Thurs July 13, 2006
The end is near! No, I don’t mean Armageddon—though the mountain that that supposed battle at the end of the world is named for is not far from here (Mt. Megiddo, which in Hebrew is Har Megiddo, thus “Ar-megeddon”). We’ve been by there a couple of times already on our travels, with nothing more ominous to report than a rather forbidding view of the Israeli prison located within sight of the place….

No, what I mean is that the end of our time here in Israel is fast approaching. At 3:30 this afternoon, Clint and Joyce Magnus left us. They’re taking a few days holiday at the coast, starting at Haifa and then heading south to Caesarea Maritima and so on. As is typical of them, they haven’t got arrangements made ahead of time but will just catch as catch can, at the time. Good for them!

Dan and I head home tomorrow morning. I called the embassy this morning and was assured by a woman in the consular section that my passport would indeed be ready tomorrow morning. “I hope you understand that I’m travelling a long distance to get there,” I said, “and so I really don’t want to make the trip if it’s not ready.” “It will be ready,” she said. I’m taking her at her word—not, of course, that I have much option!

In some ways of course it’s a good time to be leaving this place. The weather is fine, the work interesting, and the company congenial, but the political situation leaves a lot to be desired. Again this morning we heard jets overhead numerous times, and a disturbing amount of heavy thumping in the north. Bombs—big ones, and lots of them too, by the sound of it. When we arrived home at noon, we learned that Israel has been bombing not just the buffer zone separating us from Lebanon, but infrastructure throughout that country. No wonder there was so much noise! Everyone, and I do mean everyone, assures us up and down that there is no danger here whatsoever, and we have no objective reason to doubt their word. But at the same time this is just a little too far outside our sheltered North American experience to enable us to truly relax. Again, as I think I mentioned before, I think it’s our experience, rather than this experience, that’s truly unusual; over history, it’s a pretty safe bet that more people have lived in fear and the apprehension of dire things happening at any moment, than have lived in the kind of peace and security that we Canadians and Americans take for granted. But speaking historically and generally is one thing… speaking for myself, right here and now, is quite another. Yes, I’ll be glad to set foot on Canadian soil once again.

The memories will of course remain. The friendships formed with other team members are especially important. Last night after devotions we had kind of a little “recognition ceremony” for us who are leaving the dig early. We each got an official certificate of participation in Concordia University’s Institute of Archaeology. Better still, Rhoda Schuler made for each of us a personalized award, building on something that happened during our time here. Dan got the “Magnus maximus” award for being so tall (and thus, especially useful in many ways). Clint’s award highlighted his ability to say “eh” at every opportunity. Joyce got the Imelda Marcos award for having to go buy a pair of shoes in Jerusalem (she forgot to take along good walking shoes). President Holst’s was for “going with the flow,” since he’s so flexible and nothing seems to bother him ever. And mine was the “Murphy’s Law award” for having so many things go wrong in such a short time, near the beginning of the trip. It was great fun! And following that, there were 2 more special events as well. We four Canadians sang for the larger group a customized version of “O Canada” that Dan’s wife Connie wrote and emailed to us the other day. The audience was suitably impressed. Then one of the students asked all the doctors present to stand together in the centre of the circle and shake hands while greeting each other as “Doctor”—a totally goofy request, of course, but a pretty good way of spoofing the fact that 7 or 8 of our 24 or so team members are indeed doctors of one kind or another (theology, medicine, meteorology…). Very, very funny!

More important to our Edmonton crew: Our work-group today, in square F-3, was truly “Team Canada”: just Clint, Dan, and me. We have occasional help from other people, especially Irene, but mostly it was just the three of us digging in the corners of our square, prying out rocks and carting them away. Clint spent a lot of time in a narrow little trench between the wall of our square and a Byzantine wall more than a metre thick. Mark S. thinks it might have been an exterior defense wall, judging by the construction, even though it’s in an odd spot to have served that purpose. Dan focussed on another corner of the square where he found 3 thin rectangular blocks standing upright in a “U” shape right against an interior wall. Hmmm, what was that all about? We wondered about it being the head of a cistern, but it’s too high off the floor. A privy? Ditto. Some kind of storage compartments? Well, maybe. Dr. Schuler wasn’t persuaded by any of these suggestions, and told us he thought it was just a coincidental arrangement of stones that tumbled in the earthquake. We on our part weren’t terribly persuaded by that idea, so there it stood—until next week, anyway, when another team will take over our work and, for all we know, knock this thing down and cart it away posthaste. Oh well. As interesting as we found it, it’s hardly likely to be a major discovery that changes the face of Byzantine archaeology.

And that’s kind of true for this entire Northeast Church project as a whole. We’ve been at it for two solid weeks now, and naturally we’ve developed a certain amount of pride in “our” church. But that pride took a bit of a hit this morning when we acquired a broader context in which to think about this building. Mark took us on a tour of the rest of Hippos, shortly after breakfast, and I think we were all most impressed by what we saw. The Northwest Church, just to the west of us (as you might expect), is magnificent. It’s a far larger structure than ours, built of much larger and better-dressed stones, and—the most important difference of all—it was not abandoned prior to the earthquake of January 18, 749 AD. Evidence of its continuing use right up to the catastrophe was everywhere. In the diakonikon, a store-room alongside the outside aisle of the worship area, there were dozens and dozens of full storage jars containing various food items that would have been presented as offerings to the Lord and then given to the poor. The room was so full that several storage jars even stood outside the door, in the aisle of the church! In the skeuophylakion, which is sort of like our modern sacristy where liturgical items are prepared for service, a half-dozen brand-new oil lamps sat on a shelf awaiting use; they had never held oil and never been burned. The beautifully carved marble chancel screens were still in situ (in their original location), not only intact but also inlaid with small silver crosses in several places. Mosaic inscriptions are entirely readable… and so it went. By comparison, our church was “robbed out” of almost everything valuable—except for the four gold items that had been hidden behind Cistern D and never recovered.

Still, our church definitely does retain a certain charm of its own, to those with eyes to see it. The faith of the people who built it was certainly no less than the faith of those who worshipped in the finer, bigger church nearby. In fact, their determination in erecting and then at some later point repairing this relatively humble structure speaks volumes about their commitment to the Lord and his community. And however the handful of people who were buried in this building fit into the larger picture, it’s clear that they were very, very important individuals in the life of this community. One of them may have been the reason the church was built, given the position of honour in a well-formed tomb. Three others may have been honoured by burial in the same marble sarcophagus atop that original burial, within this same tomb. And the elderly woman whose sarcophagus rested in a side-room and who was venerated by anointing with oil through a hole in the lid of the coffin—well, she too obviously played some significant role in the life of this worshipping community.

How much more will be known? The four of us Canadians won’t be able to make any more contributions to the knowledge pool surrounding this church. The rest of the Concordia-St. Paul team will hopefully learn a fair amount more over the next couple of weeks. The “contract” for work on the Northeast Church extends for three more years (through the 2009 season). Maybe by that time we’ll have a much fuller understanding of who these people were—our fathers and mothers in Christ, who knew and worshipped and were saved by him 1200 years before any of us were born.

Thanks for reading along and sharing this experience vicariously. It’s been an absolute blast being here, and I hope you’ve caught some of my excitement and joy along the way.

Weds July 12, 2006
The big news today was a coin: a small bronze coin so corroded that it looks like a tiny disk of white plastic. It was found in the same cistern as the piece of gold that was unearthed last week. We all rushed over to see it, when it came to light--and then were disappointed with its less-than-spectacular appearance. Hopefully it'll be more impressive when it's properly cleaned and displayed. All that sort of work is done by the University of Haifa, before the results are published. Hopefully we can find a way to make sure that our seminary gets a copy of this year's report!

Another exciting find today was a pair of absolutely gorgeous "capitals"-- the top section of Roman columns. They didn't surface in our part of the city, unfortunately, but on another part of the dig, a little to the west of us. All the same, we were delighted to see them. They're very well preserved and are elaborately carved with acanthus leaves and flourishes-- some of the very best examples of this type of work in Palestine, according to Arthur Segal, the dig director. How cool!

Within our own group, today's consensus was that we haven't worked this hard for a long, long time. Thankfully yesterday was pretty easy, as I noted then, but today was just tough slogging. No two ways about it! We continued opening that new square that we held the groundbreaking for yesterday, and at first it was nothing but rock-hard dirt and jumble. Then, after a while, it was rock-hard dirt and rocks. Later still, we started to see a pattern in the stones we were uncovering. By the end of the morning, we had two pretty clear-defined walls: one running east-west, the other north-south. What's missing is a good corner-- there's sort of a void where its stones should be. Right beside that area, though, there's a clutter of big stones all in a heap, which suggests that the corner itself crumbled at some point, maybe in an earthquake, maybe in some military action during the time that Hippos/Sussita was an Israeli outpost.

Speaking of military action, that's today's main theme, given the "incident" on the northern border with Lebanon-- about 30 km from here. We heard jets flying overhead all morning, and the crump of bombs dropping somewhere in the distance, but didn't think too much of it. We've heard and seen fighters flying over the Sea of Galilee a few times already, and there's a military firing range just above us on the Golan Heights, so it seemed natural that that's what was going on. It was only when we came down for lunch that we heard what had happened.
Other than hearing the news itself, there don't seem to be any consequences for us here at Ein Gev. Perhaps when we travel, there might be a few more checkpoints than usual on the highways. But nobody really expects anything else to happen that will have any effect on us at all. Israel's way of handling these things is to respond as decisively as possible in the military realm, but ignore them as much as possible in the civil realm. Or so it seems, anyway. Life must go on! And this is hardly the first time that Israelis have faced these kinds of crises. It's new and, yes, a bit worrisome for us who live in uninterrupted peace and security... but I think that's primarily a reflection on our insulation from how most of the world lives.

Our team is starting to shrink, after peaking yesterday at 24 people. Today, Father Michael Patella left; he was here for just a couple of days, to check out the possibility of linking up his students from St. John's College in Collegeville, Minnesota, with this dig. (Side-note: Dan Barr referred to him a while ago as "Father Kneecap"-- which was almost too clever, earning him more blank looks than laughs.) Tomorrow, Dr. Bob Holst leaves-- the president of Concordia University-St. Paul, who's been here for about a week now. He's been on our digging team and we've enjoyed a number of really good conversations. Also tomorrow, Clint and Joyce leave for a few days on their own before they fly back to Edmonton on Monday. And then on Friday, it's time for Dan and me to leave as well!

Will we be glad to leave? Yes and no, I expect-- as is usually the case for me at least when I travel. It's fun and exciting to see new places, do new things, and meet new people, and this kind of work really seems to suit me well. It's physical enough to be a total change from what I do all year long at the seminary (reading, teaching, meetings...). But it's also mentally challenging enough to supplement and build on all of that other work (filling in gaps and helping me understand the Roman world more fully). On top of that, it's spiritually rewarding too, reading and thinking about Scripture in the places its events happened. All of this gives me good reason to anticipate some sadness when it's time to head home.

On the other hand, of course, it'll be great to be home-- to see Brenda, Jonathan, and Kevin; to sleep in past 4:00 am; to have a bit of a physical rest; to be back in a more familiar environment. There's no joy quite like a homecoming.

Look for another posting tomorrow-- maybe the last, unless I add a summarizing one sometime later.

Tuesday July 11, 2006
Work continued for yet another day, but at a slower pace today since we spent a lot of time waiting for the backhoe. As we excavate each "square," which is 5 m by 5 m (hence the name!), we carry dirt and rocks into central piles outside its boundaries, which then need to be picked up by the backhoe and used to build roadways around the site. It's a pretty good system--as long as the tractor guy comes when we need him, and today he didn't. Other teams were keeping him busy on other parts of the mountain, so there was nothing to do but wait. Oh well. Maybe a slower day, like today, will help our productivity tomorrow.
I think we'll need a bit of a boost then, since we spent our last hour today starting a brand-new square. This was a first for my team, since we started the season (only about 10 days ago--though it sure feels like we've been here longer than that) by working on a square that was already half-finished last year. Then, a couple of days ago, we finished that one and moved into the square next door to it, which was also already half-done. So we had the illusion of great progress, up until this morning at least! But now it's definitely slow going, starting from surface level. This new area not only had been our dirt-and-rock pile for a week, but now today had a loaded backhoe driving over for half an hour. How do you spell "hard-packed"? Yikes! Dan and I tackled it with picks, swinging hard, and were able to drive the points only about 2 inches into the ground with each swing. Brutal! So we made sure we gave Dr. Schuler a rough time about this. "Talk about bait and switch," we'd say; and, "Never mind how Jesus did it, you saved the worst wine until now!" (see John 2, if you don't get the reference). Thankfully he knows us well enough by now to know that we're kidding.
Actually, we Canadians seem to have acquired a pretty good reputation within the group. I don't think it's an exaggeration to say that we're pretty hard workers who others know they can count on. "Let's get the Canadians over to help" has been said a couple of times when people have really big rocks to move. We take a lot of ribbing over "eh" too, of course. In fact, the latest joke is that just as some of them have picked up our "eh," we've got a new"bilingual" greeting too: "Howdy, eh?" The Americans just crack up when they hear it.
Dan inspired quite a bit of hilarity yesterday too when he built an Inukshuk close by our work-site. Nobody knew what it was, and hadn't heard of an Inukshuk either. Naturally they assumed it was an idol, rather than a boundary-marker, so we told them that if we sacrificed 5 scorpions and prayed hard, it would snow the next day. And guess what: this morning dawned cloudy and relatively cool!
This Canadian-American thing was something I hadn't experienced in a while, but remember well from when I studied in the States, both in Portland and in St. Louis. We're sort of a conversation piece, I guess-- an unknown quantity-- and it's pretty easy to maximize that "foreign" quality, playing to the audience I suppose. On a more serious level too though, I enjoy the chance to make a good first impression not only for myself but also for our country. As I say, it's gratifying to have the sense that all of us-- Clint, Joyce, Dan and I-- are doing that.
Naturally there are plenty of jokes along with all the hard work. The problem is that I'm so bad at remembering them. One I recall though is that our leaders are a great example of a Lutheran paradox: Drs. Mark and Rhoda Schuler. Hah! I also have the habit of starting most days by encouraging our crew to "make hay before the sun shines" (we start about 5:00 am, and sunrise is about 6:10). And of course there are lots of little puns and word-plays that seem funny at the time but have a pretty short shelf-life. I guess the point is that it's certainly not all work and no play.
Did I write before about the weather on the lake? It's uncanny, how still it is every morning and then how suddenly and strongly the wind comes early in the afternoon. Apparently it has to do with the regular and progressive heating of the land throughout the morning, which results in this breeze right off the Mediterranean. Today I was walking to the dining hall for lunch when I could literally see this happening right in front of my eyes. The shallow water close to our beach here on the eastern shore was dead calm. Then, several hundred metres offshore, I could see cats-paws of wind dancing here and there. And about half-way across the lake there were whitecaps-- no kidding!-- making their way here. It was absolutely amazing to see that weather system taking shape. Sadly, I didn't have my camera with me to record it.
I bought a little book yesterday about this kibbutz and read it through this afternoon before laying down for my brief nap. A fascinating place. It was the first Jewish settlement on this side of the Sea of Galilee, established in 1937 just 2 days before a decision was made by the British authorities regarding which parts of Palestine were to be considered Jewish and which parts Arab. A presence was needed here, so a carload of settlers set out and created one. The conditions were terrible for a long time, and in fact the opening shots of the 1948 War of Independence were fired right here-- the Syrian army that commanded the Golan Heights which surround us bombarded the kibbutz to launch the war.
Anyway, what an interesting place this is. Kibbutzes have changed a lot over the years, but in the early days all of the children lived and slept in separate buildings away from their parents, so that both Mom and Dad could focus on their work and the kids could be socialized and educated with their peers. Now of course it's different. Even today though, nobody owns private cars here, but the kibbutz runs a fleet of them that everybody shares in together. It's a form of small-scale socialism that actually seems to work rather well.
Well, I suppose that's it for today. I'm not at all sure who I'm writing this for, or how many of you there are, but I do hope you're finding this blog interesting. Maybe if I can figure out how to post pictures to it, it'll be better still.

Monday July 10, 2006
You'll find this hard to believe after all the "heat stories" last week, but it actually can cool off here--today is proof! Light cloud gave us a break early in the morning, but even after it burned off the furnace didn't really get going today. One guy with a thermometer on our site said it barely topped 90 Fahrenheit by noontime. In relative terms, that's practically chilly! And the humidity was a lot lower than usual too; it's often been up in the 70% range or even a bit higher, but it dropped all morning until it was only about 30%. What a huge difference this all made, not only to our comfort level but also to the visibility. Every other day until now, we can barely see the city of Tiberias, which is only just on the other side of the lake, maybe a couple of km away. There's just too much water vapour in the air, I guess. Anyway, today was just crystal clear (by late morning), and thus a great day for pictures.
This is such beautiful country--in a harsh way. The rocky landscape covered with scrub-brush is about as different from our western-Canadian countryside as you can imagine. Speaking of which, somebody mentioned a story that supposedly came down from Jewish sources: When he was making the world, God gave different jobs to different angels, and gave one of them a huge sack full of rocks to distribute all over the world. You can probably guess the punchline: as he was flying over the Holy Land, the bag broke! Honestly, I don't think I've seen as many rocks anywhere in hte world as here. Even where things do grow, which certainly isn't everywhere, the rocks are never very far away.
Boy did we ever get rocks in our square of the dig today too. I guess we've been spoiled so far, working in square E-1, because (as I've mentioned) we found walls galore, tons of pottery, glass, bone, a metal ornament--you name it! The digging was pretty easy too, because apart from big rocks that used to belong to walls but fell down in earthquakes, most of what we were digging out was just dirt.
But now we're into a new square, as of today, E-0, and yes it really is different. There's only one wall, and it's another "floating" wall like the one we had in E-1. The bad part about floating walls is that they have to be removed so we can see what the original structure was like. And that removal means a ton of hard work! So we spent a lot of time today hefting great big rocks up and out of the square. Many of them were so big we had to use the cargo net, with as many as 5 of us pulling and lifting. Floating walls, phooey, somebody said: What we really need are levitating walls!
Still, the work went pretty well. Because there aren't many walls in this square, the material we're grinding through is a mixture of big rocks, medium rocks, small rocks, and dirt. Oh, and a few scorpions, and a very large number of bugs, thrown in there too. (Today we killed 3 large scorpions, and a whole lot of little tiny ones.) It's miserable work chewing through this kind of jumble. A pick doesn't work very well because there are too many rocks. But turreah doesn't work very well either because there are too many rocks (are you seeing a theme yet?). So we just have to go back and forth, back and forth, all day: pick a little, turreah a little, etc. There aren't many "small finds" either--the interesting stuff that breaks up the monotony of the picking and turreah-ing, bits of pottery, glass, bone, and so on. Most of those kinds of things come from inhabited areas, and especially from domestic space (houses, etc.), and that's what we don't have in this square, which seems to be mostly an open area that just got filled in with random wind-blown (?) junk over the course of many centuries.
I don't think I mentioned it before but one of the people on our team, since last Thursday, is Bob Holst--otherwise known as the president of Concordia University College, St. Paul, Minnesota! At first I was a bit concerned about being his boss, since I'm the supervisor of the square, since he's been to Israel umpteen times and has worked on digs a couple of times, but it's worked out just great. We have a lot in common, it turns out--including the fact that he and I both vicared at the same congregation under the same pastor (though 26 years apart). So we've had all sorts of things to talk about. Besides which, he's just an amazing worker too; despite being old enough that he could have been retired for several years already, he just plunges right in and does even the dirtiest, heaviest jobs with gusto. Amazing guy. It's a privilege to work with him and get to know him.
I spent a lot of time this afternoon working on my photos. My computer hasn't been "recognizing" my camera when I plug it in, so I've had a cumbersome time getting access to the pictures for a few days already, but anyway I finally got them loaded onto the computer today and realized that I had a backlog of close to 400 snaps to edit (keep/discard) and title (so I don't forget what they're about). Needless to say, I didn't get them all done, but was glad to have chewed through more than 200 of them at least. This is helpful not only for me but also for the whole team, since the plan is for everybody to turn in copies of all of their pictures to a central "pool," so CDs can be burned and distributed in order that we can all have access to everybody's pictures. Sounds nice, right? But do the math: There are about 25 of us (the number varies day by day, as people come and go from the team). If each person turned in only 400 pictures--which is pretty minimal, I think--we'd each have 10,000 pictures to sort through. That's crazy! I don't know anybody who has that amount of time. So part of my task is definitely doing some serious editing. I'm hoping to pare down my total collection by trip's end to something like 400-500 shots. Aren't digital cameras great?
Sorry I haven't been able to post any pictures yet. I still need to monkey around with this. I've tried but it hasn't worked, and I don't know why. Maybe one day soon I'll take the time to pursue it further.
Progress report on all my various misfortunes: Things are gradually working out. The embassy should have my papers ready by late in the week so I can pick them up before heading home on Friday morning. The bruise on my leg is fading, and even though there's still a pretty nasty lump just above the ankle, my walking is pretty good. No consequences at all from the tick episode (you can read about it on Clint and Joyce Magnus's blog, if you want--I guess I forgot to mention it here). And there haven't really been any other major problems to contend with. Maybe bad things really do happen in threes.
There are just three more days of digging for Clint and Joyce, Dan and me. We're getting close to being done! In a way that's a really good thing. The Magnuses are looking forward to travelling around for a few days after our duties here wrap up at Thursday noon, and Dan and I are really looking forward to going home. Partly of course this is simply because the work is so tiring. But we're also missing the familiarity and comforts (in the best sense) of home. Yes, travelling expands your horizons wonderfully: but nobody can just keep expanding continually! A bit of retracting is good too, especially after being stretched in as many directions as we have been here.

Sunday July 9, 2006
The morning came early again, and we rejoiced to see some low cloud to the east as we were piling out of the bus at the top of the road, but unfortunately it didn’t help very much beyond the first half hour up on the mountain. If anything, I think this was one of the hotter days so far. Our task didn’t help either: the day was mostly spent tearing down one of the secondary (late) walls that had been laid across the earlier structure of the church. That meant, above all, moving a very large number of very large stones. Some could be man-handled by two of us, usually Dan and me, but many others required the help of a third or even fourth person, as well as the use of a cargo net brought for this exact purpose. Did I talk about that before? A heavy mesh net is laid alongside, the heavy stone is toppled onto it, the excess net is piled atop the stone, then as many hands as necessary grab onto the mesh of the net and lift. It works especially well in hauling rocks up the “cliff edges” of an excavated hole, since several haulers can stand at the top and pull on the net, while one or more down below can do likewise, everybody pulling/pushing together despite the difference in their elevation.
Besides hauling stones, we excavated several cubic metres of dirt, cleaning away debris down to the level of the original Roman street and exposing the stylobate that originally ran between the large columns that lined it. There wasn’t much pottery or other “small finds” in most of it, but in a few places we really hit “pay dirt,” hauling out several intact pot-handles, a couple of nice rim sections, a small glass vial that was perhaps 60% complete, with a small rounded bottom and considerably larger flared top, and even—my “prize”—a long thin lead ornament of some kind, tapered from end to end, recessed in the middle, and tabbed on one end. Once again we filled a whole bucket of shards, winning the trophy (imaginary, of course) for the most productive team of the day. Yay! Thankfully we all share the pottery-cleaning equally, regardless who pulls what out of the ground. Otherwise I have a sneaking suspicion our team would suddenly start finding quite a bit less…
The biggest excitement of the day was truly impressive: more gold! Three pieces were found last year, two belt ornaments and a magical amulet, and now today here was one more! It was buried in a cistern that was one of Dr. S’s important objectives for this year. The area around the cistern’s opening had been cleared last week, and partway through the morning today he called a bunch of us stronger folk over to help lift off the very large stone “head,” which stood perhaps half a metre high and was close to a metre on each side—a great square block of stone with a large hole in the middle from which people could draw water. With that head off, one of our younger and more agile guys was sent down inside to carefully excavate the conical pile of dirt and debris that had accumulated over the centuries within the cistern, and near the end of that task here it was—a golden, Byzantine belt-ornament! Straight out of the dirt, it was shining just as brightly as if it were made yesterday. It has some sort of design on it, and is in almost perfect shape. These are only first impressions, of course—I only saw it for a moment before it was wisked away for safekeeping and proper study—but a jolt of excitement surged through us all at the sight. That’s the kind of thing we all dream of finding!
Dr. S. thanked me for my part in finding it, which I didn’t quite understand until he connected it up with today being my birthday. Oh! That was a causative connection I hadn’t thought of… He disappointed me then by saying that no, I couldn’t have it as a birthday gift. Rats, I said, I’d been looking for a little bauble of some kind for my wife... He thought that was pretty funny.
Yes, everybody sang for me at breakfast (which is more like lunch, though we eat it at 8:00 am). Rhoda doesn’t miss a beat: when we supplied her with photocopies of our passports, for safekeeping, she methodically checked them all for everybody’s birthdate, and made up a calendar for herself so we can be sure to catch them all for the entire month of the season. No wonder she’s nicknamed Regina logistica (“Queen of Logistics”)!
Walking down the hill at noontime with Clint, I told him that today was probably the hardest day so far, physically. “I must be getting old,” I said—“the work never seemed this hard when I was 43!” It was good to kibbitz back and forth with him.
On top of the usual afternoon routine—dip in the lake, including laundry, then lunch, a quick nap, some writing, then pottery-cleaning and supper—I had two other special afternoon projects. One was uploading photos from the Jerusalem trip from my camera onto the computer, which takes a while right now since—for some reason—my computer won’t “recognize” the camera when I plug it in, which means I have to upload the pictures onto somebody else’s computer, burn them onto a CD, then transfer them that way onto my machine. Sounds complicated perhaps, but it’s actually not a big deal compared to the work of editing and titling the pictures! From just this 2-day trip, I have 364 pictures to go through…. Wow! (No, I haven’t done anything yet—the writing has been taking all the time.)
The other task was doing some maintenance on the camera itself. During the morning, I set up one shot only to notice that I had a blurry black rim around part of the image. Oh-oh! I checked the lens and found that the little flip-back covers hadn’t, well, flipped back all the way. Evidently some grit had gotten in there and gummed things up. So that was it for pictures for the rest of the morning. Thankfully though it wasn’t too hard to fix, using spray-on eyeglass cleaner, Q-tips, and a bit of patience. Everything’s clean now and working just fine. I’ll just have to make sure from this point on that I keep the camera very well protected from dust and grit except for just the brief time I’m actually using it.
Somebody at the kibbutz had an old but serviceable-looking “420” sloop pulled up on the beach when we arrived home from work today, and boy did that get me interested in finding out whose it was! I looked for it at 4:30 though when I went over to clean pottery, and it was gone. I couldn’t see it out on the lake either, though the wind was as perfect as usual at that time of day—a nice brisk breeze that would make a small boat like that just fly. Somebody must have been having great fun with it somewhere!
Finally, I’m having great fun building relationships with the other people on the team. As we’re getting to know each other better, there’s a whole lot of joking going on, in both directions, which I always take to be a really healthy sign. It doesn’t always happen like that, across the “divisions” between faculty and students, adults and college kids, and yet it often doesn’t seem to take much more than a bit of intentionality on the part of the older / “higher” person to break down the presumed barriers and relate more as friends. No, of course I’m not a 21-year old undergrad anymore… and yet in some ways I very much am the same person today that I was (way back) then. This too is part of being the body of Christ, I think: There is no more Jew or Gentile, slave or free… student or teacher? middle-aged or young adult? Hmmm!

Saturday July 8, 2006
We’ve had a very busy but very exciting couple of days. I'll write some here about Thursday through Saturday, then post another section covering today, Sunday.
I travelled in to Tel Aviv on the 5:30 bus Thursday morning to sort out my passport issues and, after a frantic morning shuttling back and forth between offices and businesses in the downtown area, got everything done just before the embassy closed at noon. After all the bustling around, it was good to find a cool place in an air-conditioned “mall” in a big office tower, eat lunch, and write a bit in my journal before catching a mid-afternoon train to Jerusalem, where I was meeting up with the rest of our group after they finished the day’s digging and then rode a chartered bus to the holy city as well. My train ride was great—I always love to travel by train, and this was a great ride up from the coast through some very steep and rather wild terrain to Jerusalem. I was surprised to see both how mountainous and also how undeveloped the land was along this route; in some places there was actually something approximating a “forest,” though the trees were pretty short and stubby. I was also surprised to discover, when we arrived in Jerusalem, how much cooler it was than it had been earlier in the day in Tel Aviv. Granted, a stiff breeze had been blowing all afternoon off the Mediterranean, but I wasn’t prepared for the great difference it made in the temperature. I’d guess it was perhaps 8-10 degrees cooler than it had been in Tel Aviv (and Ein Gev, for that matter). Elevation no doubt has something to do with it—Jerusalem is perhaps 700-800 metres higher in elevation than the Sea of Galilee, and thus about 500-600 above sea level. But regardless the cause(s), it was heavenly to be out in the city around sundown and actually feel goosebumps on my arms. After the brutal heat of the past week, it was as startling a feeling as it was delicious.
I linked up with the rest of the team about 6:00 after taking a taxi from the train station to the Jaffa Gate, one of the main entrances to Jerusalem’s “Old City.” We were staying at the Austrian Hostel, a grand old four-storey establishment in the heart of the Moslem Quarter that felt like a piece of Europe dropped down in the middle of the Middle East. The food was very Austrian, and even the prices were in Euros (and thus pricey prices, too). I spent several wonderful hours, over the two days we stayed there, sitting outdoors either on the covered veranda or up on the roof, looking out over the city and contemplating its paradoxes.
For it was a rather strange place, on several levels. Within the Christian community, there’s a surprising amount of bustling and jostling at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre as various groups vie with each other to hold Masses, processions, and rites of various kinds in front of—and within—the dilapidated little structure that houses the tomb in which Jesus may have been buried (and even more important, from which he then arose!). Some of our group were a bit put-off by all of this, and I can understand why: we’d like to think that the Church is more harmonious than it appears to be in that particular place. At the same time, though, I found the whole scenario pretty honest, in the sense that the church’s brokenness and hiddenness was very evident even as its members gathered around the same holy place to worship the same Lord Jesus. Both realities are equally present: what we see, and what God sees… the pettiness of our human weakness and the majesty of what God does in spite of us. I loved it!
The same kind of rivalry was equally evident, if not more so, within the city as a whole. The Old City models it perfectly, with Jewish, Christian, Armenian, and Moslem “quarters.” There are no official boundaries between them that I know of, but the names of streets suddenly change as one rounds a corner, the predominant language on signs shifts, and you figure out pretty fast that you’re in a completely different neighbourhood. Living in the Moslem Quarter was a bit of a challenge at this particular time due to the ongoing violence in the Gaza Strip; the police and military presence was very obvious and the tension ran pretty high a few times. I wish I could frame these rivalries in the same “yes but” perspective that applies so well to the inter-Christian jostling, but I haven’t figured out a way to do so. Nor have those who are immersed in these tensions, either!—they just seem to fester and grind away from year to year. Everybody has ancient claims to the same real estate, for similar cultural and religious reasons, and nobody knows how to adjudicate all of those varying claims. Whoever is asked or forced to leave will be able to complain that they’ve been treated unfairly; whoever is the victor will feel that they are perfectly justified in their ascendancy. What a nasty situation!
Anyway, apart from the politics, we had a simply wonderful weekend (Fri-Sat) touring a whole bunch of holy sites in and around the Old City. I found my feelings about such places changing quite dramatically, too. For one thing, seeing places that might have been the genuine sites of Biblical events helped those events come alive more fully than ever before; I actually have a picture in my head now of the Mount of Olives, and Gethsemane, and the Pool of Bethesda, and many other places. Some people I know can imagine those places without ever seeing them, or even without seeing pictures of them, but I’m not like that. I actually have no picture at all in my head of places I haven’t seen; there’s just nothing there! But now some of those voids are filled, and I’m delighted at the richer understanding of Scripture that that gives me.
Even more, my attitude is shifting in another way too. I’ve always been dismissive of the search for the actual Biblical sites. “Nobody will ever know for sure whether we’ve got the right places or not,” I thought, “so why bother even looking?” My view is a little more subtle now. Maybe these aren’t the right sites. In some cases, they’re pretty likely to be correct; in other cases, the likelihood is very low. But regardless, these are places that Christians before us have venerated for centuries as places to commemorate Biblical events—and that history of veneration itself carries some weight. Does that make sense? Maybe the Church of the Holy Sepulchre is not the actual place where Jesus died and rose again. But it’s been revered as that place since the time of Constantine, whose mother Helena built a church on that place—and the reason she did so, already in the early 4th century, was because Christians at that time already had a collective memory of these events having happened there. That tradition must be worth something! And you know what: even if that isn’t the exact place, it’s pretty much certain that somewhere within a 1- or 2-kilometer radius is. And I guess that’s close enough for me (at least this “new” me).
Another impression to share: I had no idea that Jerusalem was as vertically challenging as it is. Up one hill and down the next; into this valley and up onto that ridge. Whew! Our hike yesterday morning (Saturday) from the Old City down past the remains of Herod’s temple to the ancient “city of David” and then up, up, and up the Mount of Olives was actually quite physically challenging! If the city were being built today, I suppose a lot of these ravines would have been filled in by the contractors, or at least been crossed with bridges, but because the city is so old, pretty much all of the original contour lines are still being followed.
Speaking of which: I spent Friday morning touring The Citadel, the remains of the fortifications built by various rulers just to the east of the Jaffa Gate on the highest point in the Old City. This citadel includes one of the great towers Herod built in the first century, along with the remains of older (Hasmonean, which describes things of the Maccabean period in the 2nd and 1st centuries BC) as well as later (Byzantine, Umayyad, and Ottoman) walls and towers. The whole thing looks very confusing at first because remnants of one set of walls lie right on top of others. But there are enough high points within the complex that one can climb up and get a birds-eye-view of the whole thing, and sort it out piece by piece with the help of a map and a guidebook. Fascinating! The biggest revelation to me was that the existing city walls bear almost no relationship at all to earlier structures, except for the fact that most of the present walls lie farther outside most of the earlier ones. But not even that is always true, because in some cases one or more sets of old walls enclosed a larger area than the current ones! Very, very cool. It was also quite amazing to see—and touch—a whole lot of structures that dated from the time of Jesus. For a western Canadian in particular this was a very moving experience, given the sharp contrast between the youthfulness of our part of the world and the staggering antiquity of this part. What a great experience.
My one significant regret is that I didn’t spend more time shopping. That’s not my favourite activity at the best of times, and here it was especially intimidating for several reasons: the smallness of the shops, the readiness of the vendors to pounce on anybody who shows the slightest interest in their wares, the much greater interest I had in historical matters, and especially because of the hassle of having to barter for things without having a clear idea what they’re “worth.” Example: I saw an icon—a copy of an old one, actually—and asked how much it was. 1200 shekels, the man said (about $300). Forget it! I said. Okay, 1100, he said. No way! I said; that’s way too much! Well then, he said, how much do you want to pay? I don’t know, I said; I have no idea. How much? he asked; come on, just tell me how much you want to pay. I don’t know, I said—thinking very fast in my head—nothing more than 200. Two hundred! he said. What, are you crazy? I’ll give you a special price: 800. Nope, I said, that’s way too much. What’s your best price? he asked. Tell me, how much is your best price? Two hundred, I said. Five hundred, he said. Two hundred, I said. Four hundred, he said. Two hundred, I said. Two fifty, he said. No, I said, I won’t pay anything more than two hundred. And I started to walk out of the shop. OK, he said, two hundred. So he took it and started to wrap it up. How about 225? he said. No, I said, we agreed on 200. He said nothing more, but wrapped it up, and I walked away.
Did I get a good deal or not? Considering that he started at 1200 shekels, yes. Considering that he did all the conceding, and I didn’t budge, yes. But considering that I still paid about $50 for it, well now all of a sudden I’m not too sure. What if the going rate was just 100 shekels? But if it was, why would he have started at 1200? Aarggh! You can drive yourself crazy second-guessing things this.
Anyway, we left Jerusalem yesterday, Saturday, about mid-afternoon, and sweated our way along the whole long descent from the city through the Judean Desert toward the Dead Sea, then north along the parched valley of the Jordan up to the Sea of Galilee. Again, as I said before, these were just names and perhaps at best points on a map before recently; now I can picture them in my head! We were glad to get back to the kibbutz, hot and sweaty and tired from a draining trip, just before suppertime.
After supper, which was a picnic like last Saturday’s, but this time hosted by our cottage of six, on the lawn between the cottage and the lake, the four of us Edmonton folks—Dan, me, Clint and Joyce—were somewhat unexpectedly “upgraded” to better accomodations in a different cottage on the kibbutz. A couple of new people joined the dig team, and another housing unit became available, so changes were necessary to a number of people’s housing situation, and we were among those affected. Clint and Joyce share one bedroom and Dan and I the other; we each have our own bathroom and share a common kitchen and sitting-room. Wonderful! The air conditioning works better than in the previous place we had, too. And I must say it’s nice to be together, if only because we are all about the same age and know each other relatively well. Super!

I was tired again this morning; in fact, each morning so far it’s been a little harder to wake up and get going. And I forgot my official notebook for the dig-square too, which meant I had to write in my own notebook and then transcribe it later in the day into the official one. Still, those were small problems, and overall the dig once again gave me tremendous energy and focus. I just love this work!
Sure, it still is work. We began today by chopping brush along the suspected pathway of the street that we know exists at the south end of our church and, we hope, continues through to the decumanus about 30 m south. I was a bit anxious about using a turreah again for that purpose, and in fact some of the people working around me joked that they ought to step back from me: “Careful, he’s got a turreah!” Funny. It went fine though, and within a half hour we were done.
Within our own square, E-0, we had a change of personnel today in light of my planned trip tomorrow to Tel Aviv to get the passport matter straightened out. Amanda went to work in F-4 while Kristina came from there to E-0. She will be the supervisor tomorrow in my absence. So I made sure that she had a chance to ask plenty of questions, and gave her direction along the way. I think it’ll go just fine.
Lots of progress! We “proved” today that the poorly-built and diagonal double wall in the SW corner is in fact a “floating” wall. In the triangular apex where that wall meets the better-built and more regularly oriented wall to its north, we found some large tumbled-over stones that probably came from that more regular wall. One of the largest stones in the diagonal wall is sitting right on top of one of the largest stones from the other wall—which seemed both to me and to Mark Schuler to demonstrate the point. The diagonal wall also doesn’t extend much farther down than that one course. So it’ll probably be taken out fairly soon, so we can focus on the more interesting and important “original” structures underneath.
We also made good progress in the northern part of the square just outside the gate, where we exposed another course of stones and got pretty close to the pavement. That is, we’re expecting to find pavement, but haven’t quite made it that far down yet. There were a couple of horizontal stones that seem to have perhaps tumbled from the north-south wall just to the east of our square, and we probed around them a bit, but the further digging will have to wait until tomorrow.
The final thing we accomplished today was working down to the stylobate level, again within that triangular area on the west. Mark was quite anxious for us to do this because he keeps hoping to find some pavement on the west side of that stylobate. Doing so would establish that the columns standing on the stylobate are in fact part of an atrium. This triangular section seemed a likely spot to find pavement, especially now that we have run into this group of large jumbled stones that seem not to have been disturbed since antiquity. But no such luck. We moved a couple of them out by using a cargo net, which is an innovation the team introduced this year. Dan and I borrowed Clint for this task. He was glad to get away from his “regular job,” which is working with Joyce and another woman on the mosaics in the floor of the church. They’re in pretty rough shape (the mosaics, not the Magnuses’), and need a lot of very painstaking scrubbing and cleaning, using everything from scrapers like dentists use, to cotton batting. I think Clint would probably be happier doing more of the dirt-and-rock work we’re doing, but that was what he signed up for, and he’s actually being really decent about it, not complaining at all. But I know him well enough to get the sense that he’s pretty happy to get away and do some “real work” for a change, every now and again.
Anyway, to move this big rock, we laid the net alongside the rock, turned the rock onto the net, piled the excess net on top of the rock, then lifted on the net from three sides at once. It works great!
Breakfast up on the hill was really good today too: corn flakes (from Hungary!) with milk, bread with jam and nutella, hardboiled eggs, olives, fish, coffee and tea. I made sure I complimented Itamar, the logistics manager, for the meal, but he told me he actually didn’t have anything to do with it other than delivering it; the kitchen at the kibbutz prepared everything. Oh well! I told him he should take the compliment anyway….
We got lots of pottery from our square again today, a bucket brimming full. Once again that was by far the largest amount of any of the groups. We also found more glass shards, including a piece of what might have been a small vial. The glass is so pretty, blue-green and having an iridescent sheen to the outer surface. Amazing to think that it’s as old as it is. We found a few bones too, not as many as yesterday, but including a couple of long pointy teeth. Quite a variety of things!
I washed some more clothes today, in part getting ready for the Jerusalem trip. Yesterday I didn’t have the energy to go into the lake so the small amount of laundry I did took place in the sink, but today I felt a bit more energetic so took my mesh-bag of clothes with me into the lake, sat down on the sandy bottom, and scrubbed away. What an unusual experience. The lake was of course completely calm at that time, around 1:00 pm, but the stiff breeze that I may have mentioned before comes up as regular as clockwork every day, usually about 3:00 pm. It blows hard then until sundown, about 8:00. By morning, it’s dead calm again. In fact, I mentioned to Darryl at dinner tonight that I think I’d miss having “weather” if I lived here: the pattern is exactly the same every day! Of course, that’s only based on 5 days of observations, but from what others have said, it’s pretty much true. There are significant differences between summer and winter, sure, but not so much from day to day. By contrast, I suppose we maybe have more weather than we really need in Alberta. Too bad we can’t share some of it with them here.
I’ll be out of touch with everyone by email and blog until Sunday, most likely, because of the trip I have to make now to Tel Aviv, and then to Jerusalem. We’ll be doing a very quick tour of some of the holy sites on Friday and Saturday—as Mark Schuler put it, “we’ll be running where Jesus walked.” Hah! I’ll try to report what I can when we get back, perhaps on Sunday.


\I was tired again this morning; in fact, each morning so far it’s been a little harder to wake up and get going. And I forgot my official notebook for the dig-square too, which meant I had to write in my own notebook and then transcribe it later in the day into the official one. Still, those were small problems, and overall the dig once again gave me tremendous energy and focus. I just love this work!
Sure, it still is work. We began today by chopping brush along the suspected pathway of the street that we know exists at the south end of our church and, we hope, continues through to the decumanus about 30 m south. I was a bit anxious about using a turreah again for that purpose, and in fact some of the people working around me joked that they ought to step back from me: “Careful, he’s got a turreah!” Funny. It went fine though, and within a half hour we were done.
Within our own square, E-0, we had a change of personnel today in light of my planned trip tomorrow to Tel Aviv to get the passport matter straightened out. Amanda went to work in F-4 while Kristina came from there to E-0. She will be the supervisor tomorrow in my absence. So I made sure that she had a chance to ask plenty of questions, and gave her direction along the way. I think it’ll go just fine.
Lots of progress! We “proved” today that the poorly-built and diagonal double wall in the SW corner is in fact a “floating” wall. In the triangular apex where that wall meets the better-built and more regularly oriented wall to its north, we found some large tumbled-over stones that probably came from that more regular wall. One of the largest stones in the diagonal wall is sitting right on top of one of the largest stones from the other wall—which seemed both to me and to Mark Schuler to demonstrate the point. The diagonal wall also doesn’t extend much farther down than that one course. So it’ll probably be taken out fairly soon, so we can focus on the more interesting and important “original” structures underneath.
We also made good progress in the northern part of the square just outside the gate, where we exposed another course of stones and got pretty close to the pavement. That is, we’re expecting to find pavement, but haven’t quite made it that far down yet. There were a couple of horizontal stones that seem to have perhaps tumbled from the north-south wall just to the east of our square, and we probed around them a bit, but the further digging will have to wait until tomorrow.
The final thing we accomplished today was working down to the stylobate level, again within that triangular area on the west. Mark was quite anxious for us to do this because he keeps hoping to find some pavement on the west side of that stylobate. Doing so would establish that the columns standing on the stylobate are in fact part of an atrium. This triangular section seemed a likely spot to find pavement, especially now that we have run into this group of large jumbled stones that seem not to have been disturbed since antiquity. But no such luck. We moved a couple of them out by using a cargo net, which is an innovation the team introduced this year. Dan and I borrowed Clint for this task. He was glad to get away from his “regular job,” which is working with Joyce and another woman on the mosaics in the floor of the church. They’re in pretty rough shape (the mosaics, not the Magnuses’), and need a lot of very painstaking scrubbing and cleaning, using everything from scrapers like dentists use, to cotton batting. I think Clint would probably be happier doing more of the dirt-and-rock work we’re doing, but that was what he signed up for, and he’s actually being really decent about it, not complaining at all. But I know him well enough to get the sense that he’s pretty happy to get away and do some “real work” for a change, every now and again.
Anyway, to move this big rock, we laid the net alongside the rock, turned the rock onto the net, piled the excess net on top of the rock, then lifted on the net from three sides at once. It works great!
Breakfast up on the hill was really good today too: corn flakes (from Hungary!) with milk, bread with jam and nutella, hardboiled eggs, olives, fish, coffee and tea. I made sure I complimented Itamar, the logistics manager, for the meal, but he told me he actually didn’t have anything to do with it other than delivering it; the kitchen at the kibbutz prepared everything. Oh well! I told him he should take the compliment anyway….
We got lots of pottery from our square again today, a bucket brimming full. Once again that was by far the largest amount of any of the groups. We also found more glass shards, including a piece of what might have been a small vial. The glass is so pretty, blue-green and having an iridescent sheen to the outer surface. Amazing to think that it’s as old as it is. We found a few bones too, not as many as yesterday, but including a couple of long pointy teeth. Quite a variety of things!
I washed some more clothes today, in part getting ready for the Jerusalem trip. Yesterday I didn’t have the energy to go into the lake so the small amount of laundry I did took place in the sink, but today I felt a bit more energetic so took my mesh-bag of clothes with me into the lake, sat down on the sandy bottom, and scrubbed away. What an unusual experience. The lake was of course completely calm at that time, around 1:00 pm, but the stiff breeze that I may have mentioned before comes up as regular as clockwork every day, usually about 3:00 pm. It blows hard then until sundown, about 8:00. By morning, it’s dead calm again. In fact, I mentioned to Darryl at dinner tonight that I think I’d miss having “weather” if I lived here: the pattern is exactly the same every day! Of course, that’s only based on 5 days of observations, but from what others have said, it’s pretty much true. There are significant differences between summer and winter, sure, but not so much from day to day. By contrast, I suppose we maybe have more weather than we really need in Alberta. Too bad we can’t share some of it with them here.
I’ll be out of touch with everyone by email and blog until Sunday, most likely, because of the trip I have to make now to Tel Aviv, and then to Jerusalem. We’ll be doing a very quick tour of some of the holy sites on Friday and Saturday—as Mark Schuler put it, “we’ll be running where Jesus walked.” Hah! I’ll try to report what I can when we get back, perhaps on Sunday.

The lack of early-morning cloud suggested it was going to be hot today, and sure enough it was pretty brutal up on the hill. It’s the first time in my life that I’ve ever soaked through the knees of my pants with sweat.
Still, it was an exciting day both in our own little square and more generally too. In our area, we established the location of the second face of the E-W wall we were looking for. In fact, it’s anchored (or ended) by a great big column base, a large drum of stone on which a column once rested, which ties together the two layers of stone at their eastern end. Actually, quite apart from its function in joining these two walls, this column base is an exciting find in itself because it suggests that the entire Northeast Church complex was built atop an older Roman foundation. What kind of a building was it? Maybe it was a Roman temple honouring some other god. If so, building a Christian church smack dab on top of it would be a powerful way of saying to the world that Jesus, nobody else, is now the Lord. This kind of thing happened pretty often in the first Christian centuries, as more and more people converted.
Also in our square today we found two more “new” walls. One lies just north of the double-wall I just finished talking about, separated from it by a gap of about 20 cm and rather crudely built of a single layer of irregular stones. This gap bothered me: Why on earth would it be 20 cm away from the other wall? Mark Schuler, though, had an explanation. Perhaps the earthquake caused this shoddy single-thickness wall to tip outward, away from the double-wall. Good thinking!
The other “new” wall we found is at the extreme east end of our square and runs N-S. Again this is not unexpected; it aligns perfectly with one of the walls of the church itself. Still, it’s good to have found this one, since it confirms Mark’s hypothesis that a small street continues north from the church in the same way that it also runs south from the church all the way down to the city’s decumanus, its main E-W street, maybe 30 metres to the south of the church complex.
Beyond our own square, the big news today was the removal of the marble sarcophagus from the tomb in the chancel of our church. It was a huge event. The tomb itself was discovered three years ago and partly excavated that year. The next year, it was learned that the bones of three young men were buried in it—in sequence, one after the other, with each preceding set of bones being pushed to the edges of the cavity before the new body was laid inside. The sarcophagus, however, is a bit smaller than the finely built masonry crypt in which it lay beneath the church’s floor—and initial probes beside the sarcophagus two years ago discovered nails and still more bones below it! In other words, the sarcophagus wasn’t sitting right on the floor of the crypt, but was suspended above it, resting on a couple of rocks (?). Between its bottom and the bottom of the crypt lay… what? It’s been a mystery to our team for two years now!
But today the answer became clear. The team that spent Sunday and yesterday digging down to the top of the tomb, and then removed the large slabs serving as its top, was ready by about ten this morning to remove the sarcophagus itself. A backhoe was brought in, and a double sling was hooked up from its bucket to the sarcophagus. Then it was a tense couple of minutes as the sarcophagus inched its way up past each successive course of the crypt. Finally though it was clear!—and we became the first people in 14 centuries to see what lay beneath it. Guess what? A few supporting stones… a layer of dark-coloured earth (organic remains?)… at least one very visible iron nail… and a couple of obvious bones! Mark was absolutely beside himself with excitement. This is what he had suspected all along: that the sarcophagus was a secondary burial, a way of honouring its occupants and their families with a final resting-place in the closest possible proximity to the earlier burial of a saint. How cool is that?
Our whole team gathered around to watch this awesome procedure with the key people from the other Hippos teams as well, including Arthur Segal, the director of the whole project. He was just beaming from ear to ear, delighted with this completely unprecedented find. Apparently, nowhere in any site from the Ancient Near East has this kind of double subsequent burial ever been found. In fact, Mark told me later, the experience of opening an ancient tomb of any kind is so rare that Arthur Segal, who’s spent his entire working life in Israelite archaeology and is a well-respected field-man, has only had the opportunity to do it twice. And here, in this rather mediocre church that nobody was really very interested in at all, we find not only two intact sarcophagi, but a further burial beneath one of them!
It’s hard to imagine how anything could possibly get better than this, dig-wise. But we’ll just have to wait and see what the next days, and a lot more buckets full of dirt, bring.