Page 94 - A Walk to Caesarea / Joseph Patrich

80 Archaeological Review

Theater Tickets or Game Tokens? (Fig. 75)

Two bone disks that were found in the eastern part of area KK had apparently served as entrance tickets to
the theater or hippo-stadium. The top of one disk shows a fist with one finger open, while the second –
two fishes. Incised on the other side of the disks are numbers in Roman numerals: VIIII and IIII ∆ respectively,
perhaps referring to a block of seats and row numbers. Others suggest that these were game tokens.

Fig. 75
Theater “tickets” or game
tokens

Herod’s Palace and the Praetorium of the Roman Governor

Herod’s palace was built on a promontory south of the harbor (Figs. 76–80). It
stretched over a lower and an upper terrace, with a difference in height of 3.6 m
between them. After the Herodian period, when it had turned into the residence
and headquarters of the Roman governor of Judaea, known as Herod’s praetorium,
it was further expanded and upgraded. A number of expeditions which carried out
excavations from the mid-1970s on exposed the palace in its entirety: a Hebrew
University expedition headed by Ehud Netzer and Israel Levine exposed parts of
the lower terrace. The work was continued by an expedition from the University
of Pennsylvania led by Kathryn Gleason and Barbara Burrell, in cooperation with
Ehud Netzer, which uncovered the northwestern section of the upper terrace. The
remainder of the area of this terrace was exposed by members of an expedition of
the Israel Antiquities Authority under Yosef Porath.

The palace’s lower terrace, which served as a private wing, rests on a promontory
bluff jutting about 100 m into the Mediterranean Sea. Remains of rock-cut walls,
mosaic floors, and various installations were uncovered. It was built around a rock-
cut pool. The upper terrace (Figs. 80a–c), standing higher than the promontory and
with a slightly different orientation, served as the public wing and was constructed
around a very large internal courtyard surrounded by porticoes. Remains of a
number of them have been found at later locations or in fills. In the center of the
courtyard is a raised platform for a monument or as the base of an outdoor bêma.

The upper terrace’s northern wing, of which only the wall tops and mosaic floors
remained, was comprised of two suites separated by a service corridor (Fig. 81).
The western suite faced south, while the eastern faced north. In the center of the
symmetrically laid western suite was a basilical hall suitable for holding a large
audience. This seems to be the judgment hall in the praetorium (Fig. 82a). The floor
of the northern part of the hall was raised on stone columnets (pilae) forming an
elevated floor (hypocaust, Figs. 82b–c), allowing the flow of hot air beneath it. This
section of the hall was probably intended to serve as the judges’ dias. From this
platform, the governor, with his concilium as well as additional associates, held their