Archaeologists uncover ancient 'portal to the underworld' used to summon the dead

There’s nothing quite like stumbling across a spooky cave. But would you dive in?

Well, that's what archaeologists in Israel did last year when they found an ancient cavern which may have been used for spiritual practices.

The Te'omim cave is southwest of Jerusalem, and has been the subject of an archaeological dig, which opened up some rather unnerving theories about what the cave might previously have been used for.

The region is packed with history. From the Ottoman Empire, the Abbasid and Umayyad Caliphates, and even the Romans.

But it is the people who lived there during the Roman period that this particular archaeological dig was interested in.

It turns out that people living during the Roman occupation may have been getting up to shady things in this cave as Archaeologists found some pretty interesting items inside.

Among them are axes, oil lamps, and three human skulls.

Archaeologists at the site. B. Zissu under the Te’omim Cave Archaeological Project

Archaeologists believe that these items were arranged in particular ways to form part of some sinister rituals involving contacting and even summoning the dead.

Anyone who has ever played Warhammer will be familiar with the term 'necromancy'.

This is a kind of ritual which is concerned with raising or contacting the dead.

A study by archaeologists, Eitan Klein from Israel Antiquities Authority and Boaz Zissu from Bar-Ilan University, suggests the cave may have been used for these rituals.

In the past, caves were seen as gateways to the land of the dead, so that’s probably that those items were found in a place that could raise them.

In their paper, they say: "The Te’omim Cave in the Jerusalem hills has all the cultic and physical elements necessary to serve as a possible portal to the underworld.

One of the human skulls found in the cave. B. Zissu under the Te’omim Cave Archaeological Project

"The findings and their specific archaeological contexts provide a better understanding of divination rites that were probably held in the cave."

The cave has a deep shaft at one end, and around 120 lamps were also found in particularly inaccessible parts of the cave.

I mean, if that doesn’t scream ominous then I don’t know what does.

The archaeologists admit that there is little documentation from the period detailing the kinds of practices they suspect happened in the cave.

However, they reason that this may be because this was not the sort of thing that you wanted people to know about.

To be fair, if I was trying to summon the dead in a cave, I'd probably want to keep it hush-hush too.