The drama in Beit Guvrin-Maresha National Park in Israel is not apparent on the surface. It is down below. The park, approximately 120 acres, holds the excavated remains of two ancient cities—Beit Guvrin and Maresha—where much of life and death took place underground. This fertile area in the Judean foothills, known as “The Land of a Thousand Caves,” consists of a thin crust of hard rock on top of a layer of soft chalk, which allows for easy excavation that attracted ancient settlers, who founded Maresha in the third century…
