Sunday, 2 November – Ein Gedi and Qumran Scrolls

We got the bus loaded by 8AM and headed up the east side of the Dead Sea to the Ein Gedi Nature Reserve.  It’s mentioned several time is the Bible relating to David and Solomon.

We saw many Ibex, which look like small deer with
Sheep/Goat horms

There were 5 waterfalls that we climbed to see.

A waterfall

The falls at the top

On the way back down....

Driving up the coast of the Dead Sea, you can see that it gets
lower every year.  In some places the shoreline has receeded
a quarter mile or more.  As salt deposits are dissolved, they
create 'sink holes' large enough to swallow a bus. 

A date palm plantation.

We then went to Qumron where the Dead Sea Scrolls were first discovered in 1947 when some shepherds were search for lost sheep and threw some stoned into a cave to scare out the lambs.  They heard pottery breaking instead and when they investigated, they found several clay jars filled with scrolls.  The scrolls were recognized almost immediately as sensationally important and were first published as early as 1947.

A re-creation of what the jars looked like when
they were first discovered.

The people who lived there were probably Essenes, which was conservative group of men who fled Jerusalem to escape the ‘people of the dark’ which is how they viewed the Jewish establishment there.  They viewed themselves as the ‘people of the light’.  They believed in purity and took ritual baths twice a day.

On of the aqueducts that delivered water to the baths.

The baths had separate steps so the people leaving the bath
would not be contaminated by the people entering the bath.

On of the cisterns that held water from the
flash floods that delivered water to the town.

A group photo.

Dessert in the Desert....

We had lunch at Qumron and loaded the bus for the last time to travel back through Jerusalem and on to Tel Aviv.  We had a ‘farewell’ dinner and started saying our good-byes back at the hotel.  Some of our people started leaving for the airport tonight, some will leave in the middle of the night and the rest of us will leave right after breakfast tomorrow morning.

Our last dinner together.......

It was a great trip!