On Day 6 of our trip, we left Jerusalem for the ancient site of Jericho.
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| Today, Jericho is called "Tell es-Sultan" |
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| Tel Jericho is located in Palestinian Territory |
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| There isn't very much left of Jericho today... |
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| Jericho is actually not a *massive* city. It had significant defenses for its time though.
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Short Note on Rahab and the Walls of Jericho
Rahab, according to the Joshua 2:15, lived on the wall of Jericho. Typically, people assume that the walls were very thick. Excavation shows however, that Jericho had two "walls", a wall, and a revetement wall. The first wall was raised and atop a hill (to prevent things like battering rams from taking it down). The revetement wall was a retaining part of the wall. The section between the walls was actually where Rahab lives.
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Short Note on the Size of Jericho
Jericho is actually not a very big city. (It may take maybe 30 minutes to walk around it!) In these times, the cities were set up for administration, for storage and for protection, and the majority of the people lived outside of the city.
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| People have planted farms all the way to the edge of it. |
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Carbon Dating vs. Pottery Dating
In order to date something using the Carbon Dating method, organic material is required, such as burned wood or bone. Pottery dating is much more effective because the style of the pottery and the make of it are more easily dateable.
Today, archeologists use pottery dating more often than carbon dating.
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| This is the site of the first archaeological excavation of Jericho |
Short History of Kathleen Kenyon's Excavation of Jericho
Kathleen Kenyon was the first person to excavate Jericho. During 1952 to 1958 she led a team to gather information about this ancient city.
One of the problems that occurred with her work though was that her dating of the city was wrong. (With her research she had dated the city as having fallen before Joshua arrived).
This is something that is now widely recognized by scholars as incorrect. What she did was count all the silt layers, and take into consideration the time it would take to build up, however she did not take into account the amount of rain that fell here and the heavy silt. She also restricted her pottery dating to imported pottery, instead of examining the local pottery in the area.
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| This is the Elisha Spring at Jericho. Click on the image at the bottom right to read the story behind it. |
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Up until now, this seems like one of the most refreshing stops on our journey... :)
But there was more, a lot more ahead :)
From Jericho, we departed for the Qumran Caves
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| First, the Qumran Museum... |
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| The Qumran Community was a Community of Essenes |
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And then we left the air-conditioned museum to head out and see the actual site.
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| Cistern - They used these to store water when it rained |
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| The sun was scorching, and there is no shade at all around here! |
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| The cave normally pictured in the videos for the Dead Sea Scrolls |
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| I asked for a good shot, but, they missed the cave... :( (You can just see the top of if) |
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| Here's my friend Barb next to the cave |
From here we departed for lunch and for Herod's table-top mountain fortress of Masada |
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