Mount of Olives

Brief information

The Mount of Olives does not look like a solitary peak, but like a long elevation opposite the eastern wall of the Old City, beyond the Kidron Valley. Its name is connected with the olive trees with which it was planted from ancient times, but the main feature of the place is not botany, but its location: the mountain faces Jerusalem and is read as a separate slope with three summits.

The western and southern slopes of the southern end are occupied by an ancient Jewish cemetery. Its significance in the text is explained by its proximity to the Kidron Valley and the idea of the resurrection of the dead, which will begin from the Mount of Olives. Therefore the tombstones here are perceived not only as traces of burials: they show how religious expectation literally became fixed in the relief.

What to notice first

It makes sense to compare the three summits: the northern one is associated with the Hebrew University campus on Scopus, the middle one with the Lutheran center and Augusta Victoria Hospital, and the southern one with the Russian Ascension Monastery and the village of At-Tur. Thus the mountain is revealed not through a single building, but through the distribution of different institutions along the ridge.

On the slopes, traces of the burial layer are important. Early burials are associated with catacombs between and beneath the houses of the Silwan quarter, while Yad Avshalom and the traditional Tomb of Zechariah are mentioned from the Second Temple period. Nearby in the original description stand Christian holy sites: the Garden of Gethsemane, the Tomb of the Virgin Mary, and the Monastery of Mary Magdalene. One principle helps to read the place: the relief here is not a background, but the reason why the cemetery, holy sites, and institutions occupied different parts of the mountain.