Sacred Places of the Middle East

The largest single building ever created on earth is the Great Pyramid at Giza in Egypt. When Napoleon saw it in 1798, he calculated that the stones in the three Giza pyramids could be used to build a wall one foot wide and ten feet high around all of France. But why were they built? No bones nor funeral objects have been discovered in the Great Pyramid. There are, however, strange hollow "shafts" that seem to point to the stars. In the 1980s a group of Japanese engineers and other experts tried to build a duplicate of the Great Pyramid, and found it could not be done. It is speculated that the secret knowledge the ancient Egyptians used to accomplish their impossible tasks was given to them from Atlantis.

In the Holy Land, a visitor can walk in the footsteps of Moses, Jesus and the Prophet Muhammad. Israel is such a small country that in one day it is possible to visit the Mediterranean seacoast fortress where Crusaders, including Richard the Lionheart, first came ashore; drink water from the well in Nazareth where the Angel Gabriel met the Virgin Mary; touch the sacred rock where the Ark of the Covenant once rested in Solomon's First Temple; and see the cave where the Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered. Even visitors who follow neither Christianity, Judaism nor Islam will feel moved by the powerful energies of this most ancient land.

All over the world, five times each day, Muslims pray facing the most holy place of Islam, Mecca. A small city in Saudi Arabia, Mecca is where the Prophet Muhammad was born. In the courtyard of the Great Mosque of Mecca is the Ka'aba, a cube-shaped shrine covered in black cloth embroidered in gold and silver.

In Palmyra, northern Syria, is the Temple of Bel or Baal, the well preserved ruins of a Roman temple associated with worship of the sun and moon gods. 

Atesyhkade near Yazd, Iran, is the site of an ancient fire temple that is a major Zoroastrian pilgrimage destination. It is believed that a ceremonial flame has burned here continuously for more than 1500 years.

There is a spectacular complex of sacred buildings at Petra, Jordan. The area has been inhabited for over 9,000 years and features temples and tombs carved out of solid rock.