The excavation of the Greek-Roman-Byzantine city of Nysa-Scythopolis initially was done less for the sake of archeological scholarship and more as a public works project.
The Israeli government in the mid-1980s wanted to do something about the unemployment problem in the region around Beit Shean (pronounced bayt shey-an), according to Gabi Mazor of the Israel Antiquities Authority.
But the result has been “the biggest archeological excavation done in the country,” Mazor said Monday, Oct. 1, at the Schwan Concert Hall of Wisconsin Lutheran College.
It has also been one of the biggest excavations of a Greek-Roman-Byzantine era city ever accomplished, said Mazor, who has been director of excavation of the site since 1985.
Mazor, 63, shared some of the findings with an audience of about 80 at a lecture sponsored by the Milwaukee Area Biblical Archeology Society.
The site, located about 19 miles south of Lake Kinneret (the Sea of Galilee), was a strategic crossroads for the area; and people had lived there since before biblical times, Mazor said.
The original Canaanite town of Beit Shean had been the place where the bodies of King Saul and his sons were displayed after their defeat at the battle of Mt. Gilboa, according to the Hebrew Bible (I Samuel 31:10-12).
Two synagogues
When the area was conquered by the culturally Greek Seleucid Empire in the second century BCE, King Antiochus IV, the villain of the Chanukah story, ordered construction of a Greek-type of city, or polis, at a site slightly north of the biblical town.
Its new name, Mazor explained, derived from a legend that the Greek god Dionysus had buried his mortal nurse Nysa there and had posted Scythians to guard her tomb. As the Scythians lived far to the north in the area of what is now southern Russia and Ukraine, associating them with the site makes little sense, said Mazor.
After the Maccabees’ victory created the Jewish Hasmonean dynasty, King Alexander Yannai destroyed Nysa-Scythopolis. The Romans reestablished it after they conquered the area in the first century BCE.
The city the Romans built had an estimated population of 30,000 to 35,000 at its height, and contained splendid and elaborate architecture and decorations, Mazor said.
Though the city had no surrounding wall during the Roman era, it had five imposing and ornamented gates at each point where a major road entered.
Moreover, most such cities of the period required a traveler to go through the city to get from one of the roads to another. But Nysa-Scythopolis was apparently unique in having a “beltway” around the city to the north that connected two of the major roads, Mazor said.
The central civic area, the forum or agora, featured colonnaded streets and temples to the Greek-Roman gods. Other parts of the city contained a theater for plays, an amphitheater for gladiator contests and other events, and elaborate bathhouses.
The excavators also found two synagogues, one in the private home of a man named Leontius, the other serving the Samaritan community there.
The excavators found many works of art, among them mosaics (including some in Leontius’ synagogue) and statues.
Mazor said one of his most exciting moments of the dig came when excavators found about 12 statues in one spot — “a sea of statues,” he said. He decided he had to guard these statues overnight until someone from the Israel Antiquities Authority could arrange for their preservation and protection, he said.
Excavation ended at the site in 2000. Since then, Mazor has been working on the report of the excavation, the first volume of which is scheduled to be published in November. The site also has become a national park and significant tourist attraction for the area, he said.
In a conversation after his lecture, The Chronicle asked Mazor about recent alarms over construction on the Temple Mount being done by the Muslim Wakf that controls the site and the mosques situated on it.
He told The Chronicle that the construction is “superficial work” that does not threaten any possible ancient Jewish antiquities at the site.
He said that the Wakf has been “cutting a trench” in “early Arab period pavement” to replace some water pipes, and that “nothing bad is being done.”
“You have to keep in mind,” he said, that “the Romans destroyed everything over the Temple Mount” and later “ploughed it down to bedrock…. Nothing of the Temple existed there later on.”
However, “every excavation in Jerusalem is political” and becomes “an issue,” he said.
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