History At Our Fingertips

The Israel Museum! What an amazing place. It was hard to wrap my mind around it all. I've seen movies with all kinds of things. Nayna calls them Hollywood props and they're  made in a studio by artists. But this is the real deal. They were dug out of the ground by people called archeologists who look for old things. 

These sarcophagus - stone coffins are from Egypt and date back over 5000 years.

Funny looking dolls aren't they? But they aren't dolls at all. They are gods. People prayed to these things expecting answers. About the size of an adult hand, they could be carried around. I'm sure glad my God is bigger then that and isn't made out of clay or stone.

When Nayna saw this she laughed. It's about the size of a dessert plate and around 8 inches tall. She said it must have been the first latte cup. Did they have Starbucks or Aroma back then??

These churns were found in Beersheva and Golan 5 to 6 thousand years ago. They were rocked back and forth to make butter from milk. So I wonder if they ate bread with butter and honey?

We kept going from room to room and each one was filled with more treasures. 

This room had lots of glass. Beautiful glass of all shapes, sizes and colors. This was one of Nayna's favorite rooms.

There were displays of jewelry. 

This jewelry was found in the tomb of a young woman from Jerusalem in the mid 2nd century . It's thought she must have been married to a Roman soldier because all the jewelry was imported from other places.

I found this lion in the Greek room. They all think I'm pretty cool huh?

 The helmet was worn by a Roman soldier. It looks so uncomfortable to me. But that's what kept him safe.

This was reconstructed from a synagogue. Isn't it beautiful? Even back then, they made their buildings very fancy.

This doesn't even begin to show you what we saw. There was so much more.
We saw that everything would close in an hour so we made our way back through the maze of rooms.
The last exhibit we went to was Herod the Great. Its only at the museum until January 2014 and they had people guarding everything. Nayna wanted to take pictures, but she was told no.
I can tell you about it though.
We saw his marble bathtub and a huge beautiful basin as well as part of his bathhouse, and things from his palaces - plates, bowls, pitchers, coins with pictures of Cleopatra and Marc Antony, and the big display held pieces of his shrine and sarcophagus.
Nayna found a picture of it online so you could see it.

Next we're going to the Kotel - the Western Wall in the Old City of Jerusalem.