Hammat Tiberias

Before you see anything here, you may smell it. There is a faint mineral tang in the air, a little like struck matches, carried up from springs that rise hot from deep under the ground. The lake shore lies just beyond the road. Underfoot, the paths are pale and dusty, and the stones feel warm in the sun. This is Hammat Tiberias, a small national park on the western edge of the Sea of Galilee. People have come to this short stretch of shoreline for one reason above all others, and that reason is the water.

The name gives the story away. Hammat comes from the Hebrew word for heat, and this was a settlement built around hot springs. A town called Hammat appears in the Book of Joshua as one of the fortified towns given to the tribe of Naphtali. Whether that ancient town stood exactly on this spot is a question scholars still discuss. What is certain is that the springs drew settlers here for a very long time. Hot water flowing out of the earth was medicine, comfort and luxury, all in one place.

The springs are hot enough to scald bare skin. They rise along a geological fault line, the same deep crack in the earth that formed the Jordan Valley and the lake beside you. The water carries dissolved salts and minerals, which is why it leaves pale crusts on the stones and why the air smells the way it does. For centuries, people believed this water could ease aching joints and skin complaints. Many visitors still believe it today.

There is also a much older explanation for the heat... and it is pure legend. According to a popular tale, King Solomon ordered a group of demons to heat the water for the benefit of the sick. To keep them working forever, he made the demons deaf, so they would never hear the news of his death. That is why, locals say, the springs never cool. The story is so well loved here that the old bathhouse in the park carries Solomon's name.

Shortly after the year 20 of the Common Era, Herod Antipas, a son of Herod the Great, founded the city of Tiberias a short walk to the north. He named it after the Roman emperor Tiberius. Over time, Hammat and Tiberias grew toward each other, and Jewish sources from late antiquity often speak of them almost as one place. The hot springs became a famous feature of the region. Rabbis discussed them, travellers wrote about them, and bathers came from far away.

Now — the real surprise of this park lies underfoot, and most people arrive without knowing it is here. In the 1960s, archaeologists excavated the remains of an ancient synagogue on this site. They uncovered several building phases, one above another. The most famous layer is usually dated to around the fourth century of the Common Era. Its floor carries one of the most remarkable mosaics found anywhere in the land of Israel.

The mosaic is divided into three panels. Walk to the viewing area and take them one at a time. The panel nearest the far wall shows the front of a Torah shrine, the cabinet that held the sacred scrolls. On either side stands a seven-branched menorah, the lamp of the ancient Temple in Jerusalem. Around them are other Jewish ritual objects, such as the palm branch and the citron fruit used during the autumn festival of Sukkot.

The central panel is the one that stops people in their tracks. It is a great wheel of the zodiac, the twelve star signs, each in its own section and labelled in Hebrew. In the very centre sits a figure driving a chariot, with rays of light around his head. Most scholars identify him as Helios, the sun god of the Greek and Roman world. In the four corners, women represent the four seasons of the year. Yes... a sun god, on the floor of a synagogue.

Why would a Jewish congregation choose this image? Nobody knows for certain, and that uncertainty is part of the fascination. Some scholars see the wheel as a calendar, a way of marking the cycle of months and festivals. Others see it as a symbol of God ruling over all creation and time. What the mosaic certainly shows is a community that lived comfortably inside the Greek and Roman culture of its day. Its members borrowed that visual language and made it their own.

The third panel holds inscriptions in Greek, with some lines in Aramaic, the everyday language of many Jews in this period. They thank the people who paid for the building. One donor named Severus is singled out, and he is described as a follower of the patriarchs. The patriarchs were the leaders of the Jewish community in this era, and for a time their seat was based in Tiberias. In other words, this floor was laid close to the centre of Jewish religious life in late antiquity.

That is the second surprise worth carrying with you. After the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem, Galilee became a heartland of Jewish learning. Tiberias in particular grew into a centre of scholarship. Work on the Jerusalem Talmud, a great body of Jewish law and commentary, is closely linked with the academies of this region. The people who prayed on this floor were not living on the edges of history. They were living at its middle.

Near the synagogue stands the Ottoman-era bathhouse, a solid stone building known by the name of Solomon, or Suleiman. Here the park shifts from archaeology to the long life of the springs themselves. The building shows how bathing continued here century after century, under very different rulers. Inside, you can learn about the springs and see how the hot water was channelled and used. Across the road, modern spa pools still draw on the same source today. The ritual of the bath has simply never stopped.

As you walk back toward the entrance, pause for a moment and listen. Traffic hums along the shore road. Water birds call out over the lake. Somewhere below your feet, the springs keep rising, as hot as they were when Severus paid for his floor. Look across the water toward the hills on the far shore. The view has hardly changed. The people who stood here sixteen centuries ago saw the same lake, felt the same warm air, and smelled the same faint mineral breath of the earth.