Caesarea

Yesterday after class we took a trip down to Caesarea for an afternoon tour. In 22 A.D. King Herod, who governed Israel under the rule of Rome, and who was very politically savvy, decided Israel ought to have a port city. After all, countless ships with trade cargo left Egypt and traveled counterclockwise (with the prevailing winds) around the Mediterranean coastline every year. The problem was that Israel did not have a natural bay where he wanted his port to be. So, being the kind of man he was, he had one built. Yes, he just decided to build a bay.

The project took 12 years, and surprisingly was not conducted by slaves, but paid workers (um, yay high taxes?). What they did was build very large wooden structures that look like those shoe organizer boxes you slide under beds, a large rectangle cut into so many squares—but huge! I’ll have to check on the dimensions. They’d float these out, sink them where they wanted them, and fill them with concrete. The then solid boxes acted as a base for sand to naturally build up on, creating a man-designed peninsula. And voila, not only do you have a nice bay, with the opening on the north side to accommodate for the storms from the south, but you also have a peninsula on which to build a lovely stripmall of food, and clothing, and such, where the sailors could lighten their pockets into Herod’s. He also had the shallows deepened so the ships could come into the bay safely, and added a wave breaking underwater wall further out from the harbor so that none of that pesky ocean spray would ruin the shopping experience. Ships could not sail into the harbour because winds could be unpredictable and might smash them into the walls. So, they had to be pulled in by little tugboats (who they had to pay, of course) to arrive safely.

On the highest hill of the city, he built a temple to, hmm, a god or goddess of some sort, and Augustus Cesar. Don’t forget to immortalize your ruler if you want to do well in his empire!

According to Dr. Luke, it was in Caesarea that the first non-Jewish people received the anointing of the Holy Spirit, which opened the infant church to the idea that non-Jews could be loved by God, too. What happened was that Peter was praying, and God told him that some men were coming to his house and he should go with them. God had given this guy in Caesarea named Cornelius a dream about Peter, so when he went with the men and arrived, Cornelius was like, “Hey, there you are. So, what is it you’re supposed to tell me?” So Peter told him and all the people who had gathered at his house about what had happened with Jesus, and they believed and received the Holy Spirit (Acts 10).

http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=acts%2010&version=NIV

Also according to Dr. Luke, Herod was standing on the stage at the theater he built in Caesarea, just south of the port, bragging about how great he was (or that is, not stopping the people from calling him a god), and he had one of those pride-before-a-fall moments. He died right then and there and was eaten by worms. Blech. (Acts 12:20-23)

His successors were not so politically savvy and charismatic, so Caesarea did not last how Herod built it. And earthquakes, storms, and tidal waves eventually sunk most of the port. But from an aerial view you can still see the outline beneath the waves.

It passed from hand to hand through the years, like the rest of the land here, and eventually kind of fell out of use. Until archeologists started diggin’ stuff up. One really cool part was found by accident. They’d excavated the theater and the port, but nothing in between and it was kind of a pain to take tours from one to the other because they’re so close, but you’d have to get your group all back on the bus, then all back off not too far away. So, they (who is this “they”? Anyway…) decided to make a path from one to the other. And they found the old arena where there used to be chariot races, gladiator games, etc. and which had eventually become the city dump. Our archeologist guide didn’t seem as excited as I would have imagined, but he is a maritime archeologist, so perhaps all the dry sand didn’t thrill him. But I just kept thinking in detective stories about how they always go through people’s trash. Well, this is trash from a whole community hundreds of years ago!

I really like in archeological sites open to tourists when they build outlines or wooden structures to show what used to be there. In Caesarea they have constructed a stand to show where the royalty would have sat/stood to watch the arena activities.

We also walked over to Herod’s house—his summer home, as it were, and saw where he had his private pool and courtyard, maintained naturally by the holes in the rocks which sucked water out one way, pulling water in the other so as to have continually fresh (well, salty) cool water in the pool for all his friends to enjoy. (I use the word “friends” here very lightly. From what I gather he was quite paranoid and psychotic. And very powerful. It’s not a pleasant combination.) Out front of his palace is a cool stone. Thankfully people tend to reuse things, and this stone had been reused as a part of a seat. The underside was therefore protected from the elements, so when archeologists dug it up and turned it over, they found an inscription on it about Pontius Pilate, who until they found this stone, was only mentioned in the New Testament.

As we walked back over to the port, a couple of my friends and I were lagging a little and spotted our own “archeological find”. I was so official in my picture taking, I pulled out a pen so you could all see the relative size. Pretty professional, right? ;-)

The skull was quickly followed by a super neat bird, of which I took about a hundred pictures. Thankfully I was not daunted by my friends’ good natured jests at the number, because while my finger had gone click, click, click, the camera had only taken five shots. But they were good ones. I will have to look it up sometime, since I have never seen a bird like that before!

As I mentioned, the area has been populated by various peoples through the centuries. Now it is visited by tourists from all over the world, is home to many others, and is the locale for all sorts of concerts and fairs.

The ruins provide a great backdrop for the modern entertainment and serves to remind one of how much has changed through the years and how much has stayed the same.