Hamath Tiberias National Park

Hamath Tiberias National Park sits a few kilometres south of the city centre along the lake shore, preserving the ruins of an ancient town that preceded Tiberias itself. The site contains hot springs that have been in continuous use since antiquity — the name Hamath means "hot springs" in Hebrew — and several layers of synagogue remains.

The main draw is the extraordinary fourth-century mosaic floor of the Severus synagogue, featuring a zodiac wheel with Helios at the centre, flanked by panels depicting the Torah ark and Jewish ritual objects. The artistry is exceptional and the iconography startling: you would not expect to find a sun god in a synagogue. A later mosaic floor in the same compound is more conventionally geometric and decorative. The site museum provides context, and the surrounding ruins of the ancient town are interesting to walk through. It is easily reached from central Tiberias on foot along the promenade.

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A story
The zodiac mosaic floor at Hamath Tiberias is one of the most theologically puzzling objects in Jewish art. A fourth-century synagogue floor depicts, without apparent controversy, the sun god Helios riding his chariot at the centre of a zodiac wheel — surrounded by the Hebrew names of the months. No other ancient synagogue contains pagan figurative imagery on this scale, and scholars still debate whether the congregation was unusually liberal, or whether the zodiac carried a purely calendrical meaning stripped of religious content.

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