Second Temple Field Study

March 14, 2009

Today we had a field study for our Second Temple History class. However, one of the sites we went to is only available to the public on Saturday, and our professor for this class, Dr. Yigael Levine, is a religious Jew. So Dr. Paul Wright led the expedition.

Our first stop was at Hyrcanus, a fortress in the Judean Wilderness, first build by the Hasmoneans, I believe, and then later used and improved by Herod the Great. Hyrcanus just happens to be in a sort of heavy artillery firing range. There is an Israeli military base nearby, and 5 or 6 days out of the week the relatively level ground in this area is bombared by various and sundry weapons of "minor" destruction. On the 7th day they rest from their bombardment and various and sundry non-religious Jews and Gentiles are free to go exploring. Which we did. We drove the bus quite a ways into the valley (possibly the valley of Achor?) by Hyrcanus and then hiked the rest of the way back. Hyrcanus is a pretty typical Herodian fortress, in that it is a tall, lonely hill, connected to any nearby hills only by a small spur or saddle, over which water from the aqueduct comes. Matt, Elise, and I climbed up a nearby hill, looking for what had at one point been some sort of monument, perhaps a funerary monument. We ended up skirting around Hyrcanus on a sort of ridge route and coming to the actual fortress by way of the connecting spur. We were able to see part of the aqueduct on the other side of the ridge. We also came across a hole dug in the ground, too regular to not be man-made. I wish I knew who dug it and why!

Hyrcanus, unlike Masada and Herodium, is really not well kept up or reconstructed, so there is less to see of the actual physical ruins. There were some nice mosaics, though I'm not sure if they're Herodian of Byzantine. Either way. There were also some cool rocks - agates, purple one, and green ones. (Yeah those are the technical names.) I really want to know what the green ones are. They reminded me of copper, but copper isn't exactly common in this area of the world...so I wonder.

At any rate it was a fun place to visit, a bit of the beaten trail, and I even found a...well...not exactly sure what it is. A bullet like object? Some remnant of the army's bombardment.

We paused by the Old Jericho tell on our way to our next stop to eat lunch. It was welcome.

We then took the bus part of the way up the "original" road between Jericho and Jerusalem. We didn't get very far before we had to stop and walk. We didn't have to walk as far horizontally, but the vertical distance to our next location was nothing to sneeze at. Well, really, it wasn't that bad, compared to Montana. This was another of Herod's fortresses, "Cypros." No, I don't mean Cyprus. And it's pronounced "kip-ross," named after Herod the Great's mother. According to Dr. Wright, NO ONE visits this site. Though again, I think it used to be an Israeli army base. No longer. Again, not many visible remains, but it did have an amazing view of Jericho. On both hills we talked about their history, their purpose, Herod, Herod's family, etc. Both were "fortresses," but were more than that - with all their luxury and splendor, evidences of which are still evident, these were pleasure palaces. Places for Herod to escape the pressures of political life, or for him to entertain Roman guests away from the prying eyes of the disproving Jews.

Back in the day, a few years ago, Physical Settings classes would always hike down the Kidron Wadi. Recently the road has been bad, and so most recent classes haven't been down that road or seen the Monastery on it. Since we had some extra time and energy, we headed west from Cypros to see St. George's Monastery. I had taken the road past it when I was here with my family, 10 years ago, and that was one of the only places that I hadn't yet re-visited since coming to school here. So I was excited to see it again. At first I thought we would just look at it from across the wadi, but then Dr. Wright decided that we could take the time to walk down to it and then continue the trail down the wadi. It's a really beautiful area, in spite of the fact that its in the Judean Wilderness, possibly because of the aquifer that still brings in spring water. We actually got to go inside the monastery and see their relics and the chapel build around the cave that is supposedly "Elijah's cave." I didn't get to do that last time, so that was pretty exciting. After that we continued down the wadi to Jericho, eventually met up with our bus, and came home.

(This is looking back at Cypros, the highest hill in the background. In the foreground is a Palestinian boy riding a pink bike.)

It was a lovely day, weather-wise and just in general. Not too hot, but still some sun, new and unusual places to explore, fond memories revisited, a chance to hike (about 7 miles), and some good friends to share the experience with. It was a good day.