Today I woke up almost early and went on a trip to visit Megiddo city ruins (Tel Meggido Israeli national park). Mount Megiddo (Har Megiddo in hebrew) is known in the Bible as Armageddon (the wikipedia entries are great on both subjects). On the picture you can see the entrance to the city, built during the reign of King Salomon (~3000 years ago).
Two things impressed me during the visit, the first one is that the hill is actually half artificial, most of the height coming from 26 layers of cities built starting more than 6000 years ago (some archeologists even talk about remains aging back to 10000 BC).
The second one is the effort that was put in the water system. On top of the hill there is a gigantic hole (roughly 40m deep counting the steps down) followed by a 70m horizontal tunnel getting out on the side of the hill in a hidden place where was located the local water source.
The scenary from there is fantastic, you overlook the Jezreel valley, and also have a great view on Mount Gilboa, Mount Tabor and Nazareth. I'll try to create a panorama from my pictures and will post it on my flickr.
On my way back I decided to take the mountain road passing through Dalyat Al Karmel, and ended up being pretty happy about that choice. It was olive harvest time, I stopped near an olive tree field and ate some Druze pita with labane and za'atar under the shade of a green oak, tasting this year's olives, chatting, drinking coffee and playing backgammon with the harvesters.
I finished the trip at the Mushraka to watch the sun setting down on mount Karmel.
2 comments:
still nice photo of setting sun :-)
The "artificial hills" due to endless historical reconstructions of cities are very common in this region: it seems that archeologists always aim for the hills for their studies (dixit the book "The Bible as History" at my last visit), and peel them layer after layer to learn the history of the city.
The other common thing is the use of throwing garbage in any hole in the desert: it is so common that it's one of the main source of information for archeologists.
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