… cue suspenseful music…
“The Jordanians expected that the Israelis would attack from the west hitting the Jaffa Gate. And, therefore, they concentrated all of their fortifications and their troops at that point. However, the Israeli’s knowing that the Jordanians expected that, surprised them by sending troops around to the eastern side of the city under the cover of darkness 
Click here to read the rest of this great article about Jerusalem’s eastern gate, it’s really good.
Interesting… William Browning wrote:
The Roman calendar had weird ways to determine times of the month. The Ides of March doesn't necessarily refer to a holiday or festival on the Roman calendar but instead talks about how the Romans told time in the year. The calendar was supposedly instituted by Romulus, the founder of Rome.
The Ides marked the middle of the month according to the Information Please Almanac website. The calendar organized months around three days -- Kalends, Nones and Ides. Kalends noted the first of the month, so in modern terms the Kalends of June would be June 1. Nones served as the seventh day in March, May, July and October; it was the fifth in every other month. Ides were the middle of the month -- they were the 15th of March, May, July and October but the 13th in others.
Days were noted by counting backwards from the upcoming monthly marker. For instance, Oct. 10 would be designated the "V Ides" or five days before the Ides of October. This method of dating lasted well into Medieval times before it was replaced with the Gregorian calendar used today
Blogger Labels: Ides,Romulus,Kalends,Nones
SEED of EXTINCT DATE PALM SPROUTS After 2,000 YEARS
It has five leaves, stands 14 inches high and is nicknamed Methuselah. It looks like an ordinary date palm seedling, but for UCLA- educated botanist Elaine Solowey, it is a piece of history brought back to life. Planted on Jan. 25, the seedling growing
in the black pot in Solowey’s nursery on this kibbutz in Israel’s Arava desert is 2,000 years old — more than twice as old as the 900-year-old biblical character who lent his name to the young tree. It is the oldest seed ever known to produce a viable young tree. The seed that produced Methuselah was discovered during archaeological excavations at King Herod’s palace on Mount Masada, near the Dead Sea. Its age has been confirmed by carbon dating.
Scientists hope that the unique seedling will eventually yield vital clues to the medicinal properties of the fruit of the Judean date tree, which was long thought to be extinct…. The Judean date is chronicled in the Bible, Quran and ancient literature for its diverse powers — from an aphrodisiac to a contraceptive — and as a cure for a wide range of diseases including cancer, malaria and toothache.
For Christians, the palm is a symbol of peace associated with the entry of Jesus into Jerusalem. The ancient Hebrews called the date palm the “tree of life” because of the protein in its fruit and the shade given by its long leafy branches. The Arabs said there were as many uses for the date palm as there were days in the year. Greek architects modeled their Ionic columns on the tree’s tall, thin trunk and curling, bushy top. The Romans called it Phoenix dactylifera — “the date-bearing phoenix” — because it never died and appeared to be reborn in the desert where all other plant life perished. Now Solowey and her colleagues have brought this phoenix of the desert back to life after 2,000 years.
The ancient seeds were found 30 years ago during archeological excavations on Mount Masada, the mountaintop fortress on the shore of the Dead Sea where King Herod built a spectacular palace. When the Romans conquered Palestine and laid waste to the Temple in Jerusalem, Masada was the last stand of a small band of Jewish rebels who held out against three Roman legions for several years before committing mass suicide in A.D. 73. Archaeologist Ehud Netzer found the seeds, which were identified by the department of botanical archaeology at Israel’s Bar-Ilan University. Then they were placed in storage, where they lay for 30 years until Sallon heard about the cache. “When we asked if we could try and grow some of them, they said, ‘You’re mad,’ but they gave us three seeds,” she said.
Sallon took the seeds to Solowey, who has cultivated more than 3,000 date palms and rarities like the trees that produce the fragrant resins frankincense and myrrh. Solowey admits she was skeptical about the chances of success with this project. “When I received the seeds from Sarah, I thought the chances of this experiment succeeding were less than zero,” said Solowey, cradling the precious seedling in a specially quarantined section of her nursery on the kibbutz. “But Dr. Sallon insisted and I took this very seriously. Lotus seeds over 1,000 years old have been sprouted, and I realized that no one had done any similar work with dates, so why not give it our best shot – and we were rewarded.” “It’s certainly the oldest tree seed that’s ever been sprouted.
Wheat seeds from pharaohs’ tombs have been sprouted, but none of the plants have survived for very long. Before this, the oldest seed grown was a lotus from China, which was 1,200 years old,” she said. “I’m very excited. I wasn’t expecting anything to happen. I’m really interested in finding out what the DNA testing is going to show. I know that date seeds can stay alive for several decades. To find out that they can stay alive for millennia is astonishing.” …
When the Romans invaded ancient Judea, thick forests of date palms towering up to 80 feet high and 7 miles wide covered the Jordan River valley from the Sea of Galilee in the north to the shores of the Dead Sea in the south. The tree so defined the local economy that Emperor Vespasian celebrated the conquest by minting the “Judea Capta,” a special bronze coin that showed the Jewish state as a weeping woman beneath a date palm. Today, nothing remains of those mighty forests…. The ancient Judean date, renowned for its succulence and famed for its many medicinal properties, had been lost to history. Until now. ~Matthew Kalman, SF Chronicle Foreign Service.
