The Israel Artifacts Authority reported on Monday that five individuals were apprehended by authorities while attempting to loot a 2,000-year-old artifacts site in northern Israel.
The accused attempted to loot a Roman-Byzantine site in the Nazareth-area settlement of Ein Mahil.
Nir Distelfeld, the inspector of the Israel Antiquities Authority’s robbery prevention unit in the northern region, stated that his team had recently discovered robbery excavations that had been conducted illegally near the community of Ein Mahil.
“We launched an operation after that and kept going until we caught the robbers. The procedure took around three weeks, he said.
“We ambushed them, and when we saw that they had begun excavating, I summoned the North District Police for assistance and led the policeman who came to help. We managed to catch them in the act, claimed Distelfeld.
Einat Shu’a is the name of the location where the burglars attempted to excavate. There was a sizable village nearby and a water supply.
Researchers found artifacts from the prehistoric to the Ottoman periods everywhere around the site, but the Roman and Byzantine periods were the main eras of settlement. There were also long, branching “hiding caves” to be found.
The hiding places in Einat Shu’a are probably connected to Jewish uprisings against the Roman Empire, claims the Antiquities Authority.
Fortunately, none of the area’s most enormous concealing caverns were harmed by the most recent robberies, according to Distenfeld.
Distelfeld stated that there was “equipment next to the cave—sledgehammers, hammers, quarrying tools, and metal detectors—that the robbers expected to employ.
You may see a few moderate-sized historic quarries in front of the cave.
These were storage compartments.
The detained suspects probably had time to ‘clean’ the cells.
These were discovered before they were caught.
Therefore, they are ancient.
Searching the suspects’ bodies revealed no artifacts, but the topic is still being investigated.
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