A new article in ‘Atiqot 117 by Nir-Shimshon Paran and Vladik Lifshits follows decades of exploration at the Cave of Salome near Amaẓya and sets out the evidence for its use as a Christian pilgrimage destination from the Byzantine through Abbasid eras . The authors record how a previously Jewish burial estate, hewn in the late first century BCE, was structurally and liturgically re-oriented between the fifth and ninth centuries CE.
Chapel architecture
Inside the cave, the eastern burial doorway was enlarged and arched; the rear chamber was reshaped as a chapel with a semicircular apse cut into the eastern wall, and a rock-hewn altar block left in place. A partition wall with a central doorway and two carved columns separated this apse from the entrance hall. An additional square room north of the chapel received a smaller apse and a soot-blackened lamp shelf, indicating sustained lighting during services. Directly in front of the altar area a rectangular pit, one metre by two, was sunk into the floor; Kloner (1990) earlier suggested this held a relic container .
Lamp assemblage
The Christian phase produced a large ceramic corpus. Earlier excavations recovered several Byzantine “sandal” lamps, while the recent fieldwork added dozens of intact oil lamps and fragments of hundreds more, most dating to Abbasid layers. Comparable deposits were cleared from the open courtyard, where intact vessels again cluster in post-fifth-century strata . The authors note that the dense lamp assemblage accords with other known rural pilgrimage stops in the Shephelah and helps anchor the latest activity at the cave into the ninth century.
Multilingual wall texts
Paran and Lifshits document more than two dozen inscriptions incised or painted on the soft chalk walls. Greek, Syriac and Arabic texts belong to the same Byzantine–Abbasid phase. Two Greek inscriptions explicitly dedicate the complex to “Saint Salome,” providing the name that still identifies the site . The Greek hands use letter forms current from the sixth century onward, dovetailing with the stratigraphic evidence for chapel construction.
Interpreting “Saint Salome”
The study reviews competing explanations for the saint’s identity. Earlier editors Di Segni and Patrich proposed a link to traditions in the Protoevangelium Jacobi that pair Salome with the midwife at Jesus’ birth, or to the female disciple mentioned in Matthew 27:56 and Mark 15:40. Paran and Lifshits add a second scenario: monks may have encountered a Second Temple ossuary inscribed “Salome”—a name frequent among Herodian-period women—and transferred it into local Christian devotion. They stress that the cave’s foundation long predates the crystallisation of Christian legend and suggest that a Herodian-era Salome buried on-site later became conflated with the saint venerated by pilgrims .
Courtyard mosaics and access
Christian activity was not restricted to the subterranean chambers. A mosaic floor was laid over part of the courtyard bench, and the track of the round blocking stone at the cave entrance was lowered to facilitate movement. Steps leading to a hidden passage behind the blocking stone—originally devised to secure the tomb—were exposed when the vestibule pavement was disturbed during the same phase . These alterations show that the estate’s defensive elements lost relevance once the tomb became an open devotional space.
Relationship to earlier burial estate
While their focus lies on the Christian occupation, the authors situate the chapel within a pre-existing Second Temple funerary complex that included a fifteen-metre-square courtyard, a vaulted vestibule supported by six stone pillars and a rolling blocking stone. They characterise the courtyard as “one of the most elaborate” of its period and note that only sparse Jewish-period finds survived later reuse . The transformation therefore provides a clear case study of how earlier monumental Jewish tombs could be adapted for Christian ritual without major alteration to the core architectural shell.
Significance for pilgrimage studies
Paran and Lifshits conclude that the Cave of Salome illustrates a process in which rural Second Temple estates attracted Christian attention, were modified with minimal masonry investment, and functioned as regional shrines supplied with lamps and marked by graffiti left by visitors. Inscriptions in three languages, a purpose-built apse and altar, and the concentration of Abbasid lamp fragments together confirm a protracted phase of worship that outlasted Byzantine rule .
Their documentation offers a tightly dated example of local pilgrimage practice in the Judean Shephelah and adds detail to the distribution of sites honouring female New Testament figures, enriching the archaeological record of Christian presence in the southern hill country.
The article was written with the assistance of a news analysis system.