Standing at the gates of the old city in Jerusalem I notice the limestone. Beyond this point every street, house, floor, ceiling, and stair is made of this pale stone. There is only one entry to go and come from the old city. It is at these gates I am standing. Where millions have driven, walked, and even fought through. I walk closer to the limestone and see just how torn up and abused this ancient stone really is. I remember the texture smooth but scarred with bullet holes, cannon marks, arrow dents and the occasional car mark from the current generation.
I see the transition from the floor being pavement and turning into the uneven limestone bricks, which made it impossible to wear heels. I step through this walkway knowing the only way to come out is retracing my steps. As you walk though, the architecture of this simple gateway is complex. There are hidden alcoves and secret traps for the intense battles that went on right where I was standing. The most basic trick was a simple architecture design. If you tried to enter during a war you would of course have a shield on your left arm protecting you and a sword in your right hand. The design of the gate made it an easy trap for righties who were trying to come through. You would not be able to protect yourself and would need an army of all lefties to safely enter the gates.
While walking around the old city I notice the pace of life is so much more relaxed. Before going to the Western Wall, I stop at a new portion of the wall that was dug from underneath the ground. From this part of the wall you are actually at a lower elevation then Western Wall. At this wall I am told all throughout the old city the temples walls are buried underneath. This fact they found out while knoc...
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...elt it in my blood. I knew I was being heard. I finished my prayers and walked with my face towards the wall. I saw the Israeli flag illuminated by the wall getting smaller and smaller as I disappeared to find my friends.
Since it was the Sabbath, I couldn't ride in a car. We left a different exit this time. As I continued my journey to our kibbutz I remembered I was not staying in Jerusalem but the town outside of it. The town called Jerusalem Hills. I didn't notice how much I would dislike that word, hill, so much. Walking in a group of 40 for miles of darkness in the infinite cold I finally made it back to the kibbutz three hours later. I then attended the kibbutz Kiddish that consisted of challah, danishes, figs, and of course hummus. We say the last prayers of the night blessings the food and each other and dig into the feast we were to reward ourselves with.
The air is cool and crisp. Roosters can be heard welcoming the sun to a new day and a woman is seen, wearing a clean colorful wrap about her body and head, her shadow casting a lone silhouette on the stone wall. The woman leans over to slide a piece of paper into one of the cracks, hoping her prayer will be heard in this city of Jerusalem. Millions are inserting their prayers into the walls of Japanese temples, while an inmate in one of a hundred prisons across the United States looks past his wall toward the prayers he did not keep. Billions fall asleep each night surrounded by four walls and thousands travel to China to witness the grandest one of all. Who builds walls and who tears them down?
The content of this project is based on the largest and most complete megalithic structure in Europe, The Stonehenge. It resides in center of the southern England; on the wide spread Salisbury Plains. It is said to be old approximately four thousand years, and it is even considered older than the Great Pyramids of Egypt. Standing there over such a long time, it has been the subject of research and mystery in general, for a really long time. Dozens of notable scientists, emperors and others expressed their admiration and interest through different means of explorations and excavations. There have been various theories on how it was built, and what the purpose of it was, and some of them are really intriguing and interesting such. Some thought it was built as a solar-lunar calendar, some said that it had medical purposes for the giants that had built it, it was considered a ceremonial place, temple of veneration, a portal and lastly but not less important, there were some associations of Stonehenge to the aliens. The two specific theories on the Stonehenge’s importance will be discussed and summarized in this essay. First theory comes from an astronomical stand point interpreted by Mr. Chris Witcombe, and the second theory might sound unusual when said the Stonehenge represents the human vulva, and this theory is interpreted by Anthony Perks(PhD) and Darlene Bailey(BA).
The Palace Wall carving depicts an image of the ancient Assyrian warriors of Sennacherib’s army invading Lachish an ancient Judean city in 701 BCE. The carving was made to show the military records of the ancient western world. It was made a year after the war was happening and it shows some soldiers shooting bows at a castle-like structure. There are some documents that describe the attacks on Lachish and come from the Sennacherib Prism, a document written in cuneiform in 701 BCE. It describes how Sennacherib’s army attacked the Judean city and what they did with the citizens of the city. Another document that describes the accounts of the war is the Book of Kings in the Hebrew Bible. This document was written by many different people and in different times ranging from 680 BCE to 500 BCE, a while after the war. Both documents describe some details, some true some not, of the invasion. They share the same Ancient Assyrian invasion of Lachish but they go about describing it in different ways.
The China’s Great Wall is one of the most spectacular and lasting structural feat ever conceived by the human mind. It is considered as the monument to the Chinese civilization constructed at extreme costs and under myriad sacrifices including loss of lives from hard labor for a worthy cause. The Great Wall, which is translated in Chinese as Chang Cheng was originally constructed to provide protection to the Chinese farmers from the marauding nomadic raiders who raided villages for food. The topics that follows attempt to elaborate the history of the Great Wall; the motives behind its construction; the design, materials, methods as well as the processes and labor that were applied in its construction.
and Pompeii was buried to the point where all that remained were the very highest of walls.
Those who see my monuments in years to come, and who shall speak of what I have done.” (Stone, 2015)
Stonehenge, called the most photographed site in the world, draws nearly a million visitors a year, almost half of them from the united states (Wendy Mass 9) After Stonehenge has mystified an impressed generation of visitors and scholars who traveled to Salisbury plain in Wiltshire, England, 80 miles west of London, to marvel at the wonder of this ruin (Wendy Mass 8) but why is this ruin so magnificent? What draws so many people to it? Is it because the question of who built it and how it was built still lingers in the minds of many today. These questions have kept the mystery of Stonehenge alive for thousands of years, and the combined investigative efforts of historians, geologists, engineers, archaeologists, astronomers, chemists, and philosophers have continued to uncover more questions than answers (Wendy Mass 8)
The Dead Sea Scrolls have been called the greatest manuscript find of all time. Discovered between 1947 and 1956, the Dead Sea Scrolls comprise some 800 documents but in many tens of thousands of fragments. The Scrolls date from somewhere between 250 B.C. to 68 A.D. and were written in Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek; they contain Biblical works, prayers and legal texts and sectarian documents.This priceless collection of ancient manuscripts is invaluable to our understanding of the history of Judaism, the development of the Hebrew Bible, and the beginnings of Christianity. When Mount Vesuvius erupted, it not only demolished Pompeii, but also the nearby Roman settlement of Herculaneum. Centuries later, hundreds of scrolls were uncovered in the area 1752, but many were too damaged by age and burns to risk unrolling. Thanks to one of the world’s most sensitive
Stonehenge is a statue that had been placed on Wessex, England and was not known pre-cisely who built it or for what purpose it was built. As it was told in Caroline Malone and Nancy Stone Bernard’s Stonehenge book “the meaning of the name of Stonehenge is ‘hanging stones’ because people thought the stones were hanging from the uprights” (10). Stonehenge was de-clared as World Heritage Site by United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organiza-tion (UNESCO) (Malone, 8). Unfortunately Stonehenge was affected badly by negligent people and much of that bad effect are tourist erosion. Even though deterioration on surface of stones, many archeologists and historians made numerous researches about it. Today one of the facts that we gain is Stonehenge’s age. Thanks to the 21st century technology, we learned that Stonehenge is some 5.000 years old (Malone, 10).
.... But this wall must be passable; it must have an opening that anyone can pass through. But the only people that will find the door through are the ones that are willing to be open themselves!” There are so many views, ideas, and aspects of wall due to its extreme complexity, culturally and archeologically. Everything can be linked to everything! This is the ultimate anthropological truth. The Great Wall is truly great.
The article focuses on the 150-year-old public cemetery, Stone Mountain, to map out the transition of gravestones over the years. The gravestones were categorized based on their symbolism, which was divided i...
The beat-up Arab minivan slowed tentatively under the scrutinizing gaze of the Israeli soldier on duty. The routine was simple. About halfway between Damascus Gate in East Jerusalem and Ramallah, the West Bank commercial center, the driver, blaring Arabic music on his radio, maneuvered around the dusty slabs of concrete that composed the Beit Haninah Checkpoint. He waited for a once-over by the Hebrew-speaking 18-year-old and permission to continue. Checkpoints-usually just small tin huts with a prominent white and blue Israeli flag-have become an integral and accepted part of Palestinian existence under Israeli occupation. But for me, a silent passenger in the minivan, each time we entered the no man's land between Israeli territory and the West Bank, my hea...
In Mesopotamia, about two thousand years ago, two civilizations began to thrive. Both cultures were very old and prospered long before the bible was written, as well as before the Greeks and Romans flourished. One that emerged was the civilization of Babylonia, in the southern part near the Persian Gulf (Giokaris, Amalia). It was there that an impressive City began to grow. The ancient city of Babylon was a walled city, with networks of canals. To go along with this architecture, there were green crops surrounding the city. In the middle of the square was a giant 300 foot high ziggurat, filled with plants and sculptures. People lived inside the wall that surrounded the city, where they had lavish sized homes. Even the lowest class had typically three levels of living space. Traders filled the streets with fresh fruit, baked b...
Most of the cemeteries found in the Southern Levant during the Early Bronze Age IV are composed of shaft tombs. The details differ from site to sites and sometimes within the same site (e.g. Jericho). At some of the sites, such as those nea...
- [3] ARNOLD, D, Building in Egypt, Pharaoic Stone Masonry, Oxford:Oxford University Press, 1991, pp. 159-160.