1,700-Year-Old Border Marker Unearthed in the Golan Heights
The “Nafah army base” recently made headlines in the famous Israeli TV series on the 1973 Yom Kippur War, Valley of Tears (Hebrew: Sh‘at Ne‘ila) on Channel Kan 11; but, an archaeological excavation conducted on the Golan Heights last month revealed for the first time that the name “Nafah” was given to the site as early as 1,700 years ago.
The boundary stone was discovered during an archaeological excavation conducted by the Israel Antiquities Authority when the Mekorot Water Company was about to install a water pipeline at Nafah.
This is within the framework of the projects that the company is carrying out for laying water lines in the Golan Heights, with a total length of 20 kilometers.
The water pipeline of Nafah-Kedmat Zvi will serve as the main water line in the water supply system to IDF bases in the Golan Heights and the town of Katzrin.
At the site of the excavation, directed by Dina Avshalom-Gorni and Yardenna Alexandre of the Israel Antiquities Authority, with the participation of pre-military academy (mechinot) students from Maayan Baruch and Kela Alon, as well as volunteers from the community, a boundary stone inscribed in Greek was unexpectedly uncovered.
The stone was uncovered in secondary use to cover a tomb.
The decipherment of the inscription by Israel Antiquities Authority, Dr. Danny Syon, together with Prof. Haim Ben-David from the Kinneret Academic College, aroused great excitement.According to researchers, “The inscription, which mentions the name “Kfar Nafah,” (Nafah village) was inscribed on a boundary stone.”
“Under the reign of the Roman Emperor Diocletian (around 300 CE), these stones were placed as the boundaries of villages, for the purpose of collecting taxes. This is the first boundary stone in the center of the Golan Heights, on which appears the name of a place that has been preserved to this day; Nafah was the name of the Syrian village that existed here until the Six Day War in 1967, and now Nafah is the adjacent military base.”
