After five days of digging at Qeiyafa, our group embarked on three days of touring in the southern regions Israel.
The digging has been hard work, with not much of any significant discovery, and a break was very much looked forward to by all.
First, about the digging. Against the wisdom and experience of our leader John, our young and eager site foreman asked us to lift some heavy stones. I, along with many others, stood by to watch. I was already feeling a little sore in my back. Only one or two of the foolhardy followed him into the fray. It was not more than a few minutes before our foreman cut and badly bruised his finger, needing bandaging, and one of our youngest and most athletic gave himself what is likely a hernia. Our foreman is back to doing some light work now, but Andrew got a plane back to the US yesterday morning, cutting his stay short by a few weeks. Today, a back-hoe did the heavy lifting, and thankfully, it will stay that way.
There have been other dangers presenting itself to us along the way as well. Yesterday morning, for example, I was so tired, after waking up at our usual dig wake-up time of 4:00AM, that I crashed to the floor trying to sit down where a chair was--last week! Digging this week hasn't uncovered anything important for our group, but we did uncover four scorpions, a few large spiders, a poisonous millipede, and today what looked like the venomous Palestinian viper. All these hang out under the rocks we dig up. I'm doubling up on my gloves now.
Groups at other sites in the ruins are finding some very exciting stuff. One group has uncovered a "destruction layer" where many intact vessels from the Iron age are lying. Qeiyafa, unlike many other ancient fortresses in the middle east, only has evidence of construction in two periods of history, the Iron Age (c. 1000 BC) and the Byzantine period (c. 300 AD). Many other ruins have layers upon layers of history, which can be very difficult to discern because they get mixed together. Because ours has only two layers, you would think finding the Iron Age layer would be much easier. However, it seems that where my group is situated, at the Citadel, evidence of the Iron Age walls and artifacts have been few. We have just today opened up about 50 more square meters of topsoil which is promising, however. There, about a foot below the surface we have found large stones which are evidence of a massive collapse. Welcome back back-hoe! We will treat the driver very nicely.
Now about the sight-seeing. Our travels this time were restricted to the southern half of Israel. First, about Beersheba. Getting there brought us much closer to Gaza and Hamas rocket range than John was planning. Our bus driver now is Ozmir's nephew, Na'el. That is actually his Arabic nickname; Natanel (Nathaniel) is his full name. He is very new to the job, and had trouble finding the safer route. But in all other respects he is a huge improvement over Ozmir, and John is especially happy about the change. Beersheba is an ancient ruins with many layers of excavation. There, a well still exists from the days of Jacob. At least in part because of the increased elevation of the ruins--layers upon layers--the well is now about 60 meters deep. That is, it took a rock about three and a half seconds to reach the water from the time we dropped it. The sound it made was like a giant bass drum. Pretty cool.
We also saw a few other ruins, namely Arad, Masada, and Qumran. I'm told the old TV mini-series with Peter O'Toole is very good, and our leader, John, was actually a Roman soldier in it. Something I'll check-out from the library when I get home. (See photo of movie set's siege tower.) Qumran was also interesting, simply because it gave us a chance to see what has become the most important Biblical find in recent history. (see photo of Qumran ruins with caves in the rock wall, taken from "cave 6".)
For fun and refreshment we also traveled to the springs and waterfalls of nearby Engedi ( see photo), where David went when he was in trouble, and also for a swim in the Dead Sea (see photo of me reading my geography lesson.) it was a fun sensation to float like a cork, but the beach was not a pretty picture. After that, I think I've seen enough of retirement-age, over-exposed and overweight Eastern Europeans with mud all over them. A smelly, dirty tourist trap, John called it the closest thing, for him, to Hell. Funny that it does happen to be the lowest point on Earth. As Hebrews says, all creatures are naked and exposed to the eyes of God. Not a good thing. I know because I've been to the Dead Sea.
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