Image Details

Courtesy Pella Excavation Project

LOCATION, LOCATION, LOCATION. With more than 8,000 years of occupation, Pella is one of the longest-lived sites in the southern Levant. Settlement at Pella sometimes consisted of just the main mound (at left center in photo) and at other times expanded into the adjacent Wadi Jirm and even onto the tall hill across the wadi, called Tell el-Husn (the photo is taken from Tell el-Husn, looking north). The columns at the base of the mound are part of a later Byzantine church. Fourth-century church father Eusebius says that Jesus’ followers fled Jerusalem on the eve of its destruction in 70 A.D. and escaped to Pella.