Avdat

Feel the wind first. Up here on this limestone ridge, it comes across the open Negev with nothing to stop it. It carries dust, the dry smell of warm rock, and very little sound. Underfoot, the ground is pale and gritty, broken by low walls of cut stone the colour of honey and bone. Look out in any direction and the desert falls away in soft brown folds. You are standing in a city that traders, soldiers, monks and farmers once called home.

This is Avdat, sometimes written Ovdat. It sits in the central Negev, in Israel's Southern District, above the main north–south road through the desert. Together with Haluza, Mamshit and Shivta, it belongs to a UNESCO World Heritage listing called the Incense Route, Desert Cities in the Negev. That name gives the first clue to why anyone built here at all. This hilltop was never about the land around it. It was about what passed through.

The people who founded Avdat were the Nabataeans. They were an Arab people, best known today for carving the rock city of Petra in what is now Jordan. The Nabataeans grew rich by moving precious goods across the desert, above all frankincense and myrrh. These were fragrant tree resins from southern Arabia, burned in temples and homes across the Mediterranean world. Camel caravans carried them north toward the port of Gaza. Avdat began as a station on that route, a place to rest, water animals and trade.

The city's name carries a royal memory. It comes from Obodas, the name of a Nabataean king. According to tradition, one king Obodas was buried here and later honoured as a god. Scholars still discuss which Obodas this was, and how the cult worked. What is clear is that the hilltop held special meaning for the Nabataeans. So when you walk the upper terrace, you are on ground that was once sacred as well as commercial.

Now here is something many visitors miss. Most of the stone buildings you see are not Nabataean at all. Over the centuries the city changed hands and changed shape. The Roman Empire absorbed the Nabataean kingdom in the early second century. Avdat then became part of a Roman province, with a military presence on the ridge. Later still, in the Byzantine period, when the eastern Roman Empire had become Christian, the town grew again. Much of what stands today comes from those later chapters.

Walk toward the top of the hill and you reach the acropolis, the highest and most important part of the town. Here the Byzantine builders raised churches. Two are easy to find. One is usually called the North Church. The other, the South Church, is linked with Saint Theodore, a soldier saint popular in the eastern Christian world. Look for the rounded apse at the eastern end, the curved wall where the altar once stood. In the South Church, look down too. Some floor slabs carry carved Greek inscriptions, memorials to people buried beneath.

Stop for a moment and think about water. There is almost no rain here. Yet this town fed its people, its animals and its travellers. The answer is all around you, if you know where to look. The builders cut cisterns into the rock to catch every winter flash of rain. Channels guided runoff from the slopes into storage. Out on the plain, low stone walls cross the valley floors. These walls slowed the rare floods and spread the water across small fields.

This is the second surprise. In the twentieth century, a botanist named Michael Evenari studied these ancient systems. He did not only map them. He rebuilt them. Below the ridge, he and his team restored an ancient-style farm, using the same runoff methods the old desert farmers had used. Crops grew again where people assumed nothing could grow. That experimental farm showed that the green fields of Byzantine Avdat were not a mystery. They were careful engineering, done by hand with stone.

Those fields had a purpose beyond bread. On the slopes of Avdat, archaeologists found wine presses from the Byzantine era. Each press has a flat treading floor where grapes were crushed by foot, and a channel that carried the juice into a collecting pit. Picture the harvest season here: baskets of grapes, sticky stone, the noise of people working together in the heat. Negev wine from this region was known in the wider Byzantine world. It travelled far from this dry ridge.

On the slopes you will also notice dark openings in the rock. Some are caves cut for living space and storage, cool rooms behind simple stone house fronts. Others are tombs. A Roman-era burial cave, with niches cut into its walls, lies on the hillside. In the desert, rock was the best building material and the best shelter at the same time. Step into the shade of one opening and feel how fast the temperature drops. That coolness kept people, food and wine alive.

Avdat did not last forever. The town declined in the seventh century. Historians connect its end with a strong earthquake and with the major political changes of that time in the region. After that, the city emptied. Sand and silence took over. Many centuries later, archaeologists dug and restored parts of the site. Then came an unexpected visitor. In the early 1970s, the film version of Jesus Christ Superstar used these ruins as a backdrop. Some fans still come for that reason alone.

As you move around, notice how the ruins change through the day. In the early morning, the light is low and the stone glows gold. Shadows fill every doorway and make the arches easy to read. At midday, the sun flattens everything and the heat rises quickly. The late afternoon brings warm colour back, and the desert below turns soft shades of pink and brown. If you have time, watch a full shift of light. It shows the site in a different way each hour.

Before you leave, stand still at the edge of the hilltop for one more moment. Look down at the road far below, where cars now follow almost the same line that camels once walked. Listen to the wind against the old walls. Then look at your own feet, on stone that was laid by Nabataean, Roman and Byzantine hands. As you walk back down, notice the low field walls on the plain. They are still quietly doing their job.