Jordan: Jerash, Amman, Mt Nebo and Wadi Mujib

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The last part of our journey in the Middle East was through The Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan. We had only three days in this beautiful country, but we managed to visit a few significant archaeological sites in the north of the country, as well as Petra in the south (more on that in the next post).

On our first day we visited Jerash, the Gerasa of antiquity. It was one of the great cities of the Decapolis in Roman times, with a magnificent oval plaza and cardo, and many temples to Greco-Roman gods. Amazing ruins, carefully reconstructed, plus a pipe band in full Jordanian military dress playing Scotland the Brave as we entered the theatre. Did they know we were Presbyterians? I wonder …

Our second day began in country’s capital, Amman, and ended after dark at Petra. In Amman we visited the Citadel site and museum, and learned something of the site’s history since Neolithic times. The city has had several name changes since then: it was known as Rabbath-Ammon (the high place of the Ammonites) up till Roman times when it was part of the Decapolis and renamed Philadelphia. The museum was full of artifacts found in Jerash and Petra, beautiful things indeed. The large temple on the site is assumed to have been dedicated to Hercules because of the statue “fragment” found nearby: the large curled hand in the photo in the gallery.

On the way to Petra we visited Mt Nebo, and stopped for a while at Madaba to see the mosaics in the Church of St George. The view from Mt Nebo stretches all the way to the Jordan Valley and the mountains beyond – the whole of the Promised Land shown to Moses before he died (Deuteronomy 34). Breathtaking!

This winding route took us through the Wadi Mujib, down into the deep valley that leads to the Dead Sea, across the River Mujib Dam, and up the other side. Stunning views in the late afternoon light, and a great chance to stop and stretch our legs. Our guide reminded us that this valley was once known as the Valley of Arnon, and encouraged us to find out how often it’s mentioned in the Bible. Twenty-three times, I discovered.

And then, after several long hours in the bus, we arrived in Petra …

Israel: Tel Dan, Caesarea Philippi, Megiddo, Caesarea Maritima, Sepphoris

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From little rocks to big rocks. These images were collected over the few days that we stayed in Tiberius, by Lake Galilee, and used it as a base for day trips.

Tel Dan is significant as the site of the Canaanite city of Laish, which flourished in in the 18th century BC, and also of the Israelite city of Dan. The fortifications, including the city gate in the gallery below, are attributed to King Ahab sometime around 850 BC. The remains of the king’s seat include round bases for the poles that carried the canopy over the king while he sat in judgment. Amazing that they are still there after so many centuries. Also of interest to us was the site of the Jeroboam’s temple (1 Kings chapter 12) – here we stood in the “sacred place” of one of the northern temples built at the time of the division of the Kingdom of Israel in 930 BC!

Nearby is Banias, also known as Panias, as well as by its 1st century name of Caesarea Philippi. This is the site of the spring that is part of the head waters of the Jordan River, hence the name honouring the god Pan. Caesar Augustus added the region to the territory of King Herod at the end of the 1st century BC, and Herod built a temple there in honour of Augustus. Herod’s son Philip received this part of the kingdom when his father died – he made it his capital and renamed it Caesarea Philippi. In the New Testament, Caesarea Philippi is important: it is the place where the apostle Peter understood and declared Jesus to be the Messiah (Mark 8:27-29).

Megiddo is another site with Old Testament significance. Its history dates back to the Neolithic Period (9th-5th centuries BC) and its name appears in the Biblical records of the Israelites’ conquering of Canaan, as well as of Solomon’s building projects. It is the site of the battle between Israel and Egypt in 609 BC, where King Josiah faced Pharoah Neco in battle and died, and also of the last battle in Britain’s conquest of Palestine at the end of World War I, in 1918. Megiddo is the source of the Apocalyptic place name Armageddon: the final battle (Revelation 16:16).

At Caesarea Maritima we saw the archaeological remains of King Herod’s magnificent city by the sea, including the theatre, the royal palace, the hippodrome, and the great aqueduct carrying water to the city. And we were able to paddle (no time to swim!!) in the Mediterranean. Sepphoris, in Galilee, was the city built by Herod Antipas as his first capital when the region passed to him upon the death of his father (he later built another capital on the lake, naming it Tiberius). The Herods were big on building projects, and they were big projects, using labour from the surrounding districts to complete them. It’s intriguing to think that Jesus, as a young man learning his trade, may have walked the short distance from Nazareth to Sepphoris to work on the construction of that city.

Next post … across the river to the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan!

Israel: Not more mosaics!

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Two things we saw a lot of on our journey: big rocks that used to hold up buildings, and little rocks arranged into pretty pictures. Both are equally impressive!

In this post I’ve brought together the most interesting of the little rocks: the mosaics that once decorated the floors of great Roman or Byzantine buildings, and a couple of modern mosaic walls from modern times. The Byzantine mosaics here include:

… The Constantine Mosaic under the existing floor of the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem (early 4th century)

… The mosaics on the floor of the Byzantine church on the mount of Masada (5th-7th centuries)

… The mosaic floor of the synagogue at Beit Alfa (6th Century). This is particularly interesting for the way the people are “drawn” in a naive style, and for the zodiac in the centre panel. Human images and a zodiac in a synagogue? How did they get there?

… The mosaic map floor of the Church of St George in Madaba (around AD 560). Around 2 million tesserae were used to make this map showing the location of 150 towns and cities that a traveller would pass through on the way from Syria to Egypt. The map shows remarkable geographical accuracy, if not in scale certainly in relative position of the towns, and includes possibly the oldest map of Jerusalem. Amazing!

The Roman mosaics at Sepphoris date to the 3rd century, and include the “Mona Lisa of Galilee”, part of a mosaic that was made of an estimated 1.5 million stones in 28 colours.

I am rather pleased with these mosaic images, as they were often difficult to photograph. Many were indoors, or protected under cover from the weather, and so capturing the images required shooting at high ISO (not good for noise), wide aperture (not great for depth of field) or slow shutter speeds (not great for camera shake). The Beit Alfa mosaic was shot using the 50mm f/1.8 lens (at 800 ISO, and 1/60th second to allow an aperture of f/5) so that I could capture as much detail as possible shooting across the floor. The Constantine mosaic in Bethlehem was also indoors, in a very dimly lit church, and was shot at the same ISO and shutter speed but with an aperture of f/2.8, the maximum on the 20mm lens. I am very impressed with the ability of the Nikon D7000 to minimise noise at high ISO, and also with the live view function (which made it so much easier to get better framing by stretching my arm out over the mosaics). I don’t know why I spent so long vacillating over whether or not to buy it!

Anyway, have a look at these wonderful mosaics. They are historically important, and beautiful as well.

Israel: Galilee

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We spent a few days around Lake Galilee, visiting archeological sites with both Jewish and Christian significance (Beit She’An, Beit Alfa, Korazim, Bethsaida, Capernaum) and churches (Tabgha, Kursi, Mt of the Beatitudes). We also visited the museum built around the 1st century Sea of Galilee Boat found on the shores of the lake, had a very pleasant (but too short!) cruise on the lake, and ate St Peter’s fish for lunch.

This is the region were Jesus spent most of his earthly life. Some of the sites are traditional, and may not really be the place. The Church at Kursi, for example is said to be built near Gadara, where Jesus cast the demon Legion into a herd of pigs and the pigs plunged over a cliff to their death. There are textual variants for the account of this miracle, some saying the place was Gerasa (which we visited later, Jerash in Jordan). Still, it was interesting to visit the sites, to see what generations of Christians have made of them, and for the great views of the Lake.

We can be much more confident about the archeological sites of towns referred to in the New Testament texts. Capernaum was impressive for both the Jewish Synagogue and the site believed to be the house of the apostle Peter. The tradition about the site of Peter’s house dates to the early 4th century, and several churches have been built since then, one on top of the other.

Beit She’An is also known by its Roman name, Scythopolis, and has a history dating to the 15th century BC. The ruins that can be seen today date from its Roman period, when it was the capital city of the Decapolis, the federation of ten Greco-Roman cities in and around the region of Palestine. The ruins are impressive and the mosaics quite beautiful. More on mosaics in my next post!

What’s stuck with me since leaving Galilee is the wealth of imagery in Jesus’ sermons and parables that was quite clearly drawn from life in the region of Galilee. As Peter Walker says in the book our college group read as preparation for the tour: “Simple, ordinary things could become the vehicle for conveying spiritual realities.” Looking at the wildflowers I couldn’t help think of this, for example:

“Consider how the wild flowers grow. They do not labor or spin. Yet I tell you, not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these. If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today, and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, how much more will he clothe you—you of little faith! And do not set your heart on what you will eat or drink; do not worry about it. For the pagan world runs after all such things, and your Father knows that you need them. But seek his kingdom, and these things will be given to you as well.” Luke 12:27-31


Israel: Bethlehem, Yardenit, Nazareth, Cana (and military checkpoints)

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Some “sacred sites” celebrating a connection to the life of Jesus are based on tradition only, but they are interesting to visit if only to see how Christians (and entrepreneurs) across the centuries have responded to the idea of “knowing” where these events happened.

Some of the traditions in fact go back to within a couple of centuries of Jesus’ earthly life, increasing the likelihood that the place is actually the place. Origen wrote, in about AD 230 (Contra Celsum 1:51) that visitors to Bethlehem were being shown a “cave” where Jesus was born, and in the early 4th century there are records of Constantine building a basilica over the site. So maybe that little spot that we looked at for about 30 seconds, after queueing in stifling heat for maybe an hour, was actually the site of Jesus’ birth. Who knows?

Similarly, the location of the town of Nazareth is something we can be confident about, but that of the site celebrated by the Church of the Annunciation is uncertain (and, in the scheme of things, dare I say, unimportant). The church is beautiful, though. It’s a very modern building, constructed in the mid-20th century on the site of several earlier churches. Stunning stained glass windows!

Cana? Well, there were a few towns named Cana, so it’s not at all certain that the one we visited holds the site of Jesus’ first miracle of turning water into wine at a friend’s wedding. However the church we went to was doing a brisk trade in renewed marriage vows, and the street vendors were selling quite a lot of miracle wine. Most of us opted for the freshly squeezed pomegranate juice as it seemed more genuine.

Yardenit is not the site of Jesus’ baptism, but a place where pilgrims have come to be baptised in the Jordan River. It is just south of Lake Galilee and still within Israeli territory, making it a safer place for tourists to visit than other parts of the river which form part of the border between Israel and the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan.

And on the issue of safety … several times our travels took us into the Palestinian Territories, and once into the Golan Heights. Though we lost count of the number of young people carrying powerful weapons in close proximity to our tour group I don’t think we ever felt we were in any real danger. But folk in that part of the world take security pretty seriously, hence the Israeli West Bank barrier, or “seam zone”, seen in one of the photos below. Some intense vehicle inspections were going on during one of our passages, and a couple of gun-toting military types walked through our bus looking at us very carefully. It made me thankful for the part of the world that I call home.

Israel: Jerusalem

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Jerusalem. Where to start? We spent three days walking the streets of this ancient city and visiting so many famous places, traditional religious sites and museums, trying to cram in as much as we could before things closed down for the Jewish New Year and Shabbat celebrations. Even with my photo record it is all a bit of a blur!

Our first stop was Temple Mount and The Dome of the Rock, which we were unable to enter but instead appreciated its beauty from the outside. From there we walked to the site where the Antonia Fortress once stood (now a monastery is built there) and along the Via Dolorosa to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. We also visited the Garden Tomb Site (beautiful and peaceful, but very likely not the real thing). Twice we visited – and prayed at – the Western Wall.

We spent time at the Citadel museum, from which there are stunning 360 degree views of the city and great displays teaching about the city’s history. Also the Davidson Centre which encompasses the archaeological digs around the Temple Mount. How amazing to see the stones of the Herodian walls thrown down to street level just as Jesus said they would be (Luke 21:5-6)! While many of the other religious sites in Jerusalem are regarded as such because of tradition, here was one place well-attested by archaeological evidence and firmly grounded in history consistent with the Gospel accounts of Jesus’ earthly life.

At the Israel Museum we spent quite some time taking in The Shrine of the Book. Some of my friends were able to read a little of the Isaiah scroll found at Qumran, and also the Aleppo Codex – it was very exciting to have them translate for the rest of us! My only regret was that, tours being what they are, we weren’t able to spend more time in this treasure-house.

We walked down the Mount of Olives, appreciating the awesome view of the Temple Mount, dodging the souvenir hawkers and visiting a few churches and a Jewish cemetery along the way to Gethsemane. Both the Mount of Olives and Gethsemane are well-attested historically, and it was special to visit these sites, especially to see the 2000 year old olive trees at Gethsemane.

As well as all that, we were able to fit in a few hours of free time at the Old City Markets, hunting for gifts for family at home and drinking pomegranate juice and iced coffee. Lots of good memories were made in this beautiful city.

Israel: Herodium, Masada, Qumran

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The Judean desert is an inhospitable place: dry and dusty and hot. The perfect place for a paranoid king (Herod) or a reclusive community (the Essenes) to set up house!

We spent two days in this desert, in the south of Israel, exploring the archaeological sites of Herodium, Masada, and Qumran. And drinking copious amounts of water. Which, by the way, only ever cost the equivalent of one Australian dollar for a half litre – I think someone is ripping us off over bottled water in this country!

Herodium and Masada were two sites I was particularly looking forward to visiting, because of the connections with King Herod. Both were built as desert fortresses and also as palaces, showing the determination of this king to both protect his kingdom and enjoy it’s pleasures. Qumran is, of course, the site of the 1st century community thought to be responsible for the hiding of the Dead Sea scrolls in the caves above the sea.

Masada is also important as the site of the last stand of Jewish rebels against Roman forces in AD 70. Some people walk up the arduous Snake Path as an act of remembrance, but we caught the cable car (you can see both in the photo in the gallery below). On our way to the top we saw a family – mum, dad and two teenage boys – making their way up the path. I bumped into them later and found out they were Australians, a Jewish family visiting Israel for the first time. The parents had wanted their boys to climb the mountain the way thousands had done before them, and to understand what it might have been like to be a zealot defending their country. The boys succeeded, saying it was the hardest thing they’d ever done. I was impressed.

We also had a little R&R at a Dead Sea beach at the end of one of days in the desert. It was a very weird experience to be so bouyant. No photos of this, though, as it’s pretty risky taking a camera anywhere near the salt-burdened water. The Sea level is falling about a metre a year, and leaving sinkholes all along the shoreline. Sinkholes to which everyone of us brave enough to enter the water fell prey. I lost an ipanema flip-flop in one hole – perhaps it will be recovered in an archaeological dig sometime in the future!

Egypt: Cairo and The Sinai

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Three weeks ago I travelled to the Middle East, with lots of friends from college, to learn more about the historical and geographical setting of the Bible. Our first port of call was Cairo, where we were thrown straight into the deep end of the Khan el-Khalili Bazaar and then had a short feluca cruise on the Nile. The next day we visited the Giza Pyramids, the Sphinx, and the Egyptian Museum where we spent a long time gazing at the famous Gold Mask of King Tutankhamun. Things I never imagined I would see.

We had only a day and a half in Cairo before the long bus ride to Saint Catherine’s Monastery at the foot of Mt Sinai. Having seen Codex Sinaiticus at the British Library earlier this year it was pretty amazing to visit the place where it had been safely kept for hundreds of years until 1844, and to see a little bit more of it on display in the Monastery’s museum.

Over the next few days I’ll be posting galleries of photos taken on the journey. Below are a few from our short stay in Egypt – click on the thumbnails to open a larger version of each image.

Chatsworth House (or, how to make your husband a fan of bonnet dramas)

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Chatsworth House, located in the very beautiful Peak District of Derbyshire, is one of the most stately “stately homes” in England. So stately that it has been used as a film set on a number of occasions, and is instantly recognisable as Mr Darcy’s Pemberley in the 2005 film version of “Pride and Prejudice”. It also featured in “The Duchess” as itself, having been the home of the Cavendish family (the Dukes of Devonshire) since the 16th century. We could ask why the Dukes of Devonshire owned this amazing property in Derbyshire, but I suspect that’s a long and complicated story.

We visited while work was being done on the lakeside south front of the house, so were not able to see the building’s exterior in all it’s splendour, but the gardens were full of summer flowers, and the interiors were breathtaking. In the gallery below are a few photographs taken in the famous sculpture room, including the bust made of actor Matthew Macfadyen for his role of Mr Darcy in the “Pride and Prejudice” film.

Perhaps “fan” is still too strong a word to use about my husband and bonnet dramas, but the effect of visiting Chatsworth is remarkable. He had taken more photos than I during our visit, and on our first day back home we played that “Pride and Prejudice” DVD, just to see which parts of the house we’d recognise. He sat through the whole thing. And admits he enjoyed it for the first time. There may be more work to do, but that’s a good start, yes?

Across the Whoniverse

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How nerdy is this: we were half way around the world in a beautiful city full of amazing sights, and we spent half a day in an exhibition about a science fiction television show. And it was great!

The Doctor Who Experience is an interactive adventure and exhibition showing until November 20th this year. If you’re in London any time before then, and you’re a fan of The Doctor (or any of the scary monsters he’s encountered), you’ll enjoy the chance to see props and costumes up close, and to see how the show has developed over the years since a Gallifreyan TARDIS first became stuck in the shape of a British Police Call Box. We certainly did.