History is everywhere

After the exhaustion of yesterday with the heavy rock and earth moving we both slept like logs last night waking up to the alarm at 5.30am instead of the prayer call at 5am. Helen enjoyed her role as leader of the pottery sherd washing and sorting group which is based at the Mosque at the base of the Tall. At the end of the sorting she was tested on her recognition of Middle Bronze Age verses Iron Age pottery and passed with flying colours - so her job is permanent. Although everything is broken in the layers being dug at the moment you do get kind of attached when you handle the pottery and you see a finger print or the personal designs of the potters that lived here between 3-4,000 years ago. Quite special, even if some of them lived in the most wicked city in the world. If we get to reach a floor it is highly likely that we will be finding intact pottery vessels just as they were left on destruction day, after digging through the ash layer of 1-2 metres which as I said yesterday has the consistency of talcum powder. Helen joined me at lunch time on the Tall where we did the first cut down of our surveyed squares, going down about 100mm. Only about 2.9m to go give or take. In the square I am in we have come down on top of what seems to be two parallel mud brick walls with a gap between capped with large rocks and a void beneath. I found the void when my foot broke through and a leg disappeared, to be instantly removed with the immediate thought of "a pit full of vipers". So it looks like we have an interesting place to dig. The thing is though, it is all on your knees from now on scarping with a trowel into a dust pan, dirt into the "gooffers" to be carted away, pottery sherds into labelled buckets to go down to Helen for sorting next day, and "objects" (non pottery) mapped by precise measurements according to position on the grid and their elevation in reference to our datum point the surveyor established. Our datum is 129.0 metres below sea level. It is still physically demanding.

The picture is of the back of Dr Steven Collins who is the dig director pointing directly west towards Jericho that is about 20km away and can be seen on a clear day. As yet we haven't had one good enough even to see the Judean hills. We are gathered on the high point of the upper Tall just in front of the palace ruins. Below us is the lower Tall that was within the original city walls that were up to eight metres thick and 20m high - huge. About where the Drs right shoulder is are where the massive main gate tower foundations were discovered a few years ago. In the middle of the photo is a little tree between two bigger trees. That's where the cities temple was. As was pointed out from some descriptive bible passages Moses and Joshua would have stood on this very spot as the people of Israel camped before them immediately before they crossed the Jordan River into the Promised Land, of course with Moses not going with them. They have found evidence of the camp over indicating that the Tabernacle with the Arch of the Covenant was likely pitched right on top of Sodom's temple site. Way before that the Bible tells of Joseph travelling from Egypt via the Kings Highway which is up on the hills behind the Tall, and coming down and camping at a place called in Hebrew "the place of thorn bushes" which is equated with this site as it recovered ecologically from the destruction event. In the time of King David it was called "place of the achacia trees" - some more ecological recovery. So much history and biblical connections. Where Jesus was baptised is about 6km from here - the list goes on. The lower Tall was were the market place would have been and where 20-25,000 people lived in the working class residential area, and presumeably where Lot lived. One of the groups is digging a domestic house dating from the destruction period. The upper Tall is 30m above the lower Tall, and the lower Tell is 30m above natural ground level, and all of it was transported from elsewhere.

Jordan feels safe. Even walking around this area of Amman and night feels safe. The people are friendly and helpful even with the language barrier. Today was clear and sunny and about 25C down on the heap, but still with a haze that obscured seeing Israel. Amman was 16C today, quite a difference. The sunshine isn't harsh like NZ and it's going to be hard to get a tan, although I have realised that having to wear gloves all day means white hands and brown arms. Also realised our knee caps will be concave after 5 weeks on them. The explosions from the quarry don't bother us any more but the sound of a 5 second burst of machine gun fire from the army base raised our heads. A large colourful lizard one of the group disturbed after moving a rock looked bewildered as we all gathered around and chatted away in excitement. Then I realised it probably only understood Arabic. Scorpian count up to three now. On the way home tonight we got our first glimpse of the Dead Sea. Much bigger than we imagined. Tomorrow (Thursday) is the last day of the week for us. On Friday we go on a tour of the region of biblical Moab looking at other archeological sites and a number of significant Christian sites and also Mt Nebo, from where Moses first stood and surveyed the Promised Land. Then on Saturday - it's Petra!