BEIT SHEAN

largest archaeological excavation in all of modern Israel

toilets of antiquity

excavations uncovered ancient theatre for plays, music, and feats

BEIT SHEAN Dating 5000 years the excavations reveal many levels of history. The city was the crossroad of the Jezreel and Jordan valleys commanding the routes north-south along the Jordan and east-west from Gilead to the Mediterranean Sea. One of the oldest cities in the ancient near east Beit Shean was an ancient fortress occupied by Canaanites before the conquest of Joshua. In the territory of Issachar Beit Shean  was part of the inheritance of Manasseh (Joshua 17:6,11). This is the city where the Philistines displayed the bodies of King Saul and his sons Jonathan, Abinadab, and Malchishua their bodies fastened to the walls after killing them in the battle of Mount Gilboa (1Samuel 31:8-13). David later took the city and it became the administrative center for Solomon’s reign. Solomon placed BethSean, Megiddo, and Jezreel under the governorship of Baana, son of Ahilud (1 Kings 4:12). The city was destroyed during Tiglat-Pilesser III’s conquest for Assyria (732 BC) and was known as Nysa-Scythopolis, Greek for “city of the Scythians,” or Scythopolis during the Hellenistic period. The city fell to the Hasmoneans during the end of the 2^nd century BC and became almost entirely Jewish; it flourished as an agricultural, commercial, and industrial hub. The Romans conquered the city in 63 BC and it became exclusively Gentile; Beit Shean was one of the ten heathen cities of the Decapolis. When the Jews revolted against Rome in AD 66 the city’s Jews were butchered by the Gentiles. The city thrived during the Byzantine period, its population reaching near 40,000. This is the largest archaeological excavation in Israel, and the most complete Roman and Byzantine city ever found in Israel. The city contained a theater, amphitheater, temple, baths, fountains, stores, workshops, and wide boulevards. Note the bathhouse and public toilet accommodation where people sat on two stones; if one was rich, he could pay for a ‘bun warmer’ to warm the stones during the winter months. This place was known as the spring of En-Harod in Judges (7:4-8).