Mareshah - Cave city

Even more impressive than the burial caves in Mareshah is the "cave city" which also lies to the east of the tell. It consists of 44 bell-shaped caves lit by openings in the roof and linked with one another by underground passages. The origin and purpose of this underground town have not been established. It is supposed that the Phoenicians settled in Mareshah in the fourth century B.C. because it offered a supply of building stone for their port of Ashkelon and that they drove shafts through the hard surface rock to quarry the stone lying lower down.

Numbers of crosses scratched in the rock show that in Christian times the caves were occupied by hermits.