Decaying slowly through the millennia

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I am lucky!
 I just have to walk a block or two from my moshav/village, out into the terraced valleys of the Jerusalem Hills, to find pictures for today's City Daily Photo Theme Day, which is "The beauty of decay."

This rounded place on a hill slope is one of my favorites.
See its arched opening, now half buried by the ages?!
I try to imagine who used it, when,  and for how long . . . 

Please enlarge these photos with one click, then another.
I left them big so you can enjoy the luscious details.

The hills are peppered with mysterious stone structures  that are thousands of years old.
They are hard to date, but some go back even to 4,500 years ago.
Archaeologists have proof that different peoples have inhabited this area for 6,000 years.

 The door and a window of this now low structure on the valley floor are still visible.
The big pine tree toppled over in last winter's rain and now it, too, will start to decay. 

A forest fire swept through this valley a few years ago, but this tall cypress survived.
It thrives between two dams.

Jerusalem is surrounded by hills and the only way to raise crops was to build agricultural terraces.
Farmers picked rocks from the ground and used them to build terrace walls; they may have had to bring in soil for each little plot.
They devised irrigation channels from the many springs in the Jerusalem Hills.

In the bottom of the valleys they built dams, as pictured above.
When rain water rushed down the valley from the hills, these dams stopped the soil from being washed away.

In Biblical days, farmers were able to feed their families from these terraces as well as most of the great throngs of pilgrims who ascended to the Temple in nearby Jerusalem on the three yearly pilgrimage festivals.

In recent centuries, up to 1948, Arab farmers grew many fruit and olive trees and I'm not sure what else in the hills.
I admire all who did this hard work in a not easy land.
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To see how farmers used stone shomerot, watchmen's huts, please see previous posts.
There are hundreds here in the Jerusalem Hills in various stages of decay.
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Now let's go visit the other CDP bloggers and see what's decaying in their cities.
Shalom to all. 
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(Linking also to Toby's meme (in Israel!)  Whimsical Windows, Delirious Doors.)
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בְּרֹב שַׂרְעַפַּי בְּקִרְבִּי תַּנְחוּמֶיךָ יְשַׁעַשְׁעוּ נַפְשִׁי:

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Join us in  illustrating the Book of Psalms, on Sundays.
Robert is hosting at his new blog, Robert Geiss, A PHOTOGRAPHER'S MIND.
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PSALM 94
 1 O LORD, thou God of vengeance, thou God of vengeance, shine forth! 2 Rise up, O judge of the earth; render to the proud their deserts! 3 O LORD, how long shall the wicked, how long shall the wicked exult? 4 They pour out their arrogant words, they boast, all the evildoers. 5 They crush thy people, O LORD, and afflict thy heritage. 6 They slay the widow and the sojourner, and murder the fatherless; 7 and they say, "The LORD does not see; the God of Jacob does not perceive." 8 Understand, O dullest of the people! Fools, when will you be wise? 9 He who planted the ear, does he not hear? He who formed the eye, does he not see? 10 He who chastens the nations, does he not chastise? He who teaches men knowledge, 11 the LORD, knows the thoughts of man, that they are but a breath.  

12 Blessed is the man whom thou dost chasten, O LORD, and whom thou dost teach out of thy law 13 to give him respite from days of trouble, until a pit is dug for the wicked. 14 For the LORD will not forsake his people; he will not abandon his heritage; 15 for justice will return to the righteous, and all the upright in heart will follow it.  

 16 Who rises up for me against the wicked? Who stands up for me against evildoers? 17 If the LORD had not been my help, my soul would soon have dwelt in the land of silence. 18 When I thought, "My foot slips," thy steadfast love, O LORD, held me up.

 19 When the cares of my heart are many, thy consolations cheer my soul. בְּרֹב שַׂרְעַפַּי בְּקִרְבִּי תַּנְחוּמֶיךָ יְשַׁעַשְׁעוּ נַפְשִׁי  20 Can wicked rulers be allied with thee, who frame mischief by statute? 21 They band together against the life of the righteous, and condemn the innocent to death. 22 But the LORD has become my stronghold, and my God the rock of my refuge. 23 He will bring back on them their iniquity and wipe them out for their wickedness; the LORD our God will wipe them out. .Translation: RSV (Revised Standard Version), 1952, 1971For a different translation and for commentary, see Rabbi Benjamin J. Segal.
Photos (all can be enlarged with a click or two): 1. Remains of an ancient shomera (~ watchman's hut).2. A different shomera,  also in the Jerusalem Hills. 3. Rakafot (cyclamens) grow in the ancient terrace walls..

A shomera in the valley

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Let's continue our discussion from the previous post and look at a different example of a shomera.
Thanks to Vogon Poet who found photos of similar structures in Italy, where they call it caciara.
But VP's is beautifully built and preserved!
He has seen them in the Italian countryside.

Two friends from Arkansas.
The spring down in the valley next to our hill, the shomerot, and the canyon-like wadi are must-sees for visitors.

Dr. M commented yesterday that "watchtower" is as good a translation as any for shomera.

He says, "Some of those are leftovers from the Iron I original settlement of the Hill Country....a great legacy."

And Dr. M knows. He teaches Biblical things like this in a Texas college.

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Iron Age I was over 3,000 years ago!
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Looking up at the dome-like ceiling.

I think this can be called a corbeled vault, defined as "a masonry roof constructed from opposite walls, or from a circular base, by shifting courses slightly and regularly inward until they meet."
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The ancient agricultural system here in the hills surrounding Jerusalem was to build terraces.

That meant gathering the stones from the rocky ground and using them to build terrace walls and shomerot.

The patches of cleared flat land that were created became the farm fields.

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In the days of the First and Second Temples thousands of pilgrims came up to Jerusalem at least three times a year, and they had to be fed!

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The last sojourners in this shomera surely never dreamed that someday the view from their window would be of the chicken coops and houses of my village.
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Shomera saved!

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Some S words for ABC Wednesday

Such heavy rains we had for four consecutive days in February that the shomera collapsed!
Such a sorry sight.
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The shomera stood for who knows how many years or centuries, but the unusual force and amount of rain water brought it down.
It is on the main street of my moshav (agricultural village), right next to the Founders Museum (atop which you saw the sirens in yesterdays post).

But the shomera was salvaged! See?

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Two no-longer-young Arab men, who still know the old ways of building with fieldstones, came and worked hard for several days.

This time, just to be sure, they enclosed the whole structure in chicken wire, the better to hold it together during whatever disaster comes next.
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All around us in the Hills of Jerusalem/Mountains of Judea you find remains of shomerot.

Most are corbelled stone huts with a dome roof.

Some are ancient, but they are hard to date.

Apparently farmers would use them to store their tools and their harvested produce and they would sleep there to guard everything before taking stuff home or to the market.

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In our village, founded in 1950, the shomera was used as a watchtower.

I've heard that at least three of the pioneering new immigrant residents were killed by infiltrators in the early days of our isolated moshav.

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I am still searching for a name in English for shomera.

Maybe you know?

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Today I found a reference and will try to find this publication:
Z. Ron, The Watchman’s Hut as an Expression of Hilltop Farming in the Mountains of Judea and Samaria, Tel Aviv, 1976.

Perhaps this "watchman's hut" is the English term for shomera.

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Shalom!

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