m Talmud, completed in the fourth century C.E. Like all residents of the Galilee, during the fourth century the people of Zippori suffered greatly under Roman rule. In 351, the Jews revolted against Gallus Caesar: They attacked the local garrison, killed the soldiers, and took their arms. This rebellion was firmly quashed. Christian sources tell that Zippori was razed in the revolt, but there is no archeological evidence to support this. Archeologists did find, however, that the city was destroyed in 363 in an earthquake. From the fifth century on, Zippori was inhabited by both Christians and Jews. During the Middle Ages, Zippori still had a small Jewish community, as evidenced by a letter written in the tenth century and discovered in the Cairo Genizah (Jewish archive). The Crusaders built a church in memory of Saint Anne at Zippori. They believed that Mary?s parents, Saint Anne and Saint Joachim, had lived in Zippori. Parts of the Crusader church are still standing. No evidence has been found that reveals the nature of the temple's rituals, but some coins dating from the time of Antoninus Pius, minted in Diocaesarea (Zippori), depict a temple to the Roman gods Zeus and Tyche. The temple ceased to function at an unknown date, and a large church, the remains of which were uncovered by the Hebrew University excavation team in previous seasons, was built over it in the Byzantine period. North of the decumanus, opposite the temple, a monumental building was partially excavated this summer. Its role is still unclear, although its nature and size indicate that it was an important building. A courtyard with a well-preserved stone pavement of smooth rectangular slabs executed in high quality was uncovered in the center of the building, upon which were found a pile of collapsed columns and capitals-probably as a result of an earthquake. The decoration on these architectural elements was executed in stucco. Beyond a row of columns, an adjacent aisle and additional rooms were discovered. Two of them were decorated with colorful, geometrical mosaics. The excavations, which were undertaken by the Noam Shudofsky Zippori Expedition led by of Prof. Zeev Weiss of the Institute of Archaeology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, shed light on the multi-cultural society of ancient Zippori. A Crusader fortress now sits on the hilltop, reconstructed in the eighteenth century by Zahir al-Amr, the Beduin ruler of the Galilee. The Arab village of Saffurieh, a name that harks back to the Greek Sepphoris, is nearby.