Jan 2 - Visit to Eretz Israel Museum

On January 2, we took the same bus as the day before but got off about a half mile sooner (about at the bottom right of the map). 

We visited the Eretz Israel (Land of Israel) museum. This is a large, well landscaped place that contained a number of subject area museums (they are in orange on the map) as well as a working archeological investigation (the large brown space). The map shows an area that is about 1/2 mile wide and 1/4 mile tall. One of the subject museums showing 27 centuries of coinage and 5 centuries before that of exchangeable items, like weights of precious metal (e.g., silver, or shekels, the term used in the bible). 

An example of the coins are some that were struck in the first year of the revolt of Bar Kochba during the reign of Hadrian. The letters on the coins are in the paleo hebrew script, not the Akkadian block fonts that were generally used at the time (and are found in, for example, the Dead Sea Scrolls) and have been used in Torah scrolls for the past two thousand years. (some of the Hasmonian Kings also used the paleo hebrew script on coins a century or two earlier). Apparently, the one on the right with the grape cluster says that it is 'year 1 of the redemption' , the one on the left with the palm branch says 'Eleazer the Priest'. 

Other subject museums have, for example, 80 centuries of ceramics, 30 centuries of glassware and 40 centuries of copper art.




There are also mosaics, some reassembled from finds elsewhere in Israel, some found on site. The one on the left is from the Byzantine era and has been preserved and cleaned in situ on the museum grounds.