TRAVEL TUESDAY 438 - CHURCH OF THE RESURRECTION, JERUSALEM

"Be thou comforted, little dog, Thou too in Resurrection shall have a little golden tail." -  Martin Luther

Welcome to the Travel Tuesday meme! Join me every Tuesday and showcase your creativity in photography, painting and drawing, music, poetry, creative writing or a plain old natter about Travel.

There is only one simple rule: Link your own creative work about some aspect of travel and share it with the rest of us.

Please use this meme for your creative endeavours only. Do not use this meme to advertise your products or services as any links or comments by advertisers will be removed immediately.

The Church of the Holy Sepulchre, also known as the Church of the Resurrection, is a fourth-century church in the Christian Quarter of the Old City of Jerusalem. It is considered to be the holiest site for Christians in the world, as it has been the most important pilgrimage site for Christianity since the fourth century.

According to traditions dating back to the fourth century, it contains two sites considered holy in Christianity: the site where Jesus was crucified, at a place known as Calvary or Golgotha, and Jesus's empty tomb, which is where he was buried and resurrected. In earlier times, the site was used as a Jewish burial ground, upon which a pagan temple was built. The church and rotunda, built under Constantine in the 4th century and destroyed by al-Hakim in 1009, were later reconstructed with modifications by Emperor Constantine IX Monomachos and the Crusaders, resulting in a significant departure from the original structure.

The tomb itself is enclosed by a 19th-century shrine called the Aedicule. Within the church proper are the last four stations of the Cross of the Via Dolorosa, representing the final episodes of the Passion of Jesus. The church has been a major Christian pilgrimage destination since its creation in the fourth century, as the traditional site of the resurrection of Christ, thus its original Greek name, Church of the Anastasis ('Resurrection').

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TRAVEL TUESDAY #147 - JERUSALEM, ISRAEL

“Jerusalem is not just a beautiful city: The challenge is to show that Jerusalem can be shared in peace and respect.” - Federica Mogherini

Welcome to the Travel Tuesday meme! Join me every Tuesday and showcase your creativity in photography, painting and drawing, music, poetry, creative writing or a plain old natter about Travel.

There is only one simple rule: Link your own creative work about some aspect of travel and share it with the rest of us. Please use this meme for your creative endeavours only.

Do not use this meme to advertise your products or services as any links or comments by advertisers will be removed immediately. 

Jerusalem located on a plateau in the Judaean Mountains between the Mediterranean and the Dead Sea, is one of the oldest cities in the world. In the ancient cuneiform, Jerusalem was called Urusalima, meaning ‘City of Peace’, during the early Canaanite period (approximately 2400 BC). It is considered a Holy city to the three major Abrahamic religions of Judaism, Christianity and Islam. Israelis and Palestinians both claim Jerusalem as their capital, as the State of Israel maintains its primary governmental institutions there while the State of Palestine ultimately foresees the city as its seat of power; however, neither claim is widely recognised internationally.

During its long history, Jerusalem has been destroyed at least twice, besieged 23 times, attacked 52 times, and captured and recaptured 44 times. The part of Jerusalem called the City of David was settled in the 4th millennium BCE. In 1538, walls were built around Jerusalem under Suleiman the Magnificent. Today those walls define the Old City, which has been traditionally divided into four quarters (known since the early 19th century as the Armenian, Christian, Jewish, and Muslim Quarters). The Old City became a World Heritage Site in 1981, and is on the List of World Heritage in Danger.

Modern Jerusalem has grown far beyond the Old City's boundaries. Despite having an area of only 0.9 square kilometres the Old City is home to many sites of seminal religious importance, among them the Temple Mount and its Western Wall, the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, the Dome of the Rock (shown above), the Garden Tomb and al-Aqsa Mosque. Today, the status of Jerusalem remains one of the core issues in the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. Nevertheless, all branches of the Israeli government are located in Jerusalem, including the Knesset (Israel's parliament), the residences of the Prime Minister and President, and the Supreme Court. The international community does not recognise Jerusalem as Israel's capital, and the city hosts no foreign embassies.

Jerusalem is also home to some non-governmental Israeli institutions of national importance, such as the Hebrew University and the Israel Museum with its Shrine of the Book. In 2011, Jerusalem had a population of 801,000, of which Jews comprised 497,000 (62%), Muslims 281,000 (35%), Christians 14,000 (around 2%) and 9,000 (1%) were not classified by religion.

This post is part of the Our World Tuesday meme,
and also part of the Blue Monday meme,
and also part of the Wordless Wednesday meme.

ANEMONES

“The starry, fragile windflower, Poised above in airy grace, Virgin white, suffused with blushes, Shyly droops her lovely face.” - Elaine Goodale

Anemone is a genus of about 120 species of flowering plants in the family Ranunculaceae, native to temperate zones. The genus is closely related to Pulsatilla (Pasque flower) and Hepatica; some botanists even include both of these genera within Anemone. In Greek anemōnē means “daughter of the wind”, from ánemos the wind god + feminine patronymic suffix -ōnē. The windflower often grows on craggy hilltops exposed to the wind and the name signifies that the wind may blow the petal open, but will also eventually, blow the dead petals away.

Anemone are perennials that have basal leaves with long leaf-stems that can be upright or prostrate. Leaves are simple or compound with lobed, parted, or undivided leaf blades. The leaf margins are toothed or entire. Flowers with 4–27 sepals are produced singly, in cymes of 2–9 flowers, or in umbels, above a cluster of leaf- or sepal-like bracts. Sepals may be any colour. The pistils have one ovule. The flowers have nectaries, but petals are missing in the majority of species. The fruits are ovoid to obovoid shaped achenes that are collected together in a tight cluster, ending variously lengthened stalks; though many species have sessile clusters terminating the stems. The achenes are beaked and some species have feathery hairs attached to them.

Anemone coronaria is the type species and is a single flower found in red, magenta, mauve and white forms. Found growing wild in the Mediterranean countries, Anemone coronaria is also widely grown in gardens for its decorative flowers. Numerous cultivars have been selected and named, the most popular including the De Caen and St Brigid groups of cultivars. The De Caen group are hybrids cultivated in the districts of Caen and Bayeux in France in the 18th century.

Greek mythology linked the red anemone to the death of Adonis. This handsome young man was loved by both Persephone, queen of the underworld, and Aphrodite, goddess of love. Adonis enjoyed hunting, and one day when he was out hunting alone, he wounded a fierce boar, which stabbed him with its tusks. Aphrodite heard the cries of her lover and arrived to see Adonis bleeding to death. Red anemones sprang from the earth where the drops of Adonis’ blood fell. In another version of the story, the anemones were white before the death of Adonis, whose blood turned them red. Christians later adopted the symbolism of the anemone. For them its red represented the blood shed by Jesus Christ on the cross. Anemones sometimes appear in paintings of the Crucifixion.

Anemone coronaria means “crown anemone”, evoking regal associations. The Arabic name is shaqa'iq An-Nu’man translated literally as the wounds, or “pieces”, of Nu’man. One possible source of the name traces back to the Sumerian god of food and vegetation, Tammuz, whose Phoenician epithet was “Nea’man”. Tammuz is generally considered to have been drawn into the Greek pantheon as “Adonis”. Tammuz's Phoenician epithet “Nea’man” is believed to be both the source of “an-Nu’man” in Arabic which came through Syriac, and of “anemone” which came through Greek.

Another possible source of the name is An-Nu’man III Bin Al-Munthir, the last Lakhmid king of Al-Hirah (582-c.609 AD) and a Christian Arab. An-Nu’man is known to have protected the flowers during his reign. According to myth, the flower thrived on An-Nu’man’s grave, paralleling the death and rebirth of Adonis.

In Hebrew, the anemone is calanit metzouya. “Calanit” comes from the Hebrew word “cala” לה" which means “bride”, while “metzouya” means “common”. The calanit earned its name because of its beauty and majesty, evoking a bride on her wedding day (remembering that traditionally brides wore brightly coloured clothes on their wedding day in the Middle East). In 2013 Anemone coronaria was elected as the national flower of the State of Israel, in a poll arranged by the Society for the Protection of Nature in Israel (החברה להגנת הטבע) and Ynet. Anemone coronaria grows wild all over Israel, Palestine and Jordan. During the British Mandate for Palestine, British soldiers were nicknamed “kalaniyot” for their red berets.

This post is part of the Floral Friday Fotos meme.

SIGNS OF THE TIMES

“Mankind must put an end to war before war puts an end to mankind.” - John F. Kennedy

I must say that current events lately have put me in rather pessimistic mood. The continuing bizarre events and announcements from North Korea regarding bombing the White House with a nuclear bomb, the continuing problems in Iraq and the declaration of a Caliphate, the situation in Syria, with decapitations and hundreds of dead daily, the unrelenting and mounting open warfare and increasing instability in Israel between Palestinians and the Jews, the Ukrainian civil war, etc, etc…

No wonder that my poor addled brain gave up trying to come up with some explanation for all this. Some attempt at looking at the past, divining the future and seeing why all this is happening in the here and now, proved fruitless. Like Helen Keller, “I do not want the peace which passeth understanding, I want the understanding which bringeth peace.”  A poem was all I could come up with...

Explanation

It’s all because:

There is no grain of truth

From which to grind the flour of concord,

No meal of happiness from which to bake a loaf of peace.

The water’s brackish so the thirst of knowledge won’t be quenched,

The mind athirst shall drink of bile, vinegar and blood,

The soul will sour, the heart will parch.

There is no freedom

From which to mould our dreams,

No images of hope to take delight in.

The food of love is lacking, for the birds are long now silent,

The music of the singing blood hushed long ago.

Spleen is with bitterness replete, brain rots,

And only teeth and nails still function faultlessly,

Ready to slash and bite ideals,

Poised to shred beliefs and gouge out seeds of dreams.