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rhuOK, so, after lunch we went up to the rooftops for a better view. You're above the level of the Dome of the Rock from up there.
A panoramic video from the rooftops.
The Dome of the Rock and the Satellite Dishes of the Faithful.
The kids have become somewhat obsessed with the feral cat population in Jlem. These cats were drinking from plastic washing cups that were perched in the windows:
We also saw yet another variant on the "aquarium" idea; this one is built-in:
It turns out that under the rear of the Kotel plaza is a new archaeological excavation. They have found another street from Second-Temple times and there's a lot of active digging going on:
I should probably mention that the security forces were much more visible today. There were a lot of soldiers and visibly armed police on patrol. At the checkpoint on the road from Efrat, they had extra barriers to slow the traffic. And in this picture, you can see a lot of soldiers at the Kotel, but I think many of them were there as tourists:
1pm We didn't go in to the Kotel plaza itself today. Instead, we went to the southern third of the Kotel, which is in the Jerusalem Archaeological Park.
Outside the entrance is the continuation of the road that is being excavated behind the Kotel plaza. In this picture, you can see that road behind Dani, and in the wall is "the newest and oldest gate" in the city walls. It was opened about 5 years ago, but they put it there because they noticed that the cement in the walls there was only about 500 years old; this was one of the original gates, known as the Tanners' Gate, which was closed up when the Turks built the Dung Gate.
Inside the park is the southwest corner of the Temple Mount:
And they have lots of stones that were found at various levels:
By the southwest corner is part of the water supplies for the mikvaot:
Dani pointed out this stone, which is in the part of the wall that wasn't part of the Kotel, but rather part of the Ummayad palace that was built later. He discussed the probable history of this stone: first, used by Herod to build the Jewish Temple complex; then removed by the Romans and used to build a pagan temple of Jupiter [we know this because that's what they did with the stones that they took from the Kotel wall, and this one is neither in the Kotel wall any more nor in the heap of stones from the rubble]; then taken by the Byzantines to build a church (probably the Nea) [because that's what they did with the stones from the temple of Jupiter]; finally taken by the Ummayads to build their palace [because that's where we find it today.]
For context, here's the Ummayad wall in the foreground and the Har Habayit in the background. The Kotel ha-Maaravi (Western Wall) is in line withe Ummayad wall, and the Kotel ha-Dromi (Southern Wall) is going off to the right).
Later, the Crusaders built a facility atop the Ummayad palace, and drilled a drain hole down through the wall, unaware that they were drilling through at least one stone from the Temple:
Alissa looked cute:
Moving up to the Temple Mount itself, we saw Robinson's arch about which you can read more elsewhere, I'm sure.
But there are a few things that I found of note. Basically, the street that ran along the outside of the Temple Mount was not holy in any way. In fact, it was (as Dani put it) a really "fun" place. Tourists came from all over the Roman empire to marvel at the stunning beauty of the Temple and the odd behaviour of the Jews, who prayed to only one God and didn't even have any images or statues of that God in their Temple. You can see that street quite clearly in the image above, which I'll relink here:
These are original 1st-century-BCE paving stones. Notice how smooth and even they are.
Now, here's what they found under Robinson's arch when they excavated:
That's what happened when the Romans collapsed the arch after the destruction of Jerusalem. It fell all at once and smashed the pavement directly beneath; the rest of the street is intact.
In contrast, here's a spot further down the street where they dismantled the wall one stone at a time:
Another item of note, related to that "fun" street above, is a fragment of stone that was found near the corner:
The Hebrew inscription says "Leveit Hatokeia lehavd..." --- For the house of the trumpeter (we assume that this refers to the trumpeters who would stand at this corner of the Temple Mount and sound the three separate warning blasts on Friday afternoons), to divi... --- and we assume that this is the formula "to divide between holy and mundane", that is, to mark the edge of the sacred precinct.
Heather took this wonderful picture as we were descending the steps
The whole complex is dotted with mikvaot. They had one long staircase just going down, and one (with a wall between) coming back up. The idea is that most people are tamei, which makes them forbidden from going up to the Mount. By immersing completely in a mikvah, they become tahor, ritually clean, and can now go up. But they can't touch someone tamei or they become tamei again.
We walked to the southern wall via the "peace park"
and through a house created during the Ummayad period. You can tell that the owners were middle class, because they were wealthy enough to afford a mosaic floor but not wealthy enough to afford a fancy one. Unlike at many other places, you are allowed to walk on the ancient mosaics here:
And through the old sewer system
And some other ruins from the Ummayad houses
which they built using interesting-looking stones in decorative ways. This was a Byzantine seal, apparently
All of this was to get us to the southern steps. There were fifteen of these, originally, corresponding to the fifteen "Songs of Steps" in the Psalms. The Levites (yay, my family) would chant these Psalms while people ascended.
3 pm Our final major stop for the day was the site of the ancient City of David. This is an active archaeological site; just last week they found a cache of thousands of coins.
The main admission area is supported by beams, with the active dig going on right below. They now believe that this part of the dig is actually the location of David's palace, based on some potsherds that they found there and based on the layout of what surrounds it:
:
(The man in the third picture is an archaeologist working on a diagram of the site.)
This portion is where they think the original fortress of Zion (which predates the Davidic city) was located. Based on textual evidence and the topography of the site, the most likely location for David's palace is between this fortress and the Beit Hamiqdash.
Here are some of the houses from where the fortress is. In one of them, they have found a bunch of seals, including two with names of people named in Chronicles and Jeremiah. One of the houses had two stories, built in the shape of a chet:
Next to it was this stone, which they think is the world's oldest toilet. It was connected to a sluice which ran down the hill into the nearby valley.
Once the Bronze Age gave way to the Iron Age, they were able to dig into the limestone, which let them build cisterns. This allowed the city to move up the hill.
The water supply for the city was on the east side, about halfway down the hill. It was difficult to shlep the water up to the upper parts of the city, so they built a tunnel to help the citizens get there by climbing steps and then lowering a bucket down a shaft:
One of the big issues facing the Jews in the time of the Assyrians was that their water supply was just outside the city. To defend themselves against a siege, Hezekiah had his workers build a tunnel connecting that water supply with a pool that was inside the city walls, then he had them close off what had been the access to the water supply. The excavators worked in two teams, starting at either end, and when they met in the middle, one of the engineers wrote a commemorative plaque, which has been found. A replica is on display:
The water flowed into the pool of Shiloam, which is now mostly a grassy area, although there's a bit of a Roman street there. A street which lines up exactly with the one running past the Kotel.
In the days of the Mishna, this is the site from which water was drawn to cleanse the altar during Sukkot on the Simchat bet ha-Shoeva. It's a long schlep up the hill (trust me!) and so the singing and dancing probably started as a work song.
When Jerusalem fell, some of the Zealots hid in the sewer tunnels under this street. (Remember, this is the same street we keep talking about.) According to Josephus, the Roman soldiers would take axes to the stones of the street to find Jews. And when they started excavating this part of the street earlier this year, what did they find? Portions of the street where stones were missing, with blade marks on the adjacent stones, and crushed human bones, spearheads, and intact amphorae with food remains inside. Here's one of those gaps:
We then got a van ride back up the hill, and then started walking back to our car. The kids were amazing. They had been walking with only a few breaks since 8:30 am, and they were still able to walk (and sometimes run) with a minimum of complaint up the hills of the Old City.
5:10 pm We passed the Kotel shortly after Maariv time. It was packed.
5:30 pm Back at Jaffa Gate, we were getting ready to go back to the car when we heard a drum and trumpet corps. We looked and saw a bunch of people carrying torches. As they drew closer, we realized that (1) the music was Maoz Tzur, and (2) the people were Israeli soldiers.
[Movie on Picasa to come]
The soldiers came on to the plaza where we were; we all sang and there was torch passing and some dancing. Then they went down into the mall, where there was a band and MC. Some of them came over and introduced themselves to us, asked where we were from, and wished us a happy Chanukah and a pleasant stay in Israel. It was amazingly cool. (No pix of this part; we were too flabbergasted to ask for one.)
Then back to the car. Some of the buildings in the mall had numbers on each stone:
It turns out these are historically important buildings (one is where Herzl stayed) that had to be moved to accommodate the urban development of the area. So each stone was numbered; the buildings were disassembled, moved, and reassembled.
6 pm We met J&J and kids at a mall in Talpiot for dinner. At the top of the escalators was a puppet show (I think based on a popular kids' TV show). There was a lit chanukiyah and a lot of very happy kids.
(video)
Dinner was at a place called Steakiyat Gingi, which was excellent. Superb, Heather says. It looked like a standard mall takeout joint, but it had wonderful kabab, shishlik, beans 'n' rice, salad, etc.
The kids had fun.
Then we came home and lit for the last night. (Video will be forthcoming on Picasa).
Tomorrow, we head south for a few days. I don't know if the hotel will have wi-fi, so don't worry if you don't hear from us again until Wednesday night.
A panoramic video from the rooftops.
The Dome of the Rock and the Satellite Dishes of the Faithful.
The kids have become somewhat obsessed with the feral cat population in Jlem. These cats were drinking from plastic washing cups that were perched in the windows:
We also saw yet another variant on the "aquarium" idea; this one is built-in:
It turns out that under the rear of the Kotel plaza is a new archaeological excavation. They have found another street from Second-Temple times and there's a lot of active digging going on:
I should probably mention that the security forces were much more visible today. There were a lot of soldiers and visibly armed police on patrol. At the checkpoint on the road from Efrat, they had extra barriers to slow the traffic. And in this picture, you can see a lot of soldiers at the Kotel, but I think many of them were there as tourists:
1pm We didn't go in to the Kotel plaza itself today. Instead, we went to the southern third of the Kotel, which is in the Jerusalem Archaeological Park.
Outside the entrance is the continuation of the road that is being excavated behind the Kotel plaza. In this picture, you can see that road behind Dani, and in the wall is "the newest and oldest gate" in the city walls. It was opened about 5 years ago, but they put it there because they noticed that the cement in the walls there was only about 500 years old; this was one of the original gates, known as the Tanners' Gate, which was closed up when the Turks built the Dung Gate.
Inside the park is the southwest corner of the Temple Mount:
And they have lots of stones that were found at various levels:
By the southwest corner is part of the water supplies for the mikvaot:
Dani pointed out this stone, which is in the part of the wall that wasn't part of the Kotel, but rather part of the Ummayad palace that was built later. He discussed the probable history of this stone: first, used by Herod to build the Jewish Temple complex; then removed by the Romans and used to build a pagan temple of Jupiter [we know this because that's what they did with the stones that they took from the Kotel wall, and this one is neither in the Kotel wall any more nor in the heap of stones from the rubble]; then taken by the Byzantines to build a church (probably the Nea) [because that's what they did with the stones from the temple of Jupiter]; finally taken by the Ummayads to build their palace [because that's where we find it today.]
For context, here's the Ummayad wall in the foreground and the Har Habayit in the background. The Kotel ha-Maaravi (Western Wall) is in line withe Ummayad wall, and the Kotel ha-Dromi (Southern Wall) is going off to the right).
Later, the Crusaders built a facility atop the Ummayad palace, and drilled a drain hole down through the wall, unaware that they were drilling through at least one stone from the Temple:
Alissa looked cute:
Moving up to the Temple Mount itself, we saw Robinson's arch about which you can read more elsewhere, I'm sure.
But there are a few things that I found of note. Basically, the street that ran along the outside of the Temple Mount was not holy in any way. In fact, it was (as Dani put it) a really "fun" place. Tourists came from all over the Roman empire to marvel at the stunning beauty of the Temple and the odd behaviour of the Jews, who prayed to only one God and didn't even have any images or statues of that God in their Temple. You can see that street quite clearly in the image above, which I'll relink here:
These are original 1st-century-BCE paving stones. Notice how smooth and even they are.
Now, here's what they found under Robinson's arch when they excavated:
That's what happened when the Romans collapsed the arch after the destruction of Jerusalem. It fell all at once and smashed the pavement directly beneath; the rest of the street is intact.
In contrast, here's a spot further down the street where they dismantled the wall one stone at a time:
Another item of note, related to that "fun" street above, is a fragment of stone that was found near the corner:
The Hebrew inscription says "Leveit Hatokeia lehavd..." --- For the house of the trumpeter (we assume that this refers to the trumpeters who would stand at this corner of the Temple Mount and sound the three separate warning blasts on Friday afternoons), to divi... --- and we assume that this is the formula "to divide between holy and mundane", that is, to mark the edge of the sacred precinct.
Heather took this wonderful picture as we were descending the steps
The whole complex is dotted with mikvaot. They had one long staircase just going down, and one (with a wall between) coming back up. The idea is that most people are tamei, which makes them forbidden from going up to the Mount. By immersing completely in a mikvah, they become tahor, ritually clean, and can now go up. But they can't touch someone tamei or they become tamei again.
We walked to the southern wall via the "peace park"
and through a house created during the Ummayad period. You can tell that the owners were middle class, because they were wealthy enough to afford a mosaic floor but not wealthy enough to afford a fancy one. Unlike at many other places, you are allowed to walk on the ancient mosaics here:
And through the old sewer system
And some other ruins from the Ummayad houses
which they built using interesting-looking stones in decorative ways. This was a Byzantine seal, apparently
All of this was to get us to the southern steps. There were fifteen of these, originally, corresponding to the fifteen "Songs of Steps" in the Psalms. The Levites (yay, my family) would chant these Psalms while people ascended.
3 pm Our final major stop for the day was the site of the ancient City of David. This is an active archaeological site; just last week they found a cache of thousands of coins.
The main admission area is supported by beams, with the active dig going on right below. They now believe that this part of the dig is actually the location of David's palace, based on some potsherds that they found there and based on the layout of what surrounds it:
: (The man in the third picture is an archaeologist working on a diagram of the site.)
This portion is where they think the original fortress of Zion (which predates the Davidic city) was located. Based on textual evidence and the topography of the site, the most likely location for David's palace is between this fortress and the Beit Hamiqdash.
Here are some of the houses from where the fortress is. In one of them, they have found a bunch of seals, including two with names of people named in Chronicles and Jeremiah. One of the houses had two stories, built in the shape of a chet:
Next to it was this stone, which they think is the world's oldest toilet. It was connected to a sluice which ran down the hill into the nearby valley.
Once the Bronze Age gave way to the Iron Age, they were able to dig into the limestone, which let them build cisterns. This allowed the city to move up the hill.
The water supply for the city was on the east side, about halfway down the hill. It was difficult to shlep the water up to the upper parts of the city, so they built a tunnel to help the citizens get there by climbing steps and then lowering a bucket down a shaft:
One of the big issues facing the Jews in the time of the Assyrians was that their water supply was just outside the city. To defend themselves against a siege, Hezekiah had his workers build a tunnel connecting that water supply with a pool that was inside the city walls, then he had them close off what had been the access to the water supply. The excavators worked in two teams, starting at either end, and when they met in the middle, one of the engineers wrote a commemorative plaque, which has been found. A replica is on display:
The water flowed into the pool of Shiloam, which is now mostly a grassy area, although there's a bit of a Roman street there. A street which lines up exactly with the one running past the Kotel.
In the days of the Mishna, this is the site from which water was drawn to cleanse the altar during Sukkot on the Simchat bet ha-Shoeva. It's a long schlep up the hill (trust me!) and so the singing and dancing probably started as a work song.
When Jerusalem fell, some of the Zealots hid in the sewer tunnels under this street. (Remember, this is the same street we keep talking about.) According to Josephus, the Roman soldiers would take axes to the stones of the street to find Jews. And when they started excavating this part of the street earlier this year, what did they find? Portions of the street where stones were missing, with blade marks on the adjacent stones, and crushed human bones, spearheads, and intact amphorae with food remains inside. Here's one of those gaps:
We then got a van ride back up the hill, and then started walking back to our car. The kids were amazing. They had been walking with only a few breaks since 8:30 am, and they were still able to walk (and sometimes run) with a minimum of complaint up the hills of the Old City.
5:10 pm We passed the Kotel shortly after Maariv time. It was packed.
5:30 pm Back at Jaffa Gate, we were getting ready to go back to the car when we heard a drum and trumpet corps. We looked and saw a bunch of people carrying torches. As they drew closer, we realized that (1) the music was Maoz Tzur, and (2) the people were Israeli soldiers.
[Movie on Picasa to come]
The soldiers came on to the plaza where we were; we all sang and there was torch passing and some dancing. Then they went down into the mall, where there was a band and MC. Some of them came over and introduced themselves to us, asked where we were from, and wished us a happy Chanukah and a pleasant stay in Israel. It was amazingly cool. (No pix of this part; we were too flabbergasted to ask for one.)
Then back to the car. Some of the buildings in the mall had numbers on each stone:
It turns out these are historically important buildings (one is where Herzl stayed) that had to be moved to accommodate the urban development of the area. So each stone was numbered; the buildings were disassembled, moved, and reassembled.
6 pm We met J&J and kids at a mall in Talpiot for dinner. At the top of the escalators was a puppet show (I think based on a popular kids' TV show). There was a lit chanukiyah and a lot of very happy kids.
(video)
Dinner was at a place called Steakiyat Gingi, which was excellent. Superb, Heather says. It looked like a standard mall takeout joint, but it had wonderful kabab, shishlik, beans 'n' rice, salad, etc.
The kids had fun.
Then we came home and lit for the last night. (Video will be forthcoming on Picasa).
Tomorrow, we head south for a few days. I don't know if the hotel will have wi-fi, so don't worry if you don't hear from us again until Wednesday night.