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In the preceding article, Eshel claims that at Sepphoris regular bathing facilities were not found in houses with stepped pools, leading him to conclude that the stepped pools were ordinary baths. But Meyers counters that Sepphoris’s public bathhouses, such as the one in the photo (excavated by the Hebrew University team), provided ordinary bathing facilities for cleansing. The short columns at right are hypocausts; they supported a floor and allowed steam from an adjoining furnace room to circulate between the columns and heat the public bath.