Galilee's Goddess of Love
Susita, one of the more dramatic archaeological sites in Israel, stands on a distinctive cone-like hill overlooking the Sea of Galilee. Because the flat area on the top of the hill bears a faint resemblance to a horse's head, when Alexander's Greek veterans chose the location for a fortress-city, they called it Hippos. Some have suggested that when Jesus spoked of "a city set on a hill" in the Sermon on the Mount, He may have pointed to Susita, which would have been clearly visible on the opposite shore of the lake.
Hippos was one of the cities of the Decapolis and although it was one of the closest to Jewish territory, its inhabitants remained resolutely pagan. Even during the Byzantine period, when Christianity was the religion of the empire, a man called Hermes erected a tomb at Hippos that proclaimed his pagan beliefs. The latest discovery by archaeologists from the Zinman Institute of Archaeology, part of Haifa University, is yet more evidence for paganism in Hippos.
Over the last ten years the team has discovered various Roman buildings, including a fine Odeon, a small theatre-like building used for book and poetry readings, musical recitals and other cultural events. (Theatres were more for popular entertainment.) The Hippos Odeon, the first to be discovered in Israel, could seat 600, wich shows that the city had pretensions to culture.
During the last season of excavation the team led by Professors Arthur Segal and Michael Eisenberg found a cache of three small statues of the goddess Aphrodite about a foot high. "Aphrodite was the goddess of love, but also the goddess of fertility and childbirth," says Segal. "Pregnant woman hoping for a safe birth would sacrifice to her, as would young girls hoping for love. Flowers, rather than animals, would be sacrificed to Aphrodite."
The interesting thing about this discovery is that the statues were made in a mould rather than being individually hand-crafted. This may indicate that there is an important shrine or temple of Aphrodite still to be discovered in Susita, for such statues were made to be sold to pilgrims - rather like plastic statues of the Virgin Mary at the Meryemna near Ephesus. They might be presented back to the temple as votive offerings or taken home to be placed on the mantlepiece or in a bedroom where they would be reverenced or worshipped like icons in an Orthodox home. Alas, devotion to the goddess of love didn't save Hippos from the devastating earthquake which struck in AD 749, for the city was abandoned and never inhabited again - which may be why it has excavating there is so exciting, for it is almost like a Pompeii of the Middle East. “Everything is still here, just under the surface. All we have to do is uncover it and put it together again,” Professor Segal enthuses.
cone-like hill You can see the dramatic site of Susita in the film on NWTV Return
© Kendall K. Down 2009
