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Caesarea<\/p><\/div>\n
On the coast I visited the\u00a0port city of Caesarea<\/a>,\u00a0where the great Roman architect Herod <\/a>built 2\u00a0harbors, an aqueduct, a Roman amphitheatre,\u00a0marvelous temples and markets in 30 BCE.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/em><\/div>\n $\"\"$ <\/em><\/a>
Crusaders Castle<\/p><\/div>\n
Layers <\/em>of other cultures and invaders show in the\u00a0remnants of\u00a0a Crusaders<\/a>\u00a0Castle (1101 \u2013 1265) in Caesarea.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
In the Old City of Acre<\/a>\u00a0I saw the Citadel and then\u00a0went underground into the \u201cbelly\u201dof the Crusader city where\u00a0I experienced\u00a0the Knights Halls with it\u2019s monsterous pillars, arches, crypts, and the Templar\u2019s Tunnel.\u00a0Above ground (or above our heads) stands the Muslim quarter and markets with Khan El Qmdan.<\/p>\n
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Tell Dan<\/p><\/div>\n
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Capernaum<\/p><\/div>\n
In the Golan Heights, I visited the headwaters of the River Jordan, Tell Dan, and Capernaum where Jesus and Peter lived. \u00a0Everywhere you saw rocks and more rocks, layers and more layers<\/em>.\u00a0Several years ago I did a series of monoprints called Natural Abstractions<\/a><\/em>, and rocks and layers were the major theme.<\/p>\n
Nearby in Beit She\u2019an\u00a0(where only 1\/10th of the 400 acre site has been excavated) I marveled as I walked through\u00a0the Hellenistic and Romanesque\u00a0baths, pillars, and temples. In the background was a another huge tell<\/em> (first inhabited in fifth milllennium BCE) with more layers<\/em> of history to be uncovered,\u00a0so we naturally climbed the tell to get a better look from above.\u00a0 Looking back at the excavation we could see the signs of a modern industrial city on the top layer<\/em>.<\/p>\n
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Beit She'an with tell in background<\/p><\/div>\n
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Beit She'an below, modern industry above<\/p><\/div>\n
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Wall and church above in Jerusaleum<\/p><\/div>\n
Old Jerusaleum with its four ancient quarters again reiterated the\u00a0theme of layers<\/em>. Its\u00a0impossible to explain in a blog all the buildings throughout history\u00a0that were built and destroyed, rebuilt and destroyed, in Jerusaleum.\u00a0\u00a0One religion ontop of another, anywhere you went. For example, the Church of the Holy Sepulchre <\/a>was built over the site of a temple of Aphrodite.\u00a0 And the\u00a0infamous Muslim Dome of the Rock<\/a> sits ontop of the\u00a0 Temple Mount<\/a>, which\u00a0was the site of the Second Temple of the Jews. The rock walls are part of the Western Wall <\/a>complex that is a sacred site for Jews. Temple Mount is the most contested religious site in world. Trying to keep track of what was where when<\/em> was very difficult.<\/p>\n
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Western Wall Tunnels<\/p><\/div>\n
One of the highlights of the area was the Western Wall Tunnels Tour<\/a>\u00a0which opened recently.<\/p>\n
Israel is a land of layers<\/em>, one civilization built on top of another. Visiting Israel shows you the story\u2026 a modern and ancient land in one. I was above ground, under ground in tunnels and caverns and cisterns, and everywhere in between.<\/p>\n
An excellant book to read about Israel and its layers<\/em> of civilization is The Source<\/em> by James Michener. Most of the sites that I saw were in the book, and seeing them made the story more visual. Read my blog about the book and its relevance to some of my artwork.<\/p>\n<\/body>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<\/p>\n
I recently visited Israel. In only 5 days time, I saw Caesarea, Acre\/Akko, Nazareth, Tel Dan in the Golan Heights, Capernaum and the Sea of Galilee, Beit She\u2019an, the Dead Sea, the Caves of Qumran, Massada, and numerous sites in Jerusaleum. I saw layers upon layers of civilization, and heard the countless stories of various […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[133,6],"tags":[126,124,131,17,129,127,123,130,122,125,128,132],"class_list":["post-516","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-archaeology","category-travel","tag-beit-shean","tag-caesarea","tag-herod","tag-israel","tag-james-michener","tag-jerusalem","tag-layers","tag-religion","tag-tell","tag-tell-dan","tag-the-source","tag-yahweh","odd"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lindaceverson.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/516","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lindaceverson.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lindaceverson.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lindaceverson.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lindaceverson.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=516"}],"version-history":[{"count":29,"href":"https:\/\/www.lindaceverson.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/516\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":661,"href":"https:\/\/www.lindaceverson.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/516\/revisions\/661"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lindaceverson.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=516"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lindaceverson.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=516"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lindaceverson.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=516"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}