“To Sartaba, From Sartaba” A New Proposal to Identify the Location of the Second Station on the Beacon Line from Jerusalem to Babylon

The Hebrew calendar is a lunisolar calendar. Its months are based on the revolution of the moon about the Earth, as it is said: This is the burnt offering of every new moon throughout the months of the year¹ (Num. 28:14)

At the present time the moment of the true new moon is approximated mathematically. However during the Second Temple period, the beginning of the new lunar month had to be observed and certified by witnesses. Then the Sanhedrin Court was to make a public proclamation on the first day of the lunar month (ראש חודש).

In Mishnah, Tractate Rosh Hashana, Chapter 2 describes the process of communicating the information about the beginning of new month through the chain of beacon fires:

“From the Mount of Olives to Sartaba, and from Sartaba to Grofina, and from Grofina to Hauran, and from Hauran to Bet Biltin. From Bet Biltin they did not move, but rather waved back and forth and up and down until he saw the whole of the diaspora before him lit up like one bonfire.”²

Questioning of reliability of the quoted above description, its completeness and exclusiveness of the delineated in the Mishnah route is beyond the scope of the presented research. In this article we’ll apply methods of the geographic information systems (GIS) analysis in order to examine the existed theories regarding localization of Sartaba - the second mentioned station in the chain of beacon fires, reveal their discrepancies and propose an innovative, albeit rather technical, solution for long-known problem.