#joffa

Travel advice: get all the insurance on the international rental car.

This morning, we were monitored on our way out the door by a one-eyed representative of the Cat Army who declined to have pictures taken and threatened to confiscate my camera. It was most definitely time to get out of town.

We picked up an archaeology professor to use as a tour guide and hit the road, planning to visit a few stairmaster tel sites. And then Dr. David the Tour Guide said "I think I'm going to change the itinerary a little." He may be an agent of the Cat Army sent to assess our endurance. It started out pretty awesome: we turned off the main road onto a dirt path, which is usually a good way to know when you're going somewhere Not Everyone Goes, and climbed up Tel Gezer in the underpowered van.

We collected ourselves under the shade of a jujube tree, also known as a Christ crown-of-thorns tree, so guess what legend says this tree was used for, and listened to the history of Gezer and the strategic importance of the location. Most of our lectures took place in the shade of trees or standing stones or any other shade we could locate, today. Despite fleeing to the seashore, it was still hot.

There were no aliens here, despite his posturing.

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Gezer was a city-state in Canaan, which is alternatively listed among the places that Solomon fortified and among the places that the Israelites specifically did not conquer. Most importantly, it contains an Extremely Controversial Gate.

This gate. Note the six chambers and drainage trough.

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As I understand it (I Am Not An Archaeologist), the gate is identical to gates that were excavated at Meggido and Hazur, and was originally dated to the 10th century BCE, which would lend credence to the concept of Solomon fortifying the cities of Gezer, Meggido, and Hazur, as per 1 Kings 9:15. Since it is always convenient to find archaelology that substantiates Biblical accounts, this was a super big deal.

Turns out that the 10th century pottery is underneath the gate, which probably dates to about the 9th century BCE and puts it definitely out of the Solomonic range, but "Solomonic Gate" is far easier to say than "Six-chambered gate from the 9th century BCE" so the sign on the hill still calls it a Solomonic Gate.

The world of archaeology is full of this sort of debate, and popular archaeology is full of this sort of convenient attention to facts that substantiate one's personal view.

Gezer also contains what Dr. David the Tour Guide referred to as "The Stonehenge of Israel", which are a number of standing stones of uncertain purpose, most likely commemmorative, since you can't see them from the ground outside the tel. They were also excellent for providing shade.

Standing stones sunbathing silently.

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The absolute coolest (and probably one of the most interesting) things about Gezer is its water supply. There are two springs on the ground outside the tel, but who wants to climb down the giant mountain to get water when you can just dig a huge gaping hole in the middle of your hill instead? This water supply was excavated to 20 meters deep by the original archaeology team, but it's now being actively excavated much deeper. It's an active dig, so it's closed to the public, but we were not the Public.

Real Archaeologists At Work

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This gaping maw now extends into the earth to the point where the earth fights back the water table, and they're probably near the bottom of the construction. It's a truly impressive construction, and the cool moist air that exhales from it is also a really nice thing to stand in in the baking heat of 8 AM.

We trekked down off of Tel Gezer and took another unexpected detour to the city of Ramla, where we visited a little park off the road that looked like a storage center for unused half-pipes.

Heaven is a bunch of half-pipes.

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It had a little shack with a little stairwell that opened into the vast vaulted arches of the Pool of the Arches (also known as the Pool of St. Helena, since nobody bothered to read the inscription), a cistern built in 789 AD to supply Ramla with water.

I did not expect this from a halfpipe.

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The very best part of the Pool of the Arches was the bit where we got to get in rowboats and paddle around in the cistern, looking at the architecture. This is, apparently one of the earliest dated forms of the Islamic ogival arch, which inspired the Roman Gothic Arches and transformed architecture.

Rowboating through History.

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From the Pool of the Arches we went to the White Tower, which was closed because they were shooting a movie on the site (complete with faux archaeological camp, just to confuse our tour guide). This tower was documentably built starting in the 12th century CE (by Saladin), although folklore states that it was once the crowning glory of a mosque called the White Mosque, built in the 8th century, of which no remains have ever been found.

Imagine an amazing mosque. Now imagine it leaving no traces.

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Also, there is a bush growing out of the tower, so that was a comforting sight of home.

From Ramla, we went to Yafo (Joffa, Joppa, or any other combination of Y, J, F, and P, it appears), a port town famous before the larger port of Cesarea became popular. Then Cesarea declined, and Joffa rose again (inclined? Because seriously, it may not be in the Judean hill country but wow hills) and then people discovered that standing by the seaside in a Mediterranean beach is worth living for.

How did we not go swimming? Look at that water.

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There's a story about Tutmose III and Joffa that I kind of like. Evidently, at that time the Egyptians owned the entire known world (except the Hittites, it seemed), so Joffa was under Egyptian rule. The ruling habits of the Egyptians apparently involved striking a fine balance between taking everything their subject peoples owned and inciting flagrant rebellion a la "Let them eat cake". The Lord of Joffa rebelled. Tutmose's general Djeheuty packed 200 baskets full of soldiers and manacles, sent a messenger to the wife of the "rebel lord" announcing that he was capitulating and this was the first part of the tribute, and had 500 men-at-arms carry in the 200 baskets of tribute.

You can see where this is going. 500 soldiers walk in through the gates of Joffa, carrying their baskets, and hey presto! The rebels are in chains. It's a really nice story, and maybe there's some truth in it, but like all stories we may never know.

Not Egyptian. Probably a temple wall.

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After eating lunch on a shady hill besieged by crows and overlooking the Mediterranean, we looked around at the ruins and headed to the Eretz Israel museum for the 60-minute Antiquities tour

This is a communal wine press.

--- This is the business end of an olive oil press.

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And mandatory tel.

A typical four-roomed house, with grain silo in the middle. Suspect it was repurposed for storage as the grain silo ruins the traffic flow. Rooms 1-3 are all in the big square space, while room 4 is off to the right

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The museum closed at 4, so by the time we were done roaming around the tel learning about Philistines it was right in the middle of rush hour. We got stuck in the bumper to bumper for a while until Dr. David the Tour Guide said "take this exit". We took the exit.

About a kilometer later he said "Oh, this road gets really narrow up ahead. I kind of forgot that." And by narrow he meant "even Israeli motorcyclists can't really make this more than two lanes".

To the left: cliff face. To the right: Colorado dropoff. We even had to fold in our mirror.