A unique museum now awaits the visitor to Israel—Beit Ha-Oganim (House of the Anchors). Located at Kibbutz Ein Gev on the Sea of Galilee’s eastern shore, the new museum’s exhibits are a delight to the eye and a learning experience par excellence.
Mendel Nun points to a drawing on the exterior of the new museum. The drawing (of a boat’s prow) was made from a bas-relief found in a twenty-ninth century B.C. Egyptian tomb. Note the stone anchor near the fisherman on the boat’s deck. Nun is standing next to a huge anchor-shaped cult stone. Hanging above is a normal-sized anchor.
Revised: 24-September-2020
Kibbutz Ein Gev member Mendel Nun (1918-2010) devoted most of his adult life to studying ancient fishing on the Sea of Galilee, and was the foremost authority on this subject. With the opening of Beit Ha-Oganim, Nun realized his dream of establishing a museum that not only would house his collection of antiquities, but also instill in others his love for the Sea of Galilee and its history.
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For information about museum visits, write or phone: Yoel Ben-Yosef, Beit Ha-Oganim, 14940 Kibbutz Ein Gev, Israel (Tel. 972-6-758998).
This article originally appeared in issue 48 of the Jerusalem Perspective magazine. Click on the image above to view a PDF of the original magazine article.
David N. Bivin is founder and editor emeritus of Jerusalem Perspective. A native of Cleveland, Oklahoma, U.S.A., Bivin has lived in Israel since 1963, when he came to Jerusalem on a Rotary Foundation Fellowship to do postgraduate work at the Hebrew University. He studied at the… [Read more about author]