"Goodbye" to the Sea of Galilee. Today we are driving south.
We will be following the path of the Jordan River (above) in the direction of the Dead Sea. Our first stop will be Beit Shean.
The hill with the tower and beyond is the country of Jordan.
The Roman amphitheater.
In the Roman period Beit Shean was called Scythopolis.
The size of this site is amazing! In 1986, when Mark first visited, none of this was uncovered.
The tel (hill) in the back is the site of the Philistine city where Saul and Jonathan were killed and their bodies hung on the city wall. There are fifteen cities layered on top of one another!
The floor rested on these short pegs and super heated water flowed underneath to heat the floor and the room.
Look how big those columns are. How did they lift them to stand them up? How did they make them?
The city was destroyed by an earthquake in 749 CE. The archaeologists left these columns laying as they found them.
This tree, which is on top of the tel, was where Judas hung himself in the movie version of Jesus Christ Superstar. It's no where near Jerusalem where Judas really hung himself. The tree has been dead for years but is propped up by steel poles.
While walking around we heard a loud "boom". It was a fighter jet flying over. Mark said, "Welcome to the Middle East!"
We didn't climb to the top of the tel, although Paul and I wanted to. We had too much on our agenda for the day and not enough time. There's an Egyptian building up there.
Daniel is always right beside Mark!
Public toilet demonstration!
Plenty of room for everyone!
Daniel thought it was funny but didn't "try out" the toilets.
Walking to the theater
The theatre
Only the first level of seating is remaining but there were two more levels above this. The theater would have seated 7000 people. Romans built their theaters on the principle of one seat per ten citizens in the city, so the population of Beit Shean in the first-second centuries CE would have been seventy thousand.
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