2000-Year-Old Olive Press Discovered During the War

December 3, 2006

Near Allone Abba – a tourist town near Kiryat Shmona, Lake Tiberius, and Akko – archaeologists from the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA) uncovered seals engraved with a figure of a bird and an olive branch.

During the course of routine development work on the construction of a new neighborhood next to Allone Abba, IAA inspectors discovered a beautiful olive press installed inside a rock-hewn cave. The olive press figures prominently in the Bible. This newly discovered olive press is more than 2,000 years old and was used for manufacturing olive oil on an industrial scale.

On one side of the cave was the basin (yam), on which the olives were crushed. On top, was a revolving stone wheel (memel) that was rotated by an animal. On the other side of the cave, was a press consisting of a pair of stone piers (betulot) between which the baskets of olives were placed. Four heavy stone weights were suspended on the beam to extract the oil.

The finds from the olive oil plant indicate that it was first used in the Hellenistic period (4th–1st centuries BC) and continued to operate in the Early Roman period (1st century AD). Bone spoons used for scooping up the olive paste from the basin and a stone seal engraved with a bird and an olive branch were found on the floor of the cave. Is this a message or a logo? This is the query facing archaeologists.

Leea Porat, an archaeologist with IAA, is directing this work. Porat reports that the excavations began during the war in the North, and each time the sirens sounded, the excavators hid in a rock shelter and in the trenches they dug there.

“Now that the war is behind us, we can complete the excavation. Due to the beauty and importance of the site, the Antiquities Authority will not allow it to be built upon and will recommend preserving the remains and incorporating them as an open archaeological garden in the new neighborhood to be built,” she said.

Source: By Ron Ross, Israel Mosaic Radio