Nahal Hever
stream in the Judean Desert
Nahal Hever (Hebrew: נחל חבר) or Wadi al-Khabat (Arabic) is an intermittent stream (wadi) in the Judean Desert, that flows through the West Bank and Israel, from the area of Yatta to the Dead Sea. The Hebrew name is derived from "Hevron", the Hebrew name of the city of Hebron. The stream has a few waterfalls, the tallest one having a drop of over 140 metres (460 ft).
The caves
At the head of the stream are two caves, the "Cave of Letters" (מערת האיגרות), and, further up, the "Cave of Horror" (מערת האימה) in which twenty four human skeletons were found. The skeletons of Babatha, whose personal documents were famously discovered in the Cave of Letters, and of her son are, presumably, among them. The findings have been regarded as archaeological evidence of the Bar Kokhba revolt (132–136). The sites were discovered in 1953 and investigated in 1960 and 1961 by Yigael Yadin. In 1999 and 2000 it was excavated by Richard Freund of the University of Hartford.
Biblical manuscripts
Several fragments of ancient biblical manuscripts were found at Nahal Hever. They include portions of the Book of Numbers and Psalms.
“Nahal Hever” enters the record as stream in the Judean Desert. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Nahal, Hever and stream can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Apr 28, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q2915124. VIAF identifies the subject as 315528344. The Library of Congress control number is sh98001471. Authority coordinates are 31.413, 35.366. 1 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1953, 1960, 1961 and 1999.
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This entry incorporates text from “Nahal Hever” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.