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Israel, Scythopolis (Beit She'an)
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Scythopolis is the only one of the ten ‘Decapolis’ towns situated within the borders of modern Israel. The classical city was destroyed by an earthquake in 749 CE; its ruins are extensive and quite well-preserved. Prominent in the photo is the colonnaded Byzantine ‘Silvanus Street’ (the excavators named it after a local magistrate mentioned in an inscription as responsible for its renewal) which follows the route of the earlier Roman cardo maximus.
Sythopolis was built in the shadow of the earlier Canaanite city of Beit She’an, where (according to 1 Samuel 31) the Philistines, after their victory on Mount Gilboa, displayed the bodies of King Saul and his sons on the city walls. The vast mound of Tel Beit She’an is conspicuous in the background. Twenty settlement strata have been identified there, the earliest dating back to the Neolithic (5th millennium BCE). A section of the eastern Canaanite city walls has also been excavated and is visible in the photo.
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