Tag Archives: postaweek2011

“Top Ten” Jerusalem Sites

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The first 3 must see sites in Jerusalem are associated with the 3 monotheistic religions that make up Jerusalem’s religious fabric:

1) the Western wall (Judaism) built by Herod 2000 years ago during his renovation of the Second Temple,

2) the Church of the Holy Sepulcher (Christianity) built originally by Emperor Constantine and extensively rebuilt by the Crusaders in 1149 and

3) the Haram el Sharif, with the Dome of the Rock and Al Aqsa mosque (Islam) built originally in the 8th century by the Umayyad caliph Abd al-Malik.

Here is my personal list of 7 other sites not to be missed. Add a comment to suggest sites you think should be in the “Top Ten”.

4) For a unique view of Jerusalem, take the Ramparts Walk starting at Jaffa Gate where you actually walk on the stone walls built in 1540 by the Ottoman Turkish sultan, Suleiman the Magnificent for a birds eye view of the city. Check out the 8 gates in the city walls, including the remains of the Roman gate below today’s Damascus gate.

5) Visit the Church of Santa Anna in the White Father’s compound, the ruins of a Byzantine church and a Crusader chapel resting on a dike between two pools (there’s no water in them today). This is where Jesus performed one of the two miracles he did in Jerusalem, curing the cripple of 38 years (John 5). There is also a complete Crusader church with incredible acoustics (try it out by singing Amazing Grace or other liturgical melody).

6) Visit the archaeological park at the Davidson Center and see the massive stones that were hurled down onto the Herodian street by the Romans and the steps to the Temple Mount where Jesus would have walked, the Umayyad palaces from the Early Arab period and Byzantine and Crusader ruins.

7) Reserve a Western Wall Tunnel tour and see a model of King Herod’s Second Temple (there is also a model up on the roof of the Aish HaTorah building and a model of Jerusalem in 66CE including the Temple on the grounds of the Israel Museum) and walk 488 meters under the city along the Western Wall on the Herodian street to the spot closest to the Holy of Holies, the holiest site to Judaism.

8) Tour the ancient City of David to understand the importance of water in the history of Jerusalem. Bring “water” shoes and a flashlight and walk 45 minutes through Hezekiah’s Tunnel a manmade canyon cut in the limestone with water up to your knees – quite an experience. The tunnel brought the water of the Gihon Spring to the Siloam Pool, inside the walls of the city. This is where Jesus performed the second miracle in Jerusalem, curing the blind man (John 9).

9) After extensive renovations the new Israel Museum has been open a year and one million people have visited – the Archaeology wing has been completely redone, the Ethnography section has been expanded and the Art gallery includes a new section on Israeli art. The museum includes the Shrine of the Book, where the Dead Sea Scrolls and other artifacts from Qumran are on display. Beside it is the 1:50 model of Jerusalem in 66 CE just before the Jewish Revolt against Rome which led to the destruction of the Second Temple and Jerusalem by TItus. Walk around and enjoy the Billy Rose sculpture garden designed by the Japanese-American sculptor Isamu Noguchi.

10) Take a guided tour of the Mahane Yehuda market or participate in a scavenger hunt. More than an outdoor vegetable market, it is a great place to walk around to get a feel for the characters and local cuisines of Jerusalem. You can request a detailed map of the market at https://israeltours.wordpress.com/2008/05/31/map-mahane-yehuda-market/

Tisha b’Av

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Yesterday evening marked Tisha b’Av, the 9th day of the Hebrew month of Av, which commemorates the destruction of the Temple built by King Solomon and destroyed by the Babylonians in 586 BCE. The Babylonians razed Jerusalem and exiled the Jews from their land. But Babylon fell to the Persians shortly thereafter and Cyrus, the Persian king gave permission to the Jews to return and rebuild the Temple. So a remnant of the Jewish people came back to Jerusalem from the Babylonian exile 50 years later and built the Second Temple, a much more modest structure. A young person living in Jerusalem could have seen the splendor of the First Temple, lived through the Babylonian exile and seen the Second Temple.

Almost 500 years later, King Herod built four stone supporting walls around the Temple Mount and filled the area with earth and a series of arches to expand the quadrilateral platform (about 250 meters on each side); the longest supporting wall is 488 meters long. Herod rebuilt the temple, a magnificent structure, decorated with gold and marble that stood 50 meters high. Even the Rabbis who were not great fans of Herod record that “whoever has not seen Herod’s Temple has not seen a beautiful building in his life” (Baba Batra 4a). Herod built a main street with a drainage channel underneath that runs along the length of the western wall and at the southern end a staircase that begins parallel to the street and crosses over the street (like a highway interchange) that led to the Royal basilica; today the remains of the vault that supported the staircase is known as Robinson’s Arch. The same street continues south all the way to the Siloam Pool. The Romans destroyed the Temple and Jerusalem on the 9th of Av in 70CE.

The supporting walls of the Temple Mount are standing to this day and you can walk on the 2000 year old Herodian street and see the large ashlar stones with their signature frames in a pile from when the Romans pushed them off the top of the wall. I sat on the paving stones of the street yesterday evening to read Eicha (the book of Lamentations) and remember the destruction and our return.

Yesterday the Israel Antiquities Authority announced two new finds in a press release.

During the course of work the Israel Antiquities Authority carried out in Jerusalem’s ancient drainage channel, which begins in the Siloam Pool and runs from the City of David to the archaeological garden (near the Western Wall), impressive finds were recently discovered that breathe new life into the story of the destruction of the Second Temple. …

A 2,000 year old iron sword, still in its leather scabbard, was discovered in work the Israel Antiquities Authority is doing in the channel, which served as a hiding refuge for the residents of Jerusalem from the Romans at the time of the Second Temple’s destruction. In addition, parts of the belt that carried the sword were found.

Roman sword made of iron used by soldier stationed in Jerusalem in 66CE. Photo by Clara Amit, Israel Antiquities Authority.

According to the excavation directors Eli Shukron of the Israel Antiquities Authority and Professor Ronny Reich of the University of Haifa, “It seems that the sword belonged to an infantryman of the Roman garrison stationed in Israel at the outbreak of the Great Revolt against the Romans in 66 CE. The sword’s fine state of preservation is surprising: not only its length (c. 60 cm), but also the preservation of the leather scabbard (a material that generally disintegrates quickly over time) and some of its decoration”.

A stone object adorned with a rare engraving of a menorah was found in the soil beneath the street, on the side of the drainage channel.

Stone inscribed with five-branched menorah. Photo by Vladirim Naykhin.

According to Shukron and Professor Reich, “Interestingly, even though we are dealing with a depiction of the seven-branched candelabrum, only five branches appear here. The portrayal of the menorah’s base is extremely important because it clarifies what the base of the original menorah looked like, which was apparently tripod shaped”. The fact that the stone object was found at the closest proximity to the Temple Mount to date is also important. The researchers suppose a passerby who saw the menorah with his own eyes and was amazed by its beauty incised his impressions on a stone and afterwards tossed his scrawling to the side of the road, without imagining that his creation would be found 2,000 years later.

Gold Jewelry

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A gold bell, 1 cm in diameter, with curved markings was discovered during wet-sifting of material from the drainage channel below the Herodian street near Robinson’s Arch. This is indeed a rare find. According to the press release “The bell looked as if it was sewn on the garment worn by a man of high authority in Jerusalem at the end of the Second Temple period.” Not a regular item of jewelry. The only reference to golden bells in the Bible are bells on the vestments of the high priest (Exodus 28:33-34; 39:25-26).

And beneath upon the hem of it you shall make pomegranates of tekhelet and argaman (purple) and of scarlet, round about its hem and bells of gold between them round about.

Now you can hear the gold bell “tinkle” in this short video.

Jim Davila of the PaleoJudaica blog suggests that the women of Jerusalem wore bangles on their ankles which “tinkled” and had lots of jewelry (based on Isaiah 3:16-23). It seems plausible that they might well have worn bells as jewelry and that some of those bells might have been made of gold.

I find it fascinating that people were able to make a bell out of gold 2000 years ago. So I asked my good friend Michael Parkin, a sculptor and jeweler, if he could explain how it might have been constructed. This is his response:

It appears to have a seam on the right hand side so this is my best guess or at least how I would do it using first century methods:  First the bell’s maker formed 2 hemispheres using a rounded bit of (cow?) horn or antler and a wooden mallet to drive the metal into a depression in a piece of wood.  Each hemisphere would then be filled with either pitch (conifer sap mixed with dried powdered clay or perhaps beeswax (to hold its shape).  The surface decoration was probably done with a bronze tool shaped like a very dull cold chisel and driven using a mallet similar to but smaller than the one used to hammer on the horn tool.  The completed parts and a bit of gold wire (drawn or more likely hammered) could then be welded together in a tiny charcoal forge with a blow pipe to raise the temperature locally at the seam.

Photo courtesy of IAA

This reminds me of another rare find discovered in the excavations in the Givati parking lot across from Ir David, south of the Old City Walls. One gold earring was found, made up of a large pearl inlaid at the top center and surrounded by a coiled gold hoop. Two pendants hang below the focal pearl, each one with an emerald in a gold frame and a strung pearl. The earring was discovered in the ruins of a building that dates to the Byzantine period (4th-5th Centuries AD), but archaeologists at the site believe it is much older and that it was created during the Roman period, about 2,000 years ago.

A Morning on Mount Scopus

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Construction of the campus of the Hebrew University began in 1918 on land purchased from the Gray Hill estate. The dedication ceremony was held in 1925 in the presence of many dignitaries, including Lord Balfour, Viscount Allenby, Sir Herbert Samuel, Chief Rabbi Abraham Isaac Hacohen Kook, the poet Haim Nahman Bialik, Ahad Ha’am, Dr. Chaim Weizmann and many others.

A design for the university campus by Sir Patrick Geddes positioned the university buildings on the slopes of Mount Scopus, below a domed, hexagonal Great Hall recalling the Star of David, as a counterpoint to the octagonal Dome of the Rock in the Old City. This plan was never implemented, but Geddes designed the university library, today the Faculty of Law building. The master plan for the campus was taken over by German Jewish architect Erich Mendelsohn in 1935. Mendelsohn greatly influenced the local Jerusalem International Style (Bauhaus).

Notice the living sculpture outside of the Sinatra building that commemorates the nine students killed by a bomb left in the university cafeteria in July 2002, a tree growing out of the ground at an angle, by Israeli sculptor, Ran Morin. The Tilted Tree signifies humankind’s ability to withstand even the most disruptive shocks and to continue to grow upwards.

Prof. Sukenik and his colleagues, including Prof. Nahman Avigad, had planned to open a museum on Mount Scopus in 1948 to display items related to the history of the Jewish people in ancient times. Among the artifacts are ceiling tiles from the ancient synagogue* discovered in 1932 in the city of Dura Europos, located in the desert above the banks of the Euphrates in Syria. Sukenik had been invited by the Yale University team to visit the site (in Syria) and join in the publication of the findings. He was given 3 ceiling tiles that he brought back to Israel. The outbreak of the War of Independence with the result that Scopus was isolated within Jordanian-occupied territory made the opening of the museum impossible.

  

Sixty-three years later, these painted clay tiles and other artifacts have been put on display, including some half dozen ossuaries, mosaics, clay vessels, etc. from excavations in Israel by members of the Archaeology department. The modest museum is open to the public.

Walk through the botanical gardens organized by Alexander Eig, head of the Botany Department, based on the flora of the Land of Israel planted in 1931 to some caves with Second Temple period tombs. It was here that they found some half dozen ossuaries (the ones displayed on site are replicas, the originals are in the museum) including one with a 4 line inscription in Greek and Hebrew:

[In this ossuary are] the bones of [the family of] Nicanor of Alexandria who made the doors
Nicanor  Alexa

Nicanor is mention in the Babylonian Talmud in Yoma 38a, the donor of the two bronze doors for the Temple. The original ossuary is at the British museum in London.

In 1940s, Pinsker and Ussishkin, early leaders of the Zionist movement, were buried in one of the caves.

Went back to the Jerusalem War Cemetery on Mount Scopus and found the graves of Jewish soldiers who served in the British army during WWI and fought and died here. In addition, I noticed two gravestones of Turkish soldiers.

  

Visited the memorial at Givat HaTachmoshet to see the model of Jerusalem and how the city was divided in the ceasefire agreement of Nov 30, 1948 signed by Dayan (Israel) and el-Tell (Jordan). Article VIII of the 1949 Armistice Agreements signed by Israel and Jordan in April 1949 called for a resumption of “the normal functioning of the cultural and humanitarian institutions on Mount Scopus and free access thereto; free access to the Holy Places and cultural institutions and use of the cemetery on the Mount of Olives; resumption of operation of the Latrun pumping station; provision of electricity for the Old City; and resumption of operation of the railroad to Jerusalem.” Jordan did not abide to the agreement. There is a movie with original army footage that relates the events that divided the city in 1948 and shows how Israel recaptured the area from Jordan in 1967 and reunited the city.

* http://art-history.concordia.ca/cujah/issue03/3-the-significance-of-the-dura-europos-synagogue.htm

Miriam… Caiaphas Ossuary

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The Israel Exploration Journal (Vol. 61) recently published an article by Zissu and Goren which summarizes the importance of and confirms the genuineness of a decorated ossuary bearing an engraved inscription. The Israel Antiquities Authority Unit for the Prevention of Antiquities Robbery acquired the ossuary three years ago from antiquity robbers who had plundered a Jewish tomb from the Second Temple period. Although the provenance of the ossuary is unknown investigations have led the IAA to determine that the ossuary came from a burial cave in the area of the Elah Valley.

The front of the ossuary that was found is decorated with a stylized floral motif above which is a long Aramaic inscription engraved in Jewish script:

מרים ברת ישוע בר קיפא כהן דמעזיה דבית עמרי

‘Miriam Daughter of Yeshua Son of Caiaphas, Priest[s] of Ma’aziah from Beth ’Imri’
or, an alternative reading
‘Miriam, Daughter of Yeshua Bar Qayafa, Priest of (the course of) Ma’aziah of the House of ‘Omri’

In the conclusion of their study Zissu and Goren write, “the prime importance of the inscription lies in the reference to the ancestry of the deceased – Miriam daughter of Yeshua – of the Caiaphas family, indicating the connection to the family of the Ma’aziah course of priests of Beth ’Imri”. Caiaphas is the name of Yeshua’s father, and Miriam‘s grandfather.

Ma’aziah is the last of the twenty four priestly courses (service shifts) that served in the Temple in Jerusalem (the list of courses was formulated during King David’s reign and appears in I Chronicles 24:18). This is the first reference to the Maʽaziah course in an epigraphic find from the Second Temple period. For the first time we learn from an inscription that the Caiaphas family was related to the Ma’aziah course.

The ending “from Beth ’Imri” can be interpreted two ways:

  1. The first possibility is that Beth ’Imri is the name of a priestly family – the sons of ’Immer (Ezra 2: 36-37; Nehemiah 7:39-42) whose descendents include members of the Maʽaziah course.
  2. The second possibility is that Beth ’Imri is the place of origin of the deceased or of her entire family. The name of the ancient settlement was probably preserved in the name Beit ’Ummar, a village in the northern Hebron Hills. In that village and in nearby Khirbet Kufin, remains of a Jewish settlement were identified from the Second Temple period and the time of the Bar Kokhba Revolt. It is possible that the village of Kufin preserves the name of the Caiaphas family.

Since the ossuary in question was not found in a controlled archaeological excavation and because of the importance of its inscription, it was subjected to microscopic examinations using an environmental scanning electron microscope/energy dispersive spectrometer (ESEM/EDS), the purpose of which was to evaluate its authenticity. The patina covering the sides was checked, with emphasis on the patina covering the inscription. The examinations determined that the inscription is genuine and ancient.

Discovering Sussita

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To the east of the Sea of Galilee across from Kibbutz Ein Gev is a road off the main highway <92> that passes beside a field of banana plants and winds its way onto the Golan plateau just south of Afik. About halfway, to the left of the road is a hill and on its summit (350 meters above the lake) the remains of the Byzantine city of Sussita (known as Hippos in its earlier Hellenistic incarnation).

With General Pompey’s conquest of Sussita in 63BCE it became one of the cities of the Decapolis, a group of ten cities on the eastern frontier of the Roman empire, grouped together because of their language, culture, location, and political status (each had a certain degree of autonomy and self-rule, for example, Sussita was allowed to mint its own coinage with a symbol of a horse). The Decapolis cities were centers of Greek and Roman culture in a region that was otherwise Semitic (Nabatean, Aramean, and/or Jewish). According to Josephus, Hippos had a mixed population of Christians, pagans and Jews. Of the ten cities, eight are in Jordan and two, Bet Shean and Sussita are in present day Israel.

The earliest survey and excavations, date back to the work done in the late 19th century by Gottlieb Schumacher (the German Templer railway engineer) and that of archeologist Claire Epstein in the 1950s. The University of Haifa (in conjunction with Concordia University of Minnesota and the Polish Academy of Sciences) will be excavating for their 12th season this summer.

Sussita is a remarkable archaeological site and yet is virtually unknown and unvisited; a guide will help you discover little known places and explain them. It is quite different from other cities, for example, most of the building and the street paving stones are of black basalt (rather than white limestone), the main Roman street that runs for a total length of about 500 meters like a spine across the top of the site is not the usual Cardo but actually the Decumanus.

As you walk up the path towards the site the first thing you come to is the east gate. It had a tower on each side, one round and one square – a unique feature (most towers are the same). The round tower is well built of accurately cut basalt stones laid without the use of mortar. The square tower is poorly formed and preserved, and seems to have been repaired with cement at a later stage.

Just inside the gate you can see two interlocking stone rings part of an ingenious water system built by the Romans.

Originally Sussita collected its water from rainfall that was stored in a large underground vaulted cistern 9 meters deep at the western end of the city; smaller cisterns have been uncovered under other buildings. When this was insufficient for the needs of the growing city the Romans built an aqueduct starting from the waterfall in Nahal El-Al (btw this is a great hike) about 25 kilometers away. The problem was how to get it across the valley and up into the city. The Romans engineered a pipe made up of interlocking stone rings, made airtight with caulking, in which the water flowed down into the valley and then was drawn up into the city by siphonic action (like sucking a hose to siphon gas from your tank into a container) – the first time in this region.

On the left side is the South-East Church, also called the Cathedral,  the largest and most magnificent of the eight churches uncovered in Sussita. It was excavated by Claire Epstein, as a rescue dig during the years 1951-1955 when the IDF fortified the hill against clashes with the Syrian army. Like at Beit Shean, the columns have been toppled over (like a row of wine bottles on a table covered by a tablecloth when the cloth is yanked), each one parallel to its neighbor, by the earthquake of 749CE .

Continuing along the Decumanus, one arrives at the forum on the south (left) side and opposite it, the Hellenistic (third century BCE) compound on the north side. At one end of the forum, there appears to have been a triumphal arch, marking the crossroads with the Cardo (the “heart”). Next to the arch is a monumental building (dated to the third century CE) which may have been a nymphaeum, the major water distribution point, but as no pipes or basins were found here, it could also have been part of an open-air shrine.

On the south side of the Northwest Church are two rectangular pools, the walls are plastered and there are steps leading down to the bottom. They look like they could be ritual baths (mikve) but actually these basins were used to collect grape juice. Next to the basins is a large area, the treading floor, where the grapes were placed and crushed by the feet of the workers in order to extract their juice. Besides  three wine presses in the area there is also an oil press and storage area for agriculture products used by the priests and monks.

In 2009 archaeologists identified the Roman public structure to the west of the forum that had puzzled them – an Odeon (in Greek, to sing), a roofed mini-theater with about 600 seats used for musical shows and poetry reading, the first to be discovered in Israel. One of the most recent discoveries at Herodium was a small Roman theater and loggia on the other side of the main staircase, across from the tomb area. It would be interesting to compare these two theaters.

Although we know that Jews were a minority living in the city so far no synagogue has been found. An eagle-carved lintel, typical of a synagogue (perhaps originally from a synagogue and re-used), was found on the west side of the hill, but it turned out to be another church, the Southwest Church (read the post about the Byzantine church recently uncovered at Hirbet Midras that scholars thought was a synagogue because of the lintel).

Sussita and Bet Shean, both cities of the Decapolis;  small theaters, synagogues and churches, aquaducts at Sussita and Herodium; earthquakes that levelled cities until archaeologists re-discovered them – there is much to experience with a guide.

You can read more about the excavations at their website http://hippos.haifa.ac.il/