Day 12, Wednesday, March 14, 2018 - Archaeological sifting and Israel Museum

We had to leave our hotel on the Dead Sea to be the first to arrive at the Allenby crossing into Israel. We were there first but inexplicably, the bus had to wait 20 minutes before being allowed in. Going through Jordanian immigration was pretty quick. Going through Israeli immigration was quick for most of us although my mother had to undress for a pat-down when she said she had a pacemaker - this was the first time she had been subject to such a search. After this process there was another inexplicable problem with the bus which didn't arrive until about 30 minutes later. Overall, it took over two hours to get through.

Our first stop was a facility where we sifted for artifacts. In 1999, without the knowledge of the Antiquities department, a Muslim group started digging for a new mosque and carted many truckloads of material to a dump, highly illegal. Since then there has been a project to go though the debris to sift for valuable artifacts. The manual labor is mostly done by teams of tourists who come in to sift through buckets of material, dumping it on a screen, washing it and looking for anything that is valuable. This is supervised by a staff of experts and archaeologists who check the work. We found many small shards of pottery and a small nail. Previous groups had found very valuable coins and larger pieces of pottery.

After lunch, we went to the Israel Museum which has many large building of exhibits, the most famous of which is dedicated to the Dead Sea Scrolls. Part of this museum is dedicated to the "Aleppo Codex", the most complete copy of the Jewish scriptures dating to the 10th century. This was copied and used by Jewish scholars from Egypt to Spain in the 11th and 12th centuries. Traveled from Jerusalem to Egypt to Aleppo, Syria where it remained for many years until it was damaged in a fire in the synagogue. Most of it was smuggled back to Israel in the 1950s but only about half of it was found. There is also a large archaeology exhibit tracing the Israel/Jewish history from the bronze age to current times - too much to take in during a couple hours.

From Jerusalem we headed to Tel Aviv and the landscape changed dramatically, becoming much more green with trees, shrubs and agriculture. We passed Arab villages that were completely abandoned after Israel become a state in 1948.

It is only 34 miles from Jerusalem to our hotel but it took over 1 1/2 hours due to the rush-hour traffic. We did get to see the sun setting over the Mediterranean Sea before arriving at our hotel. The little street to our hotel was so narrow with parked cars, it took our driver 10 minutes to make the corner - we didn't think it was possible. We all breathed a sigh of relief and clapped when he made it.

Our hotel is only a couple blocks from the sea and we walked along the promenade to a small restaurant overlooking the promenade. There were many people running, riding bikes and playing beach volleyball.


My mother and other visitors sifting debris - lots of pottery shards

Assembly line operation for sifting

Mount of Olives - Olive trees being restored

Model of Temple and Jerusalem at time of Jesus





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