JERICHO

Arabic Ariha town in the disputed West Bank area occupied by Israel since 1967, on the west side of the Jordan River valley. It is one of the earliest continuous settlements in the world, dating perhaps from about 9000 BC. Jericho is famous in biblical history as the first town attacked by the Israelites under Joshua after they crossed the Jordan River (Joshua 6). After its destruction by the Israelites it was, according to the biblical account, abandoned until Hiel the Bethelite established himself there in the 9th century BC (1 Kings 16:34). Jericho is mentioned several other times in the Old and New Testaments. Herod the Great established a winter residence there, and he died there in 4 BC. The site of the Roman and New Testament Jericho is approximately 1 mile (1.6 km) south of that of the Old Testament town. Old Testament Jericho has been identified in the mound known as Tall As-Sultan (at the source of the copious spring 'As-Sultan), which rises 70 feet (21 m) above the surrounding plain. A number of major archaeological expeditions have worked at the site, notably in 195258 under Kathleen M. Kenyon, director of the British School of Archaeology in Jerusalem; one of the main objectives has been to establish the date of the town's destruction by the Israelitesa matter of importance for the chronology of the Israelite entry into Canaan. Evidence of this destruction was thought to have been found but proved to be erroneous. Most of the town of the period, including the whole circuit of the town walls, has been removed by erosion; enough survives to show only that there was a town of the period. This may have been destroyed in the second half of the 14th century BC, but evidence is too scanty for precision. The site was then abandoned until the Iron Age. Little trace has been found of the 9th-century-BC occupation attributed to Hiel, but there was a sizable settlement in the 7th century BC, ending perhaps at the time of the second Babylonian Exile in 586 BC. The site was then finally abandoned, and the later Jerichos grew up elsewhere. Excavations have shown, however, that Jericho had a very long history before the biblical period, and the site's great importance is that it gives evidence of the first development of permanent settlements and thus of the first steps toward civilization. Traces have been found of visits of Mesolithic hunters, dated by carbon-14 to about 9000 BC, and of a long period of settlement by their descendants. By about 8000 BC the inhabitants had grown into an organized community capable of building a massive stone wall around the settlement, strengthened at one point at least by a massive stone tower. The size of this settlement justifies the use of the term town and suggests a population of some 2,0003,000 persons. Thus, this 1,000 years had seen movement from a hunting way of life to full settlement. The development of agriculture can be inferred from this, and grains of cultivated types of wheat and barley have been found. Jericho is thus one of the places providing evidence of the development of agriculture. It is highly probable that, to provide enough land for cultivation, irrigation had been invented. This first Neolithic culture of Palestine was a purely indigenous development. These occupants were succeeded about 7000 BC by a second group, bringing a culture that was still Neolithic and still not manufacturing pottery, though it was not indigenous. This occupation probably indicates the arrival of newcomers from one of the other centres, possibly in northern Syria, in which the Neolithic way of life based on agriculture had developed. This second Neolithic stage ended about 6000 BC. For the next 1,000 years there is little evidence of occupation at Jericho. Only about 5000 BC did Jericho show the influences of developments that had been taking place in the north, where an ever-increasing number of villages had appeared, still Neolithic but marked by the use of pottery. The first pottery users of Jericho were, however, primitive compared with their predecessors on the site, living in simple huts sunk in the ground. They were probably mainly pastoralists. Over the next 2,000 years, occupation was sparse and possibly intermittent. At the end of the 4th millennium BC, an urban culture once more appeared in Jericho, as in the rest of Palestine. Jericho became a walled town again, with its walls many times rebuilt. About 2300 BC there was once more a break in urban life. The nomadic newcomers, consisting of a number of different groups, were probably the Amorites. Their successors, about 1900 BC, were the Canaanites, sharing a culture found the whole length of the Mediterranean littoral. The Canaanites reintroduced town life, and excavations have provided evidence both of their houses and of their domestic furniture, which was found in their tombs as equipment of the dead in the afterlife. These discoveries have indicated the nature of the culture that the Israelites found when they infiltrated into Canaan and which they largely adopted. Excavations in 195051 revealed something of Herodian Jericho. A magnificent facade along the Wadi al-Qult, a mile south of Old Testament Jericho, is probably part of Herod's palace; and its style, completely Italian, illustrates Herod's devotion to Rome. Traces of other fine buildings can be seen in this area, which became the centre of Roman Jericho. Jericho of the Crusader period was on yet a third site, a mile east of the Old Testament site, and here the modern town grew up. An insignificant village in Turkish times, it became a winter resort after the British mandate over Palestine was established (1923). Its major expansion, however, came after its incorporation into Jordan in 1949. The establishment in the neighbourhood of two enormous camps of Arab refugees from Israel brought great activity to the town, which was largely rebuilt; the area of the oasis was expanded by irrigation. The Arab-Israeli War of June 1967, however, resulted in the dispersal of much of the refugee population. Modern Jericho is an Arab town that retains its character of an oasis where bananas, dates, and oranges are grown. Pop. (1987 est.) 12,528. Dame Kathleen Mary Kenyon The Editors of the Encyclopdia Britannica