On Friday we visited what some people believe is the grave of King Og, mentioned many times in the tanach, who was one of the last survivors of the race of giants called the Rephaim, whose bed was of iron and was nine cubits long and four cubits wide.
וְיֶתֶר הַגִּלְעָד וְכָל הַבָּשָׁן מַמְלֶכֶת עוֹג נָתַתִּי לַחֲצִי שֵׁבֶט הַמְנַשֶּׁה כֹּל חֶבֶל הָאַרְגֹּב לְכָל הַבָּשָׁן הַהוּא יִקָּרֵא אֶרֶץ רְפָאִים:
And the rest of Gilead [the land east of the Jordan south of the Golan], and all Bashan [the Golan heights], the kingdom of Og, I gave to the half tribe of Manasseh; all the territory of Argob [the rugged mountainous area above the Golan heights extending into Syria], all of Bashan; that is called the land of Rephaim. (Deuteronomy 3:13)
This remarkable place, known as the “Stonehenge of the Levant,” is not signposted, and is quite hard to find. We started along the route 808, and began looking for a track to the east after Gamla, but saw nothing and made a u-turn at Daliot junction. The road was pretty deserted, so we began driving slowly past the Daliot (Shaabaniya) reservoir, knowing that the track was after it, but before the Bazelet (basalt) reservoir, also known as the Dvash (honey) reservoir. Only by driving so slowly did we notice an unobtrusive and completely unsigned, very rough farm track, and we stopped the car.
We followed this unmarked road through desolate fields of strewn boulders, many arranged into walls or cairns, past cattle and wild horses. We were lucky to see young deer running through the grass at one point.
To the sound of distant tank-fire in Syria, we also saw the west-east line of bunkers which we crossed, but didn’t have time to investigate, dug into the earth from one side, and built of stones held in mesh on the other. I haven’t yet been able to confirm, but they are likely the first of three successive lines of bunkers and mortars the Syrians planned in the southern frontier zone prior to the 1973 Yom Kippur war. Something to discover next time.
After passing two of these bunkers, we reached a confluence of tracks, and turned onto the way-marked Golan trail, which we followed across fields, and over the now swollen Nahal Daliot (Daliot stream) which feed into the reservoir of that name.
Soon we began to see Gilgal Refaim, with a loan hiker sitting atop its central cairn. By the time we reached him, there was complete silence - no sound of Syrian gunfire, and we didn't see or meet anyone else the entire trek.
Gilgal Rafaim is in a very desolate spot, about an hour’s walk from the route 808, inside an IDF training ground, and care must be taken to stay on marked trails, and avoid marked uncleared fields of landmines. The only sign board is at the site itself, for the benefit of those who are already on the Golan Trail which passes right by it.
It is known in Arabic as Rujm al-Hiri (رجم الهري), meaning “stone heap of the wild cat” in Arabic, is located in the central Golan, some 16 km. east of the Sea of Galilee, on a desolate plateau of basalt boulders. Hebraised as Rogem Hiri or Rogem al-Hiri (רֻגְ'ם אל הִרי), the site is also known in Hebrew as Gilgal Rafaim (גִּלְגַּל רְפָאִים), meaning "Wheel of Spirits" or "Wheel of Ghosts." However refaim is also the word used in the Tanakh to refer to the race of giants, the Rephaites, the ancient people of Bashan (modern Golan) of whom Og was the last king. The Torah tells how Og and his whole army marched out to meet the Israelites in battle at Edrei.
Gilgal Refaim is a huge construction of local basalt fieldstones of various sizes. It comprises four concentric circles enclosing a central, round cairn. The outer, largest circle is about 500 m in circumference and 156 m in diameter. The walls are of varying width, of up to 3.5 m, and have been preserved to a height of 2.5 m, obliterated in some parts by stone collapse. Several radial walls connect the circular walls, creating a labyrinth-like structure which has only two entryways, one facing northeast, the other southeast.
Picture credit: By Hebrew Wikipedia user אסף.צ, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=6942968
At the center of the circles is a cairn, an irregular heap of stones. It is 20-25 m in diameter and preserved to a height of 6 m. The cairn consists of a central mound of stones surrounded by a lower belt, which gives it the appearance of a stepped, truncated cone. The pile of stones is hollow; beneath the cone is a burial chamber, with a narrow corridor leading to it. The chamber is round, roughly 2 m in diameter, built of large stone plates arranged on top of each other, but slightly slanting inwards. It is covered by two massive slabs of basalt, each weighing over 5.5 tons, which create a dome-like foof over the burial chamber and support the cairn above. Yonatan and I ventured inside and took photos; Amber contented herself with a glance at the low entrance hole!
Gilgal Refaim is one of the most intriguing archeological sites in Israel. A variety of theories concerning the function of this structure, which has no parallel in the Middle East, have been proposed: a religious center; a defensive enclosure; a large burial complex; a center for astronomical observation; and a calendrical device. Evidence of the site’s astronomical nature is supported by the fact that the eastern side, facing the rising sun, was built with much greater care. Also, the only two entryways are located on that side, the northeastern one roughly oriented towards the sunrise on the summer solstice.
Archeologists who excavated the site offer other possible explanations. According to one view, the concentric circles were built during the Early Bronze Age, in the middle of the 3rd millennium BCE, as a cultic and ceremonial center, where nomadic people in the process of becoming sedentary gathered annually; and that much later, during the late Bronze Age (1400 – 1300 BCE) the cairn containing the burial chamber was added (it was robbed of its contents in antiquity and only a few artifacts were found, including gold earrings and bronze arrowheads). Measurements revealed that the cairn is not located in the center of the concentric circles, supporting the view that the stone pile was a later addition.
According to another view, the architecture of Gilgal Refaim proves that both the concentric circles and the cairn were parts of a single structure. There is no evidence for a cultic structure below the cairn and artifacts typical of known cultic centers of that period were not found.
So although those who built it some 5,000 years ago left the stage of history and took with them the secrets of this unusual site, it is clear that Gilgal Refaim was a monumental commemorative tomb – the mausoleum of an Early Bronze Age leader in the Golan; the tomb was cleared of its early burial remains in the Late Bronze Age, and then reused for burial. The size of the site reflects centralized organization and leadership capable of carrying out an engineering project of such proportions; it is estimated that 42,000 tons of stones had to be transported. Maybe it is indeed the burial place of King Og.
You can see more pictures here.