It was a two-hour drive from Jerusalem to Beit She'an via the Jordan Valley, and I chose to leave at first light to avoid the heat that usually builds through the day over this region. The road descends steeply, leaving the newer neighborhoods of Jerusalem and old Arab villages behind before entering the rolling hills of the Judean desert. I continued down until I reached a junction at the floor of the Jordan Valley; the road straight ahead went to the Jordan River and the Dead Sea, the lowest point on earth, and I turned north toward Jericho.

Despite the early hour, the road was humming with traffic going in the opposite direction. Mercedes taxis and trucks overfilled with produce made their ascent toward Jerusalem. Bedouin children, already up and about, were shepherding flocks toward patches of green on the distant hills. Their tent dwellings were clustered near the road, with pickup trucks parked in front and television antennas projecting to the sky. Otherwise the landscape was devoid of modern allusions.

The bleached hills and the stark wilderness reminded me of the biblical landscape--desolate, untamed, and magnificent, bringing to mind numerous stories and legends. The sun, rising above the mountains of Moab in neighboring Jordan, and casting mysterious shadows across the badlands, only intensified this feeling. In these mountains rises the peak of Mount Nebo, where Moses, after leading the Israelites out of Egypt, viewed the Promised Land he was not allowed to enter.

I passed through Jericho, situated in a lush green, fertile oasis fed by underground springs. I continued through the center of the town, observing merchants sifting on rattan stools, smoking water pipes and sipping their morning coffee, beckoning me to stop and sample the colorful local produce. The landscape becomes drier and barely inhabited as the road continues north and changes only at the fertile Beit She'an Valley.

ENTERING BEIT SHE'AN

The short path leading to the excavations of ancient Beit She'an was shaded by a scented grove of pine and eucalyptus trees, and the air was filled with their fragrance. A group of tourists who walked ahead clogged the way as they listened to their guide, whose voice was desperately trying to compete with the clamor of hammers, chisels, tractors, and earth-moving equipment coming from the opposite direction.

Though this was not my first visit to ancient Beit She'an, I was not prepared for what I was about to see. The site was seething with activity. Scores of workers and volunteers, who did not seem to mind the sun even as beads of perspiration rolled down their foreheads, were busy digging, cleaning, reconstructing, and unearthing layers of history that had accumulated here for over the last seven thousand years.

On my previous visits to Israel when driving through the Jordan Valley to the Galilee, like many others, I would often pass Beit She'an without stopping. Except for the ancient Roman theater, which was excavated during the 1960s, and scattered building relics, there was not much to see.

The new city of Beit She'an, adjacent to the ancient city, was founded in 1949. Over the years, Beit She'an was afflicted with one of the highest unemployment rates in the country, making it almost impossible for youth to return to the town after their military service. The economic stagnation prompted the government to excavate ancient Beit She'an and develop an archaeological park, which would employ local residents and attract tourist revenue.

Beit She'an's history began on the ancient Beit She'an Tell rising over 260 feet above the city, where I decided to start my visit. A steep dusty trail snakes to the top, and I climbed it in earnest, followed by several Japanese tourists. The last few steps made me breathless, so I stopped, standing motionless for a moment as my eyes gazed over Israel's largest Roman-Byzantine city unfolding below.

Compacted under my feet were the remains of over eighteen civilizations, stretching back to the dawn of recorded history. The stone-earth strata, like rings on a tree, have silently recorded war and peace, prosperity and decline. It was no accident that the previous inhabitants chose to build a fortified city on this defensible mound that commands a strategic view on all sides.

Sitting in the northern part of the Jordan, Jezreel, and Beit She'an valleys, the city was a major crossroads of the ancient world. Caravans that traveled on the highway leading east to west on their way to the Mediterranean Sea stopped here for a respite from their long journey.

To the north, less than a mile away, the Harod River gently meanders through the valley, its course bordered by lush vegetation and migrating birds resting along its banks. A decrepit Roman bridge, partially standing but defeated by time, still tries to ford the river. I try to imagine what it must have been like for ancient visitors to cross the bridge, then pass the guardhouse and begin the gradual climb up to the city gates along a colonnaded street one kilometer long.

Who were the people who dwelled here over the centuries and fought so relentlessly to defend the city? Looking out into the valley below, I recall bits and pieces of history.

Excavations on the tell, first begun during the 1920s, reveal evidence of occupation going back to the Neolithic period (fifth millennium B.C.). Even the Egyptian pharaohs left their mark here, shown by uncovered hieroglyphic inscriptions.

When the ancient Israelites entered Israel, Beit She'an was allotted to the tribe of Manasseh but remained in the hands of the Canaanites. The Philistines ruled Beit She'an during the Iron Age and defeated King Saul on nearby Mount Gilboa in about 1000 B.C. The bodies of King Saul, who had committed suicide, and his slain sons were brought to Beit She'an and hung on the walls by Philistines. I tried to imagine the outcry of King David, who lamented so bitterly the death of Saul and his sons that he cursed the mountains: "Mountains of Gilboa, let there be no dew, neither let there be rain upon you, nor fields of offerings." (2 Sam. 1:21) Shortly thereafter, the city was destroyed, presumably by David.

Though the mountains are bare, the valley below flourishes year-round. Here an underground spring seeps from the ground along the base of Mount Gilboa. This geologically active region, part of the four-thousand-mile Syrian-African rift, has been both a blessing and a curse. The continental plates grinding in opposite directions liberate water, granting life but occasionally creating devastating earthquakes that destroy the accomplishments of countless generations.

Beit She'an, at 390 feet below sea level, and the region around it were so renowned for fertility that the sages of Israel said, "If the Garden of Eden is in the Land of Israel--then its gate is at Beit She'an."

I could understand why the sages believed in this notion. In the spring, fields of golden chrysanthemums cover the hills around the tell, hiding their gory past, then quickly succumb to the blazing summer sun, turning brown and blending with the ruins below.

The city later became part of King Solomon's empire (965--928 B.C.) and during the Hellenistic period (third century B.C.) revived at the foot of the tell, where the excavations have uncovered most of the archaeological treasures. At this time, the area was called Scythopolis or Nysa-Scythpolis. According to legend, the city was named by Dionysus, the Greek god of wine, after his nurse, Nysa, who was supposedly buried here.

A gust of wind came from nowhere, creating a cloud of dust that made me close my eyes but brought a momentary relief from the hot sun. I descended the tell to have a closer look at the ruins.

WORK IN PROGRESS

A visit to Beit She'an differs from visits to other sites, not only because of the size and magnitude of the excavations, but also because one can watch actual work in progress, observing archaeologists dig and uncover building foundations or treasures exposed to the sun for the first time in thousands of years.

I watched teams from Hebrew University and Israel's Antiquities Authority, responsible for the excavations, directing work all over the site. Broken columns were being lifted and fitted back together with the help of crane-equipped tractors, a major street was being repaved with the original paving stones, and several buildings were being reconstructed according to the detailed architectural patterns of stones found still in place.

In the beginning of the fifth century A.D., Beit She'an became a provincial capital of the Byzantine Empire. As its prominence increased, industry and commerce flourished, bestowing economic prosperity on its inhabitants. Along the major colonnaded streets, small shops offered goods from around the empire. I walked on the basalt stones of one of the streets, along with other tourists. Ancient inhabitants who strolled here were sheltered from the heat by a portico and cooled by the reflecting pool that now stands broken and empty. The streets are evidence of the large, vibrant community that once resided here.

"During the Byzantine period, in the sixth century A.D., Beit She'an reached its highest glory," explained Gaby Mazor, director of excavations for Israel's Antiquities Authority, who has been excavating in Beit She'an since 1985. Wearing a wide-brim felt hat and dark sunglasses, his tanned face was animated with excitement. "The city stretched over 1,500 dunam [375 acres] and its population reached forty thousand. By modern standards, this may not seem like a large city, but you have to consider that all of Israel at that time, which included Syria and the other side of the Jordan River, was inhabited by only about one million people."

He pointed to the ruins sprawling around me. "We are planning to rebuild part of the pool and fill it with water. We will also build some of the shops and some of the arches," he said.

The city was adorned with public buildings, which included a large temple whose steps were made from limestone brought from the quarries on Mount Gilboa. Foundations of various public buildings have been unearthed, and some will be rebuilt. Also unearthed is a water fountain, whose capital and columns are reaching twelve meters high, and two large bathhouses.

One of the more amusing discoveries was a huge latrine connected to one bathhouse. Here archaeologists discovered unpartitioned marble toilet seats arranged in a long row, along the wall. The building, which was built around a small colonnaded porch, was decorated with a mosaic floor. The area of the seats was surrounded with columns and shaded with a tile roof.

During the Arabic period (which followed the Byzantine period), the building was used for industry, probably as a linen factory. Beit She'an had a reputation for producing fine linen, getting the best price in the region. The building's huge dome collapsed in 749 A.D., when Beit She'an suffered a major earthquake, which destroyed many other buildings. "We found [the dome] on top of everything. We first removed the stones of the dome and then we came to excavate the Arabic period rooms, and later on we reached the Byzantine areas," explained Mazor.

One of the structures unearthed here was a beautiful semicircular building called Sigma. In one of its dozen rooms was found a famous mosaic of Tyche, the goddess of fortune, wearing a crown and holding a cornucopia. This priceless mosaic was stolen some years ago but fortunately was recovered and is now in the Israel Museum in Jerusalem.

Mosaic floors were discovered in most of the rooms of the semicircular building. Some pictured animals and plants and some contained inscriptions in Greek of a poetic and erotic nature. In the room where the Tyche mosaic was found, inscriptions read, "The room of the most beautiful woman," and "I pour passion, like lightning in the eyes." In another room, an inscription reads, "To the friends of Magus who decorated the room and amused themselves the night long with young women."

The inscriptions puzzle archaeologists as to the purpose of the building. Was this a brothel? Some believe so. Mazor doubts this and believes that it was used as a commercial building since it is located in the center of a commercial area.

THEATER RESTORED

Not far away is the Roman theater; a group of workers was reconstructing one of the higher rows of stone seats. Avi Arama was shirtless and glistening with perspiration as he chiseled stones for the restoration of one of the handrails. As I approached, he stopped his hammering and looked up, wiping his forehead with the back of his hand. He was a native-born Israeli, one of the two hundred local residents employed at the dig year-round.

The dig at Beit She'an is currently the largest archaeological excavation in Israel and draws almost three hundred thousand tourists a year. Its success brings not only pride to the city, giving its image a boost, but also infuses much-needed capital into the local economy. Without the excavations, he and many other young people would have no reason to remain here.

The restoration of the theater and other buildings in Beit She'an are done by people like Arama, who went through an intensive course in archaeological restoration at the Rockefeller Museum in Jerusalem, developed especially for the employees of the Beit She'an project. Arama heads a crew of about twenty workers and supervises the restoration of the theater.

Two immigrants from the former Soviet Union were among Arama's crew; they had recently arrived with their families and settled in Beit She'an. I tried to talk to one of them, an engineer from Ukraine. He was unable to understand my questions, so Arama, who surprised me with fluent Russian, volunteered to translate. He smiled. "I teach him Hebrew and he teaches me Russian," he said. Volunteers from many countries regularly come to Beit She'an to labor in the hot sun, hoping to uncover treasures from the past.

The Roman theater in the center of the ancient city is the best-preserved Roman building in Israel. The first excavations began in the 1960s, but it was not until the 1980s that most of the restoration took place, following a decision to use the stage for live performances.

The theater, built in about 200 B.C., was considered medium-sized, seating about seven thousand spectators. Today it holds only twenty-five hundred patrons, since a large part of it collapsed during the earthquake in 749 A.D..

Every year, there is an international festival reviving drama in the ancient city. Local and international entertainers draw thousands to Beit She'an, bringing the city to life with performances of drama and dance. The acoustics, perfectly suited for opera and music, add to the festival's success. Last year the festival featured the opera Nabucco, performed to a full house by the National Opera of Bulgaria. This year, Verdi's Rigoletto was performed by the Hungarian State Opera, and all performances were sold out.

Martin Karp chairs the Beit She'an Foundation for Culture, a nonprofit foundation responsible for the festivals in Beit She'an. "Next summer we are planning to put together a gladiatorial show," Karp explains enthusiastically. "We plan to run it throughout the year, several performances a day. The cast will be a combination of local Beit She'an people and Russian acrobats and circus people."

The gladiatorial arena that Karp refers to is an ancient Roman amphitheater located a few hundred meters from the theater. The amphitheater, which is also under restoration, could seat five to seven thousand spectators.

Out of the 375 acres of the ancient city, only about 20 acres have been excavated. Most of the treasures were removed to the Israel and Rockefeller museums in Jerusalem "until hopefully a museum will be built in Beit She'an," said Mazor.

Archaeologists are not planning to dig up the entire ancient city. "To do that," said Mazor, "would take about two hundred years." So most of the treasures still covered may be hidden forever.