Yearly Archives: 2011

Hiking Nahal Og

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This is a real gem of a hike. Nahal Og is less than a half hour from Jerusalem in the Judean desert. It’s picturesque in a rugged, desert kind of way so it’s a good opportunity for taking photographs of the scenery and of course your family/group.

You might find that parts of the hike are challenging but this is a hike that is doable by parents and kids. There are three places where metal rungs have been hammered into the rock to give you hand and foot holds to help you traverse the steep rock faces. In the winter months there will be parts of the trail that have filled with water that you will have to cross.

The trail is a loop so you end back where you parked your car and in fact, you can do the trail in either direction, depending on whether you want to ascend or descend the rungs. Most people find that climbing up the rungs is easier than going down. The hike itself should take you about two hours.


To fill out your day combine the hike with one of the many other attractions in the area, the mosaics at the Inn of the Good Samaritan, St George’s monastery in Wadi Qelt, the archaeological site at Qumran, a float in the Dead Sea.

Not in Herod’s Lifetime

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Just came back from a press conference with Ronny Reich, archaeologist and professor at Haifa University. Probably every guide talks about the Western Wall, the supporting wall of the Temple Mount built by King Herod in 22BCE. According to the historian Josephus, Herod elongated the square Hasmonean platform (250 meters by 250m) by rebuilding new northern, western and southern supporting walls. The eastern wall was extended and the “seam” between the earlier Hasmonean wall and Herod’s can be seen near the south-eastern corner. Along the western wall Herod designed a main street (Ronnie Reich calls it the original Wall Street, the Palestinians probably call it occupied) and a vault supporting a large staircase crossing over the street and leading to the Royal Stoa, a building 288 meters long with 160 columns (it takes 3 people with arms extended to go around a single column). When Herod moved the western wall he had to move some residences that were in the way, at the bottom of the slope from the Western Hill. These buildings were destroyed but the basements, underground cisterns and mikvaot (ritual baths) were just filled in with debris/earth. One mikva directly under the path of the planned western wall, was filled in and covered with 3 large stones. In clearing out the drainage channel under Robinson’s Arch, the mikva was discovered under the Herodian stones of the western wall.

Some clay oil lamps and a small pottery jug typical of the Second Temple period were found.

When the mikva was emptied and the soil sifted 19 coins were found, the latest ones were from the rule of Valerius Gratus, the Roman Prefect (governor) of Judaea province under Tiberius from 15 to 26CE. He was succeeded by Pontius Pilate.

   

Reich said four small bronze coins were found with dates of 15CE and 16CE (IAA press release says 17 coins with dates of 17/18CE). Since the coins were found in the fill in the mikva under the wall, the first (lowest) row of stones in the wall must have been placed there after 16CE so the wall was built more than 20 years after the death of Herod (who died in 4BCE). If that is the case, then the Herodian street, the staircase and probably the Royal Stoa were all later additions, not completed in Herod’s lifetime!

By the way, these stones have the frame but were left with the boss (protuberance) since they were underground and would never be seen.

This confirms Josephus’ account in the last book of Jewish Antiquities that the Temple building project was the largest project the ancient world had ever heard of and was not completed until about 50CE in the rule of King Agrippa II, Herod’s great grandson (even though some 15-18,000 workers were employed on the project).

Rujm el-Hiri Revisited

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I wrote about Rujm el-Hiri in a post on May 2009 and concluded with a variety of suggestions about what the structure may have been used for. Now Dr. Rami Arav who has been excavating at nearby Bethsaida since the late 1980s has proposed a new theory reported in the Nov/Dec issue of Biblical Archaeology Review based on a broader look at the local Chalcolithic civilization (4500-3500BCE) and on similarities he noticed with more distant cultures.

Rujm el-Hiri consists of four concentric circles, the outermost more than 150 meters across, made up of an estimated 42,000 tons of basalt rock. Experts believe that these are the remains of massive walls that once rose as high as 8 meters (think of the ruins of the walls of the storehouses and the Roman camps at Masada).

Excavations at Rujm el-Hiri by archaeologist Mike Freikman of Hebrew University in Jerusalem over the past five years have yielded almost no material remains of the kind that are commonly found at most archaeological sites. The lack of artifacts confirms that the site was never inhabited and so was not a town or fortress but most likely a ritual center — possibly linked to a cult of the dead. What is the reason to go to such great lengths to construct something that was never inhabited, whose location was not strategic?

Chalcolithic Ossuary, British Museum

Burial in the Chalcolithic period was in ossuaries, small clay boxes used to house the bones. Stone ossuaries were seen next in the Second Temple period for Jewish burial – bodies were buried for an initial period of about a year in temporary tombs until the flesh decomposed and only the bones remained. In archaeology, this process is called excarnation. But archaeologists have not found evidence of such preliminary graves from Chalcolithic times.

 

Artifact from Hamatmon Cave, courtesy of Israel Antiquities Authority

Arav found a clue in the treasure of Chalcolithic bronze artifacts discovered in a cave, in the cliffs above the Dead Sea. He looked at a small copper cylinder with a square opening like a gate with figures of birds perched on the edge and saw it as a ceremonial miniature of an excarnation site.

He also noticed a similarity to round, high-walled structures used by Zoroastrians in Iran and India, known as dokhmas or towers of silence. These are structures used for a process known as sky burial — the removal of flesh from corpses by vultures. The winged scavengers perch on the high circular walls, swoop in when the pallbearers depart and can peck a corpse clean in a couple of hours.

Further evidence is a mural showing vultures and headless human corpses several millennia earlier in southern Turkey, where the local Chalcolithic residents are thought to have originated suggesting that excarnation was practiced there.

Arav’s answer is that excarnation was used — vultures did the job. To this day there are Griffon vultures and other large birds of prey that swoop above the valleys of the Golan. Arav concludes that Rujm el-Hiri was an excarnation facility.

Arav also identified a smaller structure consisting of concentric stone circles on a promontory overlooking the Jordan River as an excarnation site, outer circle is 50 meters in diameter and the inner circle 33 meters. Another round structure was recently identified at Palmahim where only ossuaries were found.

It may be hard to come to terms with Arav’s theory given the Judeo-Christian view of honoring the dead and human body but excarnation is practised in other parts of the world and it’s important to remember that the Chalcolithic period predates the Israelites by as much as three millenia.

Hiking Wadi Qelt – St George Monastery

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Hiking Wadi Qelt is best in the early morning on the way down to the Dead Sea, a great place to experience the Judean desert and for photographs of the desert landscape.

From Jerusalem on highway <1> take the left at Mizpe Yericho, left again and left at the T. Park the car here for a great view of Wadi Qelt/Nahal Prat. Follow the black trail down to the stream bed. Here you will see the remains of the stone arches of the bridge of the aquaduct.

Continuing another 450 meters you’ll come to a wooden bridge that crosses Nahal Prat and to your left is the Ein Qelt pool. There are two possibilities from here: hike west along the streambed to a string of pools in Lower Nahal Prat or east along the red trail which will take you after about 2 kilometers to the monastery of St George of Koziba perched on the northern cliff.

From the monastery you can climb up to the road where you drive back to the highway or continue to the ruins of Herod’s fortress at Cypros.

Christian monks began to settle in the Judean Desert in the early 4th century identifying with Moses, Elijah, Jesus and others who spent time in the desert, as a respite from the secular world. By the fifth to seventh centuries, there were some 65 monasteries in the area: St. George, Martyrius, Euthymius, Deir Hijla, Mar Saba can be visited to this day.

Originally founded as a laura, a cluster of cells or caves for hermits about 420 CE, a small chapel was added later and about 480CE St. John of Thebes transformed the site into a monastery. In the 6th century it became known as St. George under the leadership of Gorgias of Koziba, born in Cyprus about 550 CE. The Persians destroyed it in 614 and it was rebuilt during the Crusader period but abandoned when the Crusaders were defeated and was reported in ruins by a pilgrim who visited in 1483. In 1878 a Greek monk, Kalinikos, settled here and restored the monastery, completing it in 1901.

According to tradition this is the place where Elijah stayed when God commanded him to leave King Ahab during the drought and was fed by ravens:

5 So he went and did according unto the word of the LORD; for he went and dwelt by the brook Cherith, that is before the Jordan.

6 And the ravens brought him bread and flesh in the morning, and bread and flesh in the evening; and he drank of the brook.

I Kings 17

There is also the story that Joachim, father of the Virgin Mary, hid here for forty days bewailing the barrenness of his wife Anne, whereupon an angel came to him to announce that Anne was pregnant with a daughter.

Four sites in Old City

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Most archaeological sites in Israel are part of the Israel Nature and Parks Authority but in the Old City there are a few interesting sites that are run by the East Jerusalem Development Company:

  • Ramparts Walk
  • Roman Plaza
  • Zedekiah’s Cave
  • Davidson Archaeological Park

Together these 4 sites can be the skeleton for a tour of the Old City. Because these sites are under one authority there is a combination ticket that gives you entry to all 4 sites. The current price is 55NIS whereas it would cost 72NIS if you bought  them individually (a saving of 24%) and the ticket is valid for 3 days.

The walls around the Old City were built in 1540 by the Turkish Sultan Suleiman and it is possible to walk on the top of two sections of these walls: 1) from Jaffa Gate around the Christian and Muslim Quarters all the way to Lions Gate (though I would recommend descending at Damascus Gate) and 2) across from Jaffa Gate by the Tower of David Museum around the Armenian and Jewish quarters to Dung Gate.

It’s important when exploring the Old City to go up onto the walls or roofs to get an overview of the city, something you can’t do from the ground. Looking outside the walls lets you see the institutions that were built in the late 1800s by the various European powers as the Ottoman Empire became the sick man on the Bosphorus.

At Damascus Gate you descend back in time to 135CE to the Roman Emperor Hadrian who crushed the Bar Kochba Revolt, destroyed Jerusalem and exiled its Jewish inhabitants. Hadrian rebuilt the city as a Roman city that he called Aelia Capitolina, of which remnants of the city plan exist to this day. The base of the Roman wall and the leftmost arch of three Roman arches can be seen below Damascus Gate. From Damascus Gate going south is El Zeit Street which runs along the route of the Roman Cardo and  El Wad Street that follows the Tyropean valley, above the secondary Cardo. Remains of both Cardos as well as other remains from the time of Hadrian can be visited on your tour.

Not far from Damascus Gate is another site that is called Zedekiah’s Cave or Solomon’s Quarry. This cave was discovered by chance by Dr James Turner Barclay, a physician and missionary who lived in Jerusalem for some years and was interested in biblical scholarship. On a sunny Sunday during the winter of 1854 Dr. Barclay was out walking along the city walls with his son and his faithful dog as he ususally did every Sunday when suddenly the dog vanished as if the earth had swallowed him up. While searching for the dog near the bedrock at the base of the city wall they noticed a deep hole from which they could hear the sound of barking. Excitedly they went home, gathered lanterns, ropes, measuring instruments and other equipment and under cover of darkness returned to the hole – the opening to a man-made cavern that had been created by quarrying stone. This is the largest quarry in the Holy Land, the cave begins at the city’s northern wall and extends under the Muslim Quarter for 230 meters, reaching the Sisters of Zion convent. Barclay is the one who discovered the gate to the Temple Mount that bears his name today (that you can see in the Western wall in the Women’s section of the Kotel plaza).

Following the secondary Cardo to the south of the city will bring you to the Davidson Archaeological Park excavated by Benjamin Mazar and Meir Ben Dov from 1968 to 1978 and later in the mid 90s by Ronnie Reich. Perhaps the most impressive sight in Jerusalem is the main Second Temple street, littered with large Herodian stones that the Romans hurled off the top of the wall 15 meters above when they destroyed the Temple and Jerusalem in 70CE. Where the stones under Robinson’s Arch have been cleared away, you can see that the large paving stones are broken and have buckled under the tremendous impact of the arch’s collapse.

In the visitor’s center is a movie of a Jewish pilgrim’s experience coming to the Temple in Jerusalem. The movie uses 3D modelling of the Temple complex based on the archaeological evidence.

Under the street is the main drainage channel for ancient Jerusalem that has been recently opened and that goes as far as the Siloam Pool. Walking through the park you come to the southern steps that lead up to the double and triple gates. Below the steps is Eilat Mazar’s recent excavation of part of a citadel, a 4 chamber entrance gate whose dimensions are almost identical to the palace gate in Megiddo and a building of “royal character” dated to the 9th century BCE.

Photo Walk

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I spent 3 hours yesterday afternoon on a photowalk, in this case, walking through the Old City taking photos, one of about 30 photographers. We started at Kikar Tzahal, walked through the Mamilla mall, entered Jaffa gate, followed the main road through the Armenian quarter to the Jewish quarter, down the steps to the Western Wall plaza and back to Jaffa gate via the Arab shuq. The route was chosen by a photographer – I think a guide could have taken people to some places that would have been more interesting to shoot. I was hoping for some photos with a background sky with a pink and blue sunset but the weather just didn’t cooperate yesterday.

In this post I’m sharing what I think are my best 7 photos. It gives you one particular view of Jerusalem on a particular day. A photowalk is an interesting photographic exercise.

The first day that you could ride Jerusalem’s new Light Rail was August 19. I rode it for the first time last week with clients. For the time being it’s free.

One of Jerusalem’s newest and fanciest hotels designed by Israeli architect, Moshe Safdie, as part of the Mamilla project. Across the street is the David Citadel Hotel also designed by Safdie. On the opposite corner the new Waldorf-Astoria is being built which incorporates the original Palace Hotel.

A really incredible flower shop, Aleh Koteret, with Jerusalem being reflected in the window.

The juxtaposition of metal and Jerusalem limestone, old and new.

Crossing through the Armenian quarter, you take an alleyway that turns left and under an arch is a view north to the Christian quarter and the Church of the Holy Sepulcher and the Mosque of Omar (Ibn Khattab). But Jerusalem, even the Old City, is not a living museum, so there are also water tanks, dude shemesh (sun heated water panels) and satellite dishes.

I can only submit one of these photos to the competition. Comment to make your choice.