Archaeologists Excavate Magnificent Monumental City of the Decapolis

Archaeologists and students are excavating a rich motherlode of well-preserved remains at the site of the monumental city of Hippos, devastated by a massive eighth century C.E. earthquake that made it all possible.
A line of fallen ancient columns remain in place today, undisturbed, configured exactly where they fell after a massive, devastating earthquake destroyed this city on January 18th, 749 C.E. They appear as though the event had happened only yesterday. Images of ancient Pompeii come to mind.

But this was not Pompeii.

Known as Antiochia Hippos (Hippos meaning "horse", or Hebrew Sussita, also meaning "horse"), its ruins are perched atop Sussita Mountain, an isolated table-top mountain that overlooks the eastern bank of Lake Kinneret (the Sea of Galilee) in present-day Israel. Established initially by the Seleucids as a Greco-Roman enclave, it once controlled two port facilities on the lake and its surrounding countryside. Hippos was part of the "Decapolis", a group of ten cities in Roman Palestine that were maintained as Greco-Roman cultural islands in the Near East. The damage the earthquake caused Hippos was so severe that its citizens abandoned it, never to return again. This left it to the ages with no succeeding settlement and, coupled with its relative isolation and enduring basaltic construction, preserved it much like it was left in the 8th century for 20th century archaeologists to explore. Since the year 2000, a team of archaeologists, specialists, students and volunteers under Professor Arthur Segal and Dr. Michael Eisenberg of the Zinman Institute of Archaeology, University of Haifa, have been excavating the site.
Twelve years of continuous archaeological excavations on the site," report Segal and Eisenberg, "have unearthed a wealth of Hellenistic, Roman, Byzantine and Umayyad structures erected during a period of a thousand years – from the 2nd century BCE to the 8th century CE. Yet much excavation work still has to be done to reveal the city in all its former magnificence and glory."

Thus far, Segal and Eisenberg and their team have excavated a 42 x 42m Roman forum complex, a 55 x 30m Roman basilica, a structure called a "kalybe" (an imperial cult shrine established to express loyalty to Roman imperial rule), the walls of a Hellenistic sanctuary, or temenos, an odeion ( a small theatre-like structure used for small-scale entertainment events), and the remains of two Byzantine churches.

Says Eisenberg: "During the past twelve seasons we have exposed only a small percentage of the total area of Hippos. Excavation is still in its first stages, but what has so far been discovered is sufficient to show that this is a fascinating site.......The building complexes, the rough wildness of the area, as well as the sweeping panorama of the landscape viewed from the mountain top overlooking the Kinneret and the Galilee, make Hippos one of the most attractive and impressive archaeological sites in Israel."

Segal and Eisenberg hope to be able to uncover the entire ancient city, including its street network, its main religious and public buildings, as well as its domestic sectors, with an eye toward ultimately shedding more light on our understanding of the presence and role of Hellenistic and Roman culture in the Near East between the 2nd century BCE and the 8th century CE. They intend to do this one year, one season at a time, setting smaller, more manageable objectives through time. "During the four weeks of July 2012, the 13th season of excavations will be held at the site", says Segal. "This time we will focus on the Roman basilica, on the residential quarter to the west, on the Roman bathhouse to the south, and on exposing the northeast insula".

Individuals interested in participating in the Hippos excavations may obtain detailed information by going to the website: http://hippos.haifa.ac.il/, or by inquiry to Dr. Michael Eisenberg: hippos@research.haifa.ac.il.
http://popular-archaeology.com/issue/december-2011/article/archaeologists-excavate-magnificent-monumental-city-of-the-decapolis