Ancient cities worthy of visiting
I have visited perhaps the six most ancient cities on the planet. Never did I plan the first five, Jerusalem, Jericho, and Knossos on Crete, Athens and Rhodes, which St Paul visited. Two years ago my wife and I visited Cairo, so that is six I shall talk about as worthy of visiting. There is something amazing which you can only feel if you are there standing on soil occupied by fellow humans, say 10,000 years ago. (for that is the age of Jericho the first of these I shall deal with.) The amazing thing is that you feel the age of these places just being there. You find your imagination imagining Joshua and the walls of Jericho, which have been partly excavated now. In Cairo you wonder at the pyramids and imagine the formation and building of these, the last of the ancient wonders of the world.
I said at the beginning that never did I plan the first five. I was working in Botswana in Southern Africa when my son flew to Rhodes to work. During the school holidays of the school, of which I was deputy headmaster, I flew to see him with my mother who had come to visit me. We could only get on an EL-AL jet, which meant a two day stopover in Israel on our way to Athens. Two days before we landed in Tel Aviv a bus carrying American tourists had been blown up so we met a taxi driver called Solomon who assured us we would be safe with him. He drove us down to Jericho on the road where maybe the Good Samaritan walked. The most striking landmark in Jericho is Temptation Mount, and typically there is the Temptation Mount bistro, a mark of modern tourism below where Jesus stood. It is very well laid out and worthy of a lunch time visit; you can get a large meal for 85 shekels. Jericho itself is a green oasis with channel irrigation watering orange groves and other fruit trees. But it is only an oasis, as all around the topography is harsh and barren. Take plenty of bottled water for the heat is more oppressive than you imagine. At the moment they are carrying out excavations of the ancient city wall and just outside the bistro you can see the rocks and stones of the walls uncovered. Take a camel ride here, it's good fun and would have been the mode of transport here all those years ago. There is a monastry carved out of the side of a cliff that you can see on your way out of Jericho, the oldest known city on earth. The monks use rope ladders to climb down and go about their daily business of shopping and other duties.
Jerusalem looks ancient as soon as you see the old city wall and the last stones of the temple, the famous wailing wall. Definitely worth a visit, if you believe the story of Jesus, in fact the feeling is surreal to think you may be walking the same path that he did. There is the Kidron Valley with the Church of all Nations beside the Garden of Gethsemane. Many of the holy sites mentioned in the Bible are guarded by a church or have one built over them. The Church of the Nativity is a must for there is the stable cave where Jesus was born. Let's face it, believe or not, once you are there and you realise his story is recorded history of the area, Bethlehem has a special significance. There are two more ancient places that I must mention in relation to Jesus's life and that is Nazareth and the Lake Tiberias area or Sea of Galilee. In Nazareth there is the Church of the Annunciation, where Mary received the news of the virgin birth through an angel visiting her and Joseph. Here you can see the cave type dwelling which of course the church is built over. Also the carpenters shop or Jesus's home is venerated in the same way inside the church. Nazareth is a very neat city and is set on several small hills which makes it picturesque. Tiberias was the former lakeside area where Herod had a summer residence and from the shores of the sea of Galilee you can imagine where the towns of Capernium and Magdala and Bethsaida would have been, for you can scan 360 degrees at the northern end of the sea. Beyond that and on the easterly bank is the Golan Heights. You pass the ancient church at Cana where Jesus performed his first miracle between Nazareth and the Sea of Galilee.
And so on to Athens and the Acropolis, Parthenon and the Plaka, the trendy cafe area. Very rocky and rugged but ancient and worth a visit just to see where Plato and Aristotle taught. The Acropolis is stunning at night when bathed in light. From Athens to Rhodes, the city that built one of the ancient wonders of the world, the Collossus of Rhodes, and the island that has St Paul's Bay, a small round inlet amongst the rugged cliffs, where it is said God carved it out to make a safe haven for the apostle when his boat was in danger of being swept onto the coastline in a storm. The city of Rhodes has an ancient city wall and at Lindos on the northern tip of the island there are ancient Roman burial grounds in amongst the cliffs near the fortress called again the Acropolis.
From Rhodes my mother flew me to Crete to visit her brother's and my uncle's grave at Suda Bay. He was killed in the battle of Maleme airstrip during W.W.2.. During our stay here we visited the ancient city of Knossos, where the fabled King Midas lived and to see the ruins here is a step back in time with ancient walls, pots and columns all excavated by the famous Arthur Evans. The guides here are excellent and look like the ancient Minoans themselves. Much of the pottery and frescoes are to be seen in the museum in Iraklion, the capital, and this is worth a visit to see one of the world's oldest batteries.
Finally to the largest of the ancient cities, Cairo. Cairo is exciting, very Middle East and the Pyramids a must for the ancient city seeker. When you stand next to them and imagine their age a shiver goes down your spine, The old city and Saladins wall and citadel are worth visiting and you will never see so many minarets as in this area. Strangely with all the history around us the most exciting and ancient thing my wife and I did was to put our feet into the River Nile at sunset, for that river has been flowing from time immemorial.