Kusadasi & Ephesus, Turkey

    We arrived in Kusadasi (pronounced Koo-zhya-da-see, with the rhythm of “Who’s your daddy”) on April 14.  Yet another resort town, Kusadasi has a normal population of about 50 to 60,000, but in August it swells to a million.  Fortunately for us, it wasn’t near August yet.

     But the action around here is about 16 miles away at the archeological site of Ephesus (pronounced with emphasis on the first syllable). Those of you who have read the New Testament will be familiar with this name, since St. Paul spent a couple of years here trying to convert Ephesus’s large Jewish community and I believe he wrote an Epistle to the Ephesians after he left.  He also wrote his first Epistle to the Corinthians here. Ephesus was the second largest city in the Roman Empire in the first 200 years AD, with a peak population of about 250,000 people.  It was founded around 1000 BC, according to local lore by the Amazons (our guide assured us with a straight face that this is true). More likely it was by the Greeks, who did most of the founding in this region at that time (there is a legend about this version of the founding as well, but I won’t include it here). It was also a major port located on the Meander River (from which we derive the word, reflecting the river’s twists & turns). The river slowly silted up the harbor to the point where the city was abandoned (the decline had been helped along by a barbarian sacking in 263 AD).  Today Ephesus is about 3 miles from the seacoast. Buried over the centuries by earthquakes, etc., Ephesus was not rediscovered until 1860 by British, German & Austrian archeologists (and many of its early treasures are in the British Museum and the Ephesus Museum in Vienna).  Mark Twain visited 7 years later and was not impressed (at that time excavation had just begun so it was mostly pieces of marble strewn around the ground).  Even today only about 15% of the city has been excavated. (Note:  I have to give kudos to Rick Steves here; I would never have remembered everything in these pictures more than 2 weeks later, not to mention the official names of and information about everything, without his guide).

     We had arranged for a private guide, Alex, to take us through Ephesus (no more expensive than the ship tour & much more interesting and uncrowded).  Alex told us that in August Ephesus often gets 250,000 visitors a day, so we were pretty glad to be here in the off season. Ephesus is on a hill so most tours start at the top and go downhill, as ours did. At the top is the State (or Upper) Agora, a large open courtyard surrounded by covered shopping arcades.  At one side was the Stoa Basilica.  A basilica is a building with a large central hall and narrower side halls. Today we think of a basilica as a church, but before Christianity such buildings were meeting houses or merchant houses.

Ephesus had one of the most sophisticated waterworks systems in ancient times, with water directed from the hills to cisterns at the top of the hill, then distributed through the city with clay pipes.  Next to the Basilica is the Odeon, an indoor theater (it had a wood roof) seating about 1500 for plays and concerts.  It also was the meeting place for the city council.  When found in 1860 all but the top seats were under ground.

     The Prytaneion was the seat of city administration by a committee of six priests.  The remaining pillars of this building contain a lot of ancient Greek writing which I can’t read, of course (maybe some of you can).  Not far away were two pillars with reliefs on them looking in different directions.  This was a directional sign in polyglot Ephesus; on the left is Hermes, god of merchants (among other things) looking toward the market, and on the right Asklepios, who symbolized medicine, facing a pharmacy. I should note here that many of the statues & reliefs here are reproductions of items that have been removed to a museum, but the copies are good enough that I couldn’t tell which were real and which were not.

Soon we came to the Temple of Domitian (a Roman Emperor in the 1st Century AD). This was a huge two story temple, but little remains today beyond the two levels of two columns with statues on the top ones, although archeological work continues in this area. Across Domitian Square from the temple is a frieze of Nike giving a wreath of victory to the Romans, which once topped a gateway. There is a restored archway that once topped a public water fountain (rich folks had indoor plumbing, but ordinary people got their water from the fountain). From this area was a dramatic overview of most of Ephesus.

We passed through the Hercules Gate, with pillars on both sides displaying relief statues of Hercules.  And we saw Trajan’s Fountain, which once had a large statue of the Emperor Trajan in the center. There were a lot of cats around here, including one sitting on a pedestal as if he were part of a Roman artifact.

     Near the bottom of the hill were some large and elaborate mosaics that were part of a sidewalk by an upscale shopping mall.

Nearby is the Temple of Hadrian (yet another Roman Emperor, whose works we have encountered before). It has friezes of Medusa & Hadrian’s boyfriend Antinous who died young. 

    

   Remember I mentioned that ordinary people did not have indoor plumbing?  Well, this is where they gathered (yes, gathered) to eliminate their bodily wastes. It was something of a social event, like gathering at a tavern, and the men were in no hurry to leave.  Water constantly flowed beneath the seats to flush the waste & also flowed in the trough in front of the seats to wash with.  There was a wooden roof covering the 40(!) seats, but the courtyard was open.

   Now we come to the fabulous Terrace Houses.  This is an active archeological dig at a block of 7 houses of relatively wealthy citizens.  You walk through on a scaffolding walkway with glass floors that enable you to look at the work being done below. We were there on Sunday and no one was working (not sure why, since this isn’t a Christian country) but we could see the work that was in progress.  This area is full of mosaics, frescoes & ancient rooms. There is a separate entry fee so a lot of visitors don’t go here, but it seems to us they are missing one of the best parts of Ephesus.

I think the easiest way to do this is to look at things by category. One of the most interesting things being done here is piecing back together the small pieces of marble and stone found in the various rooms. In the first house we visited there were slabs of marble on the wall that had been pieced back together & several large tables filled with pieces currently being worked on.  It was like a giant jigsaw puzzle, but with no picture of the finished product to guide you. It seems impossibly complicated, but the finished pieces prove it can be done. This room was a marble dining room, and more than 120,000 fragments of marble have been found.

We saw quite a few frescoes on walls (original I think, but perhaps restored like the marble, I’m not sure).  One wall with a duck & a fish was a kitchen. I will show a bunch of them here & label them with what little I know about them.

There was a large variety of floor mosaics in decorative patterns, some of which look like something you could see in a modern rug or upscale kitchen.

Even better than the patterned mosaics were the mosaics on floors and walls with pictures. I will use the same approach with these, putting them all together with information in the captions.

There was a stone table with a game board etched in the top in one of the houses.  I think the guide might have said this board was for Backgammon, but Mary doesn’t think so.

Then there were several other views of rooms I thought were interesting, even if I don’t remember their importance.

      Leaving the Terrace Houses we came to another big item for library fans: the Library of Celsus.  It was originally built as a mausoleum to (who else?) a guy named Celsus in 123 AD  by his son.  It was the third largest library in the ancient world with 12,000 volumes, after the libraries of Alexandria & Pergamon (but since we learned earlier that Marc Antony gave Cleopatra the Pergamon library, perhaps that made this one number 2).  The library facade was restored in the 1970’s, mostly by piecing the rubble back together again.

The columns on the first floor are 40 feet tall.  There are three large doorways & 4 statues in niches surrounding them (these are copies of the originals, which are in museums). It must have been quite beautiful in its day.  On one of the top steps a crude menorah is etched into the marble, now protected by a metal box frame.  Ephesus had a large Jewish community that apparently lived peacefully with the Romans.

Right next to the library on its left is a triple arch gate that was once part of the library complex & led to a lecture hall (rebuilt in 1989, you can see part of this gate on the right in the first 3 pictures of the library above).  It was built by Mazaeus and Mithridates, two slaves who became wealthy after being freed by their master Emperor Augustus.  Their names are inscribed in bronze on the gate.

     Next we come to one of the oldest structures in Ephesus (so far, since much is yet to be uncovered), the Great Theater. Originally built by the Greeks between 300 and 100 BC (and expanded much later by the Romans), this is one of the largest amphitheaters yet found, holding about 25,000 people. The acoustics are good enough that performers don’t need microphones.  Many modern concerts have been held here (Pavarotti sang without a microphone) but now work is being done to protect the theater from being damaged from vibrations.  The New Testament relates a story about St. Paul that takes place here (Acts 19). Next to the bottom of the stairs into the theater on the left is a fountain where theater patrons could refresh themselves.

Finally, here is the Harbor Road.  This was a wide thoroughfare lined with covered sidewalks with street lamps & shops selling goods from all over the known world.  This was the main thoroughfare, where processions were held & people went to see & be seen.  It ran from the theater to the harbor, which was on an inlet from the sea but is now long gone as the seacoast has receded some three miles.

     Leaving Ephesus, we drove to nearby Selcuk, which is essentially the spot where the Ephesians built their new town when they abandoned Ephesus.  There is a museum here that contains many of the best artifacts removed from Ephesus, but sadly it was closed for renovation.  But in Selcuk we saw a ruin that Alex told us was the first bathhouse built by the Turks in Anatolia (ie. the original Turkish Bath).  And we also visited what is left of the ancient Temple of Artemis, one of the Seven Wonders of the ancient world.  This temple, built by the Ephesians who worshipped Artemis before their conversion to Christianity, was the largest building erected by the ancient Greeks: five stories high and three times the size of the Parthenon in Athens.  Built in 550 BC, this was a place of pilgrimage and a valuable source of tourist income for the Ephesians.  But the temple was destroyed for good in 401 AD on the orders of Christians trying to eliminate paganism, and its marble parts were scavenged to build Christian buildings, including the Basilica of St. John that stood nearby.  Scavenging finished marble pillars & stones from ancient buildings for Christian churches was pretty common in this period; we will see some of the pillars from the Temple of Artemis in Istanbul.  All that is left of this once great temple is a single, lonely looking, reconstructed pillar in an open field.

   We had time after returning to the dock for a pleasant walk through Kusadasi.  As is usual in tourist ports, the area around the dock is full of touristy vendors & shops but if you walk even a few blocks into the town you can encounter a real city.  We walked up a steep hill and on the other side of it was a more real shopping and restaurant district.  Among the things we saw were the Caravanserai (now a hotel) and a statue of a “world famous” jazz trumpeter named Maffy Falay I had never heard of, who came from Kusadasi.  As elsewhere in Turkey, water pipes were seen in local cafes. 

And so we left Kusadasi & fascinating Ephesus & set sail for our last Turkish stop: Istanbul.

 

May 8, 2013 | Categories: Mediterranean cruise | 5 Comments

Antalya, Turkey

Welcome to Turkey.

   

Our next three ports are all resorts in the “Turquoise Coast” area of Turkey.  The area is called that because of the color of the water in this part of the Mediterranean.  Actually, the word “turquoise” is derived from “Turkey,” and we saw a lot of turquoise jewelry here.

     Our first stop, on April 12, was Antalya.  It was a beautiful day (really, the best weather we had had so far) & this city far exceeded our expectations.  Antalya was founded in the 2d Century BC by a King of Pergamon called Attalus II, who named it “Attaleia.”  It later came under Roman & Byzantine control until finally becoming part of the Turkish empire in the 14th Century.

     It is no wonder this is a vacationer’s haven, for it is quite beautiful.  Antalya is located on a curved bay surrounded by mountains.  Our ship was docked at one end of this bay & the old town of Antalya, called Kaleici, is at the other end.  It was way too far to walk, so it was fortunate that the ship provided a shuttle bus.  Around the docking area the mountains were quite impressive.

    I will show you the prime sights in town, but really the best part was just walking around the enjoyable old city section of town.  Here is a picture of it taken from the ship later as we sailed away.

The first landmark was the Yivli Minare, or Fluted Minaret, dating from the 13th Century.  Once decorated with turquoise tiles, it is visible everywhere in the old town. The mosque attached to it is still in use & has a roof of domes covered in tiles, the like of which we have not seen elsewhere.

We came to Hadrian’s Gate, the only remaining gate to the city, which was built in honor of Emperor Hadrian’s visit to the city in 130 AD. It had been inside the Turkish wall of the city until being uncovered & restored in the 1950’s.  The tower on the left is Roman while the one on the right was built by the Turks in 1260.

After passing through the gate we strolled through the old town, enjoying the shops & the colors & the friendly people, and the absence of crowds.

We also saw the Kesik Minare (Broken Minaret), which was damaged by fire in the 1850’s.  The ruins next to it have been a Greek temple, a church & a mosque.

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     After that we decided to walk to Antalya’s Archeological Museum.  This was a pretty long walk, but it was a beautiful day & we still had plenty of time.  Among other things on the way we saw a nice fountain with bird statues & an equestrian statue of the Seljuk Turkish Sultan who conquered Antalya in 1207. We have a lot of equestrian statues in Washington but most of them are pretty static, just a guy sitting on a horse.  This one was interesting because it was so much more dynamic.

Outside the Archeological Museum we saw some pretty wisteria and encountered an odd bird, perhaps a peahen?

    The museum was fabulous.  We were very glad we made the effort to find it, but disappointed that our time there was so inadequate to see the collection.  Most of the items came from nearby sites.  This part of Anatolia was (if I remember correctly) part of the Greek Ionian League, so there were several prominent cities in the area, most notably Pergamon.  The museum was divided into separate rooms by type of item. I will show you a few of the things that appealed to me in each room. The first room we visited was for statuary, but on the way there was an exhibit about how ancient burial sites appear.

Next we saw the mosaics room, containing mosaics recovered from Anatolia (mostly Perge & Pergamon, I think).  This was our first real taste of ancient mosaics with pictures, and this whetted our appetites for more (we will see many more in future episodes). Photos were very difficult because of the way the lighting in the room reflected off the tiles, but this will give you an idea. 

  We saw a stone table with a game board carved into it. The exhibit says that no one has figured out how this game was played. On the wall was a picture from a vase of Greek warriors playing a board game.

  Next we entered the fabulous room of sarcophagi.  “Sarcophagus” in ancient greek means “flesh eating predator.”  There were quite a few of them at the museum, most elaborately decorated with reliefs & even statuary (mostly of the occupants reclining atop the sarcophagus). Each sarcophagus was intricately carved from a single block of stone, and the lid was from another.

In this room there was also a sarcophagus for a dog named Stephanos.  He must have been well loved for someone to spring for a sarcophagus, even a pretty plain one, since these must have been pretty expensive.  There was a translation of the inscription.

Our time was running out & we didn’t want to miss the ship, so we pretty much raced through the rest on the way back to the entrance.  We saw quickly some rugs that must be antiques & a featured larger than lifesize statue of Herakles (Hercules) that is said to be the finest Roman copy of a famous Greek statue in existence (copying Greek art was one of the things the Romans did best). It was pretty impressive in person.

We made it back to the ship in plenty of time, where we encountered some more fruit art before sailing away.  Then, as the sun sank behind those beautiful mountains, we headed for our second resort on the Turquoise coast, Marmaris.

May 3, 2013 | Categories: Mediterranean cruise | 2 Comments

Israel (Day 2): Jerusalem to Haifa

   We woke up in our Jerusalem hotel room with the hope that the wind would be gone & the sun out.  No such luck. After breakfast we returned to the overlook point on the Mount of Olives & it was gray & drizzling.  But the wind was mostly gone & with the light the view was much better.  There was a guy there selling camel rides, but with the wetness he parked the camel under a tree next to our bus.

   The old city of Jerusalem is surrounded by city walls, most of which were built by our old friend Suleiman (also spelled Suleyman) the Magnificent.  The walls, of course, have gates, two of which could be seen from our perch on the Mount of Olives.  The Lion Gate is named for the lion reliefs on either side of the opening (look closely just to the right of the upper portion above the opening).  It was prophesized that the Messiah would enter Jerusalem through the Golden Gate, so the Turks sealed that gate so no one could go through it, and it is still sealed.  Our guide was of the opinion that this could be corrected one day, but it seems to me that a sealed gate would not be much of a problem for the Messiah to take care of himself (or herself?).

The hillsides on the Jerusalem side & on the Mount of Olives are covered with tombs almost as far as the eye can see, many dating back to the time of the Second Temple (the time of Jesus).  The story is that when Judgment Day arrives the folks buried in this area are supposed to be the first ones resurrected, so all of these people are trying to be first in line.  While there is a vast number of Jewish tombs here, there are also Christian & Moslem cemeteries in this area.

   We next visited the Garden of Gethsemene & the beautiful Church of All Nations that sits there.  Some of the olive trees here are about 1000 years old, but none are older than that because the Crusaders cut down all the trees around Jerusalem to build siege fortifications.  The Turks later cut down most of the rest of the trees in what is now Israel, partly to build railroads, and the Israelis have been planting trees for decades to try to reverse this process (I remember contributing money for trees in Israel in religious school in the 1950’s).

The church is not very old, but it has a number of striking mosaics on the walls & ceilings.  The ceiling is divided into sections, each of which has a decoration reflecting one of the nations that contributed to its building.  The American section features a “Jerusalem Cross,” which is characterized by a large cross with a small cross in each of its quadrants.  The centerpiece of the church is the rock on which Jesus is supposed to have sat and prayed prior to his arrest.  It surrounded by a wrought iron sculpture representing the crown of thorns with birds.

    After leaving the Mount of Olives we drove to Bethlehem.  It is close enough to Jerusalem that in this country we would probably consider it a suburb, but it is in the Palestinian Authority, so there were obstacles.  To get there we had to pass through the Israeli security wall & there were guards on both sides who had to clear us.  Israeli guides are not allowed to work in the Palestinian territory so we had to pick up a Palestinian guide when we crossed the border (he was very good & not at all hostile to Israel).  Actually, Israeli guides (like other Israelis) are not normally allowed to enter the Palestinian territory, so they have to wait at the checkpoint for their tours to return to Israeli territory.  But the Palestinian group that was working with our guide organization had arranged for our guide to accompany us in Bethlehem, although she was not allowed to talk about it while we were there.  She was pretty happy about this since she hadn’t been to Bethlehem in some years, so we were happy for her too since we liked her quite a bit.  She was greeted by several people she knew in Bethlehem whom she hadn’t seen for a long time.  Before going to the Church of the Nativity we spent some time in a Palestinian gift shop owned by the guy who arranged our Bethlehem tour (& they did a very good job of that).  It had a lot of expensive olive wood carvings (mostly religious themes), which we were told is a dying art. There was a lot of other mostly religious stuff to buy, some very expensive & some pretty cheap.  They served us tea & were not very aggressive, so it was OK considering it was essentially the price for arranging the Bethlehem tour.

      We were in Bethlehem, of course, to visit the Church of the Nativity, built over a cavern where it is said that Jesus was born. We are pretty skeptical about whether the builders of this church really knew where Jesus was born.  St. Helena, who was the mother of Emperor Constantine, who first legalized Christianity in the Roman Empire, came to Jerusalem determined to locate the sites mentioned in the Gospels and claimed she did so.  She built the first church here and also the first Church of the Holy Sepulcher, which contains the precise spot where Jesus was crucified & the tomb where he was initially buried (not to mention the tomb of Adam).  She undoubtedly consulted the locals & asked around about local traditions about these places, but this was almost 400 years after the fact.  Imagine someone coming to your town & asking about things that happened there in the 17th century, and not official things included in public records but things that happened to a small group unwelcome in majority society there.  I don’t doubt the symbolic importance of these sites or their religious significance, and I am sure that these locations represent the best guess that could be made at the time, but their historical accuracy wouldn’t satisfy modern scientific standards.

      Anyway, this church was very interesting.  The old church is Greek Orthodox & attached to it is a Catholic church of more recent vintage.  The Catholic church is where the worldwide broadcast of the Christmas eve mass originates.  The Greek Orthodox church has paintings & mosaics on the walls and, under the current floor, a Roman era mosaic floor.

Each of these churches has a cavern under it (and I think they are connected, part of a single system of caves, but I’m not sure).  Under the original Greek Orthodox church is the cavern with a marker of the spot where Jesus is supposed to have been born.  Under the Catholic church is the cavern where St. Jerome lived when he wrote the first Vulgate Bible.  The line for the first cavern is often 2 or 3 hours long, so we went into the other one.  Our guide said that caverns like this were often used at that time for stables & guest quarters, and that the translators of the Gospels chose to use the words “stable” and “inn” because they would be more familiar to Europeans even though the original text could also have been translated as caverns.  He said the cavern we visited would have been the “inn” where most of the guests stayed during the census, and that the other part where the overflow were housed was probably normally used for animals. I don’t know if that’s right or not, but as you can see below these locations are really underground caves, not what we would call an inn or a stable today.

     After emerging from the cavern we visited a courtyard where the Kings of the Crusader state of Jerusalem were crowned, in the center of which was a sculpture of Saint Jerome, then drove back to Jerusalem for lunch and a walking tour of the old town.  So, here are a few pictures to show what the town of Bethlehem looks like.

     Back in Jerusalem we abandoned the bus for a walking tour.  The first place we visited was a building designated as the location of the Last Supper (only the location, not the building).  This was outside the walls of the old city on (I believe) Mount Zion (which is really more of a hill than a mountain).  When we entered this room, very crowded with tourists (as was Jerusalem in general, and the Church of the Nativity too for that matter) there was a group singing hymns.  On the way there we saw the impressive Church of the Ascension, built (along with the Augusta Victoria hospital) by Kaiser Wilhelm II after his visit to Jerusalem around 1900.

   We entered Jerusalem through the Zion Gate (named for the “mountain”) & had a very good lunch in the Armenian Quarter near a gift shop selling religious ceramics.  We then walked through the Armenian Quarter to the Jewish Quarter.  Old town Jerusalem has four quarters (which will not surprise anyone familiar with mathematics), named for the population distribution in the 19th century.  There are Muslim & Christian Quarters as well.

We walked by the Roman Cardo, which was a shopping street in Roman times.  It is on a level much lower than the street on which we were walking.  We also saw the location of the hospital that was the original headquarters of the Knights of St. John, who we encountered in Malta.

We walked past the open market area to the Church of the Holy Sepulcher. The first church on this location was built by St. Helena, mother of Emperor Constantine who legalized Christianity, in the 4th Century.  It was later pretty much destroyed but rebuilt by the Crusaders in the 11th Century. 

     This church contains what St. Helena concluded is the site of the crucifixion, the tomb in which Jesus was initially interred, the last five Stations of the Cross and the tomb of Adam.  At one time it also contained the tombs of the Kings of the Crusader kingdom of Jerusalem, but those were destroyed centuries ago under Muslim rule.  This church has a long history of strife among the various Christian groups competing for control, to the extent of monks killing each other in pitched battles. But an uneasy settlement was negotiated by the Turks under which the Greek Orthodox oversee most of the Church with areas set aside for Catholics, Armenians, Copts, etc. within the Church.  Under the settlement nothing can be changed anywhere in the church without the unanimous agreement of all seven (I think) religions, with the result that nothing has been changed.  This standoff has led to some odd things: for example, one chapel (I think it was Armenian) was damaged by fire, but they have not been able to repair it for lack of unanimous consent.  And even odder, there was a ladder on the outside of the second floor at the time of the settlement, so there has been one maintained there ever since (replaced a couple of times, but never removed).  Sultan Suleiman entrusted the keys to this church to two Muslim families in Jerusalem who hold the keys to this day.  It is a matter of great prestige for them; one family opens the church in the morning & the other locks the church at night after the Greek Orthodox monks have secured the doors.

Inside the church are some impressive mosaics, particularly in the dome (above) & a very long one depicting the crucifixion  & the interment of Jesus, all of which reputedly took place inside this church.  Just inside the front door is the stone on which Jesus’s body is said to have been laid out before interment, & there was a line of people to touch this stone.  Actually, every part of the Church was crowded, mostly with tourists and pilgrims I would assume. 

In the next room is a small building (fairly new) that contains the Holy Sepulcher.  The line is very long & very slow, since they only allow a few people in at one time & there is no limit on how long you can stay.  We did not have enough time to go in there, but we did see an Armenian shrine adjacent to it that the Armenians say is where Jesus’s head was placed in the interment.  We were told that there were 25 or 30 tombs here in the 4th Century but after St. Helena selected this one as having been Jesus’s they destroyed the rest.  There is one left, in an adjacent room, which is really a cave that you can walk into; I assume  most of the crypts in this area originally were similar caves that could be sealed by rolling a large stone in front.

Climbing a flight of steep stairs took us to the site of the Crucifixion on what was once a hill called Golgotha (or Calvary, of course).  The spot is covered by what is in essence a large table that is open on one side, & there was a long line to crawl in there to pray.  There were some nice paintings on the walls and archways in this area as well.  Directly underneath is a spot designated as the tomb of Adam, which is basically a window on the rock which is split in accord with the story (we were told) that the earth split at the moment Jesus died.

So that was the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, which has seen so much history and is so full of religious significance.  Mark Twain had a few choice observations about this church & the plethora of religious sites housed in this one building, but I am not going to repeat them here. We next walked to the Western Wall which, as I have mentioned was built as a retaining wall to support the Second Temple when Herod expanded it (on the way our guide pointed out a sign on a house indicating that the occupant had competed the Hajj, a pilgrimage to Mecca, which is a very prestigious thing).  This wall is all that is left of the Second Temple and it is a very holy site to Jews, who come here to pray & insert written prayers into the masonry cracks.  Jews are not permitted to pray on top of the Temple Mount, which is under the control of Muslims, who have built two of their most important mosques on this site: The Dome of the Rock, with its distinctive gold dome, contains the rock on which Abraham is supposed to have started to sacrifice his son Isaac, and the Al Aqsa Mosque, which is where Mohammed is supposed to have ascended to heaven during his lifetime.  Sometimes non-Muslims are barred from ascending the Temple Mount & sometimes they are allowed to do so, although they cannot enter the mosques, but at no time is it permissible for non-Muslims to pray on the Temple Mount or even to carry a bible up there.  Anyway, both mosques are clearly visible from below the Western Wall.

The Western Wall is divided in two parts: the larger area for men & a smaller one for women.  Because of this segregation Mary & I could not approach the Wall together.  Men must wear head coverings to approach the Wall, & white yarmulkes are available for free (& to keep).  Women are restricted at the Wall, apparently they cannot wear prayer shawls or engaged in organized prayer.  Some women were arrested for disturbing the peace a few days before our visit when they broke these rules, but a Magistrate threw out the charges saying that this behavior was not unlawful.

 

     There is an intense ongoing cultural conflict in Israel & especially in Jerusalem between the ultra orthodox Jews and the more secular Jews. The ultra orthodox (like the orthodox of other religions) would like to impose their strict rules of dress & behavior on everyone else.  Women have been stoned for wandering too close to Orthodox synagogues in nonreligious dress & our guide told us she was leading a busload of tourists that was stoned when it drove too close to a synagogue.  The big issue right now has to do with the exemption in Israeli law for religious scholars from the otherwise universal military service.  According to our guide, when this law was enacted some 60 years ago it was thought that it would apply only to a few hundred special scholars.  To qualify for the exemption one must certify that he will spend his life devoted to scholarship, foregoing employment.  Today there are countless numbers of ultra orthodox Jews signing this pledge, and these people also believe they have an obligation to marry (often arranged ones) & devote themselves to maximum reproduction. The result is many thousands of families with 10 or more children living in poverty on a government dole in two room apartments.  They have become a burden on the remainder of the population and are increasing in numbers so quickly that our guide believes they will constitute a majority of the population of Jerusalem before long, which would give them the political power to impose their rules on everyone in the city.  So the new government seems prepared to do away with the military exemption; we will see.  We saw many ultra orthodox Jews in Jerusalem, who are distinctive with big black hats & suits with white shirts. There is a special section set aside in the men’s section of the Wall where there are chairs & desks for their use.

At the exit from the Wall area is what we were told is the world’s largest mezuzah (usually a very small container of tiny prayer scrolls that many Jews affix to their door frames).  We left the old city through the Dung Gate (its just what you think: this is the gate through which the refuse was taken out of the city).  Then we drove to Haifa to meet the ship.  Unfortunately we arrived after dark, so we didn’t get to see anything of this reputedly beautiful city, but we did see the lights of the Ba’hai Gardens that flow down the side of Mount Carmel (although I couldn’t get a picture from the moving bus).  I guess we will have to save that for another trip.  We sure got to see an awful lot on this trip, particularly considering it was only two days, and it was even more interesting & enlightening than we had expected.  Our guides did a marvelous job of enhancing our visit to this fascinating country.  So, as we head for Turkey I will leave you with some towel & fruit art.

 

May 1, 2013 | Categories: Mediterranean cruise | 6 Comments

Israel (Day 1): Ashdod to Jerusalem

     On April 9 we arrived in our second country noted for political violence, Israel.  Not surprisingly, Israeli security is particularly tight.  Every passenger (even those not going ashore) was required to appear personally before an Israeli security person.  There was no interrogation, however, and we were issued stamped landing permits fairly quickly (once things got going . . . they were late).  Unlike other countries, Israel stamps a visa on a separate landing pass rather than your passport, apparently because having an Israeli stamp in your passport can make it difficult to enter other countries in the Middle East.

     I’m not going to give any background on Israel because everyone is already pretty familiar with it, both the drama of biblical times and the strife that has characterized the modern state.  Ashdod, the port closest to Jerusalem, is actually an ancient city & we are told that it has recently been renovated into a nice city to visit.  But we were not here to see that.  Instead we signed on for an overnight bus tour that would take us to Masada, the Dead Sea, Jerusalem & Bethlehem.  It was long & exhausting (especially coming on the heels of two long and exhausting tours in Egypt and another time change in which we lost an hour), but very rewarding. So, leaving Ashdod we travelled past villages (you can tell the Muslim villages by the minarets), camels & sheep & goat herds, and into the Judean desert near the Dead Sea.

     We drove north along the Dead Sea to Masada, a mountaintop stronghold built by Herod the Great that has an absolutely stunning view & a controversial history.  The conventional story goes that after the Romans sacked Jerusalem & destroyed the second Temple in 70 AD in response to a Judean uprising, a remnant of the Zealot fighters took refuge with their families in this impregnable mountaintop fortress and continued to resist Roman rule.  The Romans, however, built a huge ramp up the side of the mountain (using Judean slaves so that the defenders would not prevent the work by shooting down at the workers) & rolled a large siege tower with a battering ram up the ramp so that they could breach the walls and climb into the fortress.  But the night before the onslaught the Judeans decided that they preferred death to slavery & all committed suicide.  When the Romans entered the fortress the next day they were appalled, finding nothing but dead bodies. 

     Masada was the subject of a large archeological project in the 1960’s (I don’t know if any of you knew him but Chuck Colbert, one of my father’s close friends, participated in that dig).  Masada was promoted as an inspiring moment of heroism by Jewish fighters & the Israeli army conducted its final inductions of soldiers at that site.  That is no longer done & some modern scholars have questioned some of the facts of the traditional story, the integrity of the archeological interpretations (some of which seem to be of the “finding exactly what you were hoping for” approach), & even the character of the martyrs.  First, you might wonder how we know what went on there if everyone in Masada killed themselves.  In fact, the sole source for this story is a brief recounting by the Judean/Roman historian Josephus Flavius (who had initially been a Judean general in the uprising but after being captured was adopted into a Roman general’s family).  He tells us that a couple of women & five children survived to tell the tale by hiding in the cistern, but it is doubtful that he ever talked to them, so his second hand (at least) story is less than fully reliable as history.  The standards of ancient history writing were far from today’s, of course.  For example, Josephus purports to quote a lengthy speech by the leader, Eleazer Ben-Yair, which he could not possibly have heard. Second, some scholars say that the people who holed up at Masada were not Zealots but Sicarii, named after the curved daggers they carried & used for assassinations. They were a violent fringe group who apparently killed many Jews in raids on neighboring towns.  They apparently did not participate in the defense of Jerusalem since they had occupied Masada before Jerusalem fell. Only one of the deaths at Masada was actually a suicide, the rest were murders, even in Josephus’s telling. All the men first killed their wives and children, then they drew lots to decide who would kill each other, leaving only the last to commit suicide (small pieces of potter with names written on them, including Ben-Yair’s, have been found at Masada, which would seem to corroborate this part of the story).  As our Israeli guide pointed out, this was a gross violation of God’s law (thou shalt not kill) which many modern Jews find less than admirable and which is not likely to have been done by Jews who were very religious.  I am no expert in these things, but it seems apparent that the heroism of those who died here is more ambiguous today than it seemed a few decades ago.

     In any event, this is a fascinating & beautiful place.  You can easily see why King Herod (who was, whatever else you might think of him, a prolific & innovative builder) would choose to build his winter palace here, not just for its security (he was not from a Judean family & was not popular among the Jews) but for its beauty. Our pictures do not begin to capture the stunning views from this mountaintop in every direction.

    In the old days the only way to get to the top was by the Snake Path, for reasons obvious in the picture below, a long & arduous climb.  But today there is a cable car (thank goodness).

One thing at Masada we found refreshing was their practice of painting a bold black line between the original structures they uncovered and the restorations they did to rebuild the walls.  At many archeological sites (most notably Knossos) it is difficult to tell what is original and what has been added, but here they made it clear.  There are a number of small black birds that live here (I have forgotten the name); they appear very comfortable with human visitors. There are also Ibex that live here, and rarely they are spotted at the archeological site.  We didn’t see one (sigh), but one of our fellow passengers was lucky enough to get a beautiful picture of one standing on a wall with the mountains behind.

There are a lot of interesting features at the Masada site.  Herod’s palace included his reception room, with the remains of two pillars, and a well preserved bathroom with mosaic floor & bathtub.  We also saw ancient aqueducts, one in the palace & another on the side of the mountain. The advanced aqueduct system effectively filled the cisterns on the mountain with water, and this provided the resisters at Masada with plenty of water in this desert area even after the Romans stopped the flow of water by destroying the outside aqueducts.

We saw what was left of the synagogue (converted from Herod’s stable), one of few existing from the time of the Second Temple. Another structure was the “Columbarium,” which was a roost for pigeons (used for food as well as long distance communication).

    You can stand in the breach in the wall where the Romans broke through & look down on the ramps built by the Romans & their Jewish slaves, which is still easy to see.  You can also see the very clear remains of the Roman encampments far below the walls.

So we left Masada, a beautiful & historically fascinating place, & drove to a resort on the Dead Sea where we had lunch.  There is a British miniseries about it, creatively entitled “Masada,” starring Peter O’Toole as the Roman general Flavius Silva, for those who are interested.  Much of it is fanciful, which is inevitable given the sparse historical record, but it was filmed, at least in part, at Masada (and Peter O’Toole is very good) so it is not unworthy of viewing.  A final view from the walls of remarkable Masada.

    As most of you probably know already, the Dead Sea (seen from Masada above) derives its name from the fact that it is so full of salt that nothing can live in it (actually, scientists have recently found bacteria that live deep in the Dead Sea, but they do not yet know how they do it). The Dead Sea is currently receding at a high rate, and will soon consist only of the deepest part in the center.  Our guide told us that she used to come here when the water extended far beyond its current boundaries.

     The Dead Sea today is largely a resort area.  This shores of the Dead Sea are the lowest dry land on the planet, well below sea level.  Both the water & air are reputed to have restorative powers.  Doctors in Europe send patients with skin problems here, and people rub themselves with mud from it (which is sold in jars).  The other famous thing about it is that because of the unusually high salt content it is impossible to sink; you see people floating in the waters near the resort hotel. As you can see for yourself below, I actually went into the water & did not sink at all.  I also tasted the water, & believe me it is awful.

No picture, but we did see a McDonald’s at this resort.  We have seen them all over, of course, but our guide told us that until relatively recently there were none in Israel.  Apparently they were inhibited by the number of people here who observe Kosher dietary laws:  it is impossible to make a Kosher cheeseburger (meat and dairy products cannot be served at the same time or cooked with the same utensils).  There was a fast food chain in Israel called McDavid’s.  But apparently McDonalds has figured it out (they just serve hamburgers & not cheeseburgers) & has driven McDavid’s out of business.  I would have thought they would be unable to offer milkshakes with a hamburger either, but at this resort we had ice cream made without dairy products & it was quite good.

    We drove north along the Dead Sea toward Jerusalem.  One of the interesting things about this part of the world is how small it is.  Places that the Bible describes as being a substantial journey apart are really close together by American standards.  Driving from Jerusalem to Bethlehem, for example, is about as far (it seemed) as driving from Arlington Virginia to Washington DC. Similarly, the Jordan River (which we are told in song is “deep and wide”) is more like a creek by US standards.  Anyway, the opposite side of the Dead Sea are the mountains of Jordan, & it was close enough to photograph a Jordanian Dead Sea resort or town (not sure which) across the water.

We drove past a date palm orchard (if that’s the right word), where they are experimenting with these trees because they can live on salt water.  And (passing through Palestinian territory) at Qumrum we saw the cave where the first Dead Sea Scrolls were found.  The story is that a Palestinian shepherd boy followed a stray goat into the cave & spotted the jars there containing the scrolls.  But take a look at the cave and ask yourself whether it is likely that a goat would stray into this cave.  There are quite a lot of stories in this part of the world that seem pretty dubious, at least to us. Our guide thought it more likely that they were out treasure hunting (lots of caves in this area) when they discovered the scrolls. We also passed Jericho (visible but at a distance), which I understand is considered the oldest continuously inhabited city in the world, as we drove toward Jerusalem.

Driving into Jerusalem we caught our first glimpse of the Israeli “security wall” that separates the Palestinian Authority from Israel proper. It is not a happy sight; it seems unfortunate that people feel the need to separate themselves like this.  Our Israeli guide felt bad about this as well, since the separation keeps her from leading tours in Palestinian areas like she used to do, but she is hopeful that this will one day become an international border as part of a settlement between the Israelis and the Palestinians.  She is more optimistic than I am.

     In Jerusalem we checked into our hotel, the Crown Plaza, where we had a 16th floor room with balcony (too windy to use) that had quite a view despite the dense cloud cover as the sun set.  The hotel was near the Knesset (Israeli parliament) & Supreme Court.

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After dinner at the hotel, we set out on what was supposed to be a drive around the walls of the old city & a visit to the Western Wall (also known as the Wailing Wall, a retaining wall built to support the Second Temple).  But it was very cold & extremely windy & unpleasant out.  We stopped on the Mount of Olives overlook to see a nighttime view of the Temple Mount (where the Temple once stood), the city walls & the Mosques that sit on the Temple Mount, but could only stay a minute or two because of the weather.  There wasn’t much lighting anyway. Then we visited the outside of the Church of All Nations at Gethsemane Gardens (where Jesus prayed before his arrest).  We would see all this to better effect the next day.  We did drive around the walls some, but the Western Wall area was closed off, perhaps (our guide speculated) because John Kerry might have been visiting.  So that was added to the itinerary for the second day, for which you will have to continue to our next installment.

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April 27, 2013 | Categories: Mediterranean cruise | 2 Comments