Qumran

Since we saw the Dead Sea Scrolls in the Israel Museum, it made sense to explore the excavations at Qumran, a community that lived just below the hill caves where the Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered (naturally, also right next to the Dead Sea). Since this was a marginal desert community obsessed with purity, our tour looked something like this: ritual bath, ritual bath, dining room, ritual bath, ritual bath, storehouse, ritual bath, ritual bath, cistern.

Our tour was preceded by a short informational video. We saw it first in German and then partly in Spanish before we gave up on waiting around for an English language screening. So, basically, all we learned from the film is that 1st century Essenes living at Qumran likely looked like Gandolf.

Cistern:

One of the many aforementioned ritual baths:

2,000-year-old toilet:

View of some of the caves where the Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered. It's not difficult to see why they went untouched for almost 2,000 years:

Beginning of a hike to one of the caves. Unfortunately, closed due to threat of rock slides: