Winding down

We are back to using the hotel wi-fi which is a relic of the middle bronze age I think. It is very slow tonight and can't handle uploading pictures - sorry about that. If I have time tomorrow will go and get more credit on my pre-paid dongle. Can't do it online because I don't do Arabic.

Anyway, back to a full days digging today and for my square have finally reached the top of what we think and hope are middle bronze age wall foundations, and going by the square next door have about 1m to go down to floor level. We are into a thick layer of ash and broken mud brick, and we can see by the ash layer in the baulk (edge of excavation) that whatever smashed the building we are digging came from the SW from where they have worked out the airburst meteor came from. Amazing to see and contemplate. With three days to go it is touch and go whether we will get there, hope so, because next door found a good number of intact vessels and other artifacts at that level.

The dig team is down to less than half its peak number as quite a few flew out yesterday. They have closed one of the lower Tall dig sites and sent the people up top. We have made some good friends while other people will be quickly forgotten. We suspect we may have a few American visitors over the next year - have money will travel type.

We have been in contact with our hosts in Israel, Jerry and Sheryl Bulow. We know them from our Waipu days. We are crossing the border at the Allenby Bridge/King Hussein crossing Friday morning. A dig team member did a day trip to Israel yesterday and it took him 3 hours to get through the Israeli side of the border. So we are expecting an interesting time especially as the crossing closes at 3pm in readiness for the Jewish Sabbath. To add to the intrigue we are catching a bus from the border to Jerusalem because its a bit risky for Israeli's to venture that far into the West Bank at the moment. It's ok though, in reading about the bus we are catching it will be an armoured public bus.

A group of people we have learned to admire and be humbled by are the Jordanian Christians, whether Orthodox, Catholic or whatever. On occasion we have seen cars in Amman with the Christian fish symbol on their bumpers. It seems that at the moment there is a respect of the Christian community, but its tough here. It has been interesting that Muslims prayed for the 21 Egyptian Coptic Christians in Libya last week, and interesting that in the local paper yesterday they had a report on what the men were saying as they were killed. They were lip read and where saying together "Jesus is Lord" with the occasional "I love Jesus". For local Christians this is very close to home because in the 1920's the Bedouins went on a rampage against Christians around Madaba on the plains of Moab about 30 minutes from here and they fought for their lives and many died. We have been talking in the dig team what we would do, and are really challenged by the Egyptian martyrs. In the meantime we are going to avoid ISIS like the plague they are. The security is still on high alert here.

Three days to go then it's Mt Zion, the mountain of the Lord!