Israel Off the Beaten Path Tips by gilabrand

It was Passover, the holiday celebrating the Israelites? exodus from Egypt, and our intentions of visiting the Old City were thwarted by traffic police. The whole area was blocked off to private cars in expectation of huge throngs of Israelis and tourists. So we found another way of celebrating the exodus: We visited Israel?s one and only Egyptian mummy.

Museums in Israel do not display human remains, so the existence of this mummy may be one of the country?s best-kept secrets. If you want to sidle up close to an honest-to-goodness mummy and get a good look at it from every possible angle, without standing on line or fighting crowds, Jerusalem?s mummy is just the thing.

Yarat-Hor-ru, as the mummy is called, lies in a glass case in the Pontifical Biblical Institute in Jerusalem, on a little side street behind the King David Hotel in Jerusalem. The institute, in a beautiful old building hidden behind a high iron gate, serves as a residence for Catholic theology students and houses a small archeological collection of ancient pottery, arrow heads, shell necklaces, Roman tablets and incense shovels (plus a few skeletons of infants found buried in jars and stashed away under the floorboards of ancient dwellings ? a reminder of the precariousness of life in prehistoric times).

On the day we were there, the museum was deserted. Basically, it was us and Yarat-Hor-ru, a young Egyptian official, 5 ft. tall in his stocking feet, who lived somewhere near Alexandria in 4th century BCE.

Maybe it?s morbid of me, but I would have liked to see his face, which was covered with a painted mask. On the other hand, you do spy toes peeking out of the wrapping. In the corner stands the carved lid of the mummy case, covered in hieroglyphics. Despite some Egyptologist?s attempt to provide an ?English translation? ? something about Osiris ? the text was still Greek (or should I say, ancient Egyptian) to me.

(Admission: 5 shekels, if anyone is actually there to take your money)
Emil Botta Street, just past the gas station

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The Jews have always been known as the “People of the Book." Hebrew Book Week proves the Jews are truly deserving of this title.

Every June for the past 46 years, Israel has set aside a block of time to celebrate the written word. Maybe there are such events in other parts of the globe, but the scale of Hebrew Book Week, and the incredible book frenzy that seizes the entire population, young and old, religious and secular, are hard to beat.

The editor of Masada Press, Bracha Peli, launched the first Book Day in 1926, offering books at a discount. From 1961, it became a week-long event featuring outdoor book fairs, price reductions at all book stores, book signings, poetry readings, lectures, literary workshops and kids activities.

Israel is a small place, but it publishes an average of 400 books a year. Some 2 million books are sold during Book Week alone.

Traditionally, the fair in Jerusalem was held in open parks but in the wake of security concerns, it moved to the grounds of the Israel Museum.

This is a people-watching event par excellence. People of every stripe, from professors and parents pushing strollers to ultra-Orthodox black-hatters and belly-button pierced teenagers, crawl out of the woodwork in the late afternoons and evenings to browse through the colorful stacks or present the booksellers with itemized lists.

The walkways leading up to the main building of the museum are lined with book stalls. Bored with books? Note the ancient sarcophagi, carved marble columns and bronze statuary interspersed between the stalls – or take a moonlight stroll in the museum’s Sculpture Garden. Whether or not you actually buy anything – sometimes the crush is so great you can hardly get near the books – just being there is an experience.

Not knowing Hebrew should not scare you off. There are some English-language books on sale, and you can pick up dictionaries, guidebooks and maps at a discount.

2007 venue: Old Jerusalem Train Station

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