Zippori Favorites

Favorite thing: A detail of the head of one of the animals from the Nile Festival mosaic. A mythical relative of a tiger or mountain lion...whatever it is, looks to be fierce, even to the tongue sticking out and the look in its eyes.

Favorite thing: This is only a small part of the Egyptian Festival of the Nile shown here, the entire floor of a room is covered with this mosaic portraying these animals that were found in the Nile area, or supposed to be found there.

Favorite thing: Her in the Nile building, the diversity of mosaics is fantastic, here you can see the mosaic of the Amazons, a quite vivid depiction of these warrior women. In this particular mosaic they appear to be on a hunt instead of battle.

Favorite thing: This was one of the most beautiful geometric designs we found at Zippori, just trying to imagine the amount of work that went into such a simple thing as a FLOOR....today you can find intricate designs, but for the most part they are done by a machine and replicated by machine. Here each and every single one of these were done by hand with tiny stones, the accuracy is fantastic to see.

Favorite thing: Many of the mosaics did not depict people, animals or nature, but rather pure geometric or even mathematical designs...
In this picture you can see that someone has poured water on the tiles to bring out the colors, this is strictly forbidden as the water may be of a slight acidity that continues to destroy the tiles....so please do NOT DO THIS, even if it would make it look nicer in a photo.

Favorite thing: Here in one of the small panels that make up the borders of the larger central piece you will see the same exectution of detail. Even where the stones have lost their original luster over the years from being exposed to the elements, they still retain their beauty.

Favorite thing: Here you can see the amazing center piece in the Roman Villa, the pieces used in this work are among some of the smallest I saw. The intricate detail is almost like a photograph and it is only upon getting closer that the individual stones become apparent.

Favorite thing: Here you can see a small corner of the mosaic of the central room of the Roman Villa at Zippori. The villa itself is perched on the highest point in Zippori commanding a view over the surrouning valleys, but the beauty is not only outside, but inside also.