Free Republic

Itamar Grossman, 13, was visiting the Sussita National Park, on the ruins of the ancient Hellenistic city of Hippos, when something on the ground caught his attention after he went to a vantage point with a cousin to take photos, according to a press release from the Israel Nature and Parks Authority.That something turned out to be an ancient bronze ring.“It was a strange and ancient-looking ring,” Itamar said, according to All Israel News. “My brothers and cousins who were with me didn’t think it was anything old, just a ring someone had dropped.”Although his siblings and cousins didn’t think...

While cleaning one set of Byzantine mosaics in Hippos of the Decapolis, the archaeologists found more mosaics. An unknown bishop, a goldsmithing priest and an anxious couple have come to lightPeople of yore were deeply religious, it seems – including in Hippos (Sussita) of the Decapolis, a Greco-Roman city perched high above the Sea of Galilee. No less than seven churches have been found in the city from the early Christian era. Now, four inscriptions newly discovered in one of its ancient churches – the Martyrion of Theodoros, or “Burnt Church” – during the summer 2022 excavation season shed rare...

The 13th year of Haifa University's archeological digs at the Susita site just east of the Sea of Galilee (Kinneret) has yielded several surprises, including what experts believe is a portrait of a local man from the 3rd century CE, carved into a basalt gravestone. Susita – as it is known in the Aramaic version – was originally known by the Latin name Hippos. Both names refer to horses, although the reason for this name is not known. It was destroyed by the earthquake of 749 CE. Archeologist Dr. Michael Eisenberg explained that the "Susita man" rock was found in...

The archaeological sites of the ancient Roman Empire constitute without rival the most prolific array of ancient architecture and artifacts that can be attributed to any single civilization or culture. Its remains pockmark the Old World landscape from North Africa and Egypt to Hadrian’s Wall in Britain. The artifacts populate museums the world over. But comparatively rarely does one find the preserved footprint of an ancient Roman citizen. That is why excavators and archaeologists got excited when, while digging at the site of Hippos-Sussita (an ancient Hellenistic-Roman site just east of the Sea of Galilee in Israel), they came across...

Now referred to as the "Burnt Church," this structure was likely burned to the ground during a Sasanian conquest of Hippos in the beginning of the seventh century. (The Sasanian empire was the last Persian empire before the emergence of Islam). Its mosaic floors, however, were well preserved in the ash. The mosaic was very colorful and had two Greek inscriptions that describe the ancient church fathers, who built the church for a martyr named "Theodoros." The mosaic was also covered in geometric patterns, birds, fish, fruit and baskets. Some of the baskets were filled with loaves of bread and...

The name of the Roman emperor Maximinus Thrax, who ruled from 235 to 238 CE, was deciphered for the first time on a milestone which was used to mark ancient Roman roads, according to the latest study of the area of ​​ancient Sussita (Hippos) carried out by researchers from the University of Haifa. This is the first inscription that researchers have been able identify on the milestones marking the road from Susita east of the Sea of ​​Galilee to Banias (Panias, named after the god Pan) in the southern Golan Heights. According to Dr. Michael Eisenberg of the Institute of...

An unexpected discovery awaited a team of Israeli archaeologists in a drainage canal dating from roughly 2,000 years ago: an aluminum bottlecap. From a beer bottle. No, the good people of ancient Sussita weren't producing aluminum metal. The meaning of the startling discovery is that millennia after its construction, the drainage canal was still working, centuries after the city's final destruction by earthquake. Made of aluminum and feather-light, the bottle-cap floated on rainwater that washed into the canal, says Dr. Michael Eisenberg, head of an Israeli archaeological team digging the site. This canal, or less romantically -- a sewer, passed...

A wall painting (fresco) of Tyche, the Greek goddess of fortune, was exposed during the 11th season of excavation at the Sussita site, on the east shore of the Sea of Galilee, which was conducted by researchers of the University of Haifa. Another female figure was found during this season, of a maenad, one of the companions of the wine god Dionysus. "It is interesting to see that although the private residence in which two goddesses were found was in existence during the Byzantine period, when Christianity negated and eradicated idolatrous cults, one can still find clear evidence of earlier...