Hurvat Tzunem

The arched building

Map in Hebrew

Basin stone part of an oil press

Hurvat Tzunem, or (a-)Tswana ruin (Arabic: Ibn Zur), also known as "the Lost City", is an archaeological site located in the Upper Galilee, 6 km north of Ma'alot-Tarshiha, between the settlements of Even Menachem and Gornot HaGalil in Israel.

Archeology

On the site are the ruins of a Byzantine city with an area of about 15 dunams, including ruined buildings, an oil press, cisterns, arched buildings, tombs, broken columns, a Mamluk mosque and pottery from the Roman period.

In the 1950s, the site was surveyed by Yohanan Aharoni, who found that the place was inhabited from the Roman period to the early Muslim period.

The site is a center of attraction for travelers, and in 2020 the site became of JNFs' workplan, but it is expected to remain "modest and intimate". Most of the site is covered in a grove consisting mainly of the Quercus infectoria and Laurus nobilis trees. In addition, the site has a winter puddle that houses various types of Amphibian.

External links

• Eitan Leshem, Horvat Tsunem is a fascinating historical site, on Haaretz website, 16 May 2022
• Mordechai Aviam and Dina Shalem, "The Lost City – Hurvat Tsunem", Et-Mol 285 (December 2023), pp. 30–33.

References

1.Every Place and Site, 20, Israel: Ministry of Defense, 2005, p. 137, reference number 965-220-263-0.

2. Yohanan Aharoni, A survey of the Galilee: Israeli settlements and their pottery, Land of Israel: Studies in the Knowledge of the Land and its Antiquities IV, 1956, p. 60.

3. Shabtai Shiran, The Lost City, The 7th 278, p. 32, 27 October 2017.

4. Moshe Gilad, A journey following the lost villages of the Western Galilee, Haaretz website, 20 June 2019.

5. Amnon Gopher, Under the Earth: Three Hidden Places in the Galilee, "Masa".