Xs around Jerusalem

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ABC Wednesday is here again. To see what other bloggers are coming up with, X marks the spot at Mrs. Nesbitts Place.

Looks like an X to me. But truth be told, this is a stylized alef, the first letter of the Hebrew alphabet. Alef is the first letter of Egged, the huge bus company whose lines reach every corner of Israel.


X-ray machine at the entrance to Jerusalem's Central Bus Station.
Anything bigger than a small purse has to go through the machine.
Even before you get to this point you have walked through a metal detector.
Normally there is a big crowd there trying to get their stuff X-rayed quickly and run up the stairs to catch their bus on the top departures floor.
If you are shy you will never get through.
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Buses arriving to Jerusalem from other cities drive into the basement of the Central Bus Station. The arriving passengers have their own lines and guards and X-ray machines.

X-ray machine that lets you into the Western Wall Plaza.

Here it is less chaotic than at the bus station.

But here you might also be wanded or asked a few questions by the guards if they have any suspicions.

X is the Greek letter with which the name of Christ begins. So for many centuries X has been a short form of his name.

Xmas = Christmas. Xian = Christian. Xity = Christianity.

If you enlarge the photo above, you'll see Greek letters IC and XC on each side of the halo.

In this "Pantocrator" icon the fingers of Jesus are forming these letters.

Wikipedia explains that
"In Eastern Orthodoxy, the most widely used Christogram is a four-letter abbreviation ICXC--a traditional abbreviation of the Greek words for 'Jesus Christ' (i.e. the first and last letters of each of the words ΙΗΣΟΥΣ ΧΡΙΣΤΟΣ — written 'IHCOYC XPICTOC' with a transliteration of the lunate sigma common in medieval Greek as 'C'). "

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