Jerusalem [antikvár]

INTRODUCTIONJerusalemthe City of Peace. Its name expresses the hope that has never been overcome by the violence of its history. Jerusalem's ramparts have been manned and besieged by warriors of many nations, in the name of religion, power, wealth and vengeance. The city has been both a crossroads and a battleground for 3000 years.Today, at the walls of the Old City, we can almost hear the sounds of battle and imagine the tense faces hidden behind narrow apertures. Only a car driving quickly down the slope toward the Damascus Gate indicates that centuries of strife have passed over this outpost of eternity. Jerusalem remains an arbiter of destiny for both the humble and the great, alive with religious and ethnic fervor and a focal point for the deepest human aspirations.Since its foundation, Jerusalem has seen a steady succession of conquests that characterize its chronicles up to the present. The first conqueror of Jerusalem was David, the Hebrew shepherd and king, who captured it from the Jebusites and made it his capital. Since then it has been taken and lost by the Babylonians, Ptolemy, the Seleucidae, Romans, Persians, Byzantines, Muslims, Crusaders, Mamelukes, Ottomans, the British and the Jordanians. In 1967 it was conquered by the Israelis, closing the circle that had opened with the Kingdom of Israel around 1000 bc.