We look back on history and what do we see? Empires rising and falling, revolutions and counter-revolutions, wealth accumulating and wealth dispersed, one nation dominant and then another. Shakespeare speaks of 'the rise and fall of great ones that ebb and flow with the moon.' In one lifetime I have seen my own fellow countrymen ruling over a quarter of the world, the great majority of them convinced, in the words of what is still a favorite song, that, 'God who's made the mighty would make them mightier yet.' I've heard a crazed, cracked Austrian proclaim to the world the establishment of a German Reich that would last a thousand years; an Italian clown announce that he would restart the calendar to begin his own assumption of power. I've heard a murderous Georgian brigand in the Kremlin acclaimed by the intellectual elite of the world as a wiser than Solomon, more enlightened than Ashoka, more humane than Marcus Aurelius. I've seen America wealthier and in terms of weaponry, more powerful than the rest of the world put together, so that Americans, had they so wished, could have outdone an Alexander or a Julius Caesar in the range-scale of their conquests. All in one little lifetime. All gone with the wind… Behind the debris of our self-styled, sullen supermen, there stands the gigantic figure of one person, because of whom, by whom, in whom, and through whom alone mankind might still have hope. The person of Jesus Christ.

~Malcolm Muggeridge

musings

Think you will find this interesting... I left a note on my facebook wall about a tour I was invited to go on with a number of Albright Fellows to the City of David archeological park led by the director of the excavation, Prof. Ronni Reich. He took us into areas that have not been opened to the public: the floor of the rock-cut pool, the entrance of the Siloam tunnel, and Parker's breach in the northern wall of the MB tower. It was a lot of fun. I could give more details but the story I mean to tell is more particular in scope. It involves the Director, the Fellows, me and a green coin.

Extending down-slope from the park entrance in Kenyon's section or area A, Ronni was shooting the breeze about the drama surrounding excavations in the City of David, past and present, this toward the end of our morning tour. As I was judiciously penning bits of data I thought note-worthy, I looked down from my notepad and, lo and behold, a green round edge. I knew immediately that I have found a coin but I didn't quite know how to break the news. After all, I was standing next to a world-renown archeologist surrounded by Fellows from the Albright. What would you do?

Discreetly, I exposed more of the coin with my toe, took a deep breath and picked it up. Then I waited for a pause in Ronnie's closing thoughts, nudged his arm, and handed him the coin. "Ah, you have found a coin..." he said. He bent down and grabbed a potsherd and began to scrap off the dirt. He continued to answer questions on the site while he played with the coin only to interrupt himself with comments about how these things are found all over the city promising that he would give it to me. Turns out, he was able to distinguish AUG for Augustus. And, while its true that these are common all over the city, they aren't common in the City of David. He kept it for the IAA...Such is life, funny what you find when you least expect it.