Ein Gedi

Ein Gedi EtymologyThe name Ein Gedi is composed of two Hebrew words: ein means spring and gǝdi means goat-kid. Ein Gedi thus means "Kid spring." or "Fountain Of The Kid".History and archaeologyNeolithicAt Mikveh Cave archaeologists found Pre-Pottery Neolithic A (PPNA)(ca. mid-fourth millennium BCE)(archaeology)|tellPre-Pottery Neolithic A]] on the north bank of Wadi Arugot, known in Arabic as Tell el-Jurn and in Hebrew as Tel Goren. The first permanent Iron Age settlement was Judahite and was established around 630 BCE. The site was destroyed or abandoned after the Babylonian Psalm 63, subtitled a Psalm of David when he was in the wilderness of Judah, has been associated with David's sojourn in the desert of En-gedi.The Song of Songs speaks of the "vineyards of En Gedi". The words of Ecclesiasticus 24:18, "I was exalted like a palm tree in Cades" (’en aígialoîs)(reference needed). A synagogue mosaic remains from Ein Gedi's heyday, including a Judeo-Aramaic inscription mosaic now on display at Jerusalem's Schottenstein campus museum warning inhabitants against "revealing the town's secret" – possibly the methods for extraction and preparation of the much-prized balsam resin, though not stated outright in the inscription – to the outside world.Ottoman periodIn April 1848, Lieutenant William Francis Lynch led an American expedition down the Jordan River into the Dead Sea, that stopped at En Gedi (Ain Jidy).