Avdat

We visited Avdat today. It's the furthest we have been on our Saturday morning jaunts and we took three unsuspecting visitors from the US with us. It's far, more than two hours drive down south, between Sde Boker and Mitzpeh Rimon. Like Mamshit and Shivta, Avdat is a Nabatean city, built along the Incense Route, a camel trail from the Arabian peninsular to Gaza. It was first build by the Nabateans around the first century BCE, and then taken by the Roman and the Byzantines (fourth to seventh centuries CE). The city was abandoned after an earthquake in 630 CE.

We all took pictures (except Justin), currently the ones below are mine, but I will post the good ones that the others took when I get them. The boy was lugging around an old film camera as he was taking black and white pictures for a photography class he is doing at school.
This is breakfast. We left the TA around 6am and so were quite hungry when we arrived. The boy is making coffee. We ate home made bread, cheese, banana cake and the boy loved Thom's pop tarts. From left to right, that's Janet, Justin, bso and Thom.
Avdat is a large site. There is a lot of rubble and so a lot that could still be excavated.
There are excellent arches.
And doorways.
At some point the Nabateans took up Christianity and Greek script. These are tombs laid into the floor of the Southern Church.
An arch waiting to be uncovered.
It's a compact city with a lot of building. I was amazed by the amount of rebuilding that has been done on the site. As usual we were the only people there at all, and it's a holiday weekend. A huge investment in time and money must have gone into reconstruction. In 2005 Avdat was awarded World Heritage status. It's well done.
This is a very of the site from the upper parking lot.
The hills and valleys of the Negev can be seen in the distance. You can see for miles from the top of the site. There are a number of lookout spots and the views of the hills and valleys are impressive. I like the desert.

I think we all had a good time. It was a long way to travel for a few hours walking around, but the visitors seemed to have fun. We're certainly not in Kansas anymore.