The Tell

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You can read much of the human saga—a stark history of extravagant hopes and stunning defeats—on the face of any gambler…

…the same story told by Judean hills, where towns and villages gradually piled atop one another, layer after layer, each stratum spelling yet another tale of confidence and ambition that inevitably failed. Till someone else arrived to build upon that dust. An upward sedimentary process, mounting ever higher. Generations, separated by the babble of language and culture and centuries, but united by one aim—to reach Heaven by dint of hard work, hope, and pain.

“Here, we have trenched through an augury,” our guide explained, while leading us along plank bridges that crisscrossed over the Tel Ain Makor dig. “An important ceremonial center, it apparently remained in use across the Hellenistic period till it was burned and abandoned under the Hasmoneans, then restored during the Roman era.”

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