CORNELIUS DE BRUYN (1652-1726)
Mount of Olives or Mount Olivet (826m - 2, 716ft)
East Jerusalem
In The Mount of Olives and The Dead Sea, 1714
The mount
The Mount of Olives or Mount Olivet
(826m - 2, 716ft) - in
Hebrew: הַר הַזֵּיתִים, Har ha-Zeitim ; in Arabic: جبل الزيتون,
الطور, Jabal al-Zaytun, Al-Tur - is a mountain ridge east of and
adjacent to Jerusalem's Old City. It is named for the olive groves that
once covered its slopes.
The Mount of Olives is one of three peaks of a mountain ridge which runs
for 3.5 kilometres (2.2 miles) just east of the Old City across the
Kidron Valley, in this area called the Valley of Josaphat. The peak to
its north is Mount Scopus, at 826 metres (2,710 feet), while the peak to
its south is the Mount of Corruption, at 747 m (2,451 ft). The highest
point on the Mount of Olives is At-Tur, at 818 m (2,684 ft). The ridge
acts as a watershed, and its eastern side is the beginning of the Judean
Desert.
The ridge is formed of oceanic sedimentary rock from the Late
Cretaceous, and contains a soft chalk and a hard flint. While the chalk
is easily quarried, it is not a suitable strength for construction,
which is why the Mount was never built up and instead features many
man-made burial caves. From Biblical times until the present, Jews have
been buried on the Mount of Olives. The necropolis on the southern
ridge, the location of the modern village of Silwan, was the burial
place of Jerusalem's most important citizens in the period of the
Biblical kings. The Mount has been used as a Jewish cemetery for over
3,000 years and holds approximately 150,000 graves, making it central in
the tradition of Jewish cemeteries. The religious ceremony marking the
start of a new month was held on the Mount of Olives in the days of the
Second Temple. Roman soldiers from the 10th Legion camped on the Mount
during the Siege of Jerusalem in the year 70 AD. After the destruction
of the Second Temple, Jews celebrated the festival of Sukkot on the
Mount of Olives. They made pilgrimages to the Mount of Olives because it
was 80 meters higher than the Temple Mount and offered a panoramic view
of the Temple site. It became a traditional place for lamenting the
Temple's destruction, especially on Tisha B'Av. Several key events in
the life of Jesus, as related in the Gospels, took place on the Mount of
Olives, and in the
Acts of the Apostles it is described as the
place from which Jesus ascended to heaven. Because of its association
with both Jesus and Mary, the Mount has been a site of Christian worship
since ancient times and is today a major site of pilgrimage for
Catholics, the Eastern Orthodox, and Protestants. In 1481, an Italian
Jewish pilgrim, Rabbi Meshullam da Volterra, wrote:
"And all the
community of Jews, every year, goes up to Mount Zion on the day of Tisha
B'Av to fast and mourn, and from there they move down along Yoshafat
Valley and up to Mount of Olives. From there they see the whole Temple
(the Temple Mount) and there they weep and lament the destruction of
this House." In the mid-1850s, the villagers of Silwan were paid
£100 annually by the Jews in an effort to prevent the desecration of
graves on the mount. Prime Minister of Israel Menachem Begin asked to be
buried on the Mount of Olives near the grave of Etzel member Meir
Feinstein, rather than Mount Herzl national cemetery.
Much of the top of the hill is occupied by At-Tur, a former village and
now a neighbourhood of East Jerusalem with a majority-Muslim
population.
The artist
Cornelius de Bruyn, (also called Cornelis de
Bruijn) was a Dutch artist and traveler. He made two large tours and
published illustrated books with his observations of people, buildings,
plants and animals.
During his first tour, he visited Rome. He
travelled in Egypt and climbed to the top of a pyramid where he left his
signature. De Bruijn made secret drawings of Jerusalem, then part of
the Ottoman Empire. His drawings of Palmyra are copies. De Bruijn
reached Cyprus and stayed among the Dutch merchants in Smyrna and
Constantinople. From 1684 he worked in Venice with the painter Johann
Carl Loth, returning in 1693 to The Hague, where he sold his souvenirs.
In 1698 he published his book with drawings, which was a success and was
translated in several languages. Two examples have colored
illustrations, the first color prints in history. Among his drawings
were the first pictures of the interior of the Great Pyramid and
Jerusalem that became known in Europe.
In 1701 he headed for
Archangelsk. During his second tour he visited the Samoyeds in northern
Russia. In Moscow he became acquainted with emperor Peter the Great: de
Bruijn painted his nieces, and the paintings were sent to possible
candidates for marriage.
In late April 1703, De Brujin left Moscow
along with the party of an Armenian merchants from Isfahan whose name he
recorded as Jacob Daviedof. De Bruijin and the Armenians sailed down
the Moscow River, the Oka and the Volga, eventually reaching Astrakhan.
Thanks to de Bruijn's short stopover in Nizhny Novgorod during the
Easter holidays, we now have his description of that major center of the
Russian Volga trade as it existed in 1703, with its Kremlin, stone
churches, and a lively bar (kabak) scene.
Leaving the borders of the
Russian state, de Brujin arrived to Persia, where he made drawings of
towns like Isfahan and Persepolis (1704–1705). He continued to Java and
returned to Persia, Russia, and ultimately the Netherlands.
His
drawings of Persepolis, a city destroyed by Alexander the Great, caused a
sensation. The mayor of Amsterdam Nicolaes Witsen and a member of the
Royal Society probably asked him to draw the city famous for its 40
columns. For a century, they were the best prints available to western
scholars. De Bruijn was accused of plagiarism and his second book,
Reizen over Moskovie was not such a success. From Amsterdam he fled to
Vianen.
De Bruijn died in Utrecht. It is not known when and where he was buried.
De Bruijn, who had read every Greek and Latin source he had been able
to obtain, displays a convincing knowledge of subjects, at times going
into the humorous. In Persia, he obtained a copy of Firdausi's Shahnamê,
which he summarized and made accessible to the west.
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2020 - Wandering Vertexes...
by Francis Rousseau
