Sepphoris, Zippori, Diocaesarea, Autocratoris, Saffuriyyah - by anyother name

I've got about 5 more posts worth of pictures of my Israel trip that I want to post as quickly as possible (and then there are some pictures of Germany ).

After Capernaum we headed on toward Sepphoris (or you can choose any of the names in the title of this blog). This city is a huge and very exciting archaeological site which has many mosaics.

I always try to give a sense of the landscape we pass through and this more central part of Israel had more interesting bluffs and rock formations.

 

 We passed through several towns that had more Arabic signs and seemed to be predominantly Arab.

 

The typical Israel town seems to be built of white boxes.

Sepphora was a very large archaeological site with much to look at. It is just a few kilometers from Nazareth which you can see in the background.

Some people think that Jesus may have worked on the reconstruction of Sepphora when he was in his training period in Galilea.

 

Sepphora was also inhabited by many cultures, but notably  Herod the Great did much construction here in 37 BCE.  His son would later go on to augment the Roman buildings.

Inthe 12th century the Crusaders also built a fortress here.

Most interesting are the mosaics (more than 60 of them) which stem from the 3rd through 6th centuries CE. 

 

They have a lovely home with mosaic floors.

In the main area of the site there were of course baths and a temple.

You can see some of the mosaic floors out in the open here.

Here is a blow up of the floor above.

 

Here is a road in which the wheels of wagons have dug a deep groove.

Here is another beautiful floor.

 

One room had a floor with Amazons on it.

Here is an artist's rendering of the city.

 

There was also a synagogue with a mosaic of horoscope figures (interesting because one frequently does not have figurative work in a synagogue.)

 

We headed home after a full day of touring the middle part of the country. (We had wanted to stop in at Nazareth, but there was a traffic jam and we couldn't turn in that direction. I guess that will be for next time.)