UNC archaelogy team in Israel helps unearth beautiful mosaic art buried for centuries

New artifacts found in Israel have been uncovered with the help of a team of students and archaeologists from UNC-Chapel Hill. The huge discovery was made more than 6-thousand miles away in an ancient village, in Israel’s Galilee.

They found these beautiful mosaic images including Biblical characters like Samson. It’s all part of an eleven year journey of discovery.

For the past 11 years "Carolina Blue" has had a strong presence in northern Israel; specifically, a 16-hundred year old synagogue in a village called Huqoq (sounds like "who-coke")

UNC professor Jodi Magness lead the UNC team. "I started excavations in Huqoq in 2011 and we dug every summer since them except for the COVID years," explained Magness. The group uncovered treasures not far from the Biblical land of Galilee. For the students, it’s an eye opening experience.

"A lot of them are interested in sort of being in the area that was the center of Jesus’s ministry, which is where Huqoq is located," said Magness.

Past digs unearthed beautiful mosaic tiles that reveled images of a fox eating grapes. The most recent finds include an image of a Tiger chasing an Ibex and another purported to be the image of an Israelite commander.

"I mean there’s actually plenty more that could be excavated. It’s an amazing site," said Magness. He added, "Huqoq in particular; nobody really had ever paid attention to the site previously and it turns out it’s an incredible site with a very rich history."

Magness says they have eleven years of material to process, publish and present to the world. But past effort is the last as the Israeli government develops the area for tourism. She says, she will miss it. "I live in the past, you know what I mean? Sort of, I occupied that space."

The 2023 sponsors of the project in Israel are UNC-Chapel Hill, Austin College, Brigham Young University and the University of Toronto.