A new exhibition at the Yigal Allon Center Museum in Kibbutz Ginosar, off the Sea of Galilee, offers the public its first glimpse into an archaeological site dating back 1,600 years that was unearthed in Israel in recent years, the Israel Antiquities Authority said on Thursday.
Named “Secrets of Huqoq,” the display presents a Samson floor mosaic and a bronze coin cache that was excavated in an ancient Jewish village located west of Ginosar, in Israel’s Upper Galilee.
The Horvat Huqoq site in the Amiad Forest, visible from the museum’s windows, is best known for the ancient synagogue uncovered by the Huqoq expedition excavations, led by professor Jodi Magness of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, which began in 2011.
A whole range of mosaics were found in the synagogue, “extraordinary in their beauty and narrative richness,” according to the statement.
“The Huqoq mosaics are some of the most exciting and moving finds I have ever been privileged to unearth,” it cited Magness as saying.
“I am delighted that the original Samson mosaic, alongside images of the site’s many other mosaics, are being displayed to the public so close to where they were found. For me, they are still part of an ongoing research effort, and therefore this exhibition invites the public to join the journey of discovery as it unfolds,” she added.
The exhibition offers the first window into the Huqoq village, while direct site access is in preparation.
Visitors at the museum will be presented with a village, a community, a spring, agricultural installations, ritual baths (mikvehs), a hidden underground escape network and the open landscape around them through archaeological finds, photographs, a small-scale model of the settlement, and an experiential space simulating part of its underground world.
“Huqoq is a small site telling a big story: about a living Jewish Galilee community in the Roman-Byzantine period, about an extraordinary artistic creation, and about an entire region whose life revolved around the synagogue,” said IAA exhibition curator Einat Ambar-Armon, according to the statement.
“Since preparing the site itself for public visitation is expected to take several more years, our exhibition already serves as a first gateway to the village of Huqoq and to the archaeological and human story it reveals,” said Ambar-Armon.
