Galilee - Zippori

Another of the places we stopped on this 4 day trip was Zippori. It had the most spectacular mosaics we have yet seen. It says they used over forty different colored stones to make the mosaic floor. They call it the Mona Lisa of the Galilee and with the pictures it is not hard to imagine why. for those who don't know, which maybe one or two, a mosaic is an image created by using small pieces of cut stone. The stone is not painted it is solid all the way through and they take a long time for small ones. This one is the floor of a dining room in a private residence and would have cost a fortune to create but is absolutely phenomenal. Hope you enjoy it as much as I did. This was also the site were the Crusaders gathered to head out to the Horns of Hittim where they were defeated by Salahadin and lost most of the Latin Kingdom. The Templars held Acco and several other sites for a few more years after that, but that was the beginning of the end for the Crusaders rule over the holy land. After standing on the top of Mount Arbel looking down on the field before the Horns of Hattim, and for those of you who have seen the Kingdom of Heaven movie, it is easy to understand why the crusaders lost. The Moslems held the only springs in the area and the Crusaders had marched more than a day through the heat of the desert with little or no water to meet a refreshed and ready army that outnumbered them more than 4 to one.