Thursday June 3 to Friday June 4

Some good finds today (Thurs), an early bronze age bronze bowl, a Roman nail (they are about 5 or 6 inches long, they would be the kind with which they nailed Jesus to the Cross), a bronze coin (had not been cleaned to see the date and time), while we were on our tour Friday we heard they found a complete small jug of the Early Bronze age. In my locus a lot of pottery shards and a lot of hard digging where we used pick axes and spades. Our lecture that evening was a fascinating talk on the finding and repair and then a reconstruction of a male figure of Minolan culture. Mark Moalk put about 1600 hrs in the reconstruction. He gave the lecture.
Friday we left at 7:30 am for our tour. We went first to Beth Shean which is not on most tours. It is a fascinating ruin, with several cordos, column lined streets with shops on booth sides. Some very nice ruins of more expensive homes, an amplitheater, a public latrine where men and women sat in rows together on stones set three or four inches apart. Then on to Masada, where Herod the Great had a fortress on a huge mountain and later the last Jews of the 70 AD revolt committed suicide. Herod had two palaces on top and a swimming pool. I did not get to see the cliff or north palace in 1997 because it was closed off for preservation and reconstruction. Then off to the Dead Sea to swim. The Dead Sea is dying, literally it is evaporating away because of the decrease of water inflowing into it. I was very surprized to see how much it had gone down. Then on to Qumram where the Dead Sea Scrolls were written or collected and hidden in the caves of the area. Then on to Jerusalem to settle in, we are staying in a convent called Ecce Home, near where Pontus Pilate said "see the Man". From the roof patios we can see the Dome of the Rock on the Temple Mound. The Priatorium where Jesus was sentenced by Pilate is just down the street. After supper at the convent we went to the Western Wall for the beginning of Shebat. A good night's sleep followed.