So this morning I headed off to the Church of St Anne, just down the street by the Lion's Gate with Tony Brennan for Mass at 6.30am. When we arrived nothing seemed to be happening and then we saw a now saying that Mass was at 6.45 so we headed down into the crypt where Mary was reported to have been born.
When we returned upstairs it was to see a priest setting up for Mass so we sat and prayed and gradually people arrived and we found that Mass was at 7am and in French so it was ok. There were a number of people from Ecce Homo present and although it was all in French we knew what was happening. The Mass was peace filled and it was interesting to see how the priest spoke slowly as that we could hear as the acoustics for speaking were poor but the singing sounded terrific.
After Mass and breakfast I settled to do a few things before heading off with Tony Brennan again to go to the Israel Museum. It took us some time to get the right tickets for the light rail and then some mucking round to find the right bus but eventually we got the Number 14 bus and it dropped us outside.
After entering we headed first to the World of Herod, a brilliant exhibition of the life of Herod and the things he had done in Israel and the incredible number of buildings that were produced in his reign. The story ends with the finding of his burial place at Herodium after many years of searching.
We then headed into the Book of the Scroll Exhibition which has quite a number of the Dead Scrolls (at least some fragments which are rotated with other pieces regularly so that they are not destroyed. It was truly a remarkable experience. Reminded me of my visit to the Chester Beatty Library in Dublin 12 years ago when I saw some of the Scrolls there.
We had a bite to eat then headed back to Ecce Homo for a short break before going on a walking tour of the Old City with Jared Goldfarb. He spoke to us of the quarters and how they had come into being - the two cross streets: the Cardo and the Decamus - elements of all Roman cities. He then led us through little alley ways to the quarters and told us of the story of the people and history of each section.
Back to Ecce Homo for the evening meal and then off again with Jared - this time to walk the tunnels beside the Western Wall. another great experience to see the incredible skills employed by people over 2000 years ago to build huge walls which stand today. The 'tragedy' of the story was that when we came to the end of the tour we were 5 metres from the Listotrophos - the area under Ecce Homo - but the way through had been sealed many years ago and we had to walk back through the system to return home.
Now bed as tomorrow we have 5 hours of presentation
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