Visiting Zippori

Just Northwest of Nazareth is an historic site called Tzipori or Zippori, or Sepphoris. This site holds many archeological excavations with impressive findings from the 2nd century Jews and Romans, as well as a citadel built by the crusades. It is believed that the Mishna was codified here.

The first site we visited was the synagogue where the mosaic tiles of the floor were excavated and visible. These mosaics depict some biblical stories, but also in the center of the design is a horoscope circle with the sun and a chariot in the center. This find has caused great confusion and concern for scholars who assumed that any synagogue would not have pagan images within it. Other scholars have decided that perhaps the Jews who worshipped here were not concerned the connections to paganism, but were representing the heavens and describing the vast expanse of God’s creation in the center of the mosaics.

One of the mosaic panels describes the binding of Isaac. You can clearly see Isaac and Abraham with the donkey that carried the wood. In the next panel, which is not complete, one of the interesting sections that is intact is the shoes of Abraham and Isaac, taken off and lying in the corner of the design. The idea being that when they approach the holy place where God spares Isaacs life, they take off their shoes. This detail is not in scripture and is a unique interpretation of the event from this place.

Outside of the synagogue room was the excavation of a Mikva.

We walked up the hill to another excavation site of a Roman home with an incredibly preserved mosaic floor that was done with exquisite detail.

Our guide explained that this was probably a wealthy Roman home given the content of the mosaic is all in Greek and the stories depicted are of Hercules and Dionysus.

Finally we visited the citadel constructed by the crusaders. Here is Joe Hart at the entrance to the citadel. I have no picture of the building itself, just photos from the top of the citadel.

There was a small museum of artifacts within the citadel.

As a complete side note, I am amazed by the plants here. All around Zippori were rosemary bushes that were huge like a hedge. Also, pomegranate trees and cactus and lavender. It smells amazing here.
The six foot tall bush next to Avram is rosemary… And it was a small bush. The tree behind it with orange flowers is a pomegranate tree.