Wadi Khureitun

Wadi Khureitun (Arabic; also spelled Khareitoun, Khareitun, Haritoun) or Nahal Tekoa (Hebrew) is a wadi in a deep ravine in the Judaean Desert in the West Bank, west of the Dead Sea, rising near the Israeli settlement of Tekoa.

Valley of Khureitun

Name

The Hebrew name, Nahal Tekoa ("Tekoa Stream"), and the English name used in some Christian contexts, Tekoa Valley, is derived from the ancient Judahite town of Tekoa.^{[citation needed]}

The Arabic name, Wadi Khureitun, comes from the early Christian hermit, Chariton, who founded his third lavra in this valley, whose ruins are now known in Arabic as Kirbet ('ruins of') Khureitun.^[1] The monastery, founded in about 345, was known at different times as Souka, the Old Laura, and as the monastery of Chariton, the latter name being preserved in the Arabic name of the wadi.^[1][2]

Description, history, archaeology

A hiking path on the west of the wadi passes a number of prehistoric caves on its way south to the Chariton Monastery ruins.

The archaeological Stone Age (Mesolithic and Neolithic) site of El Khiam is located in this area.^[3]

Saint Chariton the Confessor (end of 3rd century-ca. 350) founded here the Lavra of Souka, later called the Old Lavra, and even later, apparently after the remains of Chariton were translated there from the laura of Pharan after the Muslim conquest, it became known as the monastery of Chariton.^[1]

Existing karstic caves from the chalk of the wadi were expanded and used as hermit abodes by monks from the lavras of Saint Chariton and of a later desert monk and saint, Euthymius the Great.^[4]

Modern Tekoa's former chief rabbi Menachem Froman's son, Tzuri, lived in a cave in the desert canyon (wadi) behind the town.^{[citation needed]} Two young Israeli boys from Tekoa, Koby Mandell and Yosef Ish Ran, were brutally murdered by terrorists in the wadi on May 8, 2001.

See also

• Ain Sakhri figurine, Natufian, oldest representation of humans having sex