Israel Museum

June 28, 2013  Friday

We slept in!  On dig days, we leave the hotel at 5:15 a.m., but today we left around 9 a.m. for a bus trip to the Israel Museum.

The first thing we saw was the vast model of Jerusalem as it may have appeared in 66 AD.

We're standing on the Mount of Olives, looking west over Jerusalem.  This is how the temple may have looked after King Herod the Great's expansions of the platform.  The scale is 1:50.

The "third wall" expanded the northern boundary of the Old City.  In fact, there's a piece of it across the street from our hotel, so the hotel site would have been included in that boundary.

Here's the piece of the third wall that we can see from our hotel window.  It's that big rock just jutting out of the wall onto the sidewalk.  Too bad about the graffiti above it!

The area south of the temple is the City of David, and the hill that the City of David is on was known as Mount Zion.  For some reason, the more western hill that includes our dig is now known as Mount Zion.

This is the southeast corner of the Old City with the walls as they stood in 66 AD.  The structure in the middle of the photo with the pyramid-shaped cap is King David's tomb.  Our dig is east and a little north of King David's tomb.  By the way, all of these houses are just filler -- we don't really know this much detail.

Moving up the west side of the Old City.  There's Herod's palace, but it's missing the gate, staircase, and pavement, and the layout of the palace doesn't agree with what is now known.  However, the model has been modified and updated in the past, and Shimon is lobbying for more!

Now we're on the north side, outside the third wall.  An inner, earlier wall is also visible.  Again, the residential areas are mostly just filler.

One more look back at this amazing exhibit:

Next we went to the Shrine of the Book, the part of the Museum dedicated to the Dead Sea Scrolls.  

The roof of the museum is the same shape as the urns in which the scrolls were found.  We heard two theories about the water fountain setting:  It symbolizes purity, or maybe it's just to keep the building cool!  We think probably both are true.  We entered the museum at a lower level so we didn't have to get wet!

We were not allowed to take photographs inside, but here's one I found online.

A replica of the Great Isaiah Scroll is displayed at eye level on that center platform.  The area beneath the center platform is devoted to the Aleppo Codex.  "Shrine" is truly an appropriate name for this place.  The architecture is designed to evoke feelings of reverence and awe.  When we were in Israel 10 years ago, the Shrine of the Book was closed for some reason, and we didn't go in.  I'm glad we saw it this time!

The Israel Museum is one of those places that can keep Pete and me interested for hours, if not for days.  Their featured exhibit right now is about Herod the Great, King of the Jews at the time of Jesus Christ's birth.  Photos were strictly forbidden, but the above link provides a good look at what we saw.  The extent of Herod's building projects is staggering.  He was quite a politician.  He wasn't really a puppet of Rome, and was able to switch allegiance from Mark Antony to Octavian (who became Caesar Augustus) after Antony's defeat at the Battle of Actium.  Herod built his own palace in Jerusalem before undertaking the expansion of the Jewish temple and the Temple Mount -- shows where his priorities lay!  He also built temples to various other gods and to Augustus.  The whole exhibit was a great backdrop to our excavations.

We did sneak a photo of the Caiaphas ossuary.  It's beautifully carved.

I'm always amazed at the contrast between the ossuary ornamentation (if any) and the name (if any) of the person whose bones it contained.  This says "Yehosef bar Qafa", and another inscription on the long back side of the ossuary says "Yehosef bar Qayafa" (Joseph son of Caiaphas).

The consensus among scholars is that this is indeed the ossuary, or bone box, of Joseph Caiaphas, the Jewish high priest who presided over the arrest and trial of Jesus.  It's a very significant find, and interesting to us because of the possible connection of Caiaphas to our dig site.  We're digging just south of the estate of Annas, another powerful high priest who happened to be the father-in-law of Joseph Caiaphas.  At the time, the office of high priest had become a political appointment.  Even after leaving office, Annas was like the godfather -- very powerful and scary.  Five of his sons became the high priest, as well as his son-in-law Caiaphas.  Shimon and James have speculated that the residence that is emerging on our dig site might be an extension of Annas' estate, and possibly the home of one of those sons.