Zippori to Tzfat

We're coming down to our last few days in Israel, so we are taking one last multi-day trip to the upper Galilee. We've reserved a room in Tzfat (aka Safed) for two nights, but on our way there, we wanted to see the remains of yet another major Roman settlement, at Zippori. This had a majority Jewish population for many years and survived the first Jewish revolt in 66 CE by choosing not to revolt. As a consequence, it was spared the destruction that those that revolted were subjected to. It became a major center of Jewish learning.

The first thing you see when you visit the site, and perhaps the most interesting, is the underground reservoir and connecting tunnels that stored and conveyed water to the city. The reservoir could hold 4300 cubic meters (over 11,000 gallons) of water, or enough to supply the city for two weeks. A tunnel 235 meters (256 yards) long connected the reservoir to the city. Those Romans knew their plumbing!

You can see here that the reservoir was as high as 10 meters in some places:

but necked down very small in others. It was not clear whether the larger hole above was original, or due to a collapse.

The tunnel was, unfortunately, temporarily closed.

The city itself had the usual grid of streets with the standard N-S Cardo and E-W Decumanus, both paved with limestone into which the wheeled carts had carved ruts over the years:

The thing the city is perhaps most famous for is its plethora of relatively well preserved mosaic floors. This one, a bit hard to see in the picture, depicts the Nile gushing forth from some mythical beast's mouth, its depth being measured, and celebrations over the abundant water supply in the year depicted.

 

 

In particular this one, in the so-called Dionysus House, the opulent dining hall sported this incredibly detailed mosaic depicting various events in the life of Dionysus. In a medallion at one end, "the Mona Lisa of Zippori" seems to follow you with her eyes as you move (if you have a good imagination).

Others were more purely decorative.

The Citadel, or fortress, built by the Crusaders on top of the remnants of some earlier structure was interesting for its reuse of building materials, including a number of rubble-filled Roman sarcophagi used as cornerstones.

 

A Roman theater and a synagogue, neither of which show well in my photographs, completed the tour. By this point, it was after 3 pm, and we hadn't had any lunch, so we drove to Nazareth (about 5 km away) looking for food. A gas station near the edge of town appeared to have food, but we headed into Nazareth proper until we decided it was too crazy to try to deal with the traffic or parking, much less identifying a good choice of restaurants, so we headed back to the gas station. To one side there was a really good Arab-style restaurant at which we had a huge lunch consisting of "salad" for one person -- actually 14 different dishes plus two types of pita. All this, and bottled water, for about 20 bucks.

By the time we finished lunch, another friend of David's from Kibbutz Gal On, Nir Shapira, was home in the next town over. By pre-arrangement, we visited them at their house in the communal settlement (essentially a housing development) of Shimshit. In the intervening years, they had lived in Philadelphia and about 6 years Rohnert Park! We really need to connect up with Gal On Bet, the group of ex-Gal On residents in the Bay Area.

 

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