Circling Jericho

Ancient Jericho's walls were a sight to see

Last week, Israeli forces dismantled roadblocks around the West Bank city of Jericho, formally transferring control to Palestinian police. Jericho is the first of five West Bank cities scheduled to see such barriers come down in the coming weeks. Of course, this isn't the first time in Jericho's 10,000-year history that breaking down barriers has caused a stir.

Circling Jericho

Jericho is one of the world's oldest cities. In fact, Jericho was a city long before most people even knew what a city was.

Along the Banks of the River Jordan

Way back in 9000 BC, primitive hunters passing through Palestine found a spring-fed oasis near the River Jordan, a few miles from the shore of the Dead Sea. A thousand years later, those hunters' descendents had built what might have been the world's first city: Jericho, which had two or three thousand inhabitants at a time when most humans were still living in tents and huts.

The ancient city's very existence is a puzzle. It came together before humans had invented agriculture on any significant scale, but the place had too many inhabitants to be fed by hunting and gathering. Was it a trade city? If so, its lifeblood was probably salt. The Dead Sea provides an almost limitless supply of that valuable resource.

Jericho Builds Its Walls

From its earliest times, Jericho had walls. That in itself was a stunning achievement. The locals hadn't invented pottery yet, so there were no bricks to build with. Instead, Jericho's earliest walls were built of rough stones, some of which weighed several tons.

In 8000 BC, four thousand years before the Egyptian pyramids were built, Jericho had a wall 12 feet (3.5 meters) thick and more than 20 feet (6 meters) high. Reinforcing the wall was at least one 30-foot (9-meter) stone tower containing an interior staircase. At the time, Jericho's walls would have been a marvel to behold.

You don't build walls that high, and then surround them with a ditch, unless you have something to protect--and someone to protect it against. Unfortunately, we have no idea who Jericho's enemies might have been in those days. Archaeological evidence shows that the walls were damaged at least 17 times, though in most cases the culprit was probably an earthquake.

And the Walls Come Tumbling Down

The city was abandoned around 6000 BC, and only intermittently populated during the next 3,000 years. Around 1900 BC, the Canaanites captured the region and rebuilt the city. They were still there 500 or 600 years later, when the people of Israel arrived, looking for the Promised Land.

The Book of Joshua tells the story. Just after Moses had relinquished his command to Joshua, the Israelites made ready to attack the first Canaanite city they saw: Jericho. Joshua sent two spies across the River Jordan to take the measure of the city, and the men reported back that their enemies were paralyzed with fear.

At this news, the Israelites crossed the river and encircled the city. Priests carried the Ark of the Covenant around the walls while blowing horns for seven days, until finally the Israelites let loose with a great shout that collapsed the fortifications. The Israelites then destroyed Jericho, and Joshua pronounced a curse on any man who might rebuild it.

How could such a thing have happened? Experts agree that the walls were, in fact, destroyed in the middle of the second millennium BC. But archaeologists (and others) have been arguing about exactly when, why, and how Jericho's walls came tumbling down for more than a century.

O Little Town of Jericho

Whatever the circumstances, Jericho was abandoned again for more than 500 years. By Roman times, it had migrated to a site a few miles away from the original settlement. Herod the Great, the Roman-appointed king of Judaea, built a winter palace there, where he died in 4 BC.

After that, Jericho declined into a small village. It converted to Islam in the 7th century, and for hundreds of years was part of the Ottoman Empire. In 1949, it was incorporated into Jordan, where it stayed until 1967, when Israel occupied it (along with the rest of the West Bank) during the Six Days' War. A town of less than 15,000 people, it now plays its part in the still-developing story of Palestinian self-rule.

Mark Diller
March 21, 2005

Want to learn more?
See what's left of ancient Jericho
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From: KnowledgeNews