Bet Shean - Tell el-Husn

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buildings. This simplifies the work of the archaeologists, who have only to re-erect the walls which collapsed in the earthquake.

In the south part of the site another excellently preserved Roman and Byzantine theater, also seating 6,000 spectators, has been brought to light. North of this is a bath-house of the Byzantine period centered on an inner courtyard with colonnades round three sides and preserving remains of the original mosaic and marble decoration. Particularly fine is the Tyche mosaic (A.D. sixth century) found in a Byzantine building immediately northeast of the baths; it depicts Tyche, goddess of fate and of good fortune, with the cornucopia which was one of her attributes.

From the bath-house steps lead up to a colonnaded street linking the theater and the baths with the center of the city. At its north end is a broad flight of steps leading up the remains of a Roman temple of Dionysus. To the east of this temple were found foundations and architectural fragments belonging to a nymphaeum and a basilica which served in Roman times as a meeting-place and market-place and, southeast of the basilica, a row of monolithic Roman columns and part of a Byzantine street of shops leading to the southern part of the town.