Bet Shemesh and the Stalactite Caves

(From Wikipedia) The ancient city of Beit Shemesh ("house of the sun" or "temple of the sun" in Hebrew) was originally named after the Canaanite sun-goddess Shemesh, who was worshiped there.  The ruins of the ancient biblical city are located at a site called Tel Beit Shemesh, a tell located near the modern city.

Beit Shemesh is first mentioned in the Hebrew Bible in the Book of Joshua,^] as a city in the territory of the tribe of Judah on the border between their territory and that of the tribe of Dan. In Joshua 21:16, this city was set aside as one of the 13 Kohanic cities for the priests of the tribe of Levi, the Kohanim.

The city located in the territorial bounds of the tribe of Judah is mentioned in the 6th chapter of 1 Samuel as being the first city encountered by the Ark of the Covenant on its way back from Philistia after having been captured by the Philistines in battle. The stone on which the Ark was placed is recorded as still being located there at the time of writing the Books of Samuel. In the King James Version this stone is described as "the great stone of Abel".

In 2 Kings 14, Beit Shemesh is again mentioned as being the site of the battle between Amaziah king of Judea and Jehoash king of Israel.

After the destruction of much of Judah by Sennacherib in 701 BCE, the city was abandoned for a while, but there seems to have been an attempt by a group of Judahites at resettling Beth Shemesh, judging by the refurbishing of the water reservoir in the 7th century BCE.^[8]However, after the Babylonian conquest of Judah in the early 580s, either the new Babylonian rulers, or the nearby Philistine metropolis of Ekron favoured by them, apparently put an end to the initiative by sealing and covering over the vital water reservoir,^[8] which was not uncovered until 2004. During the first Jewish return, at the beginning of the Second Temple period, there was no lasting revival of the city, as opposed to many other places in the vicinity such as Beit Guvrin.
                                                      Stalactite Caves

After seeing these ruins, we went to the Stalactite Caves outside of Bet Shemesh.  There are caves all over the mountains (see below) but this cave was not discovered until blasting was done to get the limestone in the mountain.