En Gedi (also called Ein Gedi) is a fresh, green spot teeming with life on the western shore of the Dead Sea. Since prehistoric times, its freshwater springs have offered life and refreshment in a hot, rugged, brown region. Among its biblical mentions:

• Chedorlaomer, the king who defeated Sodom and captured Abraham’s nephew Lot, previously defeated an Amorite settlement at En Gedi [called Hazazon-tamar]. (Genesis 14)
• It was alloted as territory for the tribe of Judah – David’s tribe. (Joshua 15)
• David hid for a while in “the strongholds of En Gedi” when King Saul was hunting him. (1 Samuel 23:29)
• An En Gedi cave was the location of a famed encounter between David and King Saul in 1 Samuel 24. Saul, looking to “relieve himself” while hunting David, happened to use the very cave where David and his men were hiding. David snuck up to Saul and cut off a corner of his royal robe. Afterward, when David confronted the king and proclaimed his innocence, Saul lamented his own sin and departed. (The exact location of this cave is unknown. Textual clues suggest it was in the lower parts En Gedi. See 1 Sam. 24:2 – 3a, 22)

One of several waterfalls cascading from the cliff summit in En Gedi. One can swim in several refreshing, cold pools such as the one here.

Visitors to the National Park are virtually guaranteed to see wildlife up close. Common animals include the Ibex (a type of mountain goat) and the Hyrax (“rock badger”). Both of these animals are mentioned in the Bible.

A male Ibex, obviously accustomed to human presence.

"The high mountains are for the wild goats; the rocks are a refuge for the rock badgers." (Psalm 104:18)

"The rock badgers are a people not mighty, yet they make their homes in the cliffs." (Proverbs 30:26) There are actually two of them in the picture!

Tips for visitors:

• If you travel to Israel, consider spending one or two nights by the Dead Sea. There is a clean, safe hostel near the highway on the north side of En Gedi. For those with a little more money to spend, the kibbutz has a nice hotel on its grounds. Both have food options available.
• One can hike throughout the area. Trails are well marked and are assigned difficulty levels, along with estimated time for completion. For the National Park with its waterfalls, allow 1-1/2 or 2 hours to leisurely hike up, swim, take photos and return to the bottom. To get to a prehistoric temple with a spectacular Dead Sea view, allow several more hours’ time.
• For food options away from the hotel/hostel, there is a snack bar at the National Park entrance. Go across the highway toward the Dead Sea beach for restaurant options.

Masada is famous for several reasons. To Israeli Jews, it is a symbol of Jewish Independence. To those interested in military or ancient history, it is an example of Rome’s famed tenacity. For some modern tourists, it is the site of an ancient battle which happens to offer magnificent views of the Dead Sea valley.

Masada was fortified by Herod the Great a few decades before the birth of Christ. Herod took advantage of its exceptional defensive strength and prepared it as a place of refuge in the event of war. The site was well equipped to handle a long siege. Only a narrow, difficult path offered access to the fortified summit, which is some 1,300 feet above the valley floor. (The distance from top to bottom is smaller on the west side, but remains a formidable 300 feet.) A clever aquaduct system carried rain runoff into large cisterns that had been carved into the mountain. Besides its casemate walls and towers, the site had a lavish palace complete with mosiac floors, frescoed walls and Roman baths. Excavators have uncovered numerous storerooms that once held large quantities of food, drink and weaponry. It was an intimidating fortress by any measure.

Masada (center) viewed from the northeast. Its defensive power is obvious.

During the Jewish Revolt against Rome, Jewish rebels seized the summit ahead of the advancing Roman armies. When the 10th Roman legion arrived it surrounded Masada with a siege wall and 8 forts. Since the Romans had no good path to assault the top, they created their own. The video below shows how that worked.

Josephus wrote what is the only extant history of the battle at Masada. He records that on the night before the final Roman assault, the doomed Jewish fighters decided they and their families would not live as Roman slaves. They drew lots to determine who would kill the others before killing themselves. When the Romans broke in the next morning, nobody was alive except for a few women and children who had hidden themselves during the mass suicide.

The Roman general Silva set up his headquarters in this camp on Masada's west side. One can still observe the Roman siege wall (in front of camp) and the other forts around Masada's perimeter. The white path running in front of this camp is the Roman communications road that linked this headquarters with other forts.

There is no known mention of Masada in the Bible, though some speculate it could have been the “stronghold” used by David in 1 Samuel 22:4 when he was on the run from Saul. We will likely never be sure, but who knows what future excavations may yield?

View from atop Masada looking east over the Dead Sea. The mountains in the background are the mountains of ancient Moab, today the country of Jordan. The land bridge is the Lisan Peninsula that now divides the shrinking Dead Sea.

Everyone who excavated at Khirbet Qeiyafa had the privilege of enjoying a beautiful, daily view of the Elah Valley. The Elah Valley is most famous as the location of the David vs. Goliath story in 1 Samuel 17. In ancient times it was the border region between the Israelites and the Philistines, and would have seen plenty of conflict.

The following video was shot on our final day at Khirbet Qeiyafa/The Elah Fortress on August 6th, 2009. I was not able to do a video on this subject earlier due to the large shade structures that prevented a complete view of the valley. As you can tell with the video, it was a busy, noisy morning at the site. The video should still give a picture of the famous Bible story.

For years, tour buses have stopped off of the highway near the Elah Brook so people could gather ‘five smooth stones’ to carry home. (I myself did this in March of 2000.) The site of Khirbet Qeiyafa now offers another, greater reason to stop in the Elah Valley. Besides the great visual aid, it is a fortified city that dates to the time of David’s monarchy. Further excavation and research should increase and refine this information over the next several years.

After 3 days of working primarily with a wheelbarrow, I got to return to a job requiring a bit more finesse - excavating an ancient city drain channel. This task may seem dubious when one contemplates what flowed through an ancient drain in the absence of an indoor plumbing system. But a drain may yield a good bit of evidence that can reveal the inhabitants’ lifestyle and diet, and provide samples for Carbon-14 dating.

For the record, today’s work revealed a fair amount of ancient pottery (broken in pieces), various animal bones large and small, and 3 olive pits for C-14 dating. We’ll excavate more of it tomorrow, anticipating much more of the same. But there always remains the possibility of an unexpected find… which would be especially nice since National Geographic is here right now to produce print and video on our excavation.

Dr. Leen Ritmeyer is an archaeological architect who specializes in Jerusalem and its Temple Mount. He has been involved in numerous excavations and maintains a Blog. He lectures around the world and has been published extensively.

In 2008, Dr. Ritmeyer posted new dating information on some of the stone blocks in the Temple Mount’s eastern wall. I had the privilege today of seeing these stones up close. The video below explains it.

With this dating, these stones have witnessed the Assyrian Sennacharib (2 Kings 19), three assaults by Nebuchadnezzar (2 Kings 24-25), the Return under Zerubbabel (Ezra), the rebuilding of Jerusalem’s wall (Nehemiah), all of the histories with the Greeks and the Maccabees, Herod’s reconstruction, Jesus, and the Roman destruction. This does not include all of the wars and destruction that have occurred here since the 1st century.

You can read Dr. Ritmeyer’s two original posts on the subject here and here.

I just finished Day 3 on site at the Elah Fortress (aka Khirbet Qeiyafa) excavation. Today was not as tough as the previous days due to a combination of 1) a steady breeze that mitigated some of the summer temperature, 2) being able to work mostly in the shade, and 3) simply getting accustomed to the physical challenges of the work and heat.

Some interesting things have been found over the past couple of days. I won’t mention details unless I receive explicit permission from the archaeologists. They certainly have the right to control the flow of information from their own dig. In the meantime, here are a few glimpses of excavation life.

Archaeology: During excavation, it's mostly about removing dirt and rocks. Sometimes, really big rocks. Notice all of the full buckets that must be carried off and dumped, then brought back for refill.

The group on coffee break around 7:00 a.m. Monday morning. Even though it gets hot, the majority of workers wear pants (of some sort) to protect from the sun and from the rough ground. There are workers here from Israel, the U.S., Holland, Switzerland, Canada, Korea and Russia.

Revealing ancient steps. The top one was revealed my first day on the job. Below the ground level in front of my right knee, I later discovered a large broken pottery jar with a big handle. The jar looked like it had fallen from the upper step area and broken on the ground.

Food Watch

The dig expedition is staying at a hostel in an observant Jewish village. Everything is kosher, which means:

• No meat or dairy in the same meal. Our one daily meal with meat is lunch. So, no cheese, milk, yogurt or butter with lunch.
• We eat our formal breakfast around 9:00 a.m. at the dig site, though we have a coffee & pastry break before this too. Breakfast includes fruit, cucumbers, olives and tuna. I might have also seen bell peppers.
• The evening meal is at 8:00 p.m., and usually compensates for the dairy we missed at lunch. Sour cream, cottage cheese, yogurt, etc. … may exist in abundance. Pasta is sometimes included with this meal. On Sunday night, we had a green olive pizza with cheese as an option.

We finished our second workday at the Elah Fortress site a little while ago. There is more to do before bedtime, such as wash the pottery we found, sit in a lecture covering some aspect of biblical archaeology, and dinner to finish off the evening. Wakeup time is a few minutes after 4:00 a.m., so it’s early to bed for us.

It has already been a rich experience after two days on site. I can’t talk much about it at this moment because the Internet connection here is very intermittent. I’ll post some kind of photo and talk more about the experience and/or sites in Israel when my connection is more consistent.

Thanks for the prayers, and God bless.

I already posted some pictorial highlights from today, but here is a little something extra.

The water was much deeper than it looked. After shooting the video, I started to wade out some more and immediately went to above-the-knee level. It certainly felt nice on a very hot day.

We had a long, physically arduous day visiting these sites and more. Everything went well in spite of sore feet from the broken, rocky terrain of Mt. Arbel (and from climbing the water shaft at Hazor – more on that in a later post). I’ll just keep this simple… pictures with captions.

One the NW shore of Galilee. The town of Migdal (Magdala) is in the background across the water. It is the probable home of Mary the Magdal-ene.

A 3,800 year-old city gate at Dan. The Bible says that when Abraham rescued Lot, he went up to this city in pursuit of the captors (Genesis 14:12-14). He may have walked through this very gate. It is the only preserved mud brick gate we have from the Middle Bronze Age. The northern (right) tower had begun to show structural weakness around 1700 B.C., so the fortifications were buried in a huge earthen rampart that protected the city for the next 3 centuries, and preserved the gate for us.

The North end of the Sea of Galilee from the cliffs of Mount Arbel. Mt. Arbel is not specifically mentioned in the Bible, but it has a spectacular view of the area. The sites of Capernaum, the traditional "Mount of Beatitudes" and ancient Bethsaida are along the left shoreline in the top half of this photograph. The Golan Heights are in the background. This body of water is more of a lake than a Sea. One can see across to all sides even when standing on the shoreline.

Caves on the sides of the Mt. Arbel cliff. Jewish fighters fortified these and turned the side of the mountain into a fortress during ancient times. Jews fought here against the Greeks in the 2nd century B.C., Herod the Great in the 1st century B.C., and the Romans in the late-60's A.D. Josephus records that the Greeks, unable to penetrate the defenses, lowered soldiers in baskets from the summit above. The Greek soldiers then threw grappling hooks into the caves. When they hooked a Jewish soldier, they pulled him out of the cave and he fell onto the rocky terrain below.

I’ll share more photos and information later. There is simply too much to fit into one post. We have another full day tomorrow, so be sure to check back.

I am flying out tomorrow to join the excavation at the Elah Fortress (aka Khirbet Qeiyafa) in Israel. This blog has followed the Elah Fortress dig since last year.

I’ll post a synopsis on the Elah Fortress and its importance to historians and Bible students. It has re-ignited a debate over the existence of the biblical David and Solomon, and over the nature of the Israelite kingdom in that time period. The site has also produced the oldest Hebrew inscription yet found. This summer’s excavation is only the second season at the site, so more significant finds may come soon.

This blog will follow the dig while I am there. I will be visiting many other biblical sites during the trip, and plan to post photos & comments on them as well.

If you want to get a jump on the Elah Fortress, check out previous posts here.