Still before lunch today, we went to Tel Megiddo. Tel means like “mountain”. It’s the foundations of 25 cities all built on top of one another, so it’s up a ways now, like a mountain. The oldest part of the excavation was the gate to the city from 6,000 years ago, around 4000BC. One of my favorite things today, I must say. It’s so narrow so it’s easy to defend. This is cool.
The steps go up, and then narrow and turn so the entrance can be easily blocked and defended. This was here 6000 years ago…what? That’s AWESOME.
This was the city gate, higher up, during Solomon’s time. It had a series of 3 places where doors could be shut. The sidewalk was made uneven on purpose, as a defense, so you HAVE TO look down while you’re walking on it or you will break an ankle. I was looking and almost did anyway.
So this is the valley of Armageddon. It comes from Har Meggido…Har meaning mountain. This is the Jezreel Valley, and across it and the light colored tops of the mountain range to the left is Nazareth. The mountain on the right is getting into Samaria, and the mound in the middle off in the distance is Mt Tabor, or the Mount of Transfiguration. So check this out. When Jesus did his Transfiguration thing…He had Moses and Elijah there with him on either side, right? If you are standing where I took this photo and look left, you see this:
See at the very top of that mountain peak the little white dot? That is where Elijah defeated the pagan priests by drowning his offering in water and God still started it on fire, when Asherah or whichever god they were trying to get to light their sacrifices failed. Over off to the right from this is where Moses was taken to heaven. That is some cool stuff.
The large circular group of rocks down there in the excavation is a pagan sacrifice altar. When they excavated that area, they found thousands of animal and human bones from the sacrifices. Whoa.
That white stone in the distance is likely an Asherah pole. Lots of pagan worship in those days here. Although, when King Josiah was here, he came in and knocked down all the pagan stuff. When they excavated it, they set this one back up. Pastor said an Asherah pole would be about waist height and 16 inches square…about like this. That would be what the pagans would sacrifice to her on.
OK, since I grew up on a farm with grain bins…this was cool to me. It’s a grain silo…and if you look really close, you can see the spiral stairs along the outside wall of it, so they could walk down to the bottom to get the grain as it went down from use. Those are some seriously narrow stairs, like a foot wide. Seriously, gotta have some sure feet!
This is the way down to the spring fed water system of Megiddo. They made underground tunnels to run it in from a spring, even if the city was under siege. We went down 187 steps into this tunnel, I mean WHOA. I had a death grip on the rail because it was wet and slick and steep, and one false move and you’d still be rolling down those steps with everyone below you tumbling too. So neat to see. Check this out.
Down, down, down.
Into the tunnel.
And there’s me. : )
Then we went up a few steps to come out the other side, and the bus driver took us back over for schnitzel on pita bread lunch with fries and a coke. There were some toppings on that I didn’t recognize, but all in all, it was tasty. Evan had his plain…similar to a fried chicken sandwich.
OK, on to the next place, Mt Precipice!