Trekin through the Old City lookin at walls

These pictures are from the field study we did on this previous Sunday. Basically we walked around the Old City looking at walls and old archealogy sites with parts of walls. Although the topic sounds incredibly boring, which it did to me at the time as well, we had a blast running around the city trying to identify how many thousands of years this or that stone block has been around. Since Israel has had people living in it consistently for thousands of years, it makes an interesting subject for observation.

The Pictures:

Apparentlty, when good rocks were in short supply, the current occupent would simply utilize whatever stones happened to be available... such as grave stones. There are a number of grave stones stuck in the walls around city. Poor dead people. No stones.



Some of my fellow students: Jonathan, Meredith, Benito - whom many of you know-, Chad, and Matthew. We're chillin outside the archealogical park where we started our main wall observations.


My friend, Benia. The MK from the Philipines. Behind him is the fig tree we raided when we diverted from our group. The branches were a little far for either one of us the reach so we took turns extending the other over the little ledge; they were worth it.



Ancient lamps. Actually I was dinking with my camera again , trying to get cool pictures so I figured I'd put one up :)



This is the Temple Mount wall built by Herod the Great. The thing is utterly massive. I stood at the bottom and gawked at how huge the thing was. One of the stones on the wall is about half the size of an average person. Huge. Indestructably huge. The pride of Israel during Roman rule huge.


This is the road beneath that monstrosity. These are the original stones that were laid here. Translated to mean: Jesus walked here. On these very stones. Looking up at that same massive mount as we were.
The cracks are from when the huge, indestructable Temple Mount walls were destroyed by the Romans. They pushed the stones over from the top, all the way down to the bottom where the stones literally crushed the stone road. It gave a new meaning to the destruction of the temple in 70 AD and Jesus' words concerning it.



I figured I would see just how heavy those stones really were. They were pretty heavy. Heavy enough that when they built the thing they didn't have to use any sort of morter or concrete; they just stacked them on top of each other and they stayed put.


We are standing in the pool of Siloam. I don't know where the pictures are, but immediately before this we were walking/ducking through a tunnel built through the ground by Hezekiah from a spring outside the walls into this pool, which is inside the walls. The tunnel was long and narrow and we were happy to see the sun again.
This is Ben, Becky, and Barrett


The tunnel was fun, but the hike back to the top of the "hill" where our school is proved to be a difficult task...