The town of Bet Shemesh, 30km/19mi west of Jerusalem near the site of the Biblical Beth- shemesh, was founded in 1950. It is reached by turning off the Tel Aviv-Jerusalem road 5km/3mi east of Latrun (10km/6mi west of Abu Ghosh) into a road which runs south via Bet Guvrin to Qiryat Gad and Ashqelon. Bet Shemesh has developed in a relatively short time from a tented settlement for new immigrants into a modern town. Since most of the settlers were employed on re-afforestation there are extensive pinewoods in the area. There is a cement factory, using limestone from quarries in the Judaean Hills.
The new settlement was named after the Biblical Beth-shemesh, the site of which was identified in 1838 on a tell to the west of the town and excavated before and after the First World War. The excavations revealed the existence on this site of a Hyksos and later a Canaanite town dating back to the 18th century B.C. The name Beth-shemesh means "House of the Sun" - probably referring to a Canaanite temple, the foundations of which were found.
In the 13th century Joshua took the town (Joshua 21,16). In the 11th century the Philistines defeated the Israelites in a battle at Eben-ezer and captured the Ark of the Covenant; but its possession brought them ill luck and they returned it to the Israelites. The cart carrying the Ark, drawn by two milch kine, halted for a time in Beth-shemesh (1 Samuel 6,12) and then continued to Kirjath-jearim (Qiryat Yearim, near Abu Ghosh). About 800 B.C. there was a battle at Beth- shemesh between King Amaziah of Judah and King Jehoash of Israel (2 Kings 14,11).
The excavations showed that the site was still occupied in Hellenistic and Roman times. Over these remains the Mamelukes built a caravanserai in the 13th or 14th century.
5km/3mi south of Bet Shemesh, to the left of the road, is the monastery of Beit Jimal (Bet Gamal), built by Salesian monks in 1881. The few remaining monks grew some crops. In the cloister are a number of fragments of the Byzantine period, including a mosaic pavement from a church built in Bet Shemesh in the fifth or sixth century over the grave of a martyr called Stephen. During archeological digs carried out since 1989 a Byzantine church and a large oil-press have been found 2km/1.25mi from the monastery
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