Many cities of antiquity claim the right to be called the first city on Earth. However, one of them still remains out of competition. The legend about its walls, which fell from the roar of Jewish military trumpets, immortalized this ancient city in human memory. But for historians this name sounds even more weighty. Among the centers of urban civilization discovered to this day, Jericho is the oldest and continuously inhabited city in the world (it is 10,000 years old) and the lowest on our planet (250 m below sea level).
It was located in an oasis not far from the place where the Jordan River flows into the Dead Sea and blocked the way to Palestine for any conqueror following from the Jordan Valley. Jericho was the first city to be conquered by the children of Israel when they came to the Promised Land after forty years of wandering in the wilderness. “Whoever takes Jericho can be considered the master of all of Eretz Israel,” the Jews said.
According to the Old Testament Book of Joshua, the Israelites, after the exodus from Egypt and forty years of wandering in the desert from the city of Jericho, began the conquest of Canaan. After Moses died, Joshua became the new leader, under whose leadership they crossed the Jordan and took Jericho under siege. The townspeople, hiding behind the powerful walls, were sure that the city was impregnable, because the powerful walls of Jericho could not be overcome by force of arms. Only a miracle could help here. But Joshua had a vision: an angel with a sword, through whose mouth the Lord promised to transfer the impregnable city to the children of Israel.
First, Jesus sent scouts to the city. The local harlot Rahab hid them in her house and helped them escape at night. In return for her help, Rahab asked to keep her family alive after Jericho was taken. Then the Israelites for six days bypassed the walls of Jericho at a safe distance for life. The procession was led by soldiers, followed by the priests and blowing the jubilee trumpets, followed by the Levites carrying the ark of the covenant, and the elders, women and children at the rear of the procession. All 40,000 people were silent, the air was filled with only howls and whistles of pipes.
On the seventh day, Joshua decided to storm. The Israelites walked around the walls six times in silence. And on the seventh circle, they screamed loudly and blew their trumpets, so loudly that the formidable walls collapsed. Hence the expression "Jericho Trumpet" came from.
The fate of the inhabitants of Jericho was terrible: "… everything in the city, both men and women, young and old, and oxen, and sheep, and donkeys, they destroyed all with the sword." Only the harlot Rahab and her family, who from that time lived among the people of Israel, were spared. “And they burnt the city and everything in it with fire,” except for “silver and gold and vessels of copper and iron,” which were given to the Jewish priests. After that, Jesus cursed all who dared to restore Jericho.
Since that time, for a long time, only a small village existed on the ashes. Jericho restored under King Ahab (874–852 BC) the king's governor Hiil of Beth-El, who, according to the Bible, paid for this with the death of his firstborn and youngest son (I Ts. 16:34) … After that, Jericho again took a prominent position and played an important role in history.
In the Roman period, Anthony presented Jericho to Queen Cleopatra, but Emperor Augustus returned it to Herod, who built his winter palace here. During the Jewish War of 66–73, the city was destroyed and rebuilt by Emperor Hadrian. Josephus, Strabo, Ptolemy, Pliny and others mention him.
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Under Constantine I the Great there was a Christian church with a bishop at its head. Over time, the city of Jericho began to decline. In the 7th century, after the conquest of the country by the Arabs, Jews settled there, expelled by Muslims from the Arabian Peninsula. During the battles between the Crusaders and Muslims, Jericho was destroyed and lay in ruins until the middle of the 19th century, when the first archaeologists began to arrive here, intending to check the biblical legend. True, luck did not smile at the pioneers - they could not find anything …
1899 German archaeologist Ernst Sellin examined the surface of the hill and found several shards of Canaanite crockery. He came to the conclusion that it was not in vain that these lands attracted his predecessors: most likely, the ancient city was hidden under the layers. The scientist prepared himself more thoroughly, and in 1907 he discovered houses and a part of the city wall with a tower (5 rows of masonry and adobe masonry 3 m high). Finally, in 1908, the East German Society organized a major excavation led by Professors Ernst Sellin and Karl Watzinger. They were able to find two parallel ramparts built of sun-dried bricks. The outer wall was 2 m thick and 8–10 m high, while the inner wall was 3.5 m thick.
Archaeologists have determined that these walls were built between 1400 and 1200 BC. e., and identified them with those walls, which, according to the Bible, collapsed from the powerful sounds of the trumpets of the Israelite tribes. But during the excavation, archaeologists came across the remains of construction waste, which were of even greater interest to science than the finds that confirmed the biblical information about the ancient war. But due to the modern war - the First World War - further scientific research was suspended.
It took two decades before a group of British people led by Professor John Garstang was able to continue the work of their predecessors. New excavations began in 1929 and lasted for about 10 years.
In 1935-1936 Garstang found the lower layers of a Stone Age settlement. People who did not yet know ceramics were already sedentary. They lived at first in round semi-dugouts, and then in rectangular houses.
And again, scientific activity was thwarted by the ambitions of modern rulers. The work of Garstang's expedition was interrupted due to a difficult political situation. It was only after the end of World War II that British archaeologists returned to Jericho. This time, the expedition was led by Dr. Kathleen M. Canyon, whose activities are associated with all further discoveries in this ancient city in the world. The British invited German anthropologists who had been working in Jericho for several years to participate in the excavation.
1953 - Archaeologists led by Kathleen Canyon made an outstanding discovery that completely changed our understanding of the early history of mankind. Researchers were able to break through 40 cultural layers and discovered structures of the Neolithic period with huge buildings dating back to the time when, it would seem, only nomadic tribes should have lived on Earth, earning their food by hunting and collecting plants and fruits. It became an archeological sensation in the 1950s. Systematic excavations here have found a number of successive layers, combined into two complexes - the pre-ceramic Neolithic A (VIII millennium BC) and the pre-ceramic Neolithic B (VII millennium BC).
Today the city of Jericho is considered the first urban-type settlement opened in the Old World. There were discovered the earliest permanent buildings known to science, burials and sanctuaries, built of earth or small rounded adobe bricks. Without a doubt, Jericho, with its sedentary population and developed construction business, was one of the first early agricultural settlements on Earth. On the basis of many years of research conducted here, historians have received a completely new picture of the development and technical capabilities that humanity had 10,000 years ago.
The transformation of Jericho from a small primitive settlement with wretched huts and tents into a real city with an area of at least 3 hectares and a population of several thousand people is associated with the transition of the local population from simple gathering of edible cereals to agriculture - growing wheat and barley. At the same time, the researchers managed to establish that this revolutionary step was not made as a result of some kind of introduction from the outside, but was the result of the development of the tribes that lived here: the archaeological excavations of Jericho showed that in the period between the culture of the original settlement and the culture of the new city, which was built on at the turn of the IX and VIII millennia BC e., life here was not interrupted.
Josephus Flavius called this area "the most fertile land of Judea" or "Divine country." And now, when approaching Jericho, the contrast between the scorched desert around and the fresh lush greenery of the city, which grows here thanks to the power of numerous underground springs and winter streams rushing from the nearby mountains, is striking. It is thanks to the sources of Iereikhon, which in translation from Aramaic means "lunar" (in Arabic - Erich), most likely, and owes its appearance.
Initially, the town was not fortified, but with the advent of strong neighbors, fortress walls were needed to protect against attacks. The appearance of fortifications speaks not only of the confrontation between different tribes, but also of the accumulation of certain material values by the inhabitants of the ancient city, which attracted the greedy gaze of neighbors. What kind of values could these be? Archaeologists have answered this question as well. Perhaps the main source of income for the townspeople was the exchange trade: the well-located city controlled the main resources of the Dead Sea - salt, bitumen and sulfur. In Jericho, obsidian, jade and diorite from Anatolia, turquoise from the Sinai Peninsula, cowrie shells from the Red Sea were found - all these goods were highly valued during the Neolithic period.
The fact that Jericho eventually became a powerful urban center is evidenced by its defensive fortifications. The settlement occupied an area of about 4 hectares and was surrounded by a moat 8.5 m wide and 2.1 m deep, carved into the rock. A stone wall with a thickness of 1.64 m rose behind the moat, preserved at a height of 3.94 m. Its initial height, possibly, reached 5 m, and above there was a brickwork of adobe bricks.
A massive round stone tower adjoined it. Initially, scientists suggested that this is a tower of the fortress wall. But obviously, it was a special purpose structure that combined many functions, including the function of a sentry post for observing the surroundings. The tower had a diameter of 7 m and was preserved to a height of 8.15 m. It is equipped with an internal staircase, carefully built of one-meter-wide stone slabs. The tower was equipped with a grain storage and clay-coated rainwater collection tanks.
The stone tower of Jericho may have been erected at the beginning of the 8th millennium BC. e. and existed for a very long time. When it ceased to be used for its intended purpose, crypts for burials began to be arranged in its inner passage, and the former storage facilities were used as dwellings. These premises were often rebuilt. One of them, which died in a fire, dates back to the border of the 8th and 7th millennia BC. e.
After that, in the history of the tower, researchers counted 4 more periods of existence, and then the city wall collapsed and began to erode. Apparently, the city was already empty at that time. Under the protection of a stone wall, there were round, tent-like houses on stone foundations with walls made of adobe bricks, one surface of which is convex (this type of brick is called "pig's back").
To more accurately determine the age of these structures, the latest scientific methods were used, including radiocarbon analysis. It was through the study of carbon isotopes that it was possible to establish that the most ancient walls of this city date back to the VIII millennium BC. BC, that is, their age is about 10,000 years. The sanctuary turned out to be even more ancient - 9551 BC. e.
Building a powerful defensive system required an enormous investment of labor, significant manpower, and some central authority to organize and direct the work. Researchers estimate the population of this first city in the world at 2,000, and this figure may be an underestimate.
What did the first citizens of the Earth look like and how they lived?
An analysis of the skulls and bone remains found in the ancient city showed that 10,000 years ago stunted people with elongated skulls (dolichocephalic), belonging to the so-called Euro-African race, lived here 10,000 years ago. They built oval dwellings from lumps of clay, the floors of which were deepened below ground level. They entered the house through a doorway with wooden jambs.
Several steps led down. Most of the houses consisted of a single round or oval room with a diameter of 4–5 m, covered with a vault of intertwined rods. The ceiling, walls and floor were covered with clay. The floors were carefully leveled, sometimes painted and polished.
The inhabitants of the ancient city of Jericho used stone and bone tools, did not know ceramics and ate wheat and barley, the grains of which were ground on stone graters with stone pestles. From coarse food, which consisted of cereals and pods, pounded in stone mortars, these people completely worn out their teeth.
Despite a more comfortable environment than that of primitive hunters, their life was extremely difficult, and the average age of the inhabitants of the city was no more than 20 years. Child mortality was very high, and only a few survived to 40–45 years. It seems that there were no people older than this age in ancient Jericho.
The townspeople buried their dead right under the floors of their homes, wearing iconic plaster masks with cowrie shells inserted into the eyes of the masks. It is interesting that in the oldest tombs of Jericho (about 6500 BC) archaeologists mostly find skeletons without a head. Apparently, the skulls were separated from the bodies and buried separately. The ritual cutting off of the head of the dead is known in many parts of the world and has been encountered until recently. Here, in the ancient city, scientists have met, apparently, with one of the earliest manifestations of such a cult.
During this “pre-ceramic” period, the inhabitants of the city did not use earthenware - they replaced it with stone vessels, carved mainly from limestone. Perhaps they also used various braids and leather containers like wineskins.
Not knowing how to make pottery, the Jericho people nevertheless used clay for modeling: in residential buildings and tombs, many clay animal figurines, as well as molded images of the phallus, were found. The cult of the masculine principle was widespread in ancient Palestine, and its images are found in other places.
In one of the layers of the ancient city, archaeologists have found a kind of ceremonial hall with six wooden pillars. Maybe it was a sanctuary - a primitive predecessor of the future temple. Inside the building and in the immediate vicinity of it, archaeologists did not find any household items, but they found numerous clay figurines of horses, cows, sheep, goats, pigs and phallic sculptures.
The most amazing discovery in Jericho was the molded figures of people. They are made from local limestone clay with a reed frame. These figurines are of normal proportions, but flat from the front. Archaeologists have never seen such items anywhere, except Jericho.
In one of the prehistoric layers of the city, life-size group sculptures of men, women and children were also found. To make them, a cement-like clay was used, which was spread on a reed frame. These figures were still rather primitive and flat: after all, rock paintings or images on the walls of caves preceded plastic art. The discovered sculptures show what great interest the Jericho people showed in the creation of a family and the miracle of the birth of life - this was one of the first and strongest impressions of prehistoric man.
The emergence of Jericho, the first city center, testifies to the emergence of high forms of social organization. Even the invasion of more backward tribes from the north in the 5th millennium BC. e. did not interrupt this process, which as a result led to the creation of highly developed ancient civilizations of Mesopotamia and the Middle East.
In the Late Bronze Age, Jericho was a prosperous city, surrounded by a brick wall. After it was destroyed and stood in an uninhabited state for a very long time, until Hiil broke the spell and restored it, losing his sons in the process. And yet, could the sounds of trumpets and the furious cry of the people from the tribe of Israel destroy the impregnable walls?..
Over the past century, much has changed in historical science, in particular, modern views on the possible date of the exodus. The fact is that the appearance of the tribal union of Israel in Canaan can be confidently dated to the turn of the 12th and 13th centuries BC. e. (characteristic 4-room houses appear, other signs of Israeli material culture, and the first written mention of Israel belongs to the same era). But the wall found at Jericho was destroyed much earlier, around 1560 BC. e. At the turn of 1200 BC e. Jericho was practically not inhabited and had no walls, and this contradicts the biblical version of the development of events, since the cyclopean fortress walls of the city collapsed long before the time of Joshua and this city could not become an obstacle to the Israeli tribes invading Canaan.
Here again it is worth re-reading the Bible. There is a hint in the biblical story that allows us to offer some, albeit purely speculative, solution to this issue. This hint is contained in the famous story of the sending of spies to Jericho and their salvation by the harlot Rahab. According to the Book of Joshua, Rahab released the scouts from the city with a rope through the window of her house. That is, her house was part of a line of city fortifications.
Based on this, it is possible to assume that the city of Jericho at the time of Joshua was a ring of adobe houses, whose outer walls formed a "fortress" - such settlements were quite common in Canaan at the end of the Bronze Age and at the beginning of the Iron Age. The remnants of such a "stronghold" in reality could be washed away and disappear without a trace, in contrast to the capital serf construction of previous eras. And the imposing ruins of these earlier walls could later become the basis of the legend of the miracle of the Jericho pipes.
True, tradition stubbornly attributes to Joshua the destruction of precisely those cyclopean, grandiose walls that collapsed around 1560 BC. e. It is possible to assume that some of the episodes included in the history of the conquest of Canaan actually belong to an earlier time and may be associated with the revolts of the Habiru in the 14th century BC. e. The mention of the attack of the Habiru on Jericho is contained in one of the documents of the Amarna archive.
Some of the attackers, among whom there were many Semites, could later become part of the Israeli people and bring with them memories of the storming of Jericho and other cities of Canaan. Over time, these stories merged into a single story about the conquest, where events of different times were completely mixed up and in this form entered the official chronicles. And the unknown ancient commanders merged in the popular imagination with the brilliant Joshua, who still retains the honor of conquering Canaan.
Y. Podolsky