Image Details
Collections of the Israel Dept. of Antiquities and Musuems/Zev Radovan
Found, lost, and found again, this inscribed stone column—which probably stood originally in a Byzantine synagogue—took a mysterious journey before coming to rest in the Golan Archaeological Museum. Discovered more than 100 years ago at Fiq, an Arab village in the southern Golan, the column disappeared for a time before its recent rediscovery at the entrance to a Syrian cemetery in Quneitra, about 35 miles north of Fiq. When the column was rediscovered, some plaster, now removed, covered the incised menorah (seven-branched candelabrum), at lower center, and the Aramaic inscription below the menorah. The inscription reads: Ana Yehuda Hazana (“I am Yehuda the cantor”).