Jerusalem Archives - Page 198 of 199

Pool of Siloam: Dec 05 update

Paleojudaica points to a new article in Haaretz on the Pool of Siloam. It’s basically an update of things since the last big reporting in August. There are a few new things of note, which I may or may not have mentioned here before. This includes:

The discovery of the 1st century street near the pool. For those of you who know, they found this street in the excavations underneath the road/path that runs between the old pool and the garden which covers the new pool. The archaeologist told me that he would like to reveal the entire length of the road from the Pool of Siloam to the Temple Mount. I told him he was crazy. Unless he is thinking of digging a tunnel underneath all of those houses. Then he’s still crazy :-).

The recovery of “cylinder seals.” This is clarified in a post to the ANE list that the Hebrew original has “seals and bullae.” (Bullae are seal impressions.) The archaeologist told me that these date to the 9th century and do not contain personal names (as do most of the bullae found in Area G, dating to the early 6th century B.C.). The importance of these seals, if they date to anything before the mid-8th century, is that they will give evidence of an administrative center in Jerusalem at that time. Many scholars reject the biblical evidence for that, and there’s not much else evidence for it outside the Bible. The article doesn’t say, but I can tell you that these seals were found around buildings which were constructed inside the Middle Bronze pool, which is just to the north of the Gihon Spring and protected by the Pool Tower. That’s the area shown in this photo.

Boy, here’s a line that I can’t believe. At least it wasn’t true a few weeks ago. “Garbage is being collected on a regular basis.” Or maybe they’re collecting the garbage, but they just can’t get the residents to understand that they have to put it in those large containers.

UPDATE: The Hebrew version of the article has a photo montage which shows some of the seals.

Tagged Discoveries, Jerusalem

New photos of Hezekiah’s Tunnel

I used to think that I took good photos in Hezekiah’s Tunnel. I remember when most people’s photos didn’t come out and mine did (because of the difficulty of focusing in the dark). That was back in the days when I was mainly shooting students in the tunnel for the early IBEX website. But yesterday I had the chance to shoot some photos of the tunnel without students; ones that should have more general use.

As of a few years ago, this was my best shot (currently on the Hezekiah’s Tunnel page at BiblePlaces.com). It was used a few years ago by NationalGeographic.com when they did an article about the tunnel.

This is one of the shots I took yesterday. I think it’s better.

Curiously enough, some poster on a forum at dpreview.com asked a question a couple of days ago about how to get a good photo in Hezekiah’s Tunnel. Now that I had done some experimenting, I had an answer for him.

Tagged Jerusalem, Travels

The Temple Mount You’ve Never Seen

If you’ve only been to Israel in the last five years, then you never had a chance to visit inside the Muslim buildings on the Temple Mount. In fact, chances are good you weren’t even allowed on the Temple Mount at all. If you visited before the outbreak of violence in 2000, you likely visited these but probably were not able to enter “Solomon’s Stables” below Al Aqsa Mosque. Now there’s a recent video showing all of that.

When I first saw the link, I ignored it because it didn’t seem that it would have anything of interest to me. Certainly no one has been able to take a videocamera through all of the off-limits areas in recent times. I was wrong. And the 4-minute video is worth watching if you have any interest in seeing the interior of the Dome of the Rock, the Al Aqsa Mosque and Solomon’s Stables. The clip could benefit with an audio commentary explaining what you’re seeing (including some remains of Herodian architecture!), but most of it is easy to understand.

Watch it at ynetnews.com.

Tagged Jerusalem, Temple Mount

Siloam Channel: Before and After

Here’s a lesser known aspect of the Pool of Siloam excavations. Most people know that the pool is fed by Hezekiah’s Tunnel, but they may not be aware of a second channel (known as Channel #2, or the Siloam Channel/Tunnel) which connects the Gihon Spring and the Pool of Siloam but on the east side of the City of David. This channel runs on the western slope above the Kidron Valley and it was once believed that it watered the King’s Gardens in the valley via a series of square openings.

One of those openings is on the southern end of the City of David. Here’s a photo taken in September 2002.

You can see that the opening looks square and the channel looks full of trash. Also note the street pavement and the crack in the bedrock in the upper left.

Eli Shukron’s recent excavations of the Pool of Siloam has included work on this channel, and our students have had some involvement in that (no glory here: more like cleaning out a sewer). But you can see the difference once the pavement has been removed and the channel cleared. Stephen’s head (on the left) is at about pavement level.

Tagged Jerusalem

Poofy White Clouds

Today was a glorious day. Fortunately I was in town early for a lecture and had some free time before the church service, and I took advantage of it. I confess that of late I have become something of a poofy white cloud fanatic. So often the sky in Israel is flat blue and when you get poofy white clouds, the effect is dramatic. Here’s Jerusalem from the Mt. of Olives:

I could dig up a picture without the clouds, but it’s late and I’m tired, so just imagine :-).

And here’s Bethlehem this morning (from the north). This could be my favorite Bethlehem picture. I had to wait a while for the clouds to move so the city was in the sunlight. What I probably like most about the picture is that Bethlehem is hard to see :-). The countryside grabs more of your attention, which is how it all used to be. Now the modern city is so un-photogenic that you really can’t get anything interesting inside it.

My only regret on the day is that I wasn’t on the Mount of Olives for the beautiful sunset. Instead I watched it in my rearview mirror as I drove back into town for an evening lecture.

Tagged Jerusalem, Travels

City of David, Then and Now

I decided that blog format with its narrow width didn’t quite suit tonight’s post, so I’ve put it on a separate page. Today after dropping our three oldest off at VBS, I headed to the City of David with a handful of old photographs that I had printed off. My goal was to get the “now” version. For the most part, it was not successful. That doesn’t mean I didn’t enjoy it greatly, but it means that things have changed so much that many times I couldn’t even get to the same location where the photograph was taken (or figure out exactly where it was). But I had success in a couple of places, and one of them I have posted, with downloadable high-res versions so you can flip back and forth between them. Take a look.

Tagged Jerusalem, Travels