Lake Ram ( and Birkat el-Ram. ) is a

crater lake Crater Lake ( Klamath: ) is a volcanic crater lake in south-central Oregon in the Western United States. It is the main feature of Crater Lake National Park and is a tourist attraction for its deep blue color and water clarity. T ...

(

maar A maar is a broad, low-relief volcanic crater caused by a phreatomagmatic eruption (an explosion which occurs when groundwater comes into contact with hot lava or magma). A maar characteristically fills with water to form a relatively shallow ...

) in the northeastern

Golan Heights The Golan Heights, or simply the Golan, is a basaltic plateau at the southwest corner of Syria. It is bordered by the Yarmouk River in the south, the Sea of Galilee and Hula Valley in the west, the Anti-Lebanon mountains with Mount Hermon in t ...

near the village of

Mas'ade Mas'ade (, ) is a Druze village in the northern Golan Heights, Syria. It covers an area of , and in had a population of . It was given the status of a local council in 1982. Its inhabitants are mostly Syrian citizens and have permanent residency ...

and

Mount Hermon Mount Hermon ( / ALA-LC: ('Mountain of the Sheikh', ), , ) is a mountain, mountain cluster constituting the southern end of the Anti-Lebanon mountain range. Its summit straddles the Lebanon–Syria border, border between Syria and Lebanon a ...

History

Josephus Flavius Josephus (; , ; ), born Yosef ben Mattityahu (), was a Roman–Jewish historian and military leader. Best known for writing '' The Jewish War'', he was born in Jerusalem—then part of the Roman province of Judea—to a father of pr ...

referred to it as Lake Phiala. The sources of the lake are rain water and an underground spring. The lake has no outlet. It is known in Hebrew as "Brekhat Ram" (also written Berekhat Ram), meaning high pool.The Vilnay Guide to Israel, Volume 2, Beit-Or-Vilnay, 1999, p.298. It is also called Birket Ram, using the Arabic word for pond. The area is inhabited by the

Druze The Druze ( ; , ' or ', , '), who Endonym and exonym, call themselves al-Muwaḥḥidūn (), are an Arabs, Arab Eastern esotericism, esoteric Religious denomination, religious group from West Asia who adhere to the Druze faith, an Abrahamic ...

community. Many geologists believe that the lake formed inside the crater of an extinct volcano.

Archaeology

During excavations evidence was discovered of

Palaeolithic The Paleolithic or Palaeolithic ( years ago) ( ), also called the Old Stone Age (), is a period in human prehistory that is distinguished by the original development of stone tools, and which represents almost the entire period of human prehist ...

human and hominid activity. Most notably, excavation led to the discovery of the

Venus of Berekhat Ram The Venus of Berekhat Ram (280,000–250,000 BP) is a pebble found at Berekhat Ram on the Golan Heights. The pebble has been modified by early humans and is suggested to represent a female human figure. Description The object was excavated and ...

, a pebble allegedly worked by

Homo erectus ''Homo erectus'' ( ) is an extinction, extinct species of Homo, archaic human from the Pleistocene, spanning nearly 2 million years. It is the first human species to evolve a humanlike body plan and human gait, gait, to early expansions of h ...

. The artefact has been claimed to be the oldest known example of representational art in the world. The pebble was found in a context datable to at least 230,000 years before present time, thus to the early

Middle Palaeolithic The Middle Paleolithic (or Middle Palaeolithic) is the second subdivision of the Paleolithic or Old Stone Age as it is understood in Europe, Africa and Asia. The term Middle Stone Age is used as an equivalent or a synonym for the Middle P ...

. The claim that it is the earliest manifestation of human art is contested on multiple grounds (see article). The site has been excavated for evidence of human activity during its history. Research on lacustrine sediments at the site concluded that the area has been heavily settled four times over history, first during the early Bronze Age, secondly during the Hellenistic and Roman–Byzantine periods, thirdly during the period of medieval Crusader rule, and finally in modern times. Between these periods the area became overgrown as local woodland regenerated, evidencing phases of low human occupation.

Legends

According to The

Talmud The Talmud (; ) is the central text of Rabbinic Judaism and the primary source of Jewish religious law (''halakha'') and Jewish theology. Until the advent of Haskalah#Effects, modernity, in nearly all Jewish communities, the Talmud was the cen ...

Sanhedrin The Sanhedrin (Hebrew and Middle Aramaic , a loanword from , 'assembly,' 'sitting together,' hence ' assembly' or 'council') was a Jewish legislative and judicial assembly of either 23 or 70 elders, existing at both a local and central level i ...

108a, Brekhat Ram is one of three underground springs, along with

Hamat Gader Hamat Gader (; , ; , or , ; ') is a hot springs site in the Yarmuk River valley, located in an area under Israeli control, near the Golan Heights and the border with Jordan. It contains a spa, modern and ancient baths, a crocodilians farm a ...

in the southeastern Golan Heights and

Hamat Tiberias Hammath Tiberias or Hammat Tiberias () is an ancient archaeological site and Israeli national park, located at the southern end of Tiberias along the road to Zemach, on the western shore of the Sea of Galilee. Name ''Hammath'' or ''Hamma'' ...

, that opened up in the

Flood A flood is an overflow of water (list of non-water floods, or rarely other fluids) that submerges land that is usually dry. In the sense of "flowing water", the word may also be applied to the inflow of the tide. Floods are of significant con ...

Noah Noah (; , also Noach) appears as the last of the Antediluvian Patriarchs (Bible), patriarchs in the traditions of Abrahamic religions. His story appears in the Hebrew Bible (Book of Genesis, chapters 5–9), the Quran and Baháʼí literature, ...

and did not close up again after the flood. In a local Druze legend the lake is the "eye" of the "

sheikh Sheikh ( , , , , ''shuyūkh'' ) is an honorific title in the Arabic language, literally meaning "elder (administrative title), elder". It commonly designates a tribal chief or a Muslim ulama, scholar. Though this title generally refers to me ...

's wife", the name for a hill nearby. Mount Hermon (in Arabic ''Jabal al-Shaykh'', "Mountain of the Sheikh"), referred to as the sheikh himself, is supposed to have been separated from the "wife", whereupon her eye filled with tears.

References

External links

* {{Authority control Golan Heights Landforms of the Golan Heights Maars

Ram Ram, ram, or RAM most commonly refers to: * A male sheep * Random-access memory, computer memory * Ram Trucks, US, since 2009 ** List of vehicles named Dodge Ram, trucks and vans ** Ram Pickup, produced by Ram Trucks Ram, ram, or RAM may also ref ...

Extinct volcanoes Volcanoes of the Golan Heights Pleistocene volcanoes