Understanding The World In Terms Of The South And West And The North And East

I would like to do something to promote global peace. I have decided on what the most important thing is in bringing about understanding of the world. One way to begin an understanding of the world is to focus on the differences between east and west.

But I have found that the best way to understand how the world operates is to divide it into two regions, the north and east and the south and west. Just about everything about the world falls into place around this model of the differences between the north and east and the south and west, and what it all ultimately comes down to is religion. One thing that may be different in my view from how others may look at the world is that my view has Islam as part of the south and west, rather than the east.

PERMANENCE IN THE NORTH AND EAST AND CHANGE IN THE SOUTH AND WEST

In the north and east, mostly the same nations are there today that were there in ancient times. The same nations always remain and invaders just add to the mix. In the south and west, invasions and new social orders are much more likely to result in the formation of new nations.

The primary difference between the north and east and the south and west is based on religion. There has always been dynamic flow and interaction between the two, but each is based on a pair of religions, that are historically connected to one another. In the north and east, those two major religions are Hinduism and Buddhism. In the south and west, the two major religions are Christianity and Islam.

The religions of each pair are related to one another in that Buddhism resulted from an attempt at reformation of Hinduism by Siddhartha Gautama, known as the Buddha, and Christianity and Islam along with Judaism both go back to Abraham. The fundamental difference is that Hinduism believes in many gods and both Hinduism and Buddhism revolves around reincarnation. The personal goal in these eastern religions is to reach a state of moksha or nirvana. The western religions of Christianity and Islam, in contrast, are monotheistic, believing in one god, and are based on the messages of prophets, with the goal of reaching Heaven.

The underlying reason for the difference between the north and east and the south and west is that the eastern religions, mainly Hinduism and Buddhism, are timeless in nature, near-endless cycles of reincarnation and of creation and destruction. The western religions, primarily Christianity and Islam, are new and dynamic, with an emphasis on shunning the old sinful, idolatrous and, pagan past, and embracing the new revelation of God.

The world today can largely be explained as a reflection of these religious differences, transmuted into secular form. When a new social order of some type periodically comes along, the ancient nations of the north and east just absorb it as part of the eternal cycles of creation and destruction. While the south and west is more likely to break away from the old social order in the form of the creation of a new nation.

In the north and east, turmoil and conflict have produced temporary states, down through history, but the established nations remain over the long term. In the south and west, such turmoil and conflict is much more likely to bring about new permanent states. This is the primary difference between the north and east and the south and west.

The west has nations that have been there for a long time, the nations of Europe, but not as long as the nations in the east, the nations of east Asia. Further west, those European nations formed other nations, some by colonialism and empires, that have been there for far less time, the nations of the western hemisphere, Australia and some in Africa.

In the north and east, in contrast, a conquest often results in the conqueror simply being absorbed into, and adding to the mix of the nation that it has conquered, this is familiar in the case of the Aryans in northern India. India is an ancient nation in the east, with a multitude of languages and religions. It has been invaded numerous times over thousands of years, but has simply absorbed the invaders into the mix.

Consider the difference between the Mongols in the east, and the Romans in the west. Both empires conquered large areas, but eventually passed into history. But the Mongols, being in the long-established east, left no new permanent nations, having conquered what was already long-established, while the Mediterranean nations that speak the Romance languages which descended from Latin, and also Romania, are the permanent legacy of the Roman Empire.

The rate of change in the west, relative to the east, can be seen in the reconciliation after the end of wars. The European Union, in the west, formed relatively quickly, among former enemies, after the end of the Second World War, while there still is not complete reconciliation between Japan, Korea and, China. The Korean War, from 1950-53, is still likewise effectively still going on with the intermittent military action between North and South Korea. Yet the permanence of the east, relative to the changeable west, can be seen in that the new nation of Taiwan was created, but is not completely separated from China as it would likely have been if it were in the west.

The primary differences between east and west are ultimately based on religion, but yet there is a difference in how religion is administered. There has been much more emphasis on spreading the religion, and on missionary activity, with the western religions of Christianity and Islam. This is not true in the present time, within the last few decades, India's most famous export is yoga, which is of religious origin, but it was true in centuries past. The older eastern religions spread, but more slowly. There are the Hare Krishnas, which actively promote ideals based on Hinduism, but this group started in the west.

The major eastern religions are considerably older than those of the west, with the exception of Judaism. The so-called Axial Age, centering around the Sixth Century B,C,. is when much of the religion of the east came into being, with the exception of the older Hinduism, which is the original religion of the east.

The change in the arrangement in the south and west would be unimaginable in the north and east. Consider the great changes in the borders within Europe that Napoleon's campaigns brought, uniting Germany but erasing Poland. The First World War, "The war over nothing that changed everything", left change on a scale that would be unimaginable in the more permanent north and east, the dissolution of the Ottoman and Austro-Hungarian Empires into many independent states that would also be unimaginable in the east.

The modern political and economic ideologies, that tend to originate in the west, are mainly secular replacements for Christian religion. The sometimes-fervent devotion to these ideologies, such as Communism, Nazism and far-right Conservatism, can be explained by the fact that people were designed to believe in something, and when they no longer believe in religion they will just replace it with something else.

Also notice that there are six nations in the world that are named for individual people, but all of those nations practice primarily western religions. There is no nation that is named for an individual which practices primarily an eastern religion. This is a reflection of the more progressive individualism of the south and west.

These six nations are: America, named for Italian map-maker Amerigo Vespucci, Bolivia, named for South American liberator Simon Bolivar, Colombia, named for Christopher Columbus, Israel, named for Jacob whose name was changed to Israel, Saudi Arabia, named for Ibn Saud and, the Philippines, named for King Phillip of Spain. Even though the Philippines is in the far east, it is primarily Catholic by religion.

THE BOUNDARY BETWEEN THE NORTH AND EAST AND THE SOUTH AND WEST

Almost all of Africa is in the south and west, except for the ancient nations of Egypt and Ethiopia. Remember that the factor which defines the east is the same nations having been there since ancient times, while the nations of the west are more recent as well as more changeable. There were great nations in the west of Africa, the Ashanti, Songhai and, Mali, but these, in accordance with the changeability of the west in this view, are now gone except for the nation of Mali.

The most active boundary between the north and east and the south and west is the frontiers in the partition of India, with Islamic Pakistan and Bangladesh being part of the south and west. These two nations are new social orders, more like that of the south and west and with the western religion of Islam, in comparison with the ancient eastern nations all around. The nations of Pakistan and Bangladesh are, of course, not entirely new if they can be rooted in the conquests of the Moguls (or Mughals).

Both of the major religions of the east, Hinduism and Buddhism, began in India. The wheel on the flag of India is actually a symbol of Buddhism, although Buddhism is today very much a minority religion in India. These two major religions are, of course, not the only religious influences on the north and east. There are other minority religions in India, such as Jainism, but is is also rooted in Hinduism. Buddhism is one of the three great historical influences on China, along with Confucianism and Taoism. But Confucianism, although not spiritual or rooted in Hinduism, represents a timeless common-sense approach to life that fits perfectly with the general way of doing things in the east.

(Note-Has anyone ever thought about how the 1947 Partition of India resembles the Reformation in Europe, with it's split of the Protestants away from the Catholics? Did European imperialists, first Portuguese and then British, bring their continent's history to India? If Britain had stayed Catholic, rather than Protestant, in the Reformation, would the Partition ever have happened)?

Consider the Sikh religion, based in the Punjab region of northern India. There used to be a Sikh Empire, and the attempt to restore it as the new nation of Khalistan, but Sikhism, although having a more western concept of God than Hinduism, includes reincarnation like the religions of the east and this brings about the logic, according to our scenario here, of it being a part of India.

Aside from Pakistan and Bangladesh, other examples of how the "real" boundary between the north and east and the south and west does not strictly the more simplistic division of the world into east and west can be seen in Malaysia and Indonesia.

Southeast Asia, known as Indochina for it's historical mixture of influence from both India and China, is definitely in the eastern realm. The famous Cambodian temple of Angkor Wat started as a Hindu temple, but then developed as a Buddhist temple. The nations of Thailand, Cambodia and, Vietnam remain as near-ancient nations of the north and east.

But, to the south, Indonesia and Malaysia were to fall onto the south and west side of the divide. The two were originally practicing eastern religions but were then converted to the western religion of Islam. The process was similar to the bringing of Christianity to the western hemisphere. Malaysia and Indonesia are much newer nations than their neighbors to the north. Australia and New Zealand follow, in some ways, a similar pattern but were settled by Christians from the west making them, regardless of their geographical location, solidly western nations.

Just to show how much a part of the western realm Malaysia is, not geographically but according to our scenario here, a new nation even split off from it, that of Singapore. These clearly are not the permanent ancient nations that are typical of the east. Look, for example, at the difference between the two eastern city states, Singapore and Hong Kong. Both were separated from the countries that they were originally part of. But with Hong Kong, being in the north and east with it's permanence and ancient nations, the separation was only temporary. But with Singapore, being in the south and west and originally part of majority-Islamic Malaysia, the separation was lasting.

Malaysia, by the way, is an example of it is often necessary to separate nation from culture in order to understand the world. The three major ethnic groups in the country are the native Malays, and those of Indian and of Chinese ancestry. This would seem to make the country operate in an eastern way, but the conversion to Islam made it a newer nation that is part of the south and west.

You may be wondering about Korea. It is certainly an ancient eastern nation, part of the north and east and traditionally based on eastern religion, albeit with a strong Christian component as well. But yet Korea, uncharacteristic of the east, did split into two countries and social orders, that of North Korea and South Korea.

But to explain this first consider that, as with Taiwan's partial separation from China, it was the introduction of the western ideologies of Communism, democracy and, capitalism which brought about the split.

Also consider that the split between North and South Korea is actually well-rooted in history, in the so-called Three Kingdoms of Korea. Look at the following map and you will see that the present boundary between North and South Korea is approximately the same as the boundary between the northernmost of the Three Kingdoms of Korea and the others. Image from the Wikipedia article "Three Kingdoms Of Korea". 

But the boundary is not exactly the same. The ancient state of Goguryeo, which corresponds to modern North Korea, extends further south than the present border and included Seoul. The present border was drawn by the U.S. and Soviet Union. This explains the Korean War of 1950-53. North Korea's invasion of the South was because it's historic border had been pushed back.

Unlike the division of Korea, the Cold War division of Vietnam into North and South was not rooted in history in the same way, and so did not last.

THE GEOGRAPHICAL EXCEPTIONS OF THE NORTH AND EAST AND THE SOUTH AND WEST

As we have seen, the boundary between the north and east and the south and west, in my scenario here, includes exceptions to the traditional geographical boundary between east and west. Let's have a look at the major exceptions. These exceptions could be considered as a kind of "boundary region" between east and west, where the two merge rather than being defined along a sharp boundary.

Judaism is an obvious exception. It is a western religion, in fact the original western religion from which Christianity and Islam both sprang. But yet, Judaism is bound up in the ancient nation of Israel that is much more typical of the ways of the north and east. However, Judaism is very limited in population and is western in the way that it has spent the majority of it's existence without a nation of Israel, because it had been erased by the Romans and then brought back into existence, in a way similar to that of Poland, nearly 1900 years later.

Egypt and Iran are both ancient nations, more typical of the north and east than the newer nations of the south and west. Both are now majority Moslem, which in our scenario here is a western religion. But, like the nations of the north and east, the two just absorbed Islam and did not break or join into new states because of it. The reason for this is their long history prior to the arrival of Islam. The vast majority of the long history of Egypt came before it was Moslem. The Coptic Christian Church had already been there for centuries.

Iran, or Persia, has been Moslem for about half of it's history. It's pre-Islamic past has never been completely eradicated, and can be seen in the celebration of the Persian New Year, No Ruz, and in the Shah's extravagant celebration of the 2500th anniversary of the Peacock Throne in the ruins of Persepolis. I see the 1979 revolution as a reenactment of the Islamic conquest of Iran, with the Shah representing the pre-Islamic past and the revolutionaries representing the Islamic conquest.

Ethiopia, another ancient nation in the northeastern part of Africa, was in existence long before it simply absorbed Christianity. A reason that these ancient nations nations remain today, and have simply absorbed changes rather than being broken up by them, can be seen in the posting on the world and economics blog "The Binding Power Of Stone Monuments And The Power Of Walls".

Ironically, Egypt and Iran (then Persia), two of the major geographical exceptions to our scenario here, made contributions to the idea of the monotheism which is the basis of the western religions. In Iran there was the early monotheistic religion of Zoroastrianism. In Egypt, King Tut's father, Akhnaton, attempted to lead Egypt to the worship of one god, represented by the sun, to the exclusion of all others. This is known as the Amarna Period, but the monotheistic concept did not last after his death.

(Note-Here is an interesting thought. Was this idea of making one god, the sun or Aten, more important than all the others influenced by the faith that the Egyptians saw in the Israelites, which were in slavery in Egypt around that time)?

In another interesting irony, the religion of the ancient Egyptians was strikingly similar to Hinduism in India. I discussed my ideas of the possibilities in the compound posting "India And The West".

EXAMPLES OF DIFFERENCES BETWEEN THE NORTH AND EAST AND THE SOUTH AND WEST

These differences between east and west, in what I believe to be the best starting point in understanding the world, are not strict rules but they are broad and general rules. Here are a few examples of how things operate differently in the north and east and in the south and west.

If the Roman Empire had been in the north and east, it would have ultimately absorbed the invading Germanic tribes from the north who brought about it's downfall. The Latin language might be like Chinese today, having several regional variations such as Cantonese but still, typical of the north and east, held together as one language. Latin, being a western language, splintered into the Romance languages that are spoken today, such as Italian, French, Spanish, Catalan, Portuguese and, Romanian.

(Note-Here is another interesting question. Given that Christianity is one of the two religious poles, along with Islam, of the west, and the primary difference between the east and the west is that new nations are much more likely to result from invasions and new social orders in the west, would the Roman Empire have still broken apart as it did if it had not been Christian? Remember that the eastern half of the Empire continued for a thousand years as Christian Byzantium).

In the western hemisphere, if the south and west worked in the same way as the north and east, the native Indian nations such as the Aztecs, Maya and, Inca would simply have absorbed the conquistadors and would be as permanent as are China, Japan, Vietnam and, Korea today. It would have been similar to the way India absorbed the Aryans and China absorbed the Manchus.

If the north and east operated the same as the south and west, the Mongols would be like the Europeans who conquered the western hemisphere and those that they conquered would have been absorbed into the new nations that would have formed like the native Indians of the western hemisphere being absorbed into the new nations that the Europeans formed.

If the Netherlands had been in the north and east, the southern Flanders region would not have split into what is now the northern part of Belgium because of the Reformation. The nation would have simply absorbed the differences.

Consider the empires of Greece, and then Rome. The Greek Empire, to the east, splintered and did not leave any new permanent nations, even though it had great influence, in a way similar to that of the Mongols further east. The ancient nations remained, as always. The Roman Empire, to the west, did change the political landscape and leave a number of permanent nations when it splintered. This is a fine illustration of the major difference between east and west.

Another way that we see the primary difference between north and east and south and west is in terms of language. The fragmentation of widely-spoken languages in the east, such as Chinese and Sanskrit, does not produce new nations as it does in the west, such as Latin fragmenting into the Romance Languages.

For that matter, there does not seem to be the extent of fragmentation of languages in the east that there does in the west. Latin, German and, Slavic all have a family of languages descended from one language. Again, the Chinese language can be seen to have begun the process of fragmentation, into such as Cantonese and Fujianese, etc. but, typical of the ways of the east, has not entirely fragmented and certainly the country shows no sign of fragmenting like the Roman Empire.

Another example of language splintering that is typical of the south and west is that of Urdu. Mogul conquests brought the use of Persian and Arabic script to speakers of the Hindustani language. The result is that today we have the two languages of Hindi and Urdu that are mutually intelligible when spoken, but where Urdu uses Islamic Persian script. Remember that the Partition of India and Pakistan is the most active boundary region between the south and west and the north and east, and this split in language is a reflection of that boundary.

The many different nations in the western hemisphere are based on the European nations, which themselves are based on divisions of the Roman Empire, speaking different languages. One of what I consider as the two great examples of western national fragmentation, which would be unimaginable in the north and east, is the many Spanish-speaking nations of North and South America.

The reason for this is that imperial Spain forbade it's colonies in the western hemisphere from communicating with one another, while the other European imperial powers had no such rule. The many Spanish-speaking nations, long forbidden from communicating with one another, did not unite even when liberated together by Bolivar and San Martin.

Mexico is an exception to the many small Spanish-speaking nations of the western hemisphere. I see the reason for this as the influence of Mexico containing the former great Indian nations of the Aztecs and Maya. Mexico would be larger still, on the scale of Brazil, if it had not lost half of it's territory to the U.S., in the Mexican War.

The two religious poles of the west are Christianity and Islam. The other great example of western national fragmentation which would, once again, be unimaginable in the north and east, is in the Moslem countries. We saw in "The Mecca Hypothesis", on the world and economics blog, why the Arabic language has not fragmented as the Latin of the Roman Empire, or the original German of the northern European languages, has. Moslems on the pilgrimage to Mecca have, over the centuries, kept the language as one by communication with others along the way.

This gives the area where Islam is the major religion little basis for national boundaries, and in this region national borders have been especially fluid over the centuries. Caliphates have taken control over given areas, but the entire Islamic and Arabic-speaking domain appears as too unwieldy to be one nation even though some, such as Nasser of Egypt, have tried to start the process of putting a Pan-Arab nation together, just as Libya's Moammar Gaddafi wanted to put the nations of Africa together.

I think that this concept of dividing the world into the south and west and the north and east, with the south and west being historically based on Christianity and Islam and the north and east being historically based on Hinduism and Buddhism, is the best framework on which to found an understanding of the world. it makes the world a unified whole, instead of isolated parts.

OTHER FACTORS IN UNDERSTANDING HOW THE WORLD OPERATES

1) ROOTS IN HISTORY. An event does not absolutely have to have roots in history in order to happen. But the patterns of history very much repeat themselves, and the event is more likely to happen if it does.

2) SUBSTITUTE FOR RELIGION. Humans were designed to believe in something, and if they move away from religion, they will just replace it with something else. This is particularly applicable today in the western countries. Political and ideological movements are very much a substitute for religion. The Nazis, for example, took people who, for the most part, no longer believed in God, and did a magnificent job of giving them something else to believe in. In a way, it was a secular copy of the Reformation, but based on attaining racial purity rather than religious purity. Hitler was like a messianic figure and the promised "Thousand-Year Reich" was just a replacement for the Millennium foretold in the Bible. Even after secularism comes, the patterns of the religion remain and are just manifested in secular form.

3) DEMOGRAPHICS. An important underlying factor in what happens is demographics. Global warming is such an issue because the designers of the postwar suburbs, with the ideal that everyone would have a car, did not factor in how the population of both the United States and the world would dramatically increase. When soldiers return from war, they tend to start families and this creates "waves" in demographics. Rock music has such a place in history because it was the anthem of the Baby Boomers. It is no secret that the crime rate in society is proportional to the relative number of males between the ages of 15 and 25. It is also clear that the Second World War came at a time when the sons of veterans of the First World War reached military age. The same can be said of America's Revolutionary War and the War of 1812. Islam is such an important issue in the world simply because Moslems historically have a high birth rate. The reason that there is so many Moslems in Europe, and why it is such an issue, is simply that Europeans do not have enough children, while the nearby Islamic countries have their high birth rate. The border between the U.S. and Mexico is often in the news mainly because of the very different demographics on it's opposite sides. The reason that the encounters of Europeans with the rest of the eastern hemisphere, in contrast to the native Indians of the western hemisphere, turned out so differently is that the native Indians had missed the disease cycles that the others had been through and so had no immunity to diseases that were brought by the Europeans, greatly reducing their population.

4) UNSTABLE STATES. Not all nations are stable, particularly those that have been created artificially. This is often why dictators are necessary, to hold a diverse nation together until it has completed what I refer to as "The Strong Leader Binding Phase". A nation like Iraq, created from the remnants of the Ottoman Empire, is simply not ready to be a democracy. One reason for wars is that a convenient way to divert internal tension in a nation is to unite the nation against a foreign enemy. Notice that a number of ideologies in the world today need an enemy to focus against. A powerful general can be a political or military threat to the leaders of his own country, and the solution becomes to give him a war to fight somewhere.

5) WELL-DEFINED LAWS. No nation sets out to be a dictatorship. I find that the most important difference is that more free societies tend to have laws that are clear and well-defined, while dictatorships tend to have laws that are more subjective. For example, a law against something like "threatening the social order" can be interpreted in different ways and is likely to result in the government throwing anyone in jail that it decides is a threat to it's authority. We saw in "Civics Made Really Simple", on this blog, that the objective of all law and government is to keep the subjective as far away as possible. even if it cannot be entirely eliminated.

6) THE PARADOX OF PLENTY, ALSO KNOWN AS THE RESOURCE CURSE. One curious fact that is necessary to understand is that countries that are blessed with abundant natural resources are often the countries where the average people are worse off than in those countries with fewer resources. The government of a resource-rich country can use the income from those riches to build up a security force to keep themselves in power. The government of a resource-poor country, in contrast, is more dependent on the will of the people to stay in power, and is thus more likely to be a democracy. The people of resource-poor countries, such as the Netherlands and Switzerland, have no choice but to be thrifty and industrious and this makes them better-off in the long term then those in a country that can live off it's resources. Wealth tends to lie in the finished product, not in the raw material.

The Far-Reaching Legacy Of The Holy Roman Empire

What is known as the Holy Roman Empire was basically a creation of the papacy, in an effort to reassert control. It was, in particular, a jab at the eastern Christians, centered around what was then known as Constantinople. These eastern Christians would, in time, break away to form a branch of Christianity separate from the Catholic Church, what we see today as the Eastern Orthodox Church.

Constantinople was named for the Roman emperor Constantine, who had founded it, and the underlying reason for the creation of the Holy Roman Empire was to bring these eastern Christians back into line with papal authority by symbolically putting the Roman Empire back together, in the form of the Holy Roman Empire.

If we want to understand the world today, it is necessary to understand all of the implications of the Holy Roman Empire. The previous posting on this blog, "The House Of Holy Wisdom, Where The Modern World Began", described the long-term implications of the actual split between the Eastern Orthodox and Catholic Churches, but this posting will expand on that by focusing on the Holy Roman Empire which was created in the west before the split took place.

To most people today, the Holy Roman Empire means little more than a name from history class. But even if the Holy Roman Empire was ultimately unsuccessful in asserting control over the eastern Christians, it has had a tremendous effect in shaping the world that we live in today, and I would like readers to understand those effects. Remember that something does not have to be rooted in history in order for it to happen, but it is more likely to happen if it is.

On Christmas day, in the year 800, the famed king Charlemagne was crowned by the pope as Holy Roman Emperor. The coronation took place in the old St. Peter's Basilica. The present St. Peter's Basilica was built during the Sixteenth Century, on the site believed to be where St. Peter had been buried, after being martyred in Rome. But there had been a much older St. Peter's Basilica on the site, which had fallen into disrepair. It had been in there that Charlemagne had been crowned.

The Holy Roman Empire wasn't really an empire, at least not in the conventional sense. It was a somewhat loosely organized arrangement of nations in central Europe. The emperor was actually supposed to be elected, and that was how it usually worked, but there were dynasties that managed to rule. The best-remembered of these dynasties are the Habsburgs. I don't think that the Holy Roman Empire really even had a capital city, the emperor usually lived in his home area. The boundaries of the Holy Roman Empire changed over time and, despite the name, did not usually include Rome.

(Note-Has anyone noticed that the title of "emperor" seems to have faded into history? An emperor is the highest secular title, higher than a king, but no one seems to refer to himself as an emperor anymore. not even the leaders of countries that are empires refer to themselves as emperors).

The significant thing about the Holy Roman Empire is not it's power at any given time, but simply how long it lasted. It existed for over a thousand years, finally brought to an end by the conquests of Napoleon. It was certainly it's loose organization that enabled it to last for so long.

Has anyone ever noticed how ironic it is that the Holy Roman Empire was ended by Napoleon's conquests? Napoleon, like Charlemagne, had the pope there when he was crowned as emperor. But, in contrast to Charlemagne, Napoleon took the crown and put it on himself, rather than having the pope put it on, thus putting himself above the pope. This event can be said to herald the modern age of secularism.

Any historical entity that lasts for so long must have a great long-term effect and I find that it is the legacy of the Holy Roman Empire, rather than the original Roman Empire, which has done the most to shape the west that we see today. Without the way that the Holy Roman Emperor was elected, we might not have democracy today.

The western Roman Empire, including Rome, was conquered by Germanic tribes from the north. The eastern part of the empire, centered on Constantinople, became the Byzantine Empire. It spoke Greek, unlike the western part which spoke Latin, and this was part of the division between the two.

As we know, the Eastern Orthodox Church finally made the split official, with the mutual excommunication of the pope and the Archbishop of Constantinople, in the year 1054 after representatives of the pope visited the Hagia Sophia and tried to reassert authority over the east. (The long-term effects of this is what the posting on this blog, "The House Of Holy Wisdom, Where The Modern World Began" is based on).

But what later happened in the east is that the Byzantine Empire was conquered by the Ottoman Turks, in 1453. The Hagia Sophia was the largest church in Christianity, and was nearly a thousand years old. The Ottomans re-purposed it as a mosque and, to show that they too were capable of such architecture, built the Blue Mosque on an axis with the Hagia Sophia. There was a twin church to the Hagia Sophia, known as the Church of the Holy Apostles, which had fallen into disrepair. The Ottomans razed it and built the Fatih Mosque on the site.

As far as I know, this is the only representation we have of what the lost Church of the Holy Apostles looked like:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Church_of_the_Holy_Apostles#/media/File:Kokkinobaphos_Holy_Apostles.jpg

When the Ottomans conquered Constantinople, which had been the center of Eastern Orthodox Christianity, the new center was eventually established in Moscow. The primary symbolic cathedral of the Eastern Orthodox Church thus went from being the Hagia Sophia in Constantinople, renamed Istanbul by the Ottomans:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hagia_Sophia#/media/File:Hagia_Sophia_Mars_2013.jpg

To being St. Basil's cathedral, just outside the Kremlin and adjacent to red Square, in Moscow:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_Basil%27s_Cathedral#/media/File:Moscow_StBasilCathedral_d18.jpg

I find it to be no coincidence at all that the Reformation, in 1517, which split the Protestant churches from the Catholic, started right in the middle of the Holy Roman Empire. The pope created the Holy Roman Empire in an effort to reestablish the unity that the church had in the latter days of the Roman Empire after the emperor Constantine, who founded Constantinople, had converted to Christianity. It was especially aimed at reigning in the eastern Christians.

But the Holy Roman Empire turned into more of a rival to the power of the popes. It was the continuing Catholic effort to maintain control that ultimately set the groundwork for the Reformation. Not only had the creation of the Holy Roman Empire failed to prevent one great split in the church, the Schism of 1054, it also led to another split as the Reformation. Germany, where the Reformation began, was the heart of the Holy Roman Empire.

The fact that the Reformation began in the Holy Roman Empire, whose emperors became rivals to papal power, can easily be seen in the geography of the Reformation. France was an early part of the Holy Roman Empire, but it became more based in Germany. The Reformation in France parallels this. French Protestants, called Huguenots, dominated much of the country, but the Catholic side ultimately triumphed.

In Italy, a widespread movement began in the mountain valleys in the northern part of the country, that was in the Holy Roman Empire, before the Reformation, the Waldensians, which had a similar religious philosophy to the Protestants, and would later join them. But no movement of the kind was seen in the southern part of Italy, which had not been a part of the Holy Roman Empire. The power of the Holy Roman Empire had become a rival to the pope, and that was reflected in the Reformation taking place in it's territory.

When a religious order ends, with modern secularism emerging, we just reenact the previous historical patterns in secular form. The Reformation happened nearly five hundred years after the schism between eastern and western Christians, in 1054. But the wars of the Reformation began immediately, and have long since played out. There was no comparable wars between east and west after the schism of 1054, with the exception of the temporary recapture of Constantinople during the Crusades, and it's temporary re-conversion to Christianity, in 1204.

But really, the wars that had to come with the east-west split of 1054 were simply delayed. They came 750-900 years later, not in religious form like those of the Reformation, but in modern secular form. The inevitable wars between east and west, following their great split in 1054, were interrupted by wars with the Ottomans in the east, the focus on recapturing the Holy Land from the Moslems by the Crusades and then later the Reformation in the west.

In my view, the Holy Roman Empire was created to reassert control over the eastern Christians by symbolically reviving the Roman Empire, which had ruled the area of the eastern Christians as well as those in the west. But after the schism of 1054, which it could not prevent, it acted not only as a balance within western Europe, but also as a balance with the Eastern Orthodox Christians.

Napoleon's conquests in central Europe brought the Holy Roman Empire, which had existed for more than a thousand years, to an end. In doing so, it upset the balance that there had been between east and west and the wars, which otherwise would have occurred immediately after the split of 1054, now did occur.

Soon after the end of the Holy Roman Empire, and it's balancing effect, came the first of the great European invasions of Russia, that of Napoleon. The second was that of the Nazis. It was Germany that had been the heart of the Holy Roman Empire. The early conquests of the Nazis were putting the Holy Roman Empire back together. Then, in June of 1941, came the move eastward into Russia.

Remember that the Nazis, the Third Reich, were effectively the recreation of the Holy Roman Empire, which was the First Reich, and that the purpose of the creation of the Holy Roman Empire was to reassert control over the east. This Nazi invasion of Russia was not inevitable. But things are more likely to happen when they are rooted in history. I do not think the Second World War would have happened, if not for the Market Crash of 1929, which devastated Germany.

Remember also that the Nazis' code name for their invasion of Russia was Operation Barbarossa. The name comes from two great emperors of the Holy Roman Empire, one of which was a major rival to the pope, being excommunicated as a result, before drowning during the Crusades. Operation Barbarossa was thus the modern secular reenactment of a great crusade, the Nazi flag bore a resemblance to the red-on-white cross banner of the Crusaders, but this time against the territory of the eastern Christians. The Eastern Front, the most lethal combat that has ever taken place, was a delayed version of the wars, like the wars after the Reformation, that otherwise would have immediately followed the great schism of 1054 between east and west.

The Nazis were reenacting the Crusades to reassemble the Holy Roman Empire, with Hitler as a secular version of Charlemagne, and Mussolini as a secular version of the pope who crowned Charlemagne. Mussolini came to power before Hitler did and was, in some ways, his mentor. Mussolini was, ironically, also the creator of the modern Vatican. Hitler called his empire "the Third Reich". Charlemagne had led the "First Reich". The "Second Reich" was considered to be that of Kaiser Wilhelm, before and during the time of the First World War, after Germany had become a united nation. Moscow became known, in religious terms, as the "Third Rome", Constantinople had been the second, and it's conquest was the ultimate goal of the Third Reich.

Notice also that Hitler often referred to the "thousand year Reich", while the Holy Roman Empire had lasted just over a thousand years. The Fourth Crusade had been diverted to Constantinople, in 1204 by political intrigue to restore a deposed leader, and had ended up conquering the city and, at least temporarily, restoring it to Catholicism. But when the Ottomans had conquered the city, in 1453, the center of the Eastern Orthodox Church had moved to Moscow. So now, Moscow was the target of the Crusade and Hitler, in the role of Barbarossa, launched his invasion of 1941 with Moscow as the primary objective.

There were certainly other influences on Nazi ideology. It was primarily German archeologists who uncovered ancient Babylon, and many artifacts were on museum display on the island in the Spree River, in Berlin. But what did the Babylonians do? They had once been a great kingdom, led by the fabled King Hammurabi, but had then been conquered by the Assyrians. The Babylonians, invigorated by the Chaldeans, rose up against and conquered those who had earlier conquered them, and then took the Jews captive.

Interestingly, there were also invasions of Russia by Poland, in the Seventeenth Century and in 1920. The first happened before the end of the Holy Roman Empire, and it's balancing effect. But consider that most of Poland had been outside the Holy Roman Empire, and so it's balancing effect did not apply to Poland. But, in any case, these wars were a manifestation of the east-west split of 1054 because Poland remained Catholic while Russia went Eastern Orthodox.

The wartime relationship between Nazi Germany and Italy is also clearly explained by the long legacy of the Holy Roman Empire. Italians clearly had very mixed feelings about the war, and about being Hitler's ally. That was because it wasn't about putting the Roman Empire back together, of which Italy had been the center, but the Holy Roman Empire, of which Germany had been the center. The north African campaign reflected the conquests of the Roman Empire, but the Romans never had anything to do with Hitler's eastern field of conquest, particularly Russia.

The mixed feelings toward the war is, in fact, a reflection of the country being divided by the Holy Roman Empire, with the northern half in but the southern half not. Rome, where the papacy is based, had actually been a rival of the Holy Roman Empire. With the reenactment of history such a powerful force in the Second World War, these important differences were bound to come into play.

We can reenact history without really realizing it, because the patterns of the past will seem like the right thing to do in the present. The British landing at Gallipoli near Istanbul, in the the First World War, may seem like too much of a long shot. The goal was to take the Ottomans out of the war by landing close to their center of power, at Istanbul. But the Ottomans were still strong and the operation was ultimately unsuccessful.

But history is a powerful force. Savoy had recaptured Gallipoli from the Ottomans, before they had conquered Constantinople. Although that did not last either, it set the precedent for another such attempt to take Gallipoli 850 years later. Just as the temporary recapture of the center of Eastern Orthodox Christianity, in the Crusade of 1204, would set the precedent for a future crusade against the secularized center of Eastern Orthodox Christianity, now Moscow, more than 730 years later.

The Holy Roman Empire actually has been restored. Notice that Europe was at war between the end of the Holy Roman Empire, at the time of Napoleon's conquests, and it's modern restoration as the European Union. Just as the Middle East is at war because it has not reached a new equilibrium after the end of the Ottoman Empire, so was Europe until it reached a new equilibrium after the end of the Holy Roman Empire.

Also notice how the European Union fits with the methodology of the Holy Roman Empire with it's general rule by consensus, and it's rotating leadership. This shows again how we might not have democracy today were it not for the long reign of the Holy Roman Empire.

But yet we just cannot get away from the Cold War, which was just a secular reenactment of the Catholic-Eastern Orthodox split in the modern secular form of Capitalism versus Communism. Pope John Paul was such a factor in the end of the Cold War because, being from Poland, he was a reminder that the Eastern Orthodox side, in it's secular act as Communism, had overreached too far west beyond the traditional Eastern Orthodox-Catholic boundary. The end of the Cold War in eastern Europe, was the appropriate correction of the boundary, but that had only been a reaction to a western overreaching in the form of the Nazi invasion of Russia.We thought the Cold War was over, but now it seems to be back.

To really see the long-term effects of the Holy Roman Empire, let's have a look at the historical effects that it's boundaries have had.

Spain was not a part of the Holy Roman Empire, it was under Moslem rule for most of the time. The important implication of this is that the Age of Discovery, the discovery and exploration of distant lands and the setting up of colonies, began with Spain and Portugal. Columbus actually sailed in the same year that the last of the peninsula was recaptured from the Moslems.

The purpose of the Holy Roman Empire was to balance the east and I have the feeling that, if Spain and Portugal had been part of the Holy Roman Empire, the Age of Discovery would have been greatly delayed, or may not have happened at all. This is why the Age of Discovery began with Spain and Portugal, they were not part of the Holy Roman Empire. France and Britain were the next countries to join the Age of Discovery, France was under the control of it's own king, and not the Holy Roman Emperor, and Britain had never been part of the Holy Roman Empire at all.

The original focus of the Holy Roman Empire was eastward, which is why the nations that were within it were not in on the Age of Discovery, which meant sailing westward, into the Atlantic. Venice had been a maritime power but, being in the Holy Roman Empire, it's focus was eastward. What the Holy Roman Empire did achieve, in terms of discovery, was to receive the many ancient manuscripts from Greek and Roman times carried by scholars fleeing from Constantinople after it's fall to the Ottomans in 1453.

The translation of these manuscripts brought about the Renaissance, beginning in northern Italy which was part of the Holy Roman Empire. The Renaissance changed everything in Europe, by opening up new ways of thinking. Just as Christianity had propagated quickly through the Roman Empire, the Renaissance propagated through the Holy Roman Empire.

It's scientific manifestation was the enlightenment. It's political manifestation was the French Revolution, which opened the modern political era in the world as we saw in the posting on this blog "America And The Modern World Explained By Way Of Paris". It's technical manifestation was the Industrial Revolution. Most importantly, it's religious manifestation was the Reformation which was brought about and spread by the printing press after ancient Greek and Hebrew texts of the Bible were translated into the western Europeans languages, and this threatened the monopoly of the Catholic Church as people could now read the Bible for themselves and in their own languages, rather than in Latin.

Why did Italy take so long to become a united country? Modern Italy became a united country at about the same time that Germany did. Both countries were united by a common language but Germany, where the Reformation began, had long been precluded from unity because the many small German-speaking duchies and principalities across central Europe were divided between Protestant and Catholic. It was really only the coming of modern secularism which made German unity possible. Italy, however, had no such barrier to unity.

The reason that Italy did not become a united country until the time of modern railroads and telegraphy is the division remaining from the thousand years of the Holy Roman Empire. Remember that the north of the country was part of the Holy Roman Empire but the southern part, the Mezzogiorno, wasn't. This division remains today, with northern Italian politicians occasionally proposing independence from the south.

In the Second World War, after Italy had gone over to the Allied side and Mussolini had been arrested, the Nazis rescued him in a daring commando raid. He was put to rule over the so-called Italian Socialist Republic, usually referred to as the Republic of Salo. At first I thought this to be a quixotic attempt to reverse the tide of the war, that scarcely seemed worth the effort.

But then I realized how important the consciousness of the Holy Roman Empire was. The Italian Socialist Republic encompassed only northern Italy, and it's boundary with the southern part of the country was just about exactly that of the southern limit of the Holy Roman Empire. The creation of this new republic was an attempt to invoke the forces of history, in the hope that the boundaries of the Holy Roman Empire would hold.

The effects on boundaries of empires from long ago can be seen in Britain. It was not part of the Holy Roman Empire, but had been partially colonized by the Roman Empire. this is where the divisions within Britain originated. The part that colonized became England. The area to the west that was not colonized became Wales, and the area to the north that had not been colonized became Scotland.

When Britain faced the Blitz, and possible invasion, in 1940, it actually had a powerful historical factor in it's favor. The Nazis were really trying to put the Holy Roman Empire back together, which originally included France. They were then going to gather their forces and fulfill the original objective of the Holy Roman Empire, to reassert control over the east. The "Thousand Year Reich" would then go on, in secular form, having achieved it's mission, with Hitler as the new Charlemagne.

The historical factor that Britain had going for it in 1940 was that it had never been part of the Holy Roman Empire. The reason that many in Britain are skeptical of the European Union, and are thinking of leaving, is the same. The European Union is effectively the modern restoration of the Holy Roman Empire. Notice that the other countries in the European Union that do not use the Euro, insisting on keeping their own currency, are also those that were not part of the Holy Roman Empire.

The Strategic Side Of Terrorism

One thing that I think we are missing about terrorism is it's strategic side. Things are not always as they seem. Let's have a closer look into the underlying purpose of terrorist attacks.

Refugees are pouring into Europe from the upheaval in Syria. IS was hoping that these refugees would go and join them. Instead, they are going to Europe. IS, and IS sympathizers, are trying to reverse this so that they will be barred from entering Europe, and then will have little choice but to live in IS territory.

The last thing that IS wants is for all the displaced Syrians that they were hoping would become their citizens to be welcomed into Europe. So, IS and it's sympathizers are doing their best to turn Europe against the refugees.

The November attack in Paris was, on the surface, to punish France for it's military action in the Middle East. But I see the underlying reason as getting Europeans to worry about how many of these refugees might be planning similar attacks, and respond by sending them back home, where they would then likely become IS citizens.

Notice that the Brussels attack was near the headquarters of the European Union, and also that it took place in venues that were different from the Paris attacks. The attacks in Paris took place in a sports stadium, cafes and especially in a concert hall. In contrast, the attacks in Brussels were on transportation outlets, a metro station and the airport.

This was done purposely to spread the "web of fear". Now, as long as we keep these refugees in our countries, we cannot safely go to sports events, concerts, cafes, subway stations or, airports. The solution is to send all of them back home as soon as possible ( so that they will then join IS because that is about their only option).

What about the attacks on women in Cologne on New Years Eve? Doesn't anybody see through this? Whoever heard of sex offenders coordinating their attacks together? And whoever heard of a female news anchor undergoing a sexual assault right while on camera, in view of the whole country?

They have not launched a terror attack on Germany, at least so far, because it is not directly involved in military action in the Middle East. But it is the country that is taking in the most refugees (which might otherwise be joining IS), and something has to be done to turn people against the refugees so that they will be sent back home, to IS. The purpose was to turn Angela Merkel, a woman herself, against the refugees.

We really should see through things like this and understand that shunning or shutting out Moslems in Europe and the west is really helping IS.

Turkey has recently undergone several attacks by IS sympathizers. The reason is obviously that it is a major route for the refugees. IS wants Turkey to shut the border to them so that they will then live in IS territory.

This underlying reasoning that we should see is not just for recent terrorist attacks. What do you notice about the hijackers of 9/11? By nationality, they were Saudis, Egyptians, and a Kuwaiti. These are countries that are traditionally considered as American allies in the Middle East. The reason for this was to turn Americans against their allies in the region, in order to expel outside cultural influences and weaken the governments in the Middle East that were opposed to implementation of Al Qaeda's vision of Islam, as well as turning the west against those Moslems who would go and live there.

A similar underlying strategy applies to the 2008 attack on Mumbai (formerly Bombay). The army of Pakistan was putting pressure on militants there. So they launched the attack on India, knowing that this would raise tensions between the two countries. Pakistan would then be forced to divert it's army to guard the border, and this would take pressure off the militants. The same can be said of the earlier 2001 attack on the Indian Parliament, which brought the two countries to the brink of war and resulted in pressure taken off the militants in Pakistan.

The same kind of strategy was used by the John F. Kennedy Administration to stop idealistic and discontented Americans from hijacking planes to flee to Cuba, in the early 1960s. They threatened to have Fidel Castro assassinated. I am sure that there never was a serious plan to assassinate Castro. The purpose was the make the Cubans wary that one of the American defectors might be a CIA operative sent to assassinate Castro, and would put them in prison or send them back, instead of welcoming them.

The strategy seems to have largely worked except that demonizing Castro, who had earlier been popular in America, also got Kennedy killed because it made him the target of Lee Harvey Oswald, who thought killing Kennedy would boost his status after arrival in Cuba.

I have even wondered about the shooting down of  Russian jet by Turkey a few months ago. After Russia got militarily involved in Syria, a plane was sure to stray into Turkey's air space sooner or later, however slightly and unintentionally. Russia wouldn't go to war over a single plane, and shooting down the plane would show leaders of the European Union, which Turkey wants to join, what a reliable ally Turkey would be on Europe's southeastern flank, facing the Middle East. The recent agreement on refugees does make Turkey a defacto member of the European Union.

The Brussels immigrant district of Molenbeek has, since the Paris attack, become one of the most maligned places in the world by the global press, because it was where the attackers lived and plotted the attacks. I found the house where the younger Abdeslam brother was recently captured. Let's start a look around Molenbeek there, it really doesn't look like a bad place.

Remember that, if there is a compass showing on the right of the image, it is a 360 degree view, if not then it is a still photo. You can get more viewing space by clicking the arrow to "Hide Imagery". But if you click that on the first image, it seems that it may stop the following images from loading. You can pull the screen up or down or around with the mouse:

https://www.google.com/maps/@50.8532958,4.3315541,3a,75y,270h,87.76t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sF6bLk4EKohW61a3JMe9afQ!2e0!7i13312!8i6656

Here is a look, for comparison, at another area of Brussels. The blue and white "M" sign in the first scene means "Metro". This is the subway station that was one of the scenes of the Brussels attacks. The large geometric form office building nearby is part of the headquarters of the European Union:

https://www.google.com/maps/@50.8440013,4.3761338,3a,60y,69.61h,87.87t/data=!3m7!1e1!3m5!1sGJa6pdNdeAkFQNqDUvee3A!2e0!6s%2F%2Fgeo0.ggpht.com%2Fcbk%3Fpanoid%3DGJa6pdNdeAkFQNqDUvee3A%26output%3Dthumbnail%26cb_client%3Dmaps_sv.tactile.gps%26thumb%3D2%26w%3D203%26h%3D100%26yaw%3D244.15408%26pitch%3D0!7i13312!8i6656

Five days after the November 2015 Paris attacks, some of the terrorists were traced to an apartment in a building in St. Denis, a heavily immigrant quarter of Paris not far from the sports stadium where one of the attacks took place. In the ensuing shootout, police and soldiers fired about 5,000 bullets into the building, and part of it collapsed.

The fourth floor corner apartment shown in the building with the peaked roof, immediately ahead of the yellow "Tropical Sea" sign, in the first of the following images is where one of the leaders of the attacks, and his female cousin who rented the apartment, were killed. In some countries, including France, this is considered as the third floor since numbered floors in multi-story buildings do not count the ground floor. The rest of the images are a look around St. Denis.

The large church is the Basilica of St. Denis, which we saw in the posting on this blog, "American And The Modern World Explained By Way Of Paris". This is where Marie Antionette was crowned as queen and where the tombs of her and King, Louis XVI are located. Ironically this basilica, a short walk from where the shootout took place, also holds the tomb of Charles Martel who once saved France from Moslem conquest:

https://www.google.com/maps/@48.9370955,2.353827,3a,75y,164.78h,109.41t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1s9t48ZETnrGQlq7fdS27NmA!2e0!7i13312!8i6656

BIBLE PROPHECIES

Are my Bible prophecy readers watching closely how these recent terrorist attacks fit right into the scenario presented in the posting on this blog "The End Of The World As We Know It"?

In that posting, I explained my reasons for thinking that the fabled "Mark of the Beast" which people will have in the Last Days of the world to enable the one-world government, led by the Antichrist, to keep track of them and their finances, is really phones. God gave St. John a vision of the Last Days of the world, but he was an ancient man without the slightest concept of modern technology and he described people all over using phones as having a "mark" on their right hands or foreheads, for headset phones.

Like no other major terrorist or criminal investigation previously, the efforts to solve and counter these attacks in Paris and Brussels have revolved around tracking and tracing the attacker's phones. With all of the planning that obviously went into the attacks, it is surprising how careless they were about their phones being monitored and tracked.

The female cousin mentioned above practically led police to the apartment in St. Denis by use of her phone, where they are believed to have been preparing for an attack on La Defense, in Paris. The Belgian police were clearly just waiting for the funeral of the older Abdeslam brother, the bomber in a Paris cafe, and they gleaned enough information from the phones of those who attended the funeral to find his escaped  younger brother, at the house in the first set of images above, in Molenbeek.

The Underground Orion Correlation Theory

I really have something today. I think I have solved something that the world has been trying to figure out for two hundred years, why the pyramids and the Sphinx at Giza are arranged as they are. The answer is relatively simple, but it took some "thinking outside the box".

THE PYRAMIDS OF GIZA

There are over a hundred pyramids in Egypt. As far as I know, almost all are built on the west side of the Nile River because the sun sets in the west, representing death, and the pyramids were built as tombs for the pharaohs who ruled Egypt. Most of the pyramids are in various stages of ruin, many not being rediscovered until modern times.

By far the best-known, and best-preserved, are the three pyramids at Giza, built on a plateau which is actually now within the city of Cairo, which was not there in ancient times but was founded by the Fatimids in the year 969. When someone refers to "The Pyramids", it is almost inevitable that it is these three that are meant, and it is the Pyramids of Giza that we will focus on here.

From northeast to southwest, the three pyramids of Giza are that of Khufu, Khafre and, Menkaure. The three were kings of Egypt, in the early Old Kingdom and, in the order listed above, were father, son and, grandson. The earliest, that of Khufu, is the largest of the three pyramids, Khafre's is somewhat smaller, and Menkaure's is much smaller. These pyramids were completed by 2500 B.C.

This is the world-famous view of the Pyramids of Giza. The one in the distance is the largest, that of Khufu. The one in the middle, with some of the white limestone casing remaining at the top, is that of Khafre. The smallest, nearest the camera, is that of Menkaure. The three small pyramids in front of that are queens' pyramids:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giza_pyramid_complex#/media/File:Pyramids_of_the_Giza_Necropolis.jpg

There was once an elaborate complex around these three pyramids, with temples and boats put in pits around the pyramids. This may be so that the dead could "sail" into the afterlife. Statues of all three kings have been found in the pyramid complex. There was also once a stone wall around the entire complex, and a village to house the workers who built the pyramids, as well as extensive cemeteries for important figures and relatives of the three kings. The site of the "Valley Temple" is now buried beneath a nearby village.

As can be seen at the top of Khafre's Pyramid, all three were originally cased in white limestone that must have shone brilliantly in the sun. Some of this original casing also remains around the bottom of Khufu's Pyramid, although none on that of Menkaure. It is thought that this white limestone may have been pillaged when Cairo was being built.

The names of these three kings are often seen in their Greek form. More than two thousand years after these pyramids were built, Alexander would conquer Egypt and found his namesake city of Alexandria. When Alexander's empire broke up after his death, Egypt would be ruled by the dynasty known as the Ptolemies. They also ruled Israel, until control passed to another fragment of Alexander's empire, the Seleucids, against whom the Israelites would later launch the Maccabean Revolt. The Ptolemies are famous for being wrong in their model of the universe with the earth at the center, and everything else moving around it.

This was the era that produced the saga of Cleopatra, although all Ptolemaic queens actually took that name. Jews around a century or so before the time of Jesus had a thriving community in Alexandria. As they spoke Greek and began to forget Hebrew, they had the Hebrew Bible translated into Greek. Seventy scholars carefully did the translating, and this is why it was called the Septuagint and is the foundation of our modern Bible. These scholars added writings that had not been in the Hebrew Bible, such as stories of the Maccabean Revolt, which the Protestants later removed, and this is why there is a difference between the Protestant and Catholic Bibles today.

The Greek form of Khufu is Chepos, of Khafre is Cephren, and of Menkaure is Mycerinus. Thebes, the capital of Egypt during the Middle Kingdom, after the Pyramids of Giza were built but long before the time of Alexander, is also the Greek version of the earlier Egyptian name. Egypt itself is actually a Greek name. For that matter, Jesus is the Greek version of the name Joshua.

A LOOK AT THE PYRAMIDS OF GIZA

The "Great Pyramid" refers to that of Khufu (or Cheops). The building of this pyramid showed use of mathematical concepts that were not previously known to have existed that early, as the perimeter to height ratio of the Great Pyramid is almost exactly 2 pi. This is the Great Pyramid, the first of the three Giza pyramids to be built:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Pyramid_of_Giza#/media/File:Kheops-Pyramid.jpg

This is the entrance to the inner passages and chambers of the pyramid. Medieval Moslems in the area are believed to have carved what is known as the "Robber's Tunnel":

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Pyramid_of_Giza#/media/File:Pyramid_of_Khufu_-_Entrance.jpg

Here is a diagram of the interior of the Great Pyramid. There is a Grand Gallery, and doors with handles, inside the pyramid. The pyramid is built over a small hillock, with one chamber led to by a passageway below ground level. Some believe that this underground chamber was originally intended to be the burial chamber, but then Khufu (Cheops) decided that he wanted to be buried higher up:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Pyramid_of_Giza#/media/File:Great_Pyramid_S-N_Diagram.svg

Khafre's (Cephren) pyramid is the one that retains some of the original white limestone casing at the top, and the one adjacent to the Sphinx. This pyramid may appear larger than the Great Pyramid because it is built on an elevation of about ten meters higher, and because it's height to base ratio is greater. But Khafre's Pyramid is somewhat smaller. In Khafre's Pyramid, the burial chamber was actually in the bedrock, and Khafre's associated temple complex survives in better condition than that of Khufu's:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyramid_of_Khafre#/media/File:Pyramid_of_Khafre_Giza_Egypt_in_2015_2.jpg

The Sphinx has been buried in sand, and then excavated, more than once since it was built. There is believed to have once been a temple at the paws of the Sphinx. The Sphinx is believed to be from the time of Khafre. The face of the Sphinx, with the body of a lion, may be that of Khafre. A few believe that the amount of water erosion evident on the Sphinx, the area was once wetter than it is today, indicates that the Sphinx is much older than the pyramids:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sphinx#/media/File:Great_Sphinx_of_Giza_-_20080716a.jpg

The youngest of the three kings, the grandson of Khufu, was Menkaure (Mycerinus). His pyramid is far smaller than the other two, and retains none of the original white limestone casing. He may have died before the pyramid was completed, because it seems to be partially unfinished. In medieval times, nearby Moslems around the end of the Twelfth Century set about dismantling the pyramids, and began with this one. The damage can still be seen on one side of the pyramid:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyramid_of_Menkaure#/media/File:Giza_Plateau_-_Pyramid_of_Menkaure.JPG

Here is a look around the Pyramids of Giza.

There are multiple scenes following. To see the scenes, after the first one, you must first click the up arrow, ^, before you can move on to the next scene by clicking the right or forward arrow, >, After clicking the up arrow. You can then hide the previews of successive scenes, if you wish.

https://www.google.com/maps/@29.977803,31.132831,3a,75y,20.03h,99.26t/data=!3m7!1e1!3m5!1s4U0hWZMxXfdfGpfpw8_nVg!2e0!6s%2F%2Fgeo3.ggpht.com%2Fcbk%3Fpanoid%3D4U0hWZMxXfdfGpfpw8_nVg%26output%3Dthumbnail%26cb_client%3Dmaps_sv.tactile.gps%26thumb%3D2%26w%3D203%26h%3D100%26yaw%3D88.001396%26pitch%3D0!7i13312!8i6656

THE ORION CORRELATION THEORY

We shouldn't be surprised that there are any number of theories about the real origin and meaning of the pyramids. One popular pyramid theory, that has been around for several decades, is the Orion Correlation Theory. The sides of all three of the Pyramids of Giza are aligned perfectly east-west and north-south. They are aligned by the stars, in other words true north, and not the north of a magnetic compass, which is not exactly the same thing.

But yet the three pyramids are not arranged, relative to one another, in a line with the compass directions. They are aligned from northeast to southwest. It has been pointed out that the spacing and alignment of the three pyramids matches that of the three stars of the belt of the constellation Orion, which is the most prominent constellation in the northern hemisphere winter sky. Ever since I learned the stars in my youth, I have noticed that when I first sight Orion in the late Autumn, it means that winter is not far away.

Orion is the constellation representing the hunter. The three stars are supposed to be the belt across his torso. The companion of Orion is his dog, the constellation Canis Major. The Latin Canis is where we get our word "canine". The point where the dog's neck joins the body is represented by the star Sirius, which is the brightest star in the sky in apparent magnitude.

This is the constellation Orion, with other stars dimmed for clarity. The name is pronounced like O-Ryan. When I first learned about Orion, when I was eight years old, I mistakenly thought that it was pronounced in the same way as "onion". The top two stars represent the shoulders of the hunter. The two stars below the belt represent his knife:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orion_(constellation)#/media/File:Orion_3008_huge.jpg

I used to be a stargazer, when I was in my early teens. The earth faces in a different direction with each season, and one good thing about winter is that the winter stars were my favorites. Some of the best-known stars are in the constellation of Orion. Betelgeuse, in the top left or the right shoulder of the hunter, is such a giant star that if it were put in place of the sun, it would extend out the around the orbit of Jupiter and the earth would be in the central region of the star. Rigel, the left foot of the hunter, is far away but is actually more then a hundred thousand times as bright as the sun.

About 70% of the stars in the sky have Arabic names. This is due to the extensive charts made of the sky during the early days of Islam. But you may notice that the brightest stars, such as these stars in Orion, do not have Arabic names. This is because these stars that stood out had meanings to, and were named by, the ancient people long before the dimmer stars were named.

The three stars forming the "belt" of Orion, from northwest to southeast, are Mintaka, Alnilam and, Alnitak. Other stars represent the blade of the "sword" hanging from Orion's "belt". Two of the stars have Greek names, Theta Orionis and Iona Orionis. The other, seen as a patch of light is actually the Orion Nebula.

It is well-known that the night sky was very important to the ancient Egyptians, there is abundant documentation of it online. They did not recognize Orion as the constellation of The Hunter, that was from much later Greek mythology, but it is the most prominent arrangement of stars in the winter sky. The belt of Orion points directly toward Sirius, which is the brightest star in the sky, in the order that the Pyramids of Giza were built. One of the shafts in the Pyramid of Khufu aligns directly with the direction to Sirius in the sky.

Indeed, the arrangements of the Pyramids of Giza do line up very well in terms of spacing and alignment with the stars of the belt of Orion. This Orion Correlation Theory also points out that the famed Sphinx with the Pyramids of Giza could represent the constellation of Leo, the lion, which is near Orion in the sky. Furthermore, the Nile River near the three pyramids could then represent the Milky Way, which is the dense band of stars across the sky looking along the plane of our galaxy:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orion_correlation_theory#/media/File:Orion_-_pyramids.jpg

The Orion Correlation Theory, that the three Pyramids of Giza were arranged in alignment with the three stars of Orion's belt, makes a lot of sense. The spacing is perfect and we have to wonder why the three pyramids were not built in a straight line. The first two pyramids, those of Khufu and Khafre, have a line from the center to corner, as seen from above, a continuous line for both pyramids, but yet the location of the Pyramid of Menkaure is slightly offset from this line, just as the southeastern-most star of Orion's belt is offset from being a straight line.

THE FAULT OF THE  ORION CORRELATION THEORY

The problem with the Orion Correlation Theory is that of compass direction. In the belt of Orion, the stars are aligned from northwest to southeast, with the southeastern-most star being offset to the north from a straight line. The directional alignment of the three pyramids is the opposite. The Pyramids of Khufu, Khafre and Menkaure are aligned from northeast to southwest, with the southwestern-most Pyramid of Menkaure being offset from a straight line to the south. It is as if the pyramids are actually some kind of reverse mirror image of the stars, rather than a direct image.

The Orion Correlation Theory was a popular concept of how these pyramids were arranged and makes so much sense, but yet it unfortunately just does not fit perfectly due to this mismatch in directional alignment.

THE UNDERGROUND ORION CORRELATION THEORY

I was reading about this theory when I noticed a simple solution that would make it fit perfectly. I looked extensively online and did not find that anyone else had thought of it. I am going to call my version of this theory "The Underground Orion Correlation Theory". I do give credit to the original theory, because without that I wouldn't have thought of this.

The concept of the "underworld" was very important to the ancient Egyptians. It was where they went to be judged after death. The sun, which was the God named Ra, passed through the underworld each night to rise on the opposite side of the sky the following morning. There is a detailed Wikipedia article about the Egyptian concept of the underworld, titled "Duat".

To the ancient Egyptians, west represented death because the sun set in the west each evening. This is why the pyramids, which are tombs, were built on the west side of the Nile River. It is thus logical that ancient Egyptians might be buried facing west, with their heads to the east.

Now, imagine being a deceased pharaoh buried, with his head to the east and facing west. Suppose that you look up from the underworld, and can see through the ground. You would see the three Pyramids of Giza, arranged exactly as the pharaoh would have seen the stars of the belt of Orion arranged, as seen from the earth's surface. Incredibly, the pyramids were arranged to match Orion, but were meant to be viewed from below.

We know that the Pyramid of Menkaure was the smallest of the three, and the last to be built, and  the one that is offset from being a straight line with the other two. But now we see that it was offset to the south as it is so that it would appear as offset from a straight line in the same way as the southeastern-most star of Orion's belt, which is offset to the north, if it was viewed from below the ground looking upward.

If we keep trying to make the Orion Correlation Theory fit in terms of the compass directions, we will never arrive at the answer. Instead, see it in terms of left and right, up and down. With an ancient Egyptian buried below the complex, facing west, and looking up the three pyramids would appear just like the stars in Orion's belt including the offset.

The three pyramids become literally Orion's belt on earth with the associated temples and cemeteries around the pyramids filling out the rest of the constellation of Orion. This makes the Orion Correlation Theory fit perfectly, and it is the only way that it will fit perfectly.

Here again is the well-known image of how the spacing and alignment of the Pyramids of Giza fit perfectly with the arrangement of the three stars in Orion's belt. The trouble is that one of the two lines, either the stars or the pyramids, has to be inverted to make this image match. This is because the line of stars run from northwest to southeast, with the southeastern-most star (Alnitak) offset from a straight line to the north, while the line of pyramids runs from northeast to southwest, with the southwestern-most pyramid (Menkaure) offset from a straight line to the south. The arrangement of the pyramids in the following image are correct, seen from the north, but the stars have been rotated 180 degrees and then mirror-imaged north to south, to make it fit:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orion_correlation_theory#/media/File:Orion_-_pyramids.jpg

Here is a satellite view of the three Pyramids of Giza, with southernmost Pyramid of Menkaure seen as offset slightly to the south. There is a red dot at the apex of each pyramid. Image from Google Earth.

Imagine looking at this arrangement from below, from under the ground, with your head facing east (right in the image). What you would see is the arrangement of the pyramids and the Sphinx that exactly matches the arrangement of the stars of the belt of Orion, as the deceased pharaoh remembered looking up at them when he was alive on the surface of the earth.

You can see the four bright stars as the two shoulders and two feet of Orion, the belt diagonally across the middle, with the southeastern-most star offset slightly to the north, and there we have our mystery of the alignment and offset of the three pyramids solved. Look closely at the lowest star in the belt, and you will see that it is offset slightly to the north, just as the Pyramid of Menkaure is offset slightly to the south:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orion_(constellation)#/media/File:Orion_3008_huge.jpg

This also reveals that the ancient Egyptians intended the pyramids not only as tombs, but also as representations of stars. Remember that the Pyramids of Giza were originally cased in white limestone that would have shone brilliantly in the sunlight. Some of this casing remains at the top of the Pyramid of Khafre. They didn't have structural glass or electric lighting, but this was as close as the ancient Egyptians could come to recreating a star.

Look at the telescopic image of the cluster of stars, not far in the sky from Orion, known as the Pleiades. Notice the horizontal and vertical lines emanating from the brightest stars. This is the "points" of the star, the optical illusion known as halation. Notice also how these vertical and horizontal lines resemble the vertices of a pyramid, emanating from the apex (peak) as seen from either above or below. The pyramids were the best that they could do to build copies of the stars that they wondered at in the night sky:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star#/media/File:Pleiades_large.jpg

The following diagram shows how we might perceive a star, with four points caused by the optical illusion known as halation. The pyramids were attempts to recreate stars, with the four vertices of the pyramid representing the points. 

THE SPHINX AND THE UNDERGROUND ORION CORRELATION THEORY

The Orion Correlation Theory only indirectly involves the Sphinx, which is clearly a very important part of the complex at Giza. The theory has the Sphinx as possibly representing the nearby constellation Leo, the lion.

Notice that the Sphinx is south of the line of the three pyramids, just as the "sword" of Orion is south of the belt, and the positioning is identical. Just as the similarity between the arrangement of the pyramids and of the stars of the belt are unmistakable, so is the position of the sword of Orion and the Sphinx.

But if the stars are a reverse mirror image of the pyramids, meant to be "viewed" from under the ground, we end up with the Sphinx being on the wrong side of the pyramids. The Sphinx is south and east of the line of the pyramids, but the sword is south and west of the line of the stars in Orion's belt. If "viewed from below ground, the Sphinx would appear to be "above" (north) of the line of the pyramids, rather than "below" (south) of it.

But consider Egypt at the time all of this was built. Egyptians were crowded around the Nile River, which was the source of life. All around was barren desert. The Sphinx is a lion that acts as a "guard" to the pyramid complex. People approached the complex from the east, the direction of the Nile. If the Sphinx had been built on the other side of the line of the pyramids, it would be further into the desert and would not have people passing it as they approached the pyramid complex from the direction of the Nile.

My conclusion is that the ancient Egyptians knew this, but built it not to be seen from below ground like the pyramids themselves, but to be seen by the people as the "guard" when approaching the pyramid complex. When we view it in this way, the Sphinx falls right into place as representative of the blade of Orion's sword, which are the two stars Theta Orionis and Iota Orionis and the Orion Nebula, even though it is on the "wrong" side of the line of the pyramids if viewed in the same way as the pyramids were meant to be viewed. Other than that, the positioning is identical.

Esau And The Temple Mount

It is difficult to write something new about religion, with the exception of fulfillment of end-time prophecies, since Christianity has been written about for about two thousand years. But I think I have something new, in a spiritual theory about the building of the Temple Mount In Jerusalem.

Certainly the most valuable real estate in the world is the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. The Temple Mount is so-called because that is where King Solomon originally built the Jews' Temple. After the Temple was destroyed by the Babylonians, in 586 B.C., it was rebuilt by the Jews, upon their return from exile in Babylon. Just before the time of Jesus, King Herod dismantled this Second Temple in order to rebuild it on a grand scale. No sooner had it been completed when it was destroyed in the uprising of the Jews against Roman rule, but the artificially-constructed mount on which the Temple was built remains. 

I consider the story of the tree being cut down, in Chapter 4 of the Book of Daniel, but the stump being preserved, to be a prophecy of the Temple being destroyed, with the stump representing the Temple Mount.

What remains of the Temple complex is the retaining wall that Herod had built in order to expand what had been a natural holy mount, referred to as Mount Moriah. This is where, it is believed, Abraham was ready to sacrifice his son Isaac, at the command of God. It was also where, at the time of King David, the threshing floor of Aruanah the Jebusite was located, where God had an angel halt a tribulation sent on Jerusalem. The tradition of a sacred mount reflects back to Mount Sinai, where Moses received the Ten Commandments.

Moslems split from Jews in that they believe that it was Abraham's older son, Ishmael, that he was willing to sacrifice in order to obey God. Moslems refer to the Temple Mount as the Noble sanctuary, and believe that the rock at the top of Mount Moriah, upon which Abraham was willing to sacrifice his son in order to obey God, was also the spot from which Muhammad later ascended to heaven.

The prominent structure over that spot today is the mosque, known as the Dome of the Rock. The rock, within the Dome of the Rock, upon which so much is believed to have happened, is called the Foundation Stone. My understanding is that the Foundation Stone was the top of the former Mount Moriah. There is a cave, next to the Foundation Stone within the Dome of the Rock, known as "The Well of Souls". The Temple Mount, aside from it's importance to Jews and Christians, is also the third holiest place in Islam, after Mecca and Medina.

The New Testament refers to a people called Samaritans. They were a mixed-race people generally disliked by Jews. There were twelve tribes of Israel that had split into two nations. The ten in the north were known as Israel. The tribes of Judah and Benjamin in the south were known as Judah. About 740 B.C. Assyria conquered Israel, and scattered most of the population around the Assyrian Empire. These are known as the Ten Lost Tribes, and were never heard from again. In their place, the Assyrians settled people from elsewhere in their empire. By the time of Jesus, these people had intermixed with the remaining Jews and were known as Samaritans, after the region of Samaria. Samaritans are still around today, and follow what they believe is the real Jewish religion, which was supposedly not contaminated by the Babylonian exile of Judah. Samaritans believe that it is Mount Gerizim, not the Temple Mount, that is sacred.

Let's start by having a look at the Old City of Jerusalem. There is a wall around the Old City, which was not there in biblical times but was built much later, by the Ottomans in the Sixteenth Century. We will start by looking at churches and important locations outside the wall, then we will look at the wall and the Old City within, and finally at the Temple Mount which has it's own walls. The retaining wall around the Temple Mount itself was built in biblical times, just before the coming of Jesus, and is thus much older than the wall around the Old City.

Just east of the walled Old City of Jerusalem and the Temple Mount is the Kidron Valley, and on the opposite side of that is the Mount of Olives that is referenced a number of times in the Bible. To the west and south of the Old City is the modern city of Jerusalem. Here is a view across the Old City, looking eastward, with the golden dome of the Dome of the Rock on the Temple Mount, and the Mount of Olives in the distance. Image from the Wikipedia article "Old City, Jerusalem".

This is the Chapel of the Ascension, on the Mount of Olives, where Jesus is believed to have left for Heaven. Image from the Wikipedia article "Chapel of the Ascension".

Here is the Church of Mary Magdalene, image from the Wikipedia article by that name, who was Jesus' foremost female disciple, built by Czar Alexander III in 1886. It is in the Kidron Valley, between the Temple Mount and the Mount of Olives. Notice the resemblance to the design of St. Basil's Cathedral in the Kremlin: 

Near the Church of Mary Magdalene is the Church of All Nations, image from the Wikipedia article by that name, which was built on, or near, Gethsemane, where Jesus did his prayers before being arrested. This church was opened in 1924, but there had been earlier structures on the site: 

The wall around the Old City of Jerusalem was built by the Ottomans in the Sixteenth Century, and is one of the main tourist sights there. There was no wall, where the present wall is now, in biblical times.

Let's start in the northwestern corner of the old city and have a look at the attractive gates, moving clockwise as seen from above. Each image is from the Wikipedia article by the name of the gate or feature.

This is the New Gate, to the Christian Quarter of the Old City, when it was first opened: 

Here is the Damascus Gate, so named because it is toward the road to Damascus: 

The Lions Gate is in the east wall, facing toward the Mount of Olives: 

The Dung Gate is in the southern wall around the Old City of Jerusalem: 

The Zion Gate is also in the southern wall: 

The Jaffa Gate is in the western side of the wall around the Old City of Jerusalem. This is not the same thing as the so-called "Western Wall", which is the Jewish site of worship. That refers to the western retaining wall around the Temple Mount, which is within the Old City. The wall around the Old City is different from the retaining wall around the Temple Mount, which is within the Old City. The exception is the east side, facing the Kidron Valley and the mount of Olives, where the two walls are one and the same.

The Tower of David does not refer to the towering structure built near it, which is a minaret from Ottoman times. The Tower of David is the remains of an ancient citadel that dates to long before the time of Jesus. It was named for King David, but was not built until after his time: 

This is the remains of the Tower of David, within the Old City of Jerusalem, with the adjacent Ottoman minaret: 

The Old City of Jerusalem is divided into four quarters, from north of the Temple Mount to south are the Moslem, Christian, Armenian and, Jewish Quarters. In the Christian Quarter is the Church of the Holy Sepulchre: 

The present structure of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre is about a thousand years old. But a structure on the site dates back to when the first Roman Emperor who was a Christian, Constantine, sent his mother, Helena, to the Holy Land to identify important religious sites. The Church of the Holy Sepulchre is so important because it is actually two adjoined churches, one of which is believed to be built over the site of Jesus' crucifixion, referred to as Golgotha or Calvary, and the other over the location of his nearby burial site: 

Generally, Protestants do not accept these crucifixion and burial sites within the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. A tomb was discovered, cut into the rock some distance away, which was shown to date from around the time of Jesus, and which most Protestants accept as Jesus' actual tomb. This is referred to as the "Garden Tomb". There is also a nearby elevated area that is believed, by Protestants, to be the site of the crucifixion.

Protestants point out that the Bible gives the site of the crucifixion as "outside the city walls". Catholics and Orthodox Christians, who accept the sites within the Church of the Holy Sepulchre as the true crucifixion and burial sites, counter the Protestant position by stating that the sites in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, now within the city walls of the Old City of Jerusalem, would have been outside the city in biblical times because the present city walls were not built until Ottoman times, after the city had grown. The Church of the Holy Sepulchre was built before the Great Schism of 1054, between the Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Churches, and is thus still a point of union between them.

Anyway, have you ever heard the amazing story of "The Immovable Ladder"? Under the right side of the double windows, in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre is a wooden ladder.

More than 250 years ago, someone was doing some kind of maintenance work on the building, and forgot to take the ladder. Now, the church is managed by different groups of monks. For any changes to be made, the monks all have to agree on it. Sometimes, the monks do not do very well at agreeing on how to go about doing things. The result is that, for over 250 years, the groups of monks who run the Church of the Holy Sepulchre have not yet come to an agreement about what to do about the ladder under the window. So, there it remains and has become a legend. The first reference to it seems to have been in 1757. The climate is dry, and so the wooden ladder has been preserved. The ladder has been moved temporarily, on at least a few occasions, so that other maintenance work may be done, but must immediately be returned to precisely it's position because all of the monks would have to agree to move it permanently.

Have you ever heard a story like that of The Immovable Ladder? In the following image, from Google Street View, you can see it on the ledge above the red dot.

Now, let's move further inward, to the Temple Mount which is at the southeastern side of the Old City of Jerusalem, all within the walls of the Old City.

The place of worship for Jews is known as the Western Wall, the following image is from the Wikipedia article by that name. Keep in mind that this does not refer to the wall around the Old City of Jerusalem, but to the western retaining wall of the Temple Mount, which is within the Old City. This is a view, looking eastward, of the Western Wall area, in the foreground, with the golden dome of the Dome of the Rock on the Temple Mount and the Mount of Olives in the distance: 

There was once a fifth quarter of the Old City of Jerusalem, the Moroccan Quarter, which was negotiated to be moved, in order to provide easy access to the Western Wall. Notice that this photo was taken before there were many structures on the Mount of Olives, in the distance, and before the gold covering was put on the Dome of the Rock. Image from the Wikipedia article "Moroccan Quarter".

On the southwestern wall of the Temple Mount, there was once a staircase that was destroyed in the uprising against Roman rule. It's remains are known today as Robinson's Arch. Image from the Wikipedia article by that name.

There used to be a Roman fortress, the Antonia. Image from the Wikipedia article "Antonia Fortress".

King Herod, who built the Temple Mount, also used to have a palace in what is now the Old City. Here is a model of that. Image from the Wikipedia article "Herod's Palace".

This is a view of the Temple Mount from the south. Image from the Wikipedia article by that name. The ruins in the left foreground, around the corner from Robinson's Arch, are that of a Palace built against the Temple Mount by the Umayyad Caliphate. The Umayyads also built both of the mosques on the Temple Mount, the Dome of the Rock and the Al-Aqsa Mosque. Remember that Islam is the youngest of the world's major religions, it began in the Seventh Century and so was not there in biblical times. 

On the south wall of the Temple Mount, there is a set of three gates, as well as a set of two, which are now sealed. These gates, which led to the top of the Temple Mount in biblical times, are known as the Hulda Gates. Image from the Wikipedia article "Gates of the Temple Mount".

The Book of the Acts of the Apostles refers to "The Beautiful Gate", but there does not seem to be agreement on exactly which gate that is.

The Golden Gate is also in the east wall, image from the Wikipedia article by that name, but has been sealed for centuries. This sealed gate has very special meaning to Christians, Moslems and, Jews:

There are several gates to the top of the Temple Mount. Since 1967, the Gate of the Moors has been the only gate to the Temple Mount that is used by non-Moslems. Image from the Wikipedia article "Gates of the Temple Mount".

Under the southeastern part of the Temple Mount is an underground area, where the roof is supported by pillars. This is known as Solomon's Stables. We could think of Solomon's Stables as the "basement" of the Temple Mount. The Temple Mount, of course, was built by King Herod just before the time of Jesus, which was nearly a thousand years after the time of Solomon. But the crusaders did use this underground area as stables. Solomon's Stables, now used as a mosque, Al Marwani, are under the corner of the Temple Mount facing the camera, and can still be accessed from the Al Aqsa Mosque on the Temple Mount. Images from the Wikipedia articles "Gates of the Temple Mount" and "Solomon's Stables".

Due to the Temple Mount being very important to three different religions, archeological excavation is an extremely touchy issue. The Ark of the Covenant, the portable shrine carried by the Jews, was likely destroyed in the Babylonian destruction of the Temple, and carrying off of the Jews into exile, in 586 B.C. Nevertheless, there are those who believe that it was hidden somewhere, or escaped destruction, and is still waiting to be discovered. Theories such as this are helped along by the fact that there were tunnels and underground passages built into the Temple Mount, and there are extensive caves in the limestone of the area.

The most prominent structure on the Temple Mount is the Islamic Dome of the Rock, the following two images are from the Wikipedia article by that name. This is a very old structure, finished in 691, and is one of the oldest examples of Islamic architecture. This is the outside of the Dome of the Rock. The words in Arabic are lecturing Christians about believing that Jesus is the Son of God: 

Inside the Dome of the Rock this is known as the Foundation Stone, upon which so much is believed to have taken place, the stone on which Abraham was believed to be willing to sacrifice his son, the place where the Angel of God called a halt to a plague on Jerusalem and, the spot from which Muhammad ascended to Heaven: 

The Dome of the Rock, which was influenced itself by earlier Byzantine architecture, has had great architectural influence across the world. One building that I have never seen mentioned is the Aquarium building of Niagara Falls, NY. Just as the nearby casino building, formerly the Convention Center, with it's window face on the vertical drop from the structural arch is a reflection of the Hagia Sophia, also constructed by the Byzantines.

One fact that often gets overlooked is that the smaller dome adjacent to the Dome of the Rock, known as the Dome of the Chain, the following image is from the Wikipedia article by that name, was constructed as a scale model for the construction of the Dome of the Rock, and left in place afterward: 

This is the other mosque on the Temple Mount, the Al Aqsa Mosque. The following image is from the Wikipedia article by that name. When the Crusaders arrived, in the Thirteenth Century, some thought that this was Solomon's Temple: 

Here are some scenes on and around the Temple Mount. There are two levels of the Temple Mount, joined by stairs, with the northern section a little bit higher than the southern section. The gold-domed Dome of the Rock is on the higher northern section, and the Al-Aqsa Mosque is on the lower southern section. The first scene is inside the Al-Aqsa Mosque:

https://www.google.com/maps/@31.7763637,35.2356375,3a,75y,73.71h,90t/data=!3m8!1e1!3m6!1s-o3w2v7uPtmQ%2FVbVPsBje-zI%2FAAAAAAAAQvo%2FD_WTdjcYCq8!2e4!3e11!6s%2F%2Flh4.googleusercontent.com%2F-o3w2v7uPtmQ%2FVbVPsBje-zI%2FAAAAAAAAQvo%2FD_WTdjcYCq8%2Fw203-h101-n-k-no%2F!7i10240!8i5120 

SPIRITUAL THEORY OF ESAU AND THE TEMPLE MOUNT

I have a spiritual theory about the construction of the Temple Mount.

The first Temple was built by King Solomon, on Mount Moriah. That temple was destroyed by the Babylonians in 586 B.C. When the Jews were permitted to return from exile in Babylon, after Babylon was conquered by the Persians, they rebuilt the Temple on the same spot. This is known as the Second Temple, or the Temple of Zerubbabal. My understanding is that Zerubbabal would have been in line to be the king of the Jews, except that the country was now ruled by the Persians.

The Second Temple stood for over four hundred years until, near the time of Jesus, King Herod undertook to dismantle the Second Temple in order to rebuild it on a grand scale. To accomplish this, he enlarged Mount Moriah by building a massive retaining wall around it, and then filling in the gap. These retaining walls are the walls around the Temple Mount (not those around the Old City) that we see today. Herod's Temple itself is gone, it was destroyed by the Romans when the Jews rebelled against their rule not long after it had been completed, but the Temple Mount remains.

Jesus had prophecied that the Temple would be so destroyed that "not even one stone would remain upon another", which the religious leaders thought was ludicrous. My understanding is that, during the Jewish rebellion against Roman rule, several decades after the time of Jesus, the wooden parts of the Temple caught fire. The heat melted the gold in the Temple, some of which flowed down amidst the foundation stones. After the fire went out, Roman soldiers searching for gold pried the foundation stones apart so that indeed, "not one stone in the structure remained upon another".

Herod's rule was not liked by the Jewish people. The country was part of the Roman Empire. Herod had gained power, with Roman help disposing the last of the Hasmoneans (or Maccabeans), who had freed Israel from Seleucid rule to bring about a country that was independent, for the first time in centuries, until the Romans arrived.

The trouble was that Herod wasn't really Jewish. He was an Idumean, which had been formerly known as Edom and which the Hasmoneans had forcibly converted to Judaism. Remember that, in the Book of Genesis, the Edomites were descendants of Esau, who was the older brother of Jacob from whom the Jews were descended. In the famous story Jacob, with the help of his mother Rebekah, had disguised himself in order to trick their father Isaac (the son of Abraham, who Abraham had been earlier willing to sacrifice on the rock atop Mount Moriah in order to prove that he was perfectly obedient to God) into giving him the blessing instead of his older brother Esau.

By the way, the Book of Lamentations, which is a description of the Babylonian destruction of Jerusalem and the first Temple, in 586 B.C., indicates that "The land of Uz", as described in the Book of Job, is actually Edom. So Edom, the land to the southwest originally settled by Jacob's brother Esau, is actually where the story of Job takes place. Bad feelings between the Edomites and the Israelites also factored in how they cheered the Babylonians on as they were destroying Jerusalem. This is what the single chapter book of the prophet Obadiah is about.

Herod is the one who is described in the Gospels as massacring young boys because he had heard of Jesus' birth as a king, which he considered as a threat to his own rule. Jesus' mother and father took him to safety in Egypt until Herod had died. After Herod's death rule of his kingdom, which was ultimately under Roman rule, was divided among his sons. When Jesus began his ministry, the Herods mentioned at that time were Herod Phillip and Herod Antipas. Another son, Archelaus, ruled over Judea but had proven to be so inept and antagonistic of a leader that Rome replaced him with a governor called a prefect. At the time of Jesus' trial and crucifixion, that prefect was Pontius Pilate.

Let's briefly review how spiritual justice works, by reviewing the order of Jacob's own sons. One of Jacob's twelve sons would become the leader over the others, and each one would form a tribe. The oldest son was Reuben. He still formed one of the twelve tribes, but he forfeited his leadership role by later getting together with his father's concubine, Bilhah. Simeon and Levi were the next two in line but they forfeited their leadership roles with their massacre of the town of Shechem, in vengeance after their sister Dinah had been raped there. This left the fourth-born son, Judah, to inherit the leadership. Indeed, Judah became the leading tribe of Israel so that all Israelites became known as Jews.

With this in mind, shouldn't we expect that there would be some kind of spiritual justice brought to Jacob and Rebekah's deception and taking of Isaac's blessing from Esau? The deception may have had God's sanction, but it was still a deception.

Could it be spiritual justice for this deception that the Jews, the descendants of Jacob, were to be ruled over for a time by Herod, who was a descendant of Esau? This included having the Temple dismantled and rebuilt by this descendant of Esau. Furthermore, the enlarging of the sacred Mount Moriah, by Herod, represented the restoration of Esau back to the blessing of the Promised Land. The much-enlarged Temple had to be completed to represent this bringing back of Esau, even though the Temple was destroyed not long after.