The Ancients - Jericho

Episode Date: January 6, 2024

The ancient city of Jericho is often thought to be the oldest continuously inhabited settlement in the world. Made famous by the biblical tale of its conquest by Joshua, it is situated a stones throw from the western bank of the Jordan River. But did Jericho’s famous walls really come crashing down at the sound of Joshua’s trumpets?In this episode of The Ancients, Tristan speaks to archeologist Felicity Cobbing from the Palestine Exploration Fund to explore what Jericho’s archeology can reveal about its past. In doing so they catch glimpses of the city's extraordinary evolution and the pivotal role it played in shaping the cultural, agricultural and defensive processes of other ancient civilisations.Discover the past with exclusive history documentaries and ad-free podcasts presented by world-renowned historians from History Hit. Watch them on your smart TV or on the go with your mobile device. Get 50% off your first 3 months with code ANCIENTS sign up now for your 14-day free trial HERE.You can take part in our listener survey here.

Hi, I'm Tristan Hughes, and if you would like the Ancient ad-free, get early access and bonus episodes, sign up to History Hit. With a History Hit subscription, you can also watch hundreds of hours of original documentaries, including my recent documentary all about Petra and the Nabataeans, and enjoy a new release every week. Sign up now by visiting historyhit.com slash subscribe. It's the Entrance on History Hit. I'm Tristan Hughes, your host, and in today's episode, well, it's the one I've really been looking forward to sharing with you. We're exploring the archaeology of one of the most incredible sites in the world, in my opinion. The site of Jericho. Now, Jericho, today situated in the West Bank, has evidence of settlement,

of fortifications stretching back some 10,000 years, including the oldest known stone tower in history. Jericho has a fascinating story and we're going to be delving deep into its layers and layers of archaeology, from the Stone Age to the Iron Age. But of course, we will also explore the famous biblical story of Jericho. It is why the name is so well known today. Does the archaeology corroborate, does it support the tale of Joshua's siege of Jericho and its famous walls tumbling down? Well, to explain all, I was delighted to visit the Palestine Exploration Fund charity in Greenwich a few weeks back to interview the archaeologist

and author Felicity Cobbing. The PEF is a wonderful charity, so do check them out. And you can also see some bonus Jericho videos that Felicity and I recorded on my Instagram page at Ancients Tristan. But back to the episode at hand. I really do hope you enjoy. And here's Felicity to talk all things Jericho. Felicity, it is wonderful to have you on the podcast today. Thank you for inviting me. You are more than welcome to talk about Jericho. It's a topic that I've been wanting to cover

for a while. And also, at the Palestine Exploration Fund, this beautiful building in Greenwich, correct yes indeed big question first did jericho's walls really come tumbling down well they did but not quite in the way that you'd expect we will explore that as we get to that time period in jericho's story but we're going to do it almost chronologically from stone age down to bronze then to iron okay but to set the scene first of all felicity when someone mentions jericho whereabouts are we talking okay so jericho the modern city of jericho is situated very close to the ancient site the tell of teller sultan which is right next to a perennial spring it's just north of the Dead Sea on the west bank of the River

Jordan. And the climate is extraordinary. And that's really the important thing about Jericho is it has this extraordinary microclimate. It's very warm. In the summer, it gets impossibly warm. But it has a nice ambient temperature for most of the year round. The soil is also very fertile and it has very good water sources. So this makes it a fantastic place for agriculture, almost subtropical in its climate, unlike the surrounding hills where you've got much more of a Mediterranean climate. Very nice indeed. And so you've got this beautiful setting in the Holy Land. What is Jericho best known for? Come on, let's start with this. What is the story in the Bible that refers to Jericho?

Okay. So what we're talking about is the Battle of Jericho, I think. Joshua fought the Battle of Jericho and the walls came tumbling down. There are issues with that, which I'm sure we'll go into. But the ancient site was basically a Canaanite city for millennia. The city is also referred to as the City of Palms, which is a lovely title. It's very evocative, isn't it? And indeed, if the land is cultivated and it needs work to be productive, it's a fantastic place for growing date palms. And there are loads and loads of date plantations around the city of Jericho today. And the dates are fantastic. I've got no doubt whatsoever from that area of the world indeed. Is this an important story? I'm just looking at

the literature, first of all, when Jericho, this Battle of Jericho is mentioned in the Old Testament, is this an important part in the whole biblical narrative? Yes, it's essential. It's one of those kind of moments where things pivot. So if you remember in the story of the book of the Exodus, the story of the wanderings of the Israelite tribes, in the story of the book of the Exodus, the story of the wanderings of the Israelite tribes, Moses brings the Hebrews out of Egypt and they get lost in the desert for 40 years, as you do. And eventually they make it up through Jordan, through the kingdoms of Edom and Moab, and they make it up to Mount Nebo where Moses dies, seeing the promised land which is on the other side of the River Jordan. And at that point, the staff of leadership falls to Joshua, his general, and Joshua looks to

invade Canaan. That's what this is about. And the site that is the first to fall is Jericho. And the site that is the first to fall is Jericho. So it's an essential part of the story to bring the Israelites back into the promised land, according to the biblical text. We have, of course, this archaeological site that you mentioned earlier, Tel Es Soltan, which is acknowledged as Jericho. But no such thing as a silly question. Why do we know that this site is Jericho? Well, the people who wrote the Bible, there were many people, but this was their landscape. This was their part of the world.

So often when people are looking at the historicity of certain biblical passages or not, as the case may be, but there's one feature which kind of is throughout whether the story is fantastic or whether it's something which has some basis in historical fact and that is that the landscape is very real because it's there that's where they grew up and so there is that sense of of being able to identify certain sites by the description whether what happened at that site is what the bible says happened at that site is another matter, but you can kind of often tell where things were. And the person who really started this academic study off of, you know, kind of site identification was an American scholar called Edward Robinson. And he was one of the first people to look really critically at this and not just go on the pilgrimage trail

and accept, oh yes, that's Emmaus or whatever. And you find out that actually there are three Emmauses. So which one's the right one? He was the one who really started to scrutinize the biblical texts with site identification, see whether that was a real something that had some kind of veracity, as it were, or whether it was a later tradition and so on and so forth. That was in the kind of the 1850s he was doing his work. And he was really the inspiration for the PEF and their explorers. Coming on the back of that, Charles Warren, for the Palestine Exploration Fund, did a very, very short excavation at the site of Jericho and identified that it was a man-made place, rather than just a natural feature. And so with that, with Edward Warwick Robinson's

work, it was clear that this was where ancient Jericho had to be. And has there been any archaeological evidence with like the name Jericho? I mean, one of the most fascinating bits of archaeology from London today in the Mithraeum is that small tablet which has Londinium on it, you know, the earliest mention of London in history. Is there anything similar to that at Jericho that's ever been discovered wouldn't that be wonderful welcome to jericho please drive slowly no we do have there are places where that is the case the site of geyser does literally have welcome to geyser signs but at jericho no we don't have that okay fair enough well thank you for explaining that but you mentioned those archaeologists who have done work at Jericho.

I mean, for how long have archaeologists and antiquarians been fascinated, been wanting to excavate at this site? So Charles Warren was the first. That was in the winter of 1868, 67, 68. And it was a very quick visit. He was actually doing a lot more work in Jerusalem, but went down for a few days. He didn't enjoy it very much. He much preferred Jerusalem, but he did establish that these were man-made features in the landscape. Prior to that,

these mounds, these tells, had been thought to be natural features. In the Jordan Valley, there are lots and lots and lots of tales and people like Edward Robinson thought that they were kind of alluvial remnants from the Lysanne Lake that had covered them in previous geological eras. So this was an important moment because it meant that all those mounds were now archaeological sites for investigation. So a whole new archaeological landscape opened up in the Jordan Valley and elsewhere throughout the Levant, actually. And that kind of kick-started, as you said, archaeological excavations, not just at Jericho, but other places as well.

And that fascination, archaeological fascination in Jericho, has continued down to the present day. Yeah, I mean, it kind of stoppy-starty. So after Charles Warren visited, it wasn't really until the 1890s that we visited again. Again, not very long, but saying, you know what, this would be a great place to have a dig, didn't get around to doing it. And it wasn't until the 20th century that there were some proper excavations at Jericho, some really, really serious explorations which started to uncover a lot of information.

Felicity, what is some of the earliest dated, earliest surviving archaeology that we have from Jericho? Okay. The problem with archaeology is that you don't get the earliest until you've got to the bottom by its very nature. So often it's the earliest levels of sites which have multiple periods of settlement that you know the least about, which is a kind of a shame. However, we do know that the site of Jericho was at least visited, perhaps not permanent settlement, but itinerant, transhuman communities in the Holocene. But things really, really get serious in the Neolithic period. There are two phases called Pre-Pottery Neolithic A and B, PPNA and PPNB for short. And these are the two periods which

Neolithic Jericho is really famous for. And they show a really concerted effort to build permanent settled communities. What kind of communities these are is really, I don't think it's possible to say. The idea that they were a city is going far too far. A city is something that requires a lot of internal management and division, and you've got your financial quarter here and your suburbs and all that kind of stuff. But you've certainly got permanent settlement. We're talking about 10, bc 9 000 bc through to about 7 000 bc okay that is incredible because sometimes when we think of the word neolithic so the coming of farming in the stone age the new stone age i mean in the uk yeah neolithic in the uk like that's 5 000 years ago

that's stonehenge that's ring of brodca and that's orkney but in you know the near east that's 5 000 years ago that's stonehenge that's ring of brodka and that's alchemy but in you know the near east that's more than 10 000 years ago that you have a settlement i'm not going to say city but you have a settlement like jericho yes that is mind-boggling to think it's that long ago yeah i mean it really is and this is what we call the neolithic revolution isn't it that agricultural revolution where people for for whatever reason, decide that running around after gazelles just isn't cutting it anymore and they want to stay in one place. It's not necessarily an easy life choice. There are consequences, physical consequences of this lifestyle where you start growing crops, which include things like barley, emmer wheat, oats as well, the manufacture of flour is quite

hard on the body. And you start getting kind of lifestyle illnesses like arthritis creeping into the bone records of the population where previously that didn't exist. So, you know, actually as a lifestyle choice, it's hard, but it does have its benefits. Security, not running around all the time, being able to control your food source that kind of thing that makes it an attractive option despite the downsides and so what is this great story of very early jericho about it being encompassed by a wall this is an extraordinary feature of jericho i have to say that i mean it's not the only site in this period which is extraordinary. There are sites all over the Fertile Crescent which display extraordinary levels of craftsmanship,

of organisation to build monuments, but they're all quite different. Jericho's unique feature is a defensive wall, stone-built wall with a tower that is nine meters in diameter at its base, seven meters at its top that survives, and it has an internal staircase. It's a really complex structure. And there is no doubt that the population to build such a thing would have had to have been very well organized. So although the archaeology of the town, as much as there is excavated, doesn't show particular organization within the city walls, it's all kind of a bit, you know, just houses. There is evidently some serious organisation within the community to build this structure. The function of that wall is another matter of debate. What was it for?

Some people have suggested it might have been a flood defence because you're talking about being in proximity with the River Jordan, which can flood, especially if the winter rains and the winter snows from Mount Hermon are very heavy. And this is before irrigation and all that kind of stuff. And the other obvious possibility is defensive against other marauding communities who would have been around. But we don't know. I think most people think it's defensive. And it is such an amazing feat for these early farmers. If we talk about objects found from those layers, I know that it's pre-pottery, so I'm guessing they haven't found any pottery from those layers. You would be right. Oh, brilliant. So what kind of objects have they

found from those layers? So a lot of agricultural tools, flint tools, things like grinding querns to process the grains, flint blades and pounding tools. Also, at a really kind of exceptional level, there's quite a lot of ceremonial gear. So you have a series of different kinds of artefacts that all seem to kind of tie in to what might be interpreted as some kind of ancestor cult, not just from Jericho, but from other sites from the same period. So you have at Jericho and at other sites, you have what are called plastered skulls. These are the skulls of the deceased, which have been then, the flesh has been allowed to rot, which have been then the flesh has been allowed to rot the lower mandible has been removed and the remaining skull has then been covered in a lime plaster and the features maybe of the deceased we think possibly of the deceased have been then rendered in this lime plaster cowry shells have

been inlaid in the eyes and sometimes features like hair or a headdress have been put on as well using things like ochre to denote kind of hair and so on and so forth. So there's those things and they're often found beneath buildings and the bodies also sometimes. So keeping your ancestors close that's the thing. The other kind of artifact which you also find at Jericho and at other sites as well, not just in Palestine and Israel, but also in Transjordan, are plaster statues. And these can be quite large. And in fact, they're the earliest large-scale renditions of the human form. And they're built around a corn dolly. So that's kind of like the structure, the frame. And then again, layers of this lime plaster

built up to build the human figure. And again, features are molded and inlays with kairi eyes for shells and ochre for hair and beards and sometimes trousers and things like that. And sometimes there's a site called Ein Kazal in Jordan, which is just outside Jordan, and a whole cache of these was found. I think there's something like 11 statues in this kind of cache, all squished down. It was a nightmare job for the conservator and again you wonder are these denoting particular individuals are these kind of like the ancestors who may have been brought out paraded who knows how but is this indicating some kind of ancestor cult maybe the dates just amaze me if that is like you know some 10 000 years ago that you have that archaeological surviving

just before we completely move on from the stone age do we know much about how far reaching the connections of the people of jericho the connections they had at this time would they have had connections with elsewhere in the fertile crescent oh i'm sure i mean cowrie shells for example they come i think from the red sea right oh i'm not sure you've certainly trading, whether they themselves went all the way or whether you've got stops on the way, but there are definitely connections with a wider community. And so as we move on from the Stone Age, the end of the Neolithic, when abouts are we talking in the Near East with the end of the Neolithic? Oh, gosh.

Well, it's a kind of fluid thing. I mean, we tend to say that by the fourth millennium, you're entering the Chalcolithic. So this is the copper age. But it's a bit fluid, I would say. However, Jericho doesn't continue in occupation. This is important. The idea that it's the oldest continuously inhabited city is a bit of a fib, be honest it comes and it goes it's a bit like the space race this idea of settling down takes a bit of work and it takes a bit of getting used to and settlements are abandoned and then they try again and the period where things really get going properly is the early bronze age of the third millennium but that's interesting so

from the archaeology so far for stone age jericho you mentioned ppna and ppnb does there then seem to be a bit of an abandonment at jericho but at other sites not so things you know it's part of an evolving landscape okay and the question is why did they abandon? Could it have been local pressures, populations becoming too large for the landscape to sustain in the way with the tools that they had at their disposal? The kind of technologies of agriculture that they had at their disposal couldn't support that population, maybe? Who knows? Who knows? Who knows? You highlighted that, you mentioned it in passing. So we do get to the early Bronze Age.

Is this when you see this great revival in jericho's story could this be when we start potentially seeing it as what we might call a city yes i think so proto city city again there's a lot of discussion as to what makes a city a city what is it i think modern cities are not necessarily the model that we would look to but there are potentially some features that we would expect in a city and one of those is kind of the idea of of some kind of divisions quarters within the city to fulfill different functions so some kind of in town planning organization that kind of thing possibly denoting a hierarchy in terms of the administration of that city so perhaps you would have a temple area ritual area you'd have a kind of industrial area where all the mucky stuff happened place place where people lived. And even within that, maybe

areas where higher ranking people lived, lower ranking people lived. And the other big feature is defences, which of course is something that even Stone Age Jericho had, but bizarrely, we don't quite know how and why. but this is something which you see in the early bronze age pretty consistently is the development of walled cities people living in the same spot doing so very very successfully producing lots and lots of different things olive oil wine textiles some of it to keep some of it for surplus and when you've got a surplus you need to protect it i remember doing a podcast episode very recently with Dr. Jamie Fraser about the origins of olive oil and those olive oil factories. And I didn't realize how closely

connected olive oil was to the rise of so many of the city-states. And Jericho seems to be a good example of one of those. Yeah, olive oil, it isn't actually Jericho, olive oil isn't the biggie, because it's too hot for olive production. Funnily enough, they would potentially have been involved in trading other things, like for example, bitumen from the Dead Sea. Very, very important for trade with Egypt. The Egyptians use bitumen for everything from lining their boats to lining their coffins and using it in mummification. So it's a very, very important substance. And potentially the kind of agriculture you might find things being grown there that you wouldn't find growing elsewhere. So it would still have been an important point. And actually in the early Bronze

Age town, I believe that the Italian-Palestinian expedition, the latest one, found nilotic shells, which they think were being used as cosmetic containers. So there's quite a clear indication of a relationship with Egypt directly. They're getting fancy gear from the Egyptians. They're trading back something nice that the Egyptians like. So this is very much, Jericho is very much a part of a wider community. Absolutely part of a wider community. Once again, hinting at how even in the early Bronze Age, it's part of a wider interconnected world and all those

trade routes that are emerging. Is there any evidence of a potential palatial building or something like that? Yes. Again, the Italian and Palestinian expedition uncovered the remnants of a palace right up on the summit in an area called Spring Hill, which then overlooks the spring, the Ain of Sultan. So that dates to the EB2 and 3 periods. So definitely we're talking about a town which has the features which we would say looks like that which we would associate with a city lots of houses as well at that time right yeah yeah and are we talking like simple mud brick structures do we know much about how they were constructed these houses yeah i mean right from the early bronze age onwards and actually even earlier right back into the neolithic you're talking about mud brick on stone foundation so the stones would be like river boulders. They're not cut stones. And from the early Bronze Age, it's associated with Canaanite architecture.

So double row stone foundations, two boulders going bonk, bonk, bonk, and then mud brick superstructure on top. And sometimes the walls are bigger than that. So depending on the structure, there would be thicker foundations and thicker superstructure on top and sometimes the walls are bigger than that so depending on the structure there would be thicker foundations and thicker superstructure as well and i'd like to talk a bit more about the people of early bronze age jericho you mentioned during the stone age how they found bodies underneath the houses almost of the ancestors when we get to the bronze age period is there evidence of cemeteries finally being created outside of the walls?

Yeah, and at Jericho, the cemeteries are really one of the main sources of our information about the inhabitants. There's quite an extensive cemetery which has been excavated by several different groups of archaeologists. And they go through from the early Bronze Age right the way through to the middle Bronze Age. And way through to the middle bronze age and they come in the form of sharp what are called shaft tombs so these are tombs which are cut into the bedrock so there's a shaft going down and then a chamber and they are like family vaults so multiple successive burials and then when it gets a bit full you push everything to one side and stack the skulls up in one corner and the leg bones in another to make room for auntie who's just popped her clogs and

so you get these really really quite elaborate with many many people who are buried in a single shaft tomb looking like you know a family vault yeah family vault and i'm guessing were there any grave goods recovered in these there were were they weren't there? Yeah, Jericho is awesome. But it's grave goods because, you know, that climate that I was talking about earlier, the reason for this weird climate that it has is because Jericho is at pretty much the lowest point on Earth. It's where the crust is very thin. We're talking it's about 400 meters below sea level. And it's on the rift valley.

Okay, this is the rift that goes all the way down to South Africa and goes all the way up that eastern escarpment through Africa, up through the Red Sea, up through the Dead Sea, up the Jordan River until it hits Anatolia. And that's why you get all the earthquakes in Anatolia. And this rift means that it's a very geologically active region, which is also really important. And what it also means is that you've got a lot of hot springs around, you have lots of strange kind of minerals, and also possibly strange gases. possibly strange gases. And the feature of the Jericho tombs is the incredible preservation, not just of the usual kind of pots and whatnot, but also organic material. So you have a whole kind of repertoire of organic artifacts that is preserved at Jericho that you otherwise just don't see. Things like tables, baskets, floor rushing, all sorts of stuff like this that means you're in a position to kind

of flesh out what the material culture of these people actually was, what they surrounded their lives with, all their deaths. We don't know whether these were specifically just for burial or whether they represent things that they would have also have had in use in daily life they're such invaluable resources aren't they to painting more of a picture of who these people were and how they lived as mentioned tables yeah like could those have been like in those houses yes potentially so yes i mean they don't survive in the outside of the graves they don't survive but in the graves when they're buried in that bedrock, then they've survived. So we've got Jericho at this time in the early Bronze Age, and the archaeology surviving sounds

absolutely amazing. And Jericho does seem to be almost reaching its zenith, can we say? It seems to be quite powerful or prominent in the region. Yeah, I think it's one of those key sites. The early Bronze Age is the build-up. It's the earliest phase and things really get going in the Middle Bronze Age. That's when you see Canaanite material culture at its height and the town of Jericho at its most prosperous, its most vigorous. And what is this epitomised by, this Middle Bronze Age Jericho that seems to be so prominent and powerful

number one the walls they rebuild the walls they introduce what's called a glassy which is like this stone revetment and then mud brick wall superstructure on top so they massively fortify it and the archaeology from the site shows a very it it's not a huge town, but it's very, very busy. There's what's called the middle Bronze Age palace storerooms are full of jars, full of grain and things like this. So it's a very, if you're thinking about your Minoan palaces, there is something like a parallel, perhaps not quite so fancy, but the kind of organization of it is quite similar in a way where you have storerooms full of jars full of grain and that kind of thing. And then in the cemetery, you see the most brilliant grave goods. So you have lots and lots and lots of pottery.

This is the period where Canaanite pottery is at its nicest. It's quite plain, but it's very graceful in its styling. And you also have all these wonderful organic remains, and you have really quite nice kind of personal items and jewellery. A lot of it very, very Egyptianising. That link with Egypt is a massively strong cultural continuum in the southern Levant as a whole, not just in this period, but even today. So the Middle Bronze Age is kind of fun. Yeah. Kind of fun indeed. It's all looking good for Jericho at this time. However, you know where we're going to go next. What from the archaeology does it reveal about what happens to this very prominent Jericho as the Bronze Age progresses? Okay well like a lot of sites I'm afraid things come to a rather fiery end

at the end of the Middle Bronze Age. This is not the first time the site was destroyed it was also destroyed several times in the Early Bronze Age, although people went, continued to live there. But at the end of the Middle Bronze Age, basically what you're looking at is the rise of the new kingdom pharaohs in Egypt. And a little side story that's been going on while things are looking so fun in Jericho and in Canaan in general, is that Egypt has been experiencing what is called the second intermediate period in which they are ruled by the Hyksos, the rulers of foreign lands, the shepherd kings. And they are actually Canaanites in control in Egypt at their capital, Avaris, which is in the delta. And eventually, the local Egyptians have had enough of this,

and they managed to get their act together, and they chase them out, and particularly the pharaohs of the new kingdom, particularly Thutmose III, they go through the Levant, destroying, destroying, destroying. They're not just chasing the Hyksos out, they're making sure there's no way they could ever, ever come back, and they establish thus their egyptian empire in the levant which is in place from about 1550 bc right the way through to about 1150 bc and in canaanite terms that's now the late bronze age and some sites are destroyed but then redeveloped by the egyptians some sites are not some sites are. And Jericho is one of those

sites that is left. One word question to follow that. Why? I don't know. I mean, there's a little bit there, but it's kind of pretty tiny. We're talking about maybe a village, maybe. It's very scanty. The problem is with Jericho as a site is that there are big periods where the site has been abandoned and things have eroded. So there's information which we don't have. There are layers we know that are missing or that we have very patchy information from. But the Late Bronze Age does seem to have been a period of relative abandonment at Jericho. Who knows why? The strategies of the pharaohs. You know what question I'm going to ask now because we hinted it right at the start. This abandonment, the destruction that Jericho suffers in the Bronze

Age, not just near the Late Bronze Age as you've highlighted there, could any of that possibly be evidence for Joshua's conquest of Jericho mentioned in the Bible? No. Sorry. Unfortunately, the timelines just don't work. It's really, really complicated. But given what I've just told you about the Egyptians coming in, do you honestly think they'd let a load of ragged Israelites have a go at Jericho and infiltrate the land of Canaan? I don't think so. In terms of the early periods, it doesn't fit with the chronology that the Bible itself provides. And then it doesn't explain how come then Canaan is around in the Middle Bronze Age. And, you know, it just doesn't work. The only period in which an outside invasion of Canaan could have happened as a kind of definite massive force coming in and

taking over not just Jericho, but lots of other places as well, is really at the end of the Late Bronze Age when the Egyptian empire itself is coming to an end and is weak. Before that, they're not going to allow it. Even in less stable periods, they're just not going to allow that level of power being taken from them. Because is there any evidence of, of course, mentioning the famous, the walls coming, tumbling down? Is there any evidence of the archaeology that there was a great dismantling of the walls from this period during the abandonment? Well, no. I mean, the thing is, is that Jericho has several walls, many, many walls going back to the Neolithic. The walls of the early Bronze Age city were destroyed several times and with

fire and conflagration, probably some of them by earthquake as much as anything else. And then they were rebuilt, which would explain why they're rebuilt. If it was a destruction by invading armies, then perhaps there wouldn't be a town afterwards. So there are walls which do tumble down, but the chronology doesn't work out. It doesn't fit for the story as it's written in the biblical texts for that to actually happen so i'm really sorry joshua but you were a bit late to the party it is still such an interesting topic to discuss because in more recent history we mentioned at the start archaeological work done at jericho there have been several archaeologists

over the decades over the years who've gone to Jericho and tried to shoehorn that argument into their discoveries, haven't they? Undoubtedly. I mean, the inspiration for those archaeologists to go to Jericho is the biblical story. And I think that this is really important, that they went to the Holy Land, people like Charles Warren, expecting to find what they were reading about in the biblical text. That was their expectation. It wasn't necessarily an ideological position, like we must find it, but that was what they were expecting. However, they didn't, and they knew it. And Charles Warren actually writes in his own account, we didn't find it, guys. I'm really sorry. And I blame you because you set me up to find this stuff. And I didn't find it. But he kind of rationalizes. It's really interesting. He says, but what I found is what's real. And that is also God's truth.

So it's okay. It's fine. But what was important was telling the truth. And the truth was that Jericho was not the next Nineveh. It wasn't the next Nimrud. It was quite a small place, quite ordinary in many ways. And it wasn't this crazy town that you have depicted in the Bible. Not this crazy town indeed, where you mentioned, okay, so Jericho has this decline in the later Bronze Age. Do we see it resettled in a later period? Yeah, so in the Iron Age, so we're talking about from, say, 9th century BC through to the 7th century, there is some resettlement. There's possibly a kind of villa in the 9th century, something like that.

And then there is a town which was probably associated with the kingdom of Judah in the kind of 8th, 7th centuries. So Judah is the kingdom where the capital was Jerusalem, which is not that far away. And then that town is destroyed by the Babylonians in 5876 BC. And then there's nothing. There's some resettlement in the Persian period that follows, the kind of post-exilic period, but it's pretty patchy. And then it is abandoned. There's nothing there on that site after that. And it's then that you start to see other sites in the Jericho region being developed more. So there's in the Wadi Kelt, which is not so far away, there's a Hasmonean palace,

and there's a Herodian palace, and then you start getting the Byzantine chapel. And so the region itself stays functional all the way through antiquity, but it's not necessarily at that single, single point. So it's not like Troy or anywhere like that, which becomes almost a tourist site in later ancient history. The mound itself, no. I mean, it becomes incredibly important in later antiquity as an agricultural production region, that city of palms, the dates,

and also things like apobolsum, you know, that city of palms the dates and also things like upper balsam you know strange unguents and rare things that decadent romans are into and then it's also on the trade route it's on that literal you know that goes all the way down to arabia and then from jericho you can go in up the hill to jerusalem and then down to the mediterranean So it's a really connected kind of place. But that particular little spot right next to the spring, no, not really. It doesn't become like Elijah's watering hole particularly. Well, Felicity, this has been brilliant. A fountain of knowledge on all things the archaeology of Jericho. And you are part of this wider charity that for more than a century has done

archaeological work in the ancient Near East and promoting its archaeology. So talk to us a bit about this charity, the Palestine Exploration Fund. Okay. The Palestine Exploration Fund is what's known as a learned society. So it's a bit like the Society of Antiquaries, but much less posh. We were established in 1865 by a group of Victorian gents, I suppose you could say, who were soldiers, they were scholars, they were clerics. They came from all kinds of sectors of the Victorian great and good politicians as well. And they brought with them all sorts of motivations and reasons for wanting to learn more about the Levant, both genuine curiosity being one of them, political skullduggery perhaps for some others, definitely strategic knowledge was first and

foremost in many of their minds. And of course, just learning about the land where the Bible came from. There was a recognition that at that stage, the knowledge of the kind of reality of the Holy Land, what it looked like, what it was like to travel in, the culture, the ancient culture was extremely patchy and so this society was set up to get more facts you couldn't rely on pilgrims they're hopeless they tell you all sorts of tall stories but facts on the ground about this place and of course those facts were really useful for lots and lots of people and to this day you're promoting the archaeology with lectures and so on which is right and through podcasts like this because it sounds like the archaeology of Jericho is extraordinary and there is still so much more to discover in the future

there. I would think so. And at the other sites in the region, I think we're finding out a lot more, particularly about those early phases and beginning to construct much more meaningful pictures as to what they may have been like. Well, Felicity, on that note, it just goes for me to say thank you so much for taking the time to come on the podcast today. Thank you for inviting me. Well, there you go. There was Felicity Cobbing talking through the extraordinary archaeology of Jericho and

why this site is one of the most fascinating in the world. I hope you enjoyed today's episode. If you did, share it around, share it with friends, spread it as we continue our mission to share these amazing stories from our distant past with you and with as many people as possible. Last thing from me, wherever you're listening to The Ancients, whether it be Apple Podcasts on Spotify or another service, make sure that you are following, that you are subscribed so you don't miss out when we release new episodes twice every week. We've got some great episodes lined up for you in the coming weeks. But that's enough from me, and I will see you in the next episode.