The Splendor of Israel [antikvár]

Jerusalem When you leave the coast and go up to Jerusalem, you are in splendid company. For thousands upon thousands of years men and women have made the same journey and seen the same familiar landmarks. The ancient Hebrews came along this road, bringing the first fruits to the Temple. The Egyptians came, and marauders from the Philistine cities in the southwest, and the Assyrians with their long spears, and the Persians with their battle standards topped with golden apples; and then came the Greeks, the Romans, the Arabs, the Seljuks, the Crusaders, the Mamelukes, the Ottoman Turks and the British. The Sages said that nine-tenths of the world's beauty was to be found in Jerusalem, but this beauty was paid for with nine-tenths of the world's suffering. From the beginning of recorded history there have been incessant wars along the road, and for almost as long a time pilgrims have come to gaze at the holy places. On this road there is scarcely a stone which has not been kissed, or a clod of earth which has not been soaked in blood. Swords and prayers are the road's companions. The ghosts linger and throw their shadows on the road which winds across the plain and climbs the steep Judean mountains. It is a wild road, which seems to have cut loose from the ordinary life of mankind, so pounded by prayers and blood and legends that it resembles nothing so much as a shadowed highway of the imagination: 1