Day 9 Part 1 The Israel National Museum

We are waking up slower these days.  Not only is the toll of the uncountable number of stairs and miles of walking each day really adding up but our body clocks are catching up to the time change after waking us up in the early hours of the morning for most of this trip.  I look out the window of our hotel and think of the song "Bethlehem Morning" even though we are in Jerusalem. 

I ponder what to wear today.  I'm not really all that concerned about fashion (obviously) but with a limited wardrobe I have pretty much put together all the combinations of shirt/pants that I have brought with me by now.  Since we will be in Jerusalem all day, I will wear my running shoes, but what shirt with what pants?  Fortunately I have not dropped a big blob of bbq sauce on any of my shirts yet, mostly because they don't serve bbq sauce in Israel, so most of my shirts are still pretty clean.  I should probably wear a long-sleeved shirt. 

The little complicator is when you are in Jerusalem, so often places we go are "sensitive" and part of that sensitivity is the length of sleeves and pant legs for those areas where religious sensitivities are heightened.  So in Jerusalem pretty much you need to wear long sleeves and long pants.  It in such a hot place you have to wear your least cool clothing.  That pretty much holds true even in non-sensitive places as well but for sunburn potential not religiosity. It would be safer next time to just bring all long-sleeved shirts.  

I make my clothing selections from my limited options and head down for my standard breakfast. 

We gather for a devotional by Dr. Wood in one of the hotel's large rooms.  We get the game plan which includes the Israeli National Museum, the Garden Tomb, and a rare opportunity - a free couple of hours for lunch! After a prayer, we are bid to get on the bus.  The buses are always right on time and waiting for us.  The drivers are the unsung heroes of the trip.  

The bus drivers are always thinking ahead, appear right on time and where they need to be.  They are also pretty friendly.  I think ours must be from Australia.  He looks a bit like Crocodile Dundee with the hat he wears and he has that Australia way of talking.  I hope they get a good tip for the good job they do. 

We enter the downtown traffic and snake our way into town.  One of the sights that is becoming familiar to me is we often pass by the Valley of Hinnom.  It is a beautiful little park-like place where we see families playing and little children running around.  The history of this place is very dark.  The Valley of Hinnom was a place where the apostate Jews sacrificed their children to Molech and Jesus referred to as "Gehenna" or hell.  The contradiction from then until now couldn't be greater.  It looks like it should be part of a golf course.  I am a little more oriented now as the Valley of Hinnom begins near Jaffa Gate, my favorite part of the city.  

After a short bus ride, we pull into a spacious parking lot and leave our buses. We have arrived at the Israel National Museum.  This same area also is the place where "The House of the Book" displays the Scroll of Isaiah and many fragments of the Dead Sea Scrolls.  The House of the Book catches your eye right away as the shape of the building is built to resemble the kind of pottery jar the scrolls were found in, the roof is of white tile and fountains of water are continually spraying the roof.  

The water on the roof was the means by which the architects used to keep the building cool and temperature controlled before such environmental systems advanced to the level they are today.  

We are led to the area where there is a 3D scale model of Jerusalem.  I have seen pictures of this many times before.  It really helps one get oriented and have idea of how Jerusalem is laid out.  Our guide for the day is Dr. Wave Nunually.  In his characteristic and enthusiastic style, he shows us the different configurations of Jerusalem over the centuries.  The City of David, Hezekiah's Wall, and so forth.  All of it is pretty interesting and the scale and accuracy of this model is amazing, but I am anxious to get inside the museum as we are still on the outside.  All of the bus groups have gone inside some time ago and Dr. Nunually is still lecturing on the finer aspects of the City.  I appreciate this, but really want to go inside. 

Inside the museum will be all of the real artifacts that we have seen replicas of on our trip so far.  From Dan, Chorizim, Shiloh and many things we have not experienced yet all await inside.  Dr. Nunually doesn't seem to be getting the message and we stir restlessly as our precious time diminishes.  Finally Dr. Nunually confesses he has talked too long and that we should move along.

I thought he would never ask.  Instead of the museum we go into the House of the Book.  It is very dark inside especially after being in the bright sunlight outside.  It is so dark that even after a time I can barely see.  In the center of the room is the huge round feature around which the scroll of Isaiah is spread.
I am using a picture I found online as the pictures I took were all to dark to discern what the picture was about.
 

This scroll of Isaiah is the oldest complete example of the book of Isaiah.  We are told here that just recently the real scroll that has always been on display has been removed for preservation and this is an exact replica.  Really?  I don't much care to spend time looking at a replica, especially in the dark, I can do that in the gift shop in better light.  Since my reading of Hebrew characters is a little rusty and I can't look at the original, I have little interest.  For myself I consider this wasted time that I could be spending in the museum.

There are two levels in this building, the first level is all about the Dead Sea Scrolls.  The lower level of the building houses the Aleppo Codex.  This document has a shadowy and clandestine history of being stolen and ransomed through the crusader era and being transferred back and forth.  It is a collection we might think of as the first "Hebrew Bible" with most of the Jewish writings bound together in book format.  

We are spending too long in this place and I walk outside into blinding sunlight.  After too long at the scale model of Jerusalem and too long in the Shrine of the Scroll, we finally enter the museum.  It is fascinating.  Why did we not start here and see if we had time left over for the other places?  I can tell we will NOT have enough time to see everything.  

I admit I probably sound a little whiney about all this, but I LOVE museums, especially ones that house old stuff.  To be so close to a museum that holds things of biblical importance is almost more than I can stand.  I have to race through to see it all.  Much like our time at Yad Vashem, I trail the group to take as many side tours through the museum as I can while being tethered by my little blue receiver.  There is wonderful stuff, actual Roman helmets and spears, statuary and the real items from many of the sites we have toured.  The antiquity of it all is fascinating.  I have never seen things this old before.  The Constitution of the United States?  Hardly old at all, a mere blip on the timeline in comparison to many ancient writings far, far predating our country. 

This is the stone from Tel-Dan that we visited early in our tour that mentions "the House of David" verifying that David was in fact an actual historical person, not a legend like King Arthur. We saw the replica at Tel-Dan but this is the real deal here.

There were so many things that we did not get to see much less photograph. If you go to Israel, reserve AN ENTIRE DAY to see the museum.  Anything less is not enough.  I am sure that this is why many people come back to Israel and hire their own guides and make up their own tour so you can spend all day at any place you wish.  I would have done so here.

You may ask what was one of the coolest things I saw in the museum?  I have an answer for you.  An actual human heel bone with a Roman spike through it!  For real. 

No one of course is making any claims that this was Jesus' heel bone but this does date from the Roman period and verifies the method of crucifixion.  This sort of thing is extremely rare to have survived.  Amazing.

As I knew it would happen, we are told we do not have any more time, we must cut our visit to the museum short and hurry on to our next destination.  I am very close to throwing a two-year-old style tantrum melt down and make them drag me kicking and screaming out the doors of the museum, but I keep my emotions in check.  I am the last one out of the museum and on the bus.

Our next destination?  The garden tomb...