A couple of weeks ago, I went with Mark on his weekly archaeology fieldtrip. They were visiting the City of David and studying the water systems of the area, as well as many other topics. His teacher is Dr. Gabriel Barkay, and for those of you who aren't familiar with famous Near Eastern archaeologists, he is definitely one of them. While excavating a burial tomb near Jerusalem in 1979, he uncovered the oldest known copy of Old Testament scripture; he found the priestly blessing, recorded in Numbers 6:24-26, on two small silver scrolls dated to the 7th century B.C. Barkay is a professor of Biblical archaeology at Bar Ilan University and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and his academic areas of interest include the archaeology of Jerusalem, burials and burial customs, and art, epigraphy, and glyptics in the Iron Age. How is that for a textbook summary? Anyways, Mark and I have been to the City of David (in June) by ourselves, but it was fun to go with someone who is an expert on Jerusalem archaeology. Not too much else to say about the trip itself - we walked through water channels underground, looked at hillsides, and listened to lots of explanations :)