SCIENCE — OR SHOWMANSHIP?

It’s like the best cut in an autopsy: a clean incision through the dead polis, laying bare the city’s vital places.

At Hippos, the city’s main street — the decumanus — is extraordinary, a remarkable draw for visitors that all but demands to be walked.

Purely in terms of archaeology, however, this decumanus is of limited value. Aerial photos already show us where it is. And we already know a great deal about Roman urban planning to which the Hippos decumanus doesn’t add significantly.

So why go to the trouble and expense of exposing it? Mere showmanship?

That has been a dilemma facing Arthur Segal, dig director at Hippos since the dig at Hippos (also known as Susita) began in 2000.

The University of Haifa classicist ordered the aesthetically compelling cut through the gorgeous mountaintop site. Excavation of the road will be complete this season.

Now the mute stones of his decumanus lure visitors from the main gate on the east to the near-fully exposed forum.

Walking the decumanus is an incomparable experience. Real Romans, real Byzantines, real early Christians strode here. The main street slices cleanly from one end of the city to the other along this 600-meter-long mountaintop polis, past churches, through the forum and beyond.

So why is it important to expose the full decumanus? “Actually from a purely scientific point of view there is no reason,” says Segal. “We know already the street is there. We know the typical way of Roman town planning.”


MYSTICAL QUALITIES

In Roman cities, the decumanus runs east-west. Crossing it at right angles are other streets — cardo in the singular.

Pre-Roman, the design dates to the Etruscans, who assigned mystical qualities to the four quadrants. The Romans incorporated Etruscan ideas into their own culture. Many world cities bear the same grid design today.

Why dig up this decumanus? Segal is frank: “The main reason to expose it is, to say openly, to make a good impression and hoping to get some more funds,” he says.

Segal hasn’t secured Israel government funding he sought — the kind of funding that already supports well-known sites such as Sephoris, Caesarea Maritima, Beth Shean and Masada.

Funding or no, Segal is glad he made the cut. “To walk along a Roman street — it’s very inspiring,” he says. The decumanus at Hippos is an exceptional example.

Hippos was founded in the fourth century BCE after Alexander the Great took control of this area. It persisted until a great earthquake destroyed it about 748 CE.

That’s a thousand years — first of wealth and glory and subsequently of decline. From 1,000 meters up, the city overlooks the beautiful, hazy blue of the Sea of Galilee.


DRAMA?

Segal is convinced that his archaeological treasure is a magnificent public draw, and its decumanus is a key feature. Visitors vigorous enough to make the kilometer-long climb from the gravel parking lot and up the steep incline at the city gate at the beginning of the season could walk all but 160 meters of the decumanus. The balance of the road should be open by the end of July.

Segal’s mission this season is to continue and perhaps complete excavation of two churches. The North West Church, excavated by a Polish team, was still in use at the time of the earthquake, judging by its artifacts. The nearby North East Church, where an American team is digging, had been largely abandoned when the city was destroyed. The North East Church did, however, contain burials. It may have been an urban monastery complex as well as a ritual healing destination for pilgrims.

What bothers Segal about Hippos? “I still don’t know precisely the site of the domestic quarter,” he says. It may be south of the decumanus and west of the forum, in an area of the city with an overpowering view of the Sea of Galilee.

Digging in the domestic quarter is out of the question this season — too little time and too few workers.

But in the domestic quarter, Segal agrees, may come the most dramatic finds of all — earthquake victims who died in their homes, surrounded by the material culture of their lives.

If they are there, and if Segal can find them, it might make Hippos a huge tourist attraction — a kind of Near East Pompeii.

And the clean, compelling cut of Segal’s decumanus leads directly to the drama.