Reviewed by: Sepphoris: A Mosaic of Cultures by Zeev Weiss Yitz Landes Zeev Weiss. Sepphoris: A Mosaic of Cultures. Treasures of the Past: The David and Jemima Jeselsohn Library. Jerusalem: Yad Ben-Zvi, 2021. 256 pp. [in Hebrew] Given Sepphoris’s importance in antiquity and the intensity of archeological study at the site over the past decades, an up-to-date presentation of the ancient history of the city has long been a desideratum. Zeev Weiss is, without a doubt, the best person for this task. Having worked at the site since the 1980s, most of that time as the head of the Hebrew University’s expedition, Weiss’s knowledge of Sepphoris is unparalleled, and his intimate familiarity with every one of its structures and with the plethora of relevant textual sources from antiquity is apparent on every page of his Sepphoris: A Mosaic of Cultures. [End Page 182] The book is organized into eight chapters. The first two chapters provide an overview of the general history of Sepphoris/Diocaesarea from the Hellenistic through the Byzantine periods. The following two chapters are dedicated to the material remains from the Roman and Byzantine periods; these two chapters form the heart of the book, amounting to one hundred of the book’s pages, and Weiss discusses dozens of buildings—large and small, public and private—as well as various aspects of the city’s infrastructure, such as sources of water and city streets. The fifth chapter is a detailed description of the mosaic art in Sepphoris, which Weiss argues “combines Eastern and Western artistic traditions,” that is, those of Antioch and North Africa (182). The sixth chapter deals with the evidence from the necropolis; Jewish burial has long interested Weiss, but unfortunately, the evidence for Sepphoris has only partially been uncovered due to limitations on excavating burial sites in the State of Israel. In chapter 7, Weiss seeks to characterize the religious character of the Jews of Sepphoris throughout the periods under discussion by utilizing the evidence gathered in prior chapters. The book ends with a chapter on the city’s gradual demise at the end of the Byzantine era, briefly discussing the history of the village that existed at the site until 1948 (skipping over how and why the village ceased to exist). Most of Weiss’s arguments pertain to interpreting the remains of specific edifices, but given their sheer number it is impossible to review them all here. Nevertheless, several broader conclusions, particularly regarding urban life, are of note. Based on the layout of the Roman city, Weiss establishes that “there is no sign of separation between houses of different sorts or even a division into neighborhoods or into areas of habitation by socioeconomic class nor religious or social affiliation” (96). (Unlike at most Galilean sites, it is possible to reconstruct the profile of the domestic types, as a significant portion of the city has been excavated.) Moreover, because urban culture and construction in fifth-century Sepphoris were so vibrant, Weiss argues against the scholarly claim, most prominently associated with Uzi Leibner, that there was a decline in rural settlement in Galilee and the surrounding regions in this general period (45).1 In light of the “pagan” nature of much of the urban environment and art in the city, Weiss also concludes that many of the Jews of Sepphoris, of various socioeconomic levels, “redefined their attitude toward Hellenistic-Roman culture” as they adopted “foreign customs” seemingly at odds with Judaism (218). Finally, Weiss argues that there was no specific traumatic event such as military conquest or natural disaster that led to Sepphoris’s demise, but rather that it was “a long and complicated process, one instigated by various causes—not necessarily related to one [End Page 183] another—that ultimately led to the contraction of Sepphoris, its decay, and the abandonment of entire sections of the city,” particularly during the latter decades of the sixth century (231). Given the book’s structure, the text can occasionally feel repetitive or out of order. “The House of Dionysius,” a large residence located in the upper city, so called due to its floor mosaics presenting Dionysian themes, makes its first appearance in the...
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