U of T part of major Israeli archeological find University of
Toronto archeologists are part of a team that unearthed a
stunning mosaic floor that decorated the interior of a synagogue
that stood in Israel around the fourth to sixth centuries CE.
Since June 2011, U of T’s archeology centre, led by Michael
Chazan, has been participating in the Huqoq Excavation Project,
which is directed by Jodi Magness, the religious studies
professor at the University of North Carolina, and David Amit,
an archeologist with the Israel Antiquities Authority. The goal
of the project, expected to continue for the next five years, is
to excavate the late Roman and Byzantine site of Huqoq in Israel
near the Sea of Galilee to uncover the remains of a synagogue
and understand its setting in the village. Huqoq, which was
abandoned in the Middle Ages and was later re-inhabited by Arabs
until the State of Israel was established in 1948, lies about
five kilometres west of Capernaum, which is where Jesus is
believed to have lived as an ad