עין גדי
Spring-fed oasis on the Dead Sea's western shore — David's refuge from Shaul and the vineyard of Shir HaShirim — whose Jewish village flourished on the balsam trade from the Second Temple period into the Byzantine era. Its synagogue, destroyed by fire in the sixth century CE, preserved a mosaic floor of inscriptions rather than images, including the famous adjuration against "whoever reveals the secret of the town to the gentiles," and yielded from its ark the charred Ein Gedi scroll (Ein Gedi Scroll).
I. Who
- Hebrew
- עין גדי
- Also known as
- En-Gedi, Engedi, Ein Jidi
III. Where
- Modern location
- Ein Gedi National Park and antiquities site, western shore of the Dead Sea, Israel
IV. What
- Events
- Ein Gedi Scroll
V. How do we know
| Claim | Evidence | Confidence | Sources |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ein Gedi is the biblical oasis where David hid from Shaul in the strongholds and cut the corner of his cloak in the cave, and whose vineyards the Shir HaShirim makes a byword for fragrance — "a cluster of henna in the vineyards of Ein Gedi." | biblical | ★★★★★ | |
| The village synagogue was discovered in 1970 and excavated by Dan Barag, Yosef Porath, and Ehud Netzer (1970–1972); its final phase, with the mosaic floor and a bema and niche toward Yerushalayim, was destroyed by fire in the sixth century CE and the village abandoned — the burnt layer sealing the hall's contents in place. | archaeology | ★★★★★ | |
| The mosaic carries long Hebrew and Aramaic inscriptions in place of pictures: the thirteen ancestors of the world from Adam to the sons of Yefet as listed in Divrei HaYamim, the names of the zodiac signs and the months in words only, the three avot and Daniel's three companions, and donor records — a community that, unlike Beit Alpha or Hammat Tiberias in the same era, chose words where its neighbors laid figures. | archaeology biblical | ★★★★★ | |
| The floor's Aramaic adjuration curses — invoking the One "whose eyes range over the whole earth" — anyone who sows discord, slanders his fellow to the gentiles, steals, or "reveals the secret of the town to the gentiles"; the guarded secret (raz kartha) is usually understood as the techniques of the balsam (afarsimon) industry, the oasis's famously valuable perfume crop, though other readings (smuggling routes, communal matters) have been proposed.
The inscription is unique in ancient Jewish epigraphy; the balsam-trade interpretation is the scholarly standard but is an inference — the text never states what the secret was.
|
archaeology | ★★★★☆ | |
| From the charred remains of the synagogue's ark came the Ein Gedi scroll — a burnt Vayikra scroll read by virtual unwrapping, treated in this atlas as its own entity (Ein Gedi Scroll) — hard evidence that a Torah scroll stood in this ark when the fire came. | archaeology | ★★★★★ |
Referenced by: Ein Gedi Scroll