Qumran and The Mount of Olives – Sunday 6th November 2016

(Distance walked today: 13.8km)

Photos at:  https://www.flickr.com/photos/ffnord/albums/72157676432838135

We met for breakfast in the communal refectory of the kibbutz and Ineke explained to us that she had found us a replacement tour of Jericho and Bethlehem as well as the site on the River Jordan where St John baptised Jesus. Most of our group signed up for this and it was a great relief that we would not be missing such historically significant places when we had come so close.

We packed our belongings and loaded on to the bus for the short trip to Qumran, the site where the Essene religious community had once lived, and famously the burial location of the Dead Sea Scrolls. The scrolls were sealed in jars and buried in caves around the area, their discovery in the 1940s was incredibly historically valuable as it revealed a snapshot of religious tracts and books of law and history from millennia ago. The site was just over the road from Kibbutz Kalya so we were soon off of the bus and being shown around the site. To be honest the site isn’t particularly visually impressive, it’s the by now familiar collection of ritual bathing pools, cisterns, and storehouses. The site is of course best known for the scrolls, but the history of the community which lived there in isolation was quite interesting in itself. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Essenes

The caves where the scrolls were found are mainly in high up in the sides of the hills where they would not be affected by flash floods coming down in to the valley. We got told the story of the goat-heard looking for his lost goat and stumbling up this cave, the first of many which were found to contain the scrolls. I had to laugh when I heard of the academics paying the Bedouin who travelled the area for any scrolls they found. Unfortunately the payment was per square inch, so many scrolls were torn up in to inch squares to maximise the money the finder would get. Didn’t really think that one through.

The heat was really beginning to pick up so it was a relief to get back on the bus and head to Jerusalem. Qumran sits near the Dead Sea so is significantly below sea level, after around 45 minute’s drive all of it up hill there is a little lay-by which marks sea level, you can get out and have your photo taken with a camel and everything!

As we got nearer to Jerusalem we began to see the walls built around the Palestinian territories, this was quite a stark reminder that this whole area was far from stable.

Our first stop in Jerusalem was the Mount of Olives, our little bus joined the queue of coach after coach of tourists from the world over who are an ever-present sight in Jerusalem. We would be walking down the mount, and meeting our bus at the bottom of the hill to head in to Jerusalem proper. The view from the top is incredible, so much history and strife in one glance, the centre of three religions and consequently the site of so much bloodshed.

From this vantage point Ineke gave us a potted history of the city and pointed out some key landmarks, many of which we would be exploring this day and the next. The obvious focal point was the Temple Mount and the Dome of the Rock, this is the site of the Second Temple and the spot from which Mohammed ascended to Heaven. Ineke pointed out the bricked up Golden Gate of the Temple Mount, this is where the prophesies say the Messiah will return through, so when the Muslims took over the place they bricked up the gate and made the area in front of it an Islamic cemetery. This seems rather petty to me, I mean, if you are planning to thwart a living deity then a few stones aren’t going to do much.

One thing I did not expect was that most of the hillside would be covered with graves, all facing the Temple Mount. Atop many of the graves are stones, one left each time a family member visits the grave. This gave the whole place a very stark and sombre feel, as there was little to no vegetation in the grave yards.

We worked our way down the steep, narrow, street which led down the mount to the Garden of Gethsemane, the place where Jesus spent his final night with his disciples before being taken for crucifiction.

This was probably a pleasant, quiet spot a long time ago, and the chapel built on the site is a thing of beauty. However the unending shuffle of tourists does somewhat detract from the tranquillity of the site. I’m well aware that I and my group were there as tourists too, but there were ten of us, not the 50 – 100 strong groups of mainly American tourists in their matching caps and with absolutely no regard for those around them.

This chapel is hired out by the hour for services conducted by a variety of denominations and nationalities, you can pretty much guarantee that a service will be happening at any given time in the day.

We made our way out through the garden and down the last part of the hill to meet up with our bus and head up the hill to the city wall where we would spend the rest of the day exploring on foot after entering through the Dung Gate.