With about a week to go before the inauguration of President-elect Joe Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris, President Donald Trump boarded Air Force One to fly to McAllen, Texas and Alamo, Texas (not to be confused with The Alamo of San Antonio) to admire Trump’s Big, Beautiful Wall. Among others, President Trump was accompanied by Lindsey Graham who several days before had spoken regarding the counting of the Electoral College Votes, that he was not with Trump on that issue: “All I can say is, count me out. Enough is enough. We’ve got to end it.”

That story was a bit confusing, but what stands out to me is the whole idea of a wall. It led me to consider some of the “walls” from history.

jtr

One of the first walls that came to mind was from the Bible’s book of Joshua (Hebrew Bible and Christian Old Testament). Generally the Israelites were interested in subduing the Canaanites who lived in an area just north of Jerusalem. Joshua was the military leader who sought to overpower the city of Jericho whose defenses included a wall surrounding the entire city. Joshua was told by the Lord to march around the city once a day for six days, then on the seventh, march around seven times and blow your horns and thus the Walls of Jericho would fall. Archaeological evidence seems to place this happening about 1400 BCE: Before Common Era.

Readers may remember the spiritual thought to have been started in the early 1800s:

Joshua fought the battle of Jericho

Jericho, Jericho

Joshua fought the battle of Jericho

And the walls came tumbling down!

jtr

Possibly the most famous wall is the Great Wall of China which was actually an amalgam of defenses of several walls developed c.780 BCE to c.200 BCE. Emperor Qin Shi Huang was likely the unifier of those disparate walls during the Qin Dynasty (221 BCE — 206 BCE). Generally the wall was constructed to keep the northern tribes on the grassy plains from moving south into China’s more fertile land. The Great Wall is thought to be in excess of 1,000 miles in length.

Back in the 1980s when my wife and I started to travel abroad, China was one place I had always wanted to visit, so indeed we did. I walked a very small portion of the Great Wall of China which was not far from Beijing. The wall was somewhat effective but it still required military campaigns against the tribes of the north and also the wall’s effectiveness was enhanced by diplomacy.

Chronologically next were two, less famous, but again walls to keep out tribes from the north. This time the walls were in England. The wall that almost marks the border between England and Scotland is called Hadrian’s Wall after the Roman Ruler who actually had visited England in the period c.122 CE. It is only about 25 miles long and includes a cleared ditch on the north side, thus giving the soldiers on the higher wall area an advantage in case of attack. In the early 1980s my wife and I stopped to view a portion of Hadrian’s wall.

Twenty years after Hadrian’s wall was built, c. 142 CE, another Roman Ruler, Antonius Pius had constructed the Antonine Wall even though he did not visit England. This wall was further north of Hadrian’s Wall crossing Scotland on an east-west line, the eastern part just north of Edinburgh at the Firth of Forth. [I love that name, Firth of Forth. It actually means it is at the mouth (estuary) of several rivers including the river Forth.]

The last two walls I present are from the 20th century: The Maginot Line (which indeed was a lengthy fortress), 280 miles long, and The Berlin Wall.

The Maginot Line was constructed in the 1930s by France on its side of the French/German Border to keep the Germans from invading France.

Unfortunately it did not prevent the invasion – the Germans simply went around it by going through The Netherlands, Belgium, and Luxembourg. If I ever get back to Europe, I would hope to visit some structures that were part of the Maginot Line that included tunnels that used railroad engines.

The Berlin wall which in a sense was not unlike the Hadrian and Antonine Walls, had a vast expanse cleared that was patrolled by East Germans: The Death Strip. It’s life was from 1961 to 1989.

jtr

To go back to where this column started: I wonder if in a few years (or less), the Trump Wall will be like these other walls I have mentioned — that is they will become tourist attractions supplanted by other enforcement means including military campaigns, diplomacy, circumvention, etc.

Until next time: Oh, Fiddlesticks!