CHAPTER XVI
EXCAVATING OLD JERICHO
To-day I have walked through streets which were probably thronged when Moses and the Israelites were wandering in the Wilderness, and have tramped up and down staircases of clay built hundreds of years before Christ was born. I have been in the ruins of old Jericho, the city Joshua captured over three thousand years ago, now brought to light again by modern excavations.
The place is only about fourteen miles from Jerusalem as the crow flies. It lies on a little plateau, just under the mountain upon which it is said our Lord was tempted by the devil and promised the world. It is about three miles from the present town of Jericho, where I am stopping, and within easy access of it.
The excavations at Jericho are the work of the Austrian Ministry of Education. When they dug into what seemed only mounds of earth the remains of a great fortified city were found. This city was undoubtedly the Jericho of Canaan. It lies on a height surrounded by great walls some of which are of stone. It has inner walls and a citadel and was flanked with strong towers. The heart of the city is about twelve hundred feet long and five hundred and twenty-five feet wide.
Many of the houses have been unearthed. In one of them, which is supposed to have been built twenty-seven hundred years ago, there was found an uncovered courtyard. The house seems to have been abandoned during a fire, and for some reason or other is better preserved than most of the others. It contained a red sandstone mill for grinding meal and water vessels of various shapes. It had plates and jugs as well as lamps and iron vessels with handles of deer horn.
In going through the ruins I crunched over bushels of pottery broken in pieces. I saw water jars chipped and cracked. Each had a clay stopper as big as a tomato with a hole through the centre. There are hundreds of these stoppers lying on the ground. There are also stone mortars which were used for grinding grain, and the remains of amphoræ, or huge jars with necks and side handles, which were buried in the earth and used to hold wine or grain. Most of the pottery is covered with a white glaze, and some of it has vertical stripes of yellow painted upon it.
In the buildings the stone walls are constructed without angles, the cracks being filled in with smaller stones. I am told that the work was done with tools of bronze, and that some of it dates back before history. The centre of the city is on an egg-shaped plateau just above the plain of the Jordan.
It is difficult in wandering through these ruins of mud, brick, and rough stone to realize that here was once a magnificent city. The Jericho of Joshua’s day was not magnificent in our sense of the word, although it covered a large area and had a great many people. There are no remnants of great marble columns, and it is said that Jericho had disappeared long before Christ came and that another city had taken its place situated in this same Jordan Valley. The Jericho of Christ had a theatre, a circus, and a university. It ranked with Jerusalem as one of the important places in Palestine. Surrounded by irrigated gardens, it was known as the City of Palms. It had grown up in Roman times, and Mark Antony thought so much of it that he gave it as a present to Cleopatra, who collected quite a revenue from the balsam groves near by, which furnished the gum of commerce. Cotton was raised here at that time, and this region was then a winter resort for Jerusalem. Herod the Great had palaces in Jericho. It is said that he died here, although he was buried near Hebron. We know that our Saviour came to Jericho, and here He healed the blind. He did not stay in the city, but dwelt outside in the house of Zaccheus, who was a collector of taxes for the Roman Government and therefore not popular with the Jews. I refer to Zaccheus the dwarf. He was so short that he feared he would not be able to see the Christ over the heads of the crowd and, as you remember from the verse in the old primer:
Zaccheus he did climb a tree