Season 9 — Week 1, Day 2: Today was a Good Day!

Today was a good day! Very hot (104°) but good. After a delay of only one day, we were finally able to get into the field and begin our excavation. The agreement with the National Parks Authority means that we are presently limited to working in the vicinity of the church and away from trees that might fall. Later this week we hope to have a tractor do the initial clearing in the front of the Ottoman period (Ehud's) house. It is in this area that the 2019 electromagnetic scan indicated a large structure underground. For now, we are divided into two excavation areas. In one Zachary Wong and his team are digging on the east just outside of the church. They are presently encountering Crusader walls laid on what seems to be a Byzantine plastered floor. The thought is that the plastered floor belonged to a small pool that fed water into the Byzantine bathhouse that we excavated a few years ago. Motti would like to excavate down below the plastered floor in the hopes of finding remnants of the 4th century Christian structure that preceded the building of the basilica. Another team cleared the area of the mosaic covered baslica floor near the "bishop's inscription," excavated in 2021 that commemorates the renovation of the basilica. The archaeologists have marked out an area about half an archaeological square (which usually measures 5 meters by 5 meters). In this area there seems to be little evidence that mosaic floor was preserved. If all goes as planned, we will excavate through the floor reaching the Roman period below. Twice I have been involved in excavating through the basilica floor and on both occasions, we quickly arrived to Roman period (1-3 century) walls. Our hope is to find remnants of the early Roman period (NT) Bethsaida beneath the church.

Aerial Footage of Bethsaida-Julias — EAEP