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Sussita/Hippos rises 1,000 feet above the Sea of Galilee. The mountain on whose crest a city was first built in the third century B.C. dominates the area between the eastern shore of the lake and the hills of the Golan Heights—seen here as a backdrop further to the east. A narrow ridge extends from Sussita/Hippos to the plateau to the east. This ridge with the mountain of Sussita/Hippos at the end has always struck people as looking like the neck and head of a horse. And so it was named: The Greeks called it Hippos, meaning “horse”; Jews called the city Sussita, Aramaic for “mare”; later, Arab conquerors named it Qal’at el Husn, or “fortress of the horse.”

Sussita/Hippos is the most significant archaeological site on the eastern shore of the Galilee, yet it still awaits systematic excavation.