day seven. jerusalem.

we visited the israel museum at just the right time of our trip. after a day and half, i have a rough mental idea of geographical layout of the area around the old city. and yet, we still have several days to go. which is a great time to visit the israel museum. when you enter, there is a to-scale model of the old city of jerusalem. 

i stood at in the spot where approximately our hotel is located and took this picture of the model. you can see the damascus gate, where we entered the old city yesterday in the middle of the picture. the road leading away from the damascus gate and into the bottom right of the picture is the damascus road...which attentive readers will remember leads to damascus. 

the israel museum is also the home of the dead sea scrolls. they look like this:

.....you can't take any pictures. for something this cool, you need to make the trip to israel. and if you do make a trip to jerusalem, make sure to stop and see these treasures. extremely cool stuff. 

i snuck the camera out of my pocket to record the moment right before we entered the vault where the scrolls are kept. 

we left the israel museum and headed for the city of david. on the way we drove around the eastern side of the old city. i already had an idea of what to expect because i spent some time looking at the model at the museum. looking to the west, the city once looked like the picture below. this is also approximately what the city looked like from the mount of olives. 

the city of david...that's jerusalem right? well, sort of. the "old city" as we know it today, is for the most part the city that was (re)built by Suleiman; he built it upon the city that Herod built and was then destroyed and then rebuilt and then destroyed...you get the point. prior to all of that war, peace, war, peace, war, peace, war, peace, etc. david founded jerusalem, but the original, original, original city was directly to the south of what we now consider the old city. in the picture above, that means it's immediately to the left. 

this original, original, original city is what is now known as "the city of david." we went there. and the pictures of really old rocks tour continued. 

excavations of what is believed to be david's palace are underway. i have pictures of it, but it looks like...a big pile of old rocks. what is worth seeing, a can't miss if you visit jerusalem, are hezekiah's tunnels. for those of you who can cite from memory 2 Chronicles 32:30 ("It was Hezekiah who blocked the upper outlet of the Gihon spring and channeled the water down to the west side of the City of David. He succeeded in everything he undertook."), you already know what i'm talking about. for the rest of us, you can read more on wikipedia. 

the short of hezekiah's story is this: a dude named Hezekiah ruled jerusalem in the 8th century b.c.e. he pissed of the assyrians (more or less present day iraq), who then decided it was time for war (a foreshadowing of the war/peace/war/peace/war/peace cycle to come). the water spring where jerusalem sourced it's water was also the side of the city where the assyrians were going to attack, but it was outside of the city walls. not a good strategic gameplan. the solution? simple. build a tunnel under the city to move the water to the other side, putting the city of jerusalem in it's entirety between the assyrian (or any other future army) and the new water source. 

now for the really cool part. you can walk through this tunnel today. 

it was another great day in jerusalem. our kids named the tunnel as their favorite part of the trip so far. i enjoyed the israel museum. we also started the day at yad vashem, the israel holocaust museum. like the one in washington d.c., it's a mournful experience. but it was a good trip for ana. she bought a book.