IN THE JUDEAN FOOTHILLS, Israel -- "Come, climb into the grave," said Amir Ganor, an archaeologist-cop, his hand reaching out from an underground hole. "See what the robbers have done."

Indeed, it was a ruin. A tomb from the first century B.C., one of thousands hidden in an ancient urban center under the cactus-strewn hills, it had been vandalized and plundered of antiquities, human bones scattered in the dirt.

"They leave the bones, take the goods and destroy the site forever," Ganor said, shining a flashlight to show three burial places, typical for a Jewish grave site from the early Roman period. "When I first saw this, I cried."

Grave-robbing is as old as time, especially in these parts, where time really stretches back. But in expectation of sharply increased religious tourism to the Holy Land at the turn of the millennium, the robbers appear to be working overtime.

Israeli authorities say that as antiquities dealers seek to stockpile merchandise, it has been open season on rare coins, oil lamps and precious glass. But merchants themselves say they do not have great hopes for an increase in sales. It must be the middlemen, they say, who are filling the diggers' heads with dreams.

"I don't expect much from the millennium," said Khader Baidun, a dealer in the Old City of Jerusalem. "Those who do come, the pilgrims, are unlikely to do much rare-antiquities shopping. But there is a new phenomenon that has no basis in the market: The hysteria among people has increased; they have started thinking the land is full of gold."

With guns on their hips, cell phones in their pockets and shovels in their jeeps, Ganor, 31, and a dozen agents patrol off-road Israel in defense of history. But the Antiquities Authority's antitheft unit is essentially powerless to stop the destruction. Not only is its responsibility vast -- 50,000 archaeological sites -- but the laws are not on its side: Only the little guys, the diggers and the middlemen, are acting illegally.

In Israel it is perfectly legal to sell the fruits of the pilfering. Some 80 licensed dealers do a $5-million-a-year business.

The plunderers follow in the grand tradition of the late Moshe Dayan, a master digger with an obsessive hunger for valuable archaeological finds. Dayan, Israel's legendary general, used to go so far as to use Israeli soldiers and army helicopters to help him collect national treasures for his private home.

But antiquities authorities refrained from cracking down on him, even when they caught him red-handed, as when he was nearly buried alive during an illegal dig. In exchange, he told them to help themselves to anything in his house that they wanted to display in the Israel Museum, and they did.

The motives of Dayan were never pecuniary. But today's grave robbers, their hopes pinned on a millennial rush, are driven by the expectation of double or nothing -- about $40 -- for an oil lamp.

Even with dwindling resources and staff cuts, the tiny antitheft unit caught 15 would-be grave robbers in October, compared with 100 in a typical year. They have caught 20 middlemen so far this year, up from four in 1996. Each was found with at least $50,000 worth of goods.

Antiquities authorities say dealers, who usually do not keep a lot of stock and only buy rare objects, are stocking up. The evidence lies in their registers, which undergo spot checks, the authorities say.

"What could be better in the year 2000 than to take home some souvenir, a coin, an oil lamp, from the Jesus period?" Ganor said, sounding like a huckster for the dealers.

But the dealers themselves, who have no reason to lie because their end of the business is perfectly legal, say they are not in fact increasing their buying.

"Antiquities is a dead business," said Abu Shakra, another dealer in the Old City. "Look at my stock. I haven't bought anything in seven years."

The antitheft unit's job is an almost ludicrous pursuit. Working with tips from informers in Arab villages, where, they say, most robbers come from, they roam a vast area in the dead of night. Wearing night-vision goggles, they try to sneak up on small gangs of men who work with pickaxes and metal detectors.

At ruins south of Bet Shemesh and a few miles from the Palestinian territories, Ganor covered the terrain as if he knew what lay beneath every mound, which he probably does. To most Israelis, the hills are geographically and psychologically off limits, part of a forbidding landscape that surrounds them. But to Ganor, the dirt is just cover for an extensive Roman and Byzantine city beneath.

"Robbers really like this place because it's a huge graveyard," he said as he descended crumbling steps and wriggled his very tall body headfirst into a hollow. "They search for the smoothly cut rock, with curves, which indicate the entrance. They are good, like archaeologists."

As he sat underground, his cell phone rang. "We have one, come," he said, scrambling up and into his jeep. One of his agents had caught a man with a metal detector at an already excavated site in Bet Shemesh. Ganor drove on and off the road, then clambered up a hill, physically transforming in a matter of minutes from mild-mannered archaeologist to Israeli policeman.

Within seconds, the man was cuffed and seated on an ancient mosaic floor as Ganor and his agent searched his bag. "If I had found something it would be in my pockets," the man informed them, asking for the apple in his bag.

"Generally I find coins, today nothing," he whispered so the officers could not hear.

As the officers drove the man, an Israeli who would not give his name, to the Bet Shemesh police station, the agent, Alon Klein, said: "That was a stupid one -- broad daylight. I could see him from the road. I parked my car behind and then I sneaked through the brush like Indiana Jones."

The man started to cry. It later turned out that he had a long police record of plunder and pilfer, all to support a drug habit, the police said. "It's not a very good profession," the man said, hanging his head.

The real professionals work under cover of darkness and rarely get caught. They use expensive, finely tuned metal detectors, and then hack away at layers of history, leaving Ganor to stumble on the wreckage of another site ruined, and sometimes, in a manly way, to cry himself.