Until recently the glory of the old city was suggested only by a tel, some twenty layers high, which dates back to biblical times, and by the excavated remains of an amphitheater built during the Roman era, when Beth She'an was known as Scythopolis. Jesus probably passed through here as he traveled from Galilee to Jerusalem. Starting in 1985, under the auspices of the Antiquities Authority and Hebrew University , acre upon acre of ground at Beth She'an has been rolled back, revealing the downtown area of the most important Roman city in Palestine after Caesarea. Seeing the exposed bathhouse complex, the temples, the colonnaded streets, it is hard to imagine that only a decade ago this panorama appeared to be nothing but a grassy plain. We climbed the tel and took in the ruins, conscious that most of the destruction below us had occurred in a few short minutes.
Archaeology can provide haunting snapshots, moments of cataclysm preserved in high resolution.
From the account of Flavius Josephus we know the exact day the mansion was burned. Decades of work lie ahead. After visiting perhaps one mosaic site too many, my son bore the air of a jaded connoisseur, but even he was startled into appreciation by the delicate and deftly rendered face of a beautiful woman in the floor of a Roman villa at Sepphoris. The goal ultimately is to make Zippori into an archaeological park focused on the mosaics. Crowning the hill that Sepphoris occupies is a citadel built originally by the Crusaders on Byzantine foundations and then rebuilt by the Turks.