Beth She'an Part Dos

After viewing the amphitheater we moved across (to the left in the big shot) toward the bath complex. As I have said before, Romans are all about the efficient moving and use of water and bathing was an advanced art.

 

Columns add elegance to the entrance to the baths, which offer all the benefits of a modern health club, from, exercising (wrestling and boxing) in the palaestra (courtyard outside) to cold and warm bathing and increasingly warmer temperatures. The floor mosaic from the palasetra above is geometric, but quite pretty.

Here you see more columns along the back and to the right the entrance to the caldarium,(hot bath).

Inside you can see how the floor was held up and vents were used to send the heat up from furnaces that heated the water.

This is an aerial photo that was taken of the site.

 

There were ususally three separate entrances, one for women, one for men and one for attendant slaves.

Here is a decorative fountain outside the calderium.

Nearby was a room for the latrines. This too was a social experience for the romans. They sat on boards over a channel of water and chatted while they did their business.

From the baths we moved to the merchant area along the main road and colonnade through the city.

There was a crescent of chops along the road (Not pictured here because I couldn't capture the nature of the semi-circle. Farther down the road were various buildings including temples and buildings we aren't really sure about. The consertavors left these columns down to show the effects of an earthquake on the area.

Farther to the right when you turn off the main road are more temples and buildings.

 

This is a tile floor we passed  on that road perpendicular to the main drag. I've decided this must be a catfish.

 

Here is the tel behind the Roman city. It is at the top that the Egyptians established their town (and the stela was found).

Then our instructor Professor Nelson from CUNY led us off the trail to see the water source. Here is the wadi below (to the left off the perpendicular road to the main drag. (I believe that is in the Southwest section of the site.)

 

- I'm not sure, but we passed through on a road with a bunch of fallen columns (to the right - not visible in the above image but can be seen below in the distance.) 

...and there were clearly all kinds of unexcavated structures and dwellings in the area.

Then we went off the road and were shown where the Wadi was.

We went down through the brush to some structures.

There were clear signs of Roman barrel arches there (as well as a bunch of cows on the other side of the arch.)

 

 

These pictures may not seem terribly spectacular next to the exotic images of columns and mosaics, but it is fascinating to see how expansive this site is and how many different civilizations have been here. On the way back we passed olive trees with olives ready to be harvested.(Bottom right)

Then we had free time to either climb the Tel or listen to our instructor explain a temple complex on teh Southwest corner of the site. I was tired and didn't know if I should try ot climb all those steps (I kind of wish I had - because there was quite a bit up on top of the Tel.

 

 (This image is from: http://www.soniahalliday.com/images/IS725-4-44.jpg )

I decided that I should take advantage of having a live tourguide howver and it was extremely intersting - so there was no bad decision to make.)

This temple had fountains.

Here you can see a fountain basin in front of the temple , Behind it is a trough and three lion heads sprayed water into the trough.

 זה אַריֵה.  

(It is a lion!) And all too  soon our trip was over. It was very hot and so I had my first ice cream since my arrival. All the National Park stores sell a variety of popsicles and icecream bars, so I bought one recommended by a fellow student and enjoyed it until the bus arrived.  We headed back home with nice views of the Jordan and of course

... the Sea of Galilea.

I finally got a good view of this large, beautiful sea!

The Archaeological Site at Beit She'an Part 1

This site is the most amazing thing I have seen in Israel., so I took a lot of pictures and will divide this post into two parts. It is a national park and the ruins are everywhere. There are so many buildings and remnants of so many cultures.

Because it lies at the junction of the Jezreel and Jordan valleys, this site has been inhabited since the early Bronze Age (3200 BCE). It was an Egyptian administrative center in the 15th Century BCE and the Egyptians inhabited the area for more than 300 years. They discovered a stela here that they called "The Lion and Dog Stela:

 

(I tried to link this, but the  link misbehaved - it is from the Account of the Excavations by Hebrew University : http://www.rehov.org/project/tel_beth_shean.htm#Egyptian)

They believe that the Sea People invaded and toppled Egyptian rule and the were replaced by the Canaanites, before they were conquered by the Philistines in 1100 BCE. King David retook the area which was then also later ruled by Solomon.  The Assyrians then conquered it (732 BCE) and set it on fire.

During the Hellenic period, the Greeks named it Scythopolis (named for Sythian mercenaries) and a temple was built on top of the hill (Tel). More wars (Ptolemies versus Syrians) and more fire by the end of the second century BCE.

The Romans rebuilt the city calling it Decapolis and we looked at the primary Roman ruins during our field trip. We drove by the hippodrome on the way to the park.

When one first enters the park, one is struck by the numerous rows of columns.

Below you can see the block of stone with the wheels on either side that show how the Romans (and Greeks) got their building blocks to the scene.

 This is a better shot of the device:

Here is a kind of panorama view . There are baths on the left a street with shops and a colonnade in the middle and the amphitheatre is the huge dark building on the right.

 

Here are the  cornices that were on the amphitheater.

We started off at the amphitheater - (The best preserved one in Samaria)

It is beautiful. It would have had large statues in the niches on the stage area and supposedly the pillars were even taller.

This is the right side of the stage area.

 

Up on the top you have a great view of some of the other features.  Below you can see the main colonnade along the street where there were all kinds of shops.

 

This is a better view of the street - which you can see slopes from the middle down to the right in order to enhance drainage. (The Romans knew just about everything there is to know about handling water.)

This is farther down to the right of the main street where there was a temple.

This is a view from the amphitheater towards the baths and latrines. (more to the left).

 

I'll do a second post on the baths and latrines and what you see behind the  main plaza.

The Road to Beit She'an

 This is a cute dog I saw in the Mall parking lot:

Here are some pictures I took in the bus on the way to Beit She'an.

We travelled almost directly south from Kefar Szold. Around the sea of Galilee. The red flag is the kibbutz.

The landscape near the kibbutz looks like the picture below - dry grasses and mountains similar tothe kind you find in California.

 

We passed this intersting Fort (I htought it said Zimor or something like that - probably from modern times.)

We had driven by the sea of Galilee a couple of times, but it had always been shrouded in mist. Today I could actually see the sea (but of course the view could still have been better! ;-).)

 

We passed a couple of these tower things. 

Near the sea they grow a lot of bananas. I'm not sure why, but they are kept inside of large cloth expanses like the beige tent (middle strip in the image below.

The bouganvillea grows really tall and bushy here.

 

We passed all kinds of agricultural sites including palm trees laden with dates.

You can see the peaches hanging off of the trees here.

We were driving between the Sea of Glailee on one side and the river Jordan below. (It doesn't look chilly or cold to me - probably the wrong time of year!)

 

 Near the modern town of Beit She'an we passed this cemetery.

Here is a little part of the town (but it isn't very representative - Beit She'an is a larger modern town.)