Jericho in brief
Tell es-Sultan, the mound of ancient Jericho, rises beside a spring in the Jordan Valley, about 10 kilometres north of the Dead Sea and around 250 metres below sea level, in the West Bank. The spring, Ain es-Sultan, watered the oasis, and people settled there at the end of the last Ice Age. About 20 layers of settlement, one on top of the other, make up the mound. UNESCO listed the site as a World Heritage Site in 2023.
Excavations
The German archaeologist Ernst Sellin dug at the mound in 1907 to 1909, and the British archaeologist John Garstang in the 1930s. The most important work was by Kathleen Kenyon, who dug a deep trench from 1952 to 1958 and set out the sequence of occupation using careful methods that have become a model.
The earliest town
Kenyon found that around 9000 to 8000 BC, in the Pre-Pottery Neolithic period, there was a settlement of round mud-brick houses, with a wall of stone and a tower. The tower is about 8.5 metres high and 9 metres across, with an inner staircase of 22 steps. It is among the oldest large stone structures in the world. Why it was built is not known. It may have been a defence against attackers, a protection against floods, or a symbol of power.
By about 7000 BC, in the later Pre-Pottery Neolithic, people were building rectangular houses with plastered floors. They buried their dead under the floors, and in some cases separated the skull, and modelled the face on it in plaster, with shells for eyes. These plastered skulls are among the most striking objects from the period. The people grew wheat and barley, and kept goats.
The walls of Joshua
In the Bible, the walls of Jericho fall to Joshua. Garstang thought that he had found the fallen walls of the Late Bronze Age, around 1400 BC. Kenyon found that the walls that he had dug up were from the Early Bronze Age, in the third millennium BC, and that little remained of a Late Bronze Age town, so there was little to test the story. The debate has continued, with some scholars arguing for different dates. Archaeology cannot prove or disprove a biblical event, and most researchers regard the story as a later account.
Why it matters
Jericho was one of the first places where people settled in large numbers, before pottery and with the beginnings of farming. It shows the Neolithic transition in the Near East, a change in human history that led to towns, storage, specialisation and monuments. See also Çatalhöyük and Göbekli Tepe.
Visiting
The tell and the tower can be visited, with a cable car above the town, and the site museum. Conditions in the West Bank can change, so check current travel advice.
Sources
- Kenyon, K. M. (1957). Digging Up Jericho. Ernest Benn.
- Bar-Yosef, O. (1986). The walls of Jericho: an alternative interpretation. Current Anthropology 27: 157 to 162.
- UNESCO World Heritage Centre. World Heritage List, entry for Ancient Jericho/Tell es-Sultan (2023).