Photo courtesy of the Department of Art and Archaeology, Princeton University
Excavated only once, in the 1930s, ancient Antioch-on-the-Orontes has largely vanished from modern memory. Founded by the Hellenistic king Seleucus Nicator in the late fourth century B.C.E., Antioch flourished for more than a thousand years, becoming one of the four great cities of antiquity and a cultural Mecca for Greeks, Romans, Jews and Christians.