The Lost Files: Tombs of the Kings

More accurately, a walk through the valley of the Tombs of the Kings, and then a visit to a Tomb of a Queen, specifically, the Temple-Tomb of Queen Hatshepsut.

Along the ravine where ancient pharaohs attempted to make their bodies disappear, so that their gilded splendor could escape grave robbers and be ready for the resurrection, you find little digs like this one:

Unfortunately for you, the interior of the many passages tunneled into the rocks have a vigorous no-photo policy, vigorous at least until a pound or two were to emerge . . . and you just weren’t worth it.  So the elaborate hieroglyphic script and vividly colored memorials will have to remain in my memory alone.

This remote valley was across the river from the contemporary town of Luxor where we were staying.  Father Severhino and I were able to drive with two parishioners up into the hills to find what had been hidden for centuries.

Our two guides had a different philosophy than Father Doan in Cairo had had.  While there, as he led us to the Cairo market, he cheerfully explained that the bombing there two weeks prior was a good sign, “Because a mortar never hits the same crater twice.”  Here in Luxor, our friends waited until after we had visited our next sight before describing in detail the massacre of several years before, when 63 tourists had been gunned down by terrorists.

Which would have explained the presence here as everywhere else of machinegun equipped guards.

Remote though it was:

Deir el-Bahri was begun over 4,000 years ago.

Mentuhotep II, whom I’m sure has always been of great interest to you, was actually the first to be buried here.  Hatshepsut, one of the longest reigning and most prosperous of female pharaohs, then expanded the site to hold her mausoleum.  Unfortunately, as I’m sure you remember, under Thutmose III and his son, her memory was attempted to be eradicated, so they did things like knock the faces off her statues.

These guys made it, though:

Here photos could be taken of the cool paintings and such:

With the requisite hieroglyphics.  Below of course you recognize the lower golden oval (cartouche) representing the aforementioned Thutmose III—apparently sometimes called by his loving people ‘stork-threebean-shovel-beetle guy’.

A Window on Dor

Do some farming.  Find a 6th century synagogue.

That was on the to-do list for the members of the kibbutz Bet-Alpha back in 1928.  Their find contained one of the nicest mosaic floors discovered in Israel, so on a road trip yesterday four of us decided to swing by the northern location.

Three segments run down the center of the Jerusalem-facing synagogue.  Closest to the apse is an image of an Ark flanked by lions and two menorah (menarot, if you want to be technical).  In the middle is the full zodiac, underscoring how important the calendar is for Jewish ritual, and recalling the belief that the temple was a microcosm of the entire universe.  Finally, at the bottom, Abraham’s sacrifice of Isaac is depicted, which coincided with yesterday’s first reading for Mass from Genesis.

From there we continued to the nearby site of Gideon’s selection of his warriors.  Ma’ayan Harod still has a running spring today, made famous by Judges 7.  Even after Gideon has cleared anyone who was hesitant to fight and 22,000 men go home, God still wants to thin down the remaining 10,000.  So it’s from this spring that Gideon sifts his men—those kneeling down to drink vs. those who ‘lapped with their hands to their mouths’.  He sent home the kneeling crew, so he was left with 300 men.

When you’re there the true meaning of the text is clarified: ‘kneeling down’ actually meant diving into the swimming pool there:

Heading west brought us to the coast just south of Haifa.  There was the Templar ruin of the fortress Atlit, also known, in an apparent tribute to this blog, as Castle Pilgrim.  Built in 1218, it was never taken in siege.  Unless you count it’s being besieged today by the navy base that surrounds it, which means this is about as close as you can get to it:

Continuing south we arrived at Dor, winning the day’s prize for longest occupied site, with its origins going back about 4,000 years.  It shows up in Joshua 11 to its own misfortune: teaming up with a whole crew of kings and armies against the newcomers Joshua and Co., Dor is trounced and the king, among others, is killed.

Various groups lived there over the millennia, including the Romans with temples left behind, the Byzantines with a church, and crusaders fortifying the area—after which it appears to have been abandoned.

Centuries of the Mediterranean doing what the Mediterranean does have worn away the bay and headlands, leaving behind beautiful rock formations and tide pools.

Which were met by a sun-drenched beach, which we also researched.

The Lost Files: The Temple of Karnak

Thebes didn’t have just one temple, of course.  And the temples they did have kept getting expanded and enlarged by pharaohs who realized that bigger was better.

Definitely bigger.

Witness Karnak, the sprawling temple complex just north of the temple of Luxor.  Remodeled and tinkered with for over 1,300 years, it has a lot of carved rocks left behind today.

Like these guys by today’s entrance:

Unfortunately, what you can’t see from these photos is the scale: these columns are absolutely massive—with diameters of over three meters, they are over 21 meters—almost 70 feet—tall.

They also had the tallest obelisks in Egypt there:

The tallest currently in Egypt, I should say.  I learned that all of Egypt’s tallest obelisks are in Rome.  I thought I’d seen these things somewhere before.

Father Severhino and I spent hours hours wandering through the vast complex.  You get thirsty after a while.

Enough to lose your head, it seems:

Though the place was named Karnak, I didn’t see any cars anywhere.  Or anyone who had a knack for one, as far as I could tell.  There sure were plenty of names lying around though, or at least carved into the rocks.  Using bugs and such as symbols.  So that you would never forget who these people were.

The Lost Files: The Temple of Luxor

One of the misleading elements of a blog is that it gives the impression of keeping one up-to-date on the adventures and escapades of the blogger, which could very well be the case, except when the blogger is a slacker.

Like myself.

In such a case archives of photos and events build up that should be posted, but instead languish away in obscurity. In an attempt to (begin to) rectify this egregious delinquency, witness the beginning of ‘The Lost Files’.

Beginning with April’s trip to Egypt. Based on what was posted, you’d never know we got past the pyramids. Two of us, however, remained in Cairo as the rest of our group bussed back to Israel. Going first to celebrate Mass with the Missionaries of Charity, they told us about the Franciscans in Luxor, which was our next destination.

Far up the Nile River in the heart of Egypt, Luxor was once the capital of ancient Egyptian, known then as Thebes. Taking the night train that followed the Nile, Father Severhino and I arrived in the city at dawn, which today boasts the most extensive temple complexes of the ancient pharaohs, as well as many of their tombs.

Our early arrival gave us a view of the main temple in the morning sunlight.

Going right in, we had the site virtually to ourselves.

Not counting guys like this, of course.

One of the most spectacular things of walking through the ancient ruins was the sheer magnitude of the scale. Everything was so massive.

Our research confirmed: there remains the remembrance of those who walked like an Egyptian.

All in all, it was a monumental site:

With much to ponder (so we sphinx).

Spending two nights in town (more photos yet), we were able to get to know the Franciscans and meet the Catholic community, as well as celebrate Mass for the sisters who ran a grade school. Definitely an experience worth chronicling.

Pontifex

. . . means ‘bridge builder’ in Latin, which is what Jerusalem has in Santiago Calatrava.

I brought along my camera for my afternoon run yesterday, and was able to catch a few shots of his piece, one of Jerusalem’s most recent additions.

Northern Californians will immediately recognize Calatrava’s work, being familiar with the graceful Sundial Bridge crossing the Sacramento River in Redding.

Calatrava’s 72 string bridge in Jerusalem doesn’t cross over any water, though.

The route under Calatrava’s bridge would be better traversed by car than by kayak:

Calatrava modeled the bridge after the theme of a harp, recalling King David and the many subsequent temple musicians.

Calatrava cites Psalm 150 as one of his inspirations—one of the most exuberant of the Psalms: “Praise Him with a blast of the trumpet; praise Him with the lyre and harp!”

“Praise him with really tricky balanced cables making you dizzy when you try to run under them while looking upwards!”

The Seventh Station

Seven sevens give you today, if you started counting from Passover.  A week of weeks, you could say.  So the name for today’s feast, Weeks, or Shavuot, is appropriate.

What is celebrated today?  That of course goes back to the question, what is celebrated on Passover.  Get that one right, and then figure out what the Jewish people would have been doing 50 days (Greek: pentecoste) later.

If you answered that Passover had to do with the Lord delivering Israel from Egypt and bringing them into freedom, you’re right on target.  Journey forward seven weeks, and where were the Jewish people?  In the heart of the desert of the Sinai Peninsula, they were at the foot of the rocky crest with the same name.  Moses at its summit today receives the new Law that would allow Israel to live as God’s people.

Seven wasn’t enough when it came to the Torah itself.  The Jewish Encyclopedia explains that the Law was in fact given in 70 languages:

The word of God was pronounced on Mount Sinai in seventy languages (Shab. 88a; Ex. R. v.; comp. Acts ii. 5). The Torah was written in seventy languages in order that the nations should not be able to plead ignorance as their excuse for rejecting it (Tosef., Soṭah, viii.). Among the seventy languages the most noble is Hebrew, for in it was pronounced the creative word of God (Gen. R. xviii., xxxi.; Yalḳ., Gen. 52).

Because of this, regarding today’s feast, the Encyclopedia continues: “The relation of the Jewish to the Christian Pentecost with its pouring out of the spirit as an analogy to the giving the Law in seventy languages is obvious.”

Speaking of sevens, I was at the Seventh Station on the Via Dolorosa today.  Every Friday the Missionaries of Charity host a Mass in a tiny chapel hidden above the Way of the Cross, followed by adoration throughout the day.  It was beautiful to stay afterward and pray, because throughout the day when children came in to pray the rosary with the sisters, you got to see what exuberance meant.

Magdalene

It may be that in your geographical precinct it is today that you celebrate Ascension Thursday.  In which case a few more photos from last Thursday’s Ascension celebration are in order.

These are from the hike back down the Mount of Olives on the way back from Mass at the site of the Ascension.  Just above Gethsemane, near the base of the slope, the Russian Orthodox have the beautiful Monastery of Mary Magdalene.

Possessing a lovely view of the Old City, its golden domes are one of the most eye-catching sites on the hillside:

Though the five domes here aren’t quite as large as the golden sphere of the Dome of the Rock inside the city walls:

The interior of the sanctuary, surrounded by beautiful flower gardens, reflects the prayerful stillness of the nuns who reside there:

Here the sisters preserve the icon of Mary and Child titled the ‘Odigidria’, brought down from Lebanon, with many miracles and healings attributed to it.  The Russian martyrs Elizabeth and Barbara, nuns killed by the Bolsheviks, are also buried here.

Manger Square

My running paid off today as 3 of us tried to drive over to Bethlehem for Mass with the Holy Father early this morning .

“I thank Almighty God for giving me the grace to come to Bethlehem,” said Pope Benedict XVI in beginning his homily.  I felt the same way—we almost hadn’t made it.

We found all the roads to Bethlehem closed for security—making it a little hard to get there.  Knowing the area from running, though, I was able to navigate us through smaller neighborhoods to get to the back roads that brought us into Bethlehem, in a Magi-like way, by a different route.

There we found several checkpoints as well, but just as we came to the final barricade, beyond which no traffic was allowed, Father Don made a left turn to pull into the driveway of a friend.

So with passage and parking provided, we were able to be part of a latter-day singing of heaven and earth’s Gloria in Excelsis Deo.

Along with a good-sized crowd—flooding the square:

Because of our roundabout arrival, we didn’t have quite as much pre-Mass time as the day before in Jerusalem.

But we did have time to see the friars helping with the candles again.  The Franciscans providing light for the world:

Perhaps most exciting of all was seeing the joy of the Christian Palestinians of Bethlehem in having the Holy Father come to them.  Father Don had worked in the area for years, so he introduced me to some of his friends.

Including those dressed in traditional garb for the occasion:

Because Manger Square in front of the Basilica of the Nativity is quite small, papal-venuely speaking, you were guaranteed to be close:

And to get lots of sun:

A few weeks before I had been in Bethlehem and had spoken with one of the deacons about the preparations the choir was making for today’s Mass.  To hear them and some of the other sounds of the day, click here:

The Pope’s homily spoke of the revitalizing message of Christ’s birth, transforming us to be, “witnesses of the triumph of God’s love over the hatred, selfishness, fear and resentment which cripple human relationships.”  He included in his remarks a special greeting to the pilgrims from Gaza who at the last moment had received permission to leave the Gaza Strip to come to Bethlehem.

To come to Bethlehem where the world had gathered together to hear again the message of the angels bearing good tidings: “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth, peace to those whom he loves.”

Kidron Valley

Today was the big Mass with the Holy Father in Jerusalem.

Security was heavy, tickets were few, but we were able to make it in.

This was as close as we could get:

 

Though they didn’t ask us to help with setup:

 

This clip gives you a sense of some of the energy at the Mass:

 

This guy was pretty popular:

The liturgy itself:

 

Paul VI was the first Pope to have visited the Holy Land since St. Peter left in the first century.  John Paul II followed him in 2000.  So that makes today’s Mass roughly the third with the Holy Father in Jerusalem in almost 2,000 years.

 

The liturgy began at 4:30, ending around 7:00, so our hike home gave us a view of the low western light.

Streetwise

Security was high on the streets of Jerusalem today.  Though it’s always high on the streets of Jerusalem.  So today it was particularly high.

Standard patrols on the streets are teams of two with bulletproof vests, riot sticks, and automatic rifles.

Many of the additional security had a pared down appearance, with the green vest and brimmed hat that would look similar to security personnel in the rest of the world, weapons tucked out of sight.

Cutting north of the Old City, I passed by vans with mobile satellite dishes, groups of policemen setting up barricades, and random surveillance teams.

Helicopters were joined by blimps with aerial perspective as I went into the Old City in the afternoon.  Going in meant not coming out, as the gates went into lockdown.  Meeting a roadblock at the Jaffa Gate I tried cutting south to the Zion Gate, which was open, but every road off the hill was closed.  After grabbing a cappuccino I found the roads opened again, only to pass by the squads of police and military still onsite after the Holy Father had passed by.

And this all before the big Mass in the Kidron Valley tomorrow.