(Without a car in Israel, or: I love Hebrew translation)
Hitting a weekend without a car, we did a close-your-eyes-and-poke-a-site in the guidebook, and Lee hit upon City of David. Nestled on the east side of the Old City, in the shadow if the Jewish Quarter, lies the original Jerusalem.
Most people don't know that the current walls of the Old City were built by the Ottomans somewhere around 600 years ago, long after the destruction of both the first and second temples. Something else people don't really know, the original walled-in city is the modern day location of the City of David. Built by Cannonites something like 3000 years ago, it was captured by King David...and, you know, established. The historical site is (yet another) active archeology site, and according to our tour guide, new things are discovered every couple of years, forcing him to change his tour schpiel every so often.
Walking through the dirty part of town (loads of graffiti, broken down cars on the sides of the road...general disarray), you come to the gates of the tourist site. Which is _nice_. Very clean, very well laid out, very modern and spacious. The tours aren't cheap - 60NIS for a three hour trip, plus 4NIS for a tiny LED flashlight (more about that later!) - which probably explains the super fancy digs. We met our tour group, and walked down a fruit-tree lined path to a small auditorium, where we were given 3D glasses. The first part of the tour consisted of a 15-minute 3D adventure through the history of City of David. All things considered (and with our very judgmental eyes), the movie was pretty good quality!
(Gorgeous City of David gates)
You start the tour in the Royal Quarter (very inventively named 'Area G'), where King David and his crew chilled. Surrounded by his aristocrats, he was situated at the top of the hill. The archeological dig discovered 51 seals, which led them to believe one of the excavated rooms was a library or office of sorts. One of the seals was that of the scribe of Jeremiah. Of the book of Jeremiah. During this part of the tour, we learned that when the city walls were built, they had to consider the tricky issue of water. As the city is on a small hill, there weren't any naturally occurring pools in it, so they built the walls just a little short of a spring (Gihon spring), and were very inventive in how they accessed water in times of siege.
(Views of the Old City; Some aristocratic bedroom)
Continuing down the hill and into the dig site, we learned about Warren's Shaft (and yes, the teenager in me made many jokes about this), which is named after some British guy who 'rediscovered' it in 1867. The shaft is a tunnel carved out of the mountain leading to the Gihon spring, that allowed residents to access water during when the city was under attack. There is a theory that David used this tunnel to enter and take the city when he came in and conquered the Cannonites. Anyhow, from Warren's Shaft, you head down into the mountain to Hezekiah's Tunnel. Which is pretty frigging cool.
(Huh huh, Warren's Shaft, huh huh)
The tunnel is a 500 meter man-made tunnel carved out of the mountain to channel water from the Gihon spring to the Pool of Siloam (written in the bible that a blind man was healed when Jesus told him to wash in this pool) - the spring runs for about 30 minutes a day, filling the pool, before drying up again. This was done some 2700 years ago - two separate digging teams, starting at either end of the eventual tunnel, meeting in the middle. There was no modern surveying equipment, no machines to make this task easier - this was men with iron tools (or perhaps bronze) slowly digging WAY underground to create a tunnel to capture a temperamental stream to keep a city hydrated. The two teams were only a few inches off from a perfect lineup- and required a tiny adjustment to complete the tunnel and have the two teams meet.
Part of the tour CAN take you through this tunnel, in knee-high (or slightly deeper) water, or you can circumvent that, and walk a dry tunnel to a meeting point near some massive bathing pool used for some celebrations (taking water to the temple in glass dishes.....more on that in a while). Most of the tour (oh, egads- a bunch of Americans. New Yorkers. Rudest people ever, no joke.) elected to go around the water, and Lee and I, being us, took the water route. Armed with our tiny 4NIS LED flashlights, we rolled up our pants legs and headed off down into a tiny dark water-filled tunnel. It was a little scary, and very cool. You could see the tool marks in the stone, and tiny stalactites hanging from the ceiling. Most of the tunnel was only slightly wider than Lee's shoulders, and under 2 meters high- occasionally MUCH shorter than that, and in one section MUCH taller - maybe 10 meters - and the water went to just under my knees, except at the very beginning, when it was crotch height. My jeans got a good soaking. As did my shoes. And 500 meters down a dark, damp, echoing tunnel is far. A lot farther than you'd think.
(Lee in the stream; No, seriously, I'm cool with dark tunnels in knee-deep water I can't see the bottom of, really.)
(Some more of the tunnel; Siloam's Pool)
We eventually hit daylight again at the Pool of Siloam, where we did our best at drying off before returning to meet the rest of the group. They were standing in front of a mural, covering an active dig site, showing a bunch of citizens around a very large pool, surrounded by columns and white stone steps. We learned that this was a community pool, used by everyone, and for celebrations. I can't recall the name of the 7-day ceremony, but citizens would take small gold plates, and fill them with water from the pool, walk up the numerous stone steps of the town marketplace to the temple, and throw the water on the sacrificial altar. Every day for seven days. Standing underground, on the unearthed steps, our guide led us to the end of the dig, saying:
"We were digging here, and hit a Byzantine church, so we had to stop there. We can't dig through other ruins."
And:
"On this side (the northern side) of the excavation is a mosque, we can't dig through a mosque."
This caused some titters through the crowd - like I said before, you can't throw a rock in this town without hitting some sort of historically important something or other.
This week was uneventful otherwise- we decided we're staying on for another 6 months, Lee is headed back to the UK tomorrow for his family, and we're getting ready to ship out for a month away. Pretty much status quo for the dynamic duo!
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