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Tel Bet She'an has been excavated over the past twenty years and is, in our opinion, worth the detour.
The city had good access to water and was near a crossing place on the Jordan River - still used. The uncovered city centre has some fine remains of baths, market, public buildings, temples and roads. Most of it is byzantine; there are remains of christian churches found. The city - dating from the stone age and in the 12th century BC an outpost of Egypt - was destroyed by an earth quake in de 8th century. Perhaps because the river also changed course, the city was not rebuild. Now it is sometimes as if the quake was yesterday.
Main visits: the baths, the round market places (?) with mosaiques, the streets with columns, the theatre and - very good views and an egyptian stele - the mountain.
Updated Apr 22, 2008
Address: Bet She'an national parc
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The excavations & restoration of the Roman city at Bet Shean is one of the best we've seen anywhere. The streets & theater are perfectly retored.
Written Jul 5, 2004
Address: Bet Shean in Tiberius region
The Greek goddess of fortune Tyche. This mosaic was actually stolen from the sites. It was found in pieces and needed to be assemlbled back.
Written Mar 8, 2003
Favorite thing: Earthquakes destroyed most of Beit Shean, then called Scythopolis in 749CE. These photos graphically show some of the destruction. Floors upheaved, things tumbling this over that, columns toppled and looking like the local bowling alley of the GODS.
Fondest memory: The last photo shows me at Beit Shean with my partner in travel "crime", my wife Zohara. She is often kind enough to suffer through a day scrambling through ancient ruins, even though she does not enjoy it so much, to let me satisfy my hunger for history.
Written Oct 26, 2011
Favorite thing: The Sigma is a semi-circular area with shops or rooms on one side. Many of the rooms are decorated with mosaics and tiles with geometric shapes, animals and even one of Tyche the guardian goddess of this city. What the use of the rooms or shops were is not explained.
Written Oct 26, 2011
Favorite thing: The main street where everything came together, the "center" of town, the Broadway of Beit Shean.
Palladius was the name of the governor of the area and the story goes that the archeologists found an inscription telling about construction during his term, so they named the street after him.
Written Oct 26, 2011
Favorite thing: After the theater the most important thing in a Roman life was the bathouse. Again here in Beit Shean there was no stinting on the all important bathouse. From the frigadarium to the tepidarium and on into the hot room its all there, only one problem the floor is missing, apparently the marble was taken for dwellings after much of the city was destoryed in earthquakes.
If you look at one of the photos of the mosaic floor you will see swastikas, even though Hitler in his Nazi Germany stole this symbol for his flag, it has been used throughout history and can be found in many Roman settlements as far apart as Beit Shean, Israel and Conimbriga, Portugal.
Written Oct 26, 2011
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Favorite thing: For sure the Romans loved their entertainment. Almost any settlement of any size had its own elaborate theater and Beit Shean was no exception. Several of the entrance tunnels were cut out of the mountainside and the capitols for the columns on the stage are fine works.
Written Oct 26, 2011
Favorite thing: Much of what is still preserved here in Beit Shean is from the Roman period and many of their structures stand out and "stand up" to the process of time. The majority of what is here today is from the period of rebuilding done around 63BC
Written Oct 26, 2011
Tel Beit Shean, history in the diggings
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Bet Shean is a site steeped thousands of years in antiquity. But it also sits along the Syrian-African fault line and suffers from occasional severe earthquakes. Its last incarnation came to an end in...
Build your own Tel Bet She'an page
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