By the Sea of Salt Crystals

I awoke early this morning, and couldn’t get back to sleep, so I decided, with this being my first day in Jerusalem, to go for an early morning walk. I left the hotel, and walked around a bit in the Old City, inside the walls. It was very quiet, and I caught a picture of the sunrise over the Mount of Olives.

The official tour began at Qumran, the site of the community near the Dead Sea that produced the Dead Sea scrolls. We toured the ancient ruins, which was near one of the caves where the scrolls were found. In it, over 15,000 scroll fragments were found.

We continued south along the shore of the Dead Sea to Masada, Herod the Great’s palace fortress in the wilderness. Herod was a master architect, who built the mountaintop fort to be a place of refuge to withstand any siege. When the Roman army rolled through Judea crushing the Jewish revolt of 69 AD, 1,000 Jews took over the lightly guarded Masada, and settled in for the long haul. It was more than three years before the Roman tenth legion broke through the walls, and then discovered that all inside had died by their own hands the night before, rather than face a life of slavery. In the photo, you can see the great height of the fortress by the cable cars. You can also make out the remains (square) of 2 of the 8 Roman camps that surrounded the foot of the mountain. The smaller one to the right that is more distinct has been partially restored.

On our way back to Jerusalem we stopped at a beach on the Dead Sea to try on a coating of the black, mineral rich mud, and go for a ‘swim.’ The water is so salt laden, you really float out on top. In the picture below, I am totally unsupported, except by the buoyancy of the water.

On a more serious note, along the return road through the Judean wilderness, we saw many Bedouin encampments. Theirs is a semi nomadic, subsistence life. You can see the tin-and-plastic shack homes in the background, and a pile of pallets they have scavenged to use as building materials. It seems to be to be very far from the romantic image more widely portrayed.