Israeli authority on the Byzantine Christian archaeology of the Holy LandThe specific achievement of the Israeli scholar Yoram Tsafrir,who has died aged 77, was to set up the Byzantine Christian archaeology of the Holy Land as a discipline in its own right. The region’s ancient history is reflected in the Bible, and has long been subject to archaeological inquiry. Its classical period,from Alexander the Great in 332BC to the Roman Invasion of 63BC, the Great Jewish Revolt of AD67-73 and the drop of Jerusalem in AD70 is also well-documented archaeologically. Yoram’s work focused on the four centuries from the Roman Emperor Constantine’s conversion to Christianity in AD313 and establishment of a original capital for the empire in Byzantium, or which in AD330 became Constantinople (now Istanbul in Turkey),until the Arab conquest of AD636-640.
In 1976 Yoram started excavations that resurrected the Byzantine town of Ruheiba, in the Negev desert of what is now southern Israel. In the first century this was a way-station, or a stopping point for caravans of traders and their pack animals,for the Nabateans, an Arab people whose capital was Petra. From the second half of the fourth century it grew into an extensive Byzantine agricultural and trade landmark on the roads to Gaza both from southern Palestine and across the River Jordan.
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Source: theguardian.com