12 Friday, October 3, 1980

THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS

Caesarea Expedition Digging Up an Ancient City

-

-VW

into Early, Middle, or Late)
heads.
(Continued from Page 10) racing, lewd theater and female
Another beautiful mosaic are made on the basis of the
I was assigned to a gladiatorial games.
Trade, however, contin- has been found on the quality of the clay, the color,
square, G9 which, under the
previous volUnteers in ued to make the city pros- grounds of the home of De- the texture, the method of
June, had been dug in the perous, bringing goods from troiter Paul Zuckerman, construction. All of the in-
who lives part of the year in formation is recorded for
center to about two meters the Middle East and grain ,. Caesarea. each bucket and significant
deep, exposing a Byzantine from the Plain Of Sharon to
We worked until second pieces are saved to be
road. Our objective was to fill the warehouses along breakfast, which was labeled for further study or
dig alongside the road hop- the wharf, despite Herod's
brought into the field at display.
ing to connect with and ex- shortcomings. After his
Many of the volunteers
plain the peristyle of a death and that of his son, 8:30 a.m. A combination
Roman villa from Imperial procurators were sent out festive and resting occasion, crowded around the
times in the next square from Rome to administer af- it brought together all of the table to learn the char-
that had been excavated fairs of the city that had be- workers in each field into a acteristic features that
during a previous season. come the commercial capi- shaded area where we at- would date the shards,
tacked generous helpings of
The peristyle was tal; among the procurators yogurt, hard-boiled eggs, the experts . picking out
classiC examples from the
Pontius
Pilate,
whose
was
paved with colorful
bread, jam, peanut butter,
mosaics, and it was name is inscribed on a tab- cheese, fruit, olives, to- hundreds. of fragments
from each bucket.
hoped that our square let in the theater.
After -supper there were
Other squares in G Field matoes, cucumbers, and cof-
would help to clarify the
fee, tea or milk.
lectures each evening in
rooms adjacent to the unearthed portions of the
At 9:15 we returned to
villa. Instead we had Herodian wall next to the work until 12:30, by history, geography, ar-
theological processes, dat-
kibutz
banana
field.
Dr.
found a Byzantine road.
which time the sun had ing, the up-coming weekend
the
Bull
says
that
frequently
G,
Field
In
I,
baked the site and the trips, mosaics, coins, and
synagogue, which is close to the kibutz and the expedi-
the sea in what must have tion are both interested in workers. The last hours underwater archeology.
with the sun overhead The last two fields of exper-
been the Jewish quarter, "digging" the same field.
were the hardest, and tise were presented by the
The
objective
in
Field
C
was excavated by the Israeli
archeologist Aviyona many was to explore the munici- ended with a final careful same specialist, Prof.
years ago. It shows evidence pal buildings that lay sweeping of the cobbles- Robert Hohlfelder of the
tones of the road and of University of Colorado, who
of having been rebuilt sev- alongside the great prom-
eral times in antiquity, but enade, the Cardo Maximus, the various loci and along served the dig in both
no modern restoration has a major north-south artery the meter of the baulk on capacities.
He showed slides of the
with covered porticos along each side to see if foot-
been attempted.
Seals from books belong- each side of the street that prints in the morning underwater grid and the
betray unwelcome submersible vacuum hoses
ing to a yeshiva have been Herod had built to lead from might
. .
visitors,
and also to or- by which excavation is
found by Prof. Bull, but as the forum to the theater. It
ganize the work for the being carried out in the
yet the site of the rabbinical had been partially exca-
harbor in front of the
school has not been iden- vated in previous seasons, following day.
The vans came to pick up Crusader Fortress. He
tified. The population of revealing a broad esplanade
Herod's city was mixed, part for both pedestrian and veh- the crew and the equip- showed the great piles of
Jewish, part foreign icular traffic, a third-of-a- ment, all of which had to be columns from the Cardo
mile long, its porticos loaded into the vans and Maximus, and he explained
(Greeks, Syrians, Samari-
formed by flanking rows of hauled out to the fields each how the underwater dig is a
tans, etc.).
morning and hauled in each joint effort between the
imported marble columns.
Herod was unpopular
Many of these columns afternoon, along with the University, of Haifa diving
with the Jews for many rea-
sons: ,first, because of his lie now in the sea as part precious buckets of pot- team under the direction of
of the arm of the harbor shards and the finds for the Elisha Linder and the di-
mixed ancestry (although
installations from Cru- day. vers from the joint expedi-
outwardly observant of cus-
The wheelbarrow and the tion of Drew.
sader times. Prof. Bull
toms, he was not of Jewish
gufas were chained to a post
Only experienced divers
origin); second, because he hopes that with the fi-
at
a
nearby
Israeli
military
can
contribute to the suc-
nancial
aid
of
Baron
Ed-
was morally corrupt, wel-
coming the Romans and mond de Rothschild, a station. Frequently an Is- cess of the dig where the
being used by them to keep benefactor in the area, raeli patrol jeep would come currents are often, danger-
order; and third, because of the columns can be along and the soldiers ous along the coast. The dig
his paranoid cruelty extend- brought up from the sea would come out to see what was completed when we ar-
ing even to members of his and reset on bases found we had found during the rived for-the second session
along the road. Some of day. ' and the diving rig and the
own family.
We returned for shower's gear were being brought in
, He embraced Roman the buildings in C Field
manners in constructing were "carpeted': with and lunch at 1:30 p.m. in the from the sea.
a temple to Augustus and colorful mosaics made of Kayit cafeteria. Lunch was
Also using air tanks,
Rome and even commis- tiny stone and glass tes- a feast of Mid-eastern members of earlier ex-
eggplant
dishes
and
salads
sioned colossal statues in serae from both the
peditions had entered
their honor. A foot of one Byzantine and Roman/ followed by fish fresh from one of the vaults along
the
sea,
or
chicken
or
meat.
of these colossal works Herodian times. Both
At 4 p.m. every other day, the sea, the first of what
decorates the entrance to figural and geometric de-
we
were assigned to pottery has proved to be a series
in
_ signs have been found
the theater today.
of underground ware-
Equally offensive to the style like those at washing crews. All of the houses which lined the
hundreds
of
carefully
Tiberias
with
the
seasons
Jews was the moral deea-
harbor, described by
dente in their eyes of horse represented as colorful labeled buckets of potshards Josephus as being as
that had been recovered
each day had to be washed ° large as the harbor at
and loaded into mesh bags Athens (Piraeus).
The foul air required that
to dry overnight so that they
could be "read" at pottery the rooms be entered with
extreme caution. The first
reading the following day.
This reading is the most penetration resulted in the
crucial part of the dig. Each exciting find of a warehouse
bag of shards is emptied converted into a Mit-
onto a table before a group hraeum, a shrine for wor-
of experts headed by Robert shipping the Persian god
Bull. It is the lowly shards Mithras, who was popular
that are almighty in dating with the Roman soldiers.
the level. Before the altar was found a
The assignments of Hel- medallion of Mithras slay-
lenistic, Roman, Byzantine, ing the bull, and the altar of
Islamic (each broken down the converted underground
Prof. Goldman holds a lamp that she restored.
shrine was designed so that
a ray of light coming
through a hole in the .ceiling
fell on the altar at the skim-
mer solstice.
Further exploration has
revealed another room with
Christian frescos, unique in
the area, and there is great
eagerness to continue
exploring the vaults next
season.

Prof. Robert Hohlfelder of the University of
Colorado is shown searching the inner face of the
southern breakwater of Herod's harbor in Caesarea
for dateable artifacts.

Beth Alpha, Beth
Shearim, Beth Shean,
Tiberias, Benyas), and
one to the south (Lachish,
Hessi, Beersheva, and
Masada).
My supervisor was a med-
ical administrator from
Loma Linda, Calif., and my
co-workers included two
graduate seminary stu-
It houses the most im- dents, a biology teacher and
portant piece of principal of an elementary
sculpture from the dig — school, a professor of history
the Tyche or Good For- and archeology, a French
tune of the ancient har- major and a business ad-
bor city in the form of a ministration student. Of di--
woman. Its collection of verse backgrounds and
coins, pottery, columns, ages, we worked together
capitals and sculpture with amazing energy and
are excellent, but the col- good will.
lection of lamps, of
The choreography of get-
course, were of special ting 80 people he used and
interest to me.
fed and into the Hertz vans
After the first week I was out to the fields and back
apprenticed to the lamp ex- each day was so efficiently
pert, who was photograph- planned and executed that
ing and the recording the Dr. Bull can well be proud of
pottery lamps and frag- his organi'zation and his
ments found during the sea- workers. Frequent visitors
son. Over 600 fragments from the Israel Department
were discovered, and each of Antiquities, the Ameri-
piece revealed valuable in- can State Department,
sponsoring institutions,
formation.
We had an opportunity to members of the press, and
examine each fragment, fellow scholars gave Dr.
speculating on the dating Bull an almost daily tour of
and the manufacture, since explanations 'ofthe fields.
One scholar came from
we could look inside.
The lamps found intact Oxford, doing a count of
were all carefully drawn, murex shells (from which
and I had the assignment of the ancient purple dye was
gluing together fragments made), for whom we kept a
so that they could be photo- running count of every
graphed whole. Some of the murex shell excavated.
We were in bed and
molds were also found,
along with the material out sleeping by 9:30. During
the night I would listen to
of which molds were made.
Many of the best lamps the surf pounding the
came from my square in G beach along the shore,
Field, in the wall alongside and I would imagine the
the peristyle of the Roman Roman ships coming into
villa, so that I had an oppor- harbor a mile or so up the
beach, and all of the suc-
tunity to be present when
the lamps were unearthed cessive ships that had
and to learn about them landed or tried to land
when they were being along these same
photographed and beaches.
The sea was rough
catalogued.
The expedition consists summer, often churning up
of a consortium of col- yellow sand instead of
leges and universities blue-white waves. We had
from the U.S. and only about five days that
Canada, many of them were not "black flag" (no
religious affiliated. swimming), and at night I
Everybody was very in- would waken and listen to
terested in Bible study the sea.
The Romans are gone: the
and in visiting the ar-
cheological and religious Herodian city is gone; gone
sites, both Jewish and are the Byzantines and the
Christian, on the two followers of Islam and the
tours which were offered, Crusaders. But the waves
one to the Galilee and the are constant — the chang-
north (Megiddo, Hazor, ing sea.

Many of the finds from
the dig are housed in a
small, but very important
museum on the grounds of
Kibutz Sodot Yam, and we
were given several oppor-
tunities to tour the museum
under the guidance of its di-
rector Aaron Wegman, one
of the pioneers of the kibutz.