Sites Around the World: Jericho

Jericho
Greatcommission.com

In the Old Testament, we have an account of the Israelites defeating the city of Jericho when they came into the Promised Land after wandering in the wilderness for 40 years. According to the biblical account, after the Israelites marched around the city once a day for six days, on the seventh day they encircled the city seven times. On the seventh time around, the priests blew the trumpets, the people shouted and the walls fell flat.

Charles Warren rediscovered these walls in 1868. Jericho, also known as present day Tell es-Sultan, is considered one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in the world, with evidence of settlement dating back to 9000 BCE.

During the Natufian phase (10,800-8,500 BCE), sedentary hunter-gatherers lived in large semi-subterranean oval stone structures. By the Pre-Pottery Neolithic A phase (8,500-7,300 BCE) roofed, oval semi-subterranean dwellings appear as a village. During this time, the first tower was built along with a defensive perimeter wall. Inhabitants began engaging in long distance trade and growing domesticated crops. Plastered human skulls appear in rectangular houses with red- and white-painted floors during the Pre-Pottery Neolithic B phase (7,300-6,000 BCE). “Plastered skulls are a known trait from PPNB sites, such as Kfar HaHoresh, Beidha, Çatalhöyük and Beisamoun, and similar eerie statuary at 'Ain Ghazal” (Kris Hirst). 

Tell es-Sultan
Wikipedia Commons

By the Early Neolithic (6.000-5,000 BCE), Jericho was mostly abandoned. Throughout the Middle and Late Neolithic (5,000-3,100 BCE), there was very minimal occupation. Extra defensive walls and towers were added during the Early and Middle Bronze Age (3,100-1,800 BCE). In the Late Bronze Age (1,800-1,400 BC), Jericho is destroyed.

“The citizens of Jericho were well prepared for a siege. A copious spring which provided water for ancient, as well as modern, Jericho lay inside the city walls. At the time of the attack, the harvest had just been taken in (Joshua 3:15), so the citizens had an abundant supply of food. This has been borne out by many large jars full of grain found in the Canaanite homes by John Garstang in his excavation in the 1930s and also by Kenyon. With a plentiful food supply and ample water, the inhabitants of Jericho could have held out for perhaps several years.

After the seventh trip around the city on the seventh day, Scripture tells us that the wall ‘fell down flat’ (Joshua 6:20). The Hebrew here carries the suggestion that it “fell beneath itself.”5 Is there evidence for such an event at Jericho? It turns out that there is ample evidence that the mudbrick city wall collapsed and was deposited at the base of the stone retaining wall at the time the city met its end.

After the city walls fell, how did the Israelites surmount the four to five meter (12–15 foot) high retaining wall at the base of the tell? Excavations have shown that the bricks from the collapsed walls formed a ramp against the retaining wall so that the Israelites could merely climb up over the top. The Bible is very precise in its description of how the Israelites entered the city: ‘the people went up into the city, every man straight before him [i.e., straight up and over],’ (Joshua 6:20). The Israelites had to go up, and that is what archaeology has revealed. They had to go from ground level at the base of the tell to the top of the rampart in order to enter the city.” – Bryant Wood

After this, Jericho lost its power as a political center and was ruled by Babylonians, the Persian, Roman, Byzantine and Ottoman Empire, and others up until present day. 

Panorama of Jericho
Wikipedia Commons

About the Author

I'm Melanie, the founder of BermudaQuest and an archaeology undergraduate at the University of New Mexico. I love writing about ancient and modern cultures. My goal is to make information about our origins available to everyone [in simple English!]