In a watery Golan cave, Herod’s great-grandson entertained in the Roman imperial style
An altar dedicated to the cult of Pan was likely converted to a banquet area by Herodian ruler Agrippa II, aligning with the account of Josephus, new research shows
Gavriel Fiske is a reporter at The Times of Israel
The latest excavations at Banias, an archaeological site and national park in the Golan Heights that abuts the border with Lebanon, have shown that a sacred cave long associated with the worship of nature deity Pan was likely repurposed during the late 1st century CE by Agrippa II, the great-grandson of King Herod, as an ancient event hall in the Roman style.
After the Jewish Revolt against Roman rule (66–73 CE), Agrippa II, who had been raised in Rome and supported the Romans in the revolt, converted the cave site and immediate surroundings in front of the grotto into a nymphaeum-triclinium, a venue for Roman-style banquets in which water flowed around a central dining area and out through an aqueduct, according to Dr. Adi Erlich and researcher Ron Lavi of the University of Haifa’s Zinman Institute of Archaeology.
The finding is “a real discovery” that “changes a lot about the history of Banias,” and also reinforces the accounts of the historian Josephus, who lived contemporaneously with Agrippa II, researcher Lavi said, speaking, along with Erlich, to The Times of Israel in a Zoom conference call.
“Many people tend to regard whatever Josephus says as exaggerations, but I think wherever you dig and you compare, [with] historical descriptions usually he’s right,” he said. Josephus wrote about a cave full of water in Banias, and “we can now confirm it by finding the aqueduct that was built to funnel out water from the cave.”
Erlich and Lavi published the results of their study, “Dine and Worship: The Roman Complex in Front of the Pan Grotto in Paneas/Caesarea Philippi,” in November in the peer-reviewed journal Bulletin of the American Society of Overseas Research (University of Chicago Press).
The banquet area was discovered during “magical” seasons of excavations in 2020 and 2021, when the site was empty of tourists due to the COVID pandemic, after a routine conservation effort to reinforce a wall “raised a few questions,” explained Lavi.
The area in front of the cave had traditionally been identified as King Herod’s Augusteum, a temple dedicated to the imperial might of Rome built by Herod during his reign that would have blocked off the cave.
However, the researchers wrote, “The new excavations have proven that during the Roman period, the place was unroofed and open to the cave, which was full of water. The water flowed out through a large aqueduct, water installations were constructed in the courtyard, and niches flanked on the west and east.”
The cave was “probably at the start a cultic, open space. But we believe that Agrippa II, in the last third of the first century, turned the place into his private triclinium, a dining area with water. The cave was full of water but also, the entire area in front of it,” Erlich explained.
“In Roman Italy of the first century, this was very common. You dine outdoors and you have a water source or a fountain or any kind of water installation,” Erlich said. “That goes together with beautiful sights, views, the sounds of the water and the smells of food. So it’s about all the senses that work together.”
The Banias site would have had another component, the cave grotto, making it into a nymphaeum-triclinium. “The cave was indeed full of water. There was a huge rock in the middle, which was the focal point of the whole complex. This rock probably carried an altar or a statue,” Erlich said.
“The whole complex was built on a symmetric plan facing this rock. The aqueduct was controlling the water level so that this rock would be seen at all times,” she added, noting that some ancient coins found nearby, in Caesarea Philippi proper, show “a statue of Pan or a related figure standing in the cave.”
The Roman-style, nymphaeum-triclinium banquet complex discovered at Banias is the only one of its kind uncovered in Israel, the researchers said.
At the time the cave was fed by a natural spring and would have been constantly full of water, but it’s likely that at a later date, an earthquake shifted the water flow in the area, as the cave now only occasionally fills with water from runoff from heavy rains, the researchers said.
Christian connections
In the first century, the Banias cave area was part of the Roman city of Caesarea Philippi, a location later mentioned in the New Testament Gospels of Mark and Matthew as the place where Saint Peter acknowledged the divinity of Jesus. A church dating from the 5th century was previously discovered at the cave site, and in modern times, the area has been a Christian pilgrimage destination.
The name Banias, also known since the Hellenistic period as Paneas, has its origins in the name Pan, indicating that the cave site was long associated with the worship of the goat-footed, flute-playing nature deity, whose cult, dispersed around the eastern Mediterranean, largely practiced in wild, unspoiled areas, including natural caves and grottos.
According to Josephus, after the Second Temple in Jerusalem was destroyed in 70 CE by Titus and his legions, the Roman general “went to Banias and Agrippa hosted him with games in which prisoners were executed. This took place in Caesarea Philippi, probably 70 CE, maybe a year later,” Erlich said.
Agrippa II had fled Jerusalem in 66 CE, a few years earlier, as the Jewish Revolt got underway, and it’s likely that this is when he converted the site.
Some coins were found embedded in the concrete floor of the complex, the latest dating from 69 CE, “so that’s why we speak about the last third of the first century, [and why] we have a better dating for the construction of the whole complex. [We also] have a better understanding of the water management of the site,” Erlich said.
The Paneas cave as a nymphaeum-triclinium bears a striking resemblance to similar sites in Italy, she said, especially at Sperlonga, a site on the coast between Rome and Naples. There, a large nymphaeum-triclinium constructed as part of an imperial villa also featured a water-filled grotto with a central stone altar, leading out to a dining area surrounded by water.
A site of hydromancy
Sperlonga was built during the time of Augustus, the first Roman emperor, who reigned from 27 BCE until his death in 14 CE. The site is also associated with his successor, Emperor Tiberius, who nearly died there when the grotto collapsed while he was dining in the triclinium, according to Latin sources.
Herod Agrippa II, also known as Marcus Julius Agrippa, was born in 27 or 28 CE and like his father, was raised in the Roman imperial court, after which he was sent to govern territories in the north of Israel as a client ruler for the empire. During his time in Rome, he was very likely exposed to the nymphaeum-triclinium dining tradition, which could have served as inspiration for his own in Banias.
Agrippa II fought on the side of the Romans in the Jewish Revolt, sent thousands of his troops to aid the legions during the siege of Jerusalem, and was later wounded during the siege of Gamla. Sometime after the revolt, he returned to Rome, where he died childless around 94 CE, the last ruler of the Herodian Dynasty.
According to researchers, the Banias cave area was then returned to a site of Pan worship that included, according to accounts, a kind of hydromancy where sacrifices would be thrown into the waters to determine the worshippers’ fate. A few hundred years later, the site would be converted into an early church as Christianity gained prominence.
Today, Banias, a popular national park and tourist destination known for waterfalls, springs and hiking trails, has been closed for over a year due to the Israel-Hezbollah conflict. According to the Israel Nature and Parks Authority, who oversees the site and funded the excavations, during the conflict around 336 dunams (83 acres) of parkland were burned by fires started by Hezbollah rockets, but the fires didn’t cause damage to the cave site, hiking trails or facilities.
Further plans to develop the site, including a potential recreation of how the Banias cave would have looked as a Roman dining area, are currently frozen and will be examined after the war, the authority said.
