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Home > Magazines > BAR > September/October 1990

Sussita Awaits the Spade

The largest archaeological site on the east bank of the Sea of Galilee was once a thriving city of the Decapolis

By Vassilios Tzaferis

Most stories in BAR are about sites that have been excavated. In fact, I can’t recall a single story about a place that hadn’t been extensively excavated. This story—about Sussita/Hippos, in the Galilee—may be a first. Of course, a scholar must be very careful when writing in BAR. One little slip and someone will take him to task in a blasting letter to the editor that will be read around the world. So let me say at the outset, to qualify my opening statement, that the Israel Antiquities Authority did conduct a small salvage excavation at the site […]

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Footnotes

1.

The Talmud (from the Hebrew, to “study”) is a written compendium of oral law completed by about the fifth century A.D. and is composed of the Mishnah and the Gemara, a commentary on the Mishnah. The Talmud exists in two versions: the Jerusalem and the Babylonian.

Endnotes

1.

See Claire Epstein, “Hippos,” in Encyclopedia of Archaeological Excavations in the Holy Land, vol. 2, ed. Michael Avi-Yonah (Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society and Masada Press, 1976), pp. 521–523.

2.

Gottlieb Schumacher, The Jaulan (London: 1888), pp. 145–146.

3.

Jerusalem Talmud, Shevi’it 8:3.

4.

Mendel Nun, Anchorages and Ancient Ports in the Kinneret (Jerusalem: Ariel, 1987) (in Hebrew).