Hamat Gader

• LIST OF WORKS: see Category:Hamat Gader (subject)

Hamat Gader [now in the State of Israel] was a bath complex in the Decapolis, near Tiberias and Gadara.

Overview

The "hot springs of Gadara", located in the Yarmuk River valley, some 7 km. east of the Sea of Galilee, were renowned since antiquity for their therapeutic qualities. In the 2nd century CE the Romans built there a bath complex for the convenience of the 10th Roman Legion, which was garrisoned in the nearby city of Gadara. During the Byzantine period, in the 5th and 6th centuries, the site developed to become the second-largest bath complex of the entire Empire, after Baia in Italy. Dedicatory inscriptions praise in particular the empress Eudocia (421-460) and the Caesar Anastasius (491-518) for the construction. Among the visitors were prominent Greek philosophers and tutors like Meleager and Philodemus, but also famous rabbinical figures who made mention of the baths in the Talmud. Near the magnificent baths a large Roman theater was erected in the 3rd century and a synagogue with a beautiful mosaic floor in the 5th century.

Some of the buildings were damaged by an earthquake in the 7th-century and restored and renovated by the Umayyad caliph Muawiyya who in 661-80 ruled from Damascus. Eventually, the site was abandoned in the 9th century.

Hamat Gader in scholarship

Remains of the various structures at Hamat Gader were first studied and partially excavated in 1932. Extensive excavations which exposed a large portion of the baths complex were conducted during several seasons, beginning in 1979, by Y. Hirschfeld and G. Solar on behalf of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, the Israel Exploration Society and the Israel Antiquities Authority.

The buildings and pools are exceptionally well preserved to a height of several meters. The most elaborate section of the mosaic floor of the synagogue, with two cypress trees and two lions facing the center and a wreath surrounding a dedicatory inscription, was removed from the site and is now installed in the entrance hall of the Supreme Court of Israel.

External links

• Wikipedia

• Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs

• Hamat Gader

Pictures from the Web

• Hamat Gader Maps [1] [2] (from planetware.com)

• The Roman Baths Ruins [3] (from worldisround.com); [4] (from wikimedia.org)

• The Ancient Pools [5] (from wikimedia.org)

• The synagogue floor [6] [7] (from wikimedia.org)