Rujm el-Hiri

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The megalithic Rujm el- Hiri (Arabic, Cairn of wildcat, also Rogem Hiri or Hebrew Gilgal Refaim, wheel of ghosts ) is located in the central Golan, about 16 km east of the Sea of ​​Galilee, on a basalt plateau in the Israeli-occupied Syria. After the discovery in the late 1960s, Israeli researchers conducted between 1988 and 1991 by the first archaeological excavations. The work is continued by Michael Freikman of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem 2009/10.

Description

Rujim el- Hiri is located on the volcanic plateau of the Golan, which is littered with innumerable dolmens from the Middle Bronze Age. The Megalithbauwerk consists of four concentric walls developed as circles around a central stone grave. As a building material of the upcoming basalt used in sizes from field stone up to several tons megaliths. The outer circle is about 150 feet in diameter. The walls are up to 3.5 meters wide and partially preserved to a height of 2.5 meters. Sporadic radial connections between the circles create a maze-like structure. Two accesses are in the North and in the South East.

In the center of the circles one about six feet high Cairn is of irregular stones. Its diameter is 25 meters. The Cairn consists of the central cairn surrounded by a curb ring and has the appearance of a truncated cone. Built is a round chamber of two meters in diameter, leading to a narrow passage. The chamber consists of large, slightly inward sloping stone slabs on which two capstones are with a weight of 5.5 tons. It has already been robbed in antiquity. During the excavations were only a few artifacts, including gold earrings and bronze arrowheads are found.

Interpretations

There are several hypotheses about the function of the building Rujm el- Hiri. So it was by Anthony Aveni and Yonathan Mizrachi, like Stonehenge, is an astronomical observatory considered. For this theory is that the eastern side on which are the two additions, was built with greater care.

The first excavators assumed that the circles were created much earlier than the grave mound. The concentric circles could middle of the 3rd millennium BC, during the early Bronze Age 3000-2700 have been, first built BC as cultic and ceremonial center. It was only during the late Bronze Age (1400-1300 BC), the off-center location, Cairn could have come to the chamber to do so.

On the other hand, the architectural design could also point to a joint planning of circles and cairn. There is no evidence for a cultic structure under the cairn. Typical artifacts that are known from other cultic centers of this period, were not found here.

Michael Freikman found in his investigations on the Golan some more double stone circles, each surrounding a grave mound. Rujm el- Hiri is thus not the only one, but - with its four stone circles - by far the largest such facility in the region. Freikmann thus represents the simultaneity of grave mounds and stone circles and dated the emergence into the Chalcolithic. He interprets the system as a tomb for a leading personality of the former inhabitants of the Golan. The size of the square, where 42,000 tons of rock were installed, should reflect this importance. This requires a well-organized communities have existed to deal with this performance.

The archaeologist Rami Arav of the University of Nebraska indicated the plant as a kind Dakhmah, a place of sky burial. He incorporates a regional finds from the Chalcolithic ossuaries. If it only the bones of the dead were buried, they must first have been fleshed. As in Tibet and other regions where came from lack of firewood no cremation and burial because of a hard floor not in question, the bodies may have been exposed within the stone circles vultures.

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