Road station

Betogabri

Beth Govrin

Betogabri keeps the town's older name, Baitogabra, which Ptolemy also uses; today it is Beth Govrin. Josephus says Vespasian captured it in AD 68 during the Jewish War. In 199 or 200 Septimius Severus refounded it as a city with the Greek name Eleutheropolis, so the map preserves an earlier stage. It became a key crossroads on the trade route from Egypt, Gaza and Ascalon up to Jerusalem, and Christian tradition placed the tombs of the prophets Habakkuk and Micah and of Ezra nearby. The sixteen miles the map gives from Ascalon, about twenty-four kilometres, seem too few.

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