The UNESCO World Heritage Committee voted in Qatar on Sunday to admit Beit Guvrin-Maresha National Park to the growing list of World Heritage sites, making it the eighth World Heritage site in Israel. The Israel Nature and Parks Authority submitted the nomination through Israel's UNESCO committee, which is a joint effort between the Education and Foreign ministries and other authorities. Adding Beit Guvrin-Maresha National Park, a site that enfolds the ruins of the First Temple-period town of Maresha, bolsters Israel's standing as an important bridge to ancient times, a preserver of world heritage, and a conduit between the past and present. The recognition will likely both boost the number of visitors to the site and help with crucial preservation efforts. Beit Guvrin-Maresha joins seven other Israeli world heritage sites: Masada, the Old City of Acre, the White City of Tel Aviv, the Negev incense route, the biblical tels of Megiddo, Hazor and Beersheba, the Bahai holy places in Haifa and the Western Galilee, and the Nahal Me'arot caves on Mount Carmel. The Beit Guvrin caves, which cover 5 square kilometers (2 square miles), represent the Judean foothills' "land of a thousand caves," all of them man-made. The caves are of various types, and include limestone quarries, cisterns, olive presses, burial sites, ritual sites, dovecotes, stables, and more. Unique to Beit Guvrin, for health reasons, the caves were not used as living quarters. The first caves in the area were dug beneath Tel Maresha in the ninth century B.C.E. The peak of active use occurred between the second and third centuries B.C.E. In the first few centuries C.E., the caves that Beit Guvrin is famous for were carved out, including the bell-shaped caves (sixth to eighth centuries C.E.), the biggest of their kind in the world. Dr. Tzvika Tzuk, chief archaeologist of the Nature and Parks Authority, welcomed the announcement. "We are happy to see that professional opinion has declared the caves of Maresha and Beit Guvrin as a World Heritage site, adopted by the UNESCO World Heritage Committee." The Nature and Parks Authority announced that it "will take it upon itself, together with various public and governmental institutions, to continue to maintain this site, which has been recognized as part of the cultural heritage of Israel."
