The city of Jericho is known not only from the biblical tradition. Its real story goes back a long way. Archaeological excavations have produced amazing results: 23 cultural layers! The lowest and most powerful belongs to the Stone Age (VIII millennium BC) and is 13 meters thick. The Neolithic settlement already had thick defensive structures - walls and even towers made of rough stone. The first inhabitants themselves lived in adobe houses and houses made of adobe bricks.
The clay floors in the dwellings were carefully leveled and sometimes even painted and polished. Preserved pieces of furniture: tables, chairs, stools. Many clay figures of people and animals were found.
Gateway to the land of Canaan
Early Jericho was a settlement of farmers. Behind the fortress walls, they kept their wealth (grain, stone and pottery vessels, tools), protecting the good from the restless warlike steppe dwellers.
The oldest city on the planet is spread over an area of five hectares. Jericho existed for about 5 thousand years until the time when the Habiru tribes (Biblical Israelites), who came from the Sinai desert, appeared near it. Jericho seemed to them an impregnable fortress.
The herders, whom the prophet Moses led through the desert for 40 years, really wanted to penetrate into the rich country of Canaan, where people had long learned to use copper and bronze tools, where they made wonderful pottery vessels and stored wonderful wine and olive oil in them, where they sewed comfortable clothes from leather and wool and lived in solid stone houses, and not in tents covered with skins. But to get into Canaan, the shepherds had to take Jericho.
At this crucial moment, aged Moses died and Joshua became the leader of the ancient Jews. During the entire journey, he was Moses' closest assistant and led the Jewish army. Joshua decided to storm Jericho. But only after he had a vision: an angel with a sword, through whose lips the Lord promised to give him the impregnable city.
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At the instigation from above, instead of a long-term siege, the commander Joshua used in all respects original tactics. For six days in a row, the 40,000-strong Israeli army left the camp in order to march around the fortress walls at a distance safe from the arrows and stone shells of the enemy. Armed warriors stepped importantly ahead, followed by bearded men in long robes (Levite priests) and humming silver trumpets and ram's horns. Following them were the priests who carried the sacred Ark of the Covenant, decorated with golden figures of winged cherubs. The procession was closed by a crowd of women, children and old people in festive clothes. They all remained in deathly silence.
The Bible describes the seventh day as follows: “On the seventh day, they got up early, at dawn, and walked around the city in the same way seven times; only on this day we walked around the city seven times. When the priests were blowing their trumpets for the seventh time, Jesus said to the people: exclaim, for the Lord has given you the city! (Joshua 6: 14-15).
When the signal rang out and the silver pipes began to hum again, all the people screamed at their best. So much so that the walls of the city shook and collapsed! Joshua's thugs rushed up the rubble of the walls and captured the city. All the inhabitants of Jericho were killed, only the harlot Rahab and her relatives were spared, since before that the maiden hid the scouts sent to the city.
Skeptic's gaze
More than one generation of scientists was occupied with the question whether the “miraculous” capture of Jericho was a historical fact or it was fiction. After all, everyone understands that no matter how many trumpets and shouts, even the wooden walls do not move. And even more so - stone.
First of all, archaeologists have established the thickness of the walls. They turned out to be truly cyclopean. The width of the outer wall is about 1.5 meters, the inner one is 3.5 meters. The height and diameter of the excavated corner tower were 8 meters. The builders erected structures from blocks measuring 2 × 3 meters, weighing several tons. Could such walls fall and under the influence of what forces?
The famous English archaeologist, director of the British School of Archeology in Jerusalem Kathleen Kenyon, one of the first to excavate the ancient city, found that the walls in Jericho did fall. In her opinion, this happened around 1580 BC, that is, 180 years before the appearance of the Israeli army in the Jordan Valley. Jericho was destroyed by the Egyptians, who pursued the Hyksos expelled from Egypt, and later was almost not inhabited. Consequently, Joshua had no difficulty in overcoming the "barrier" on the way to the promised land, and the whole history of his exploits is just an example of the Old Testament "PR".
In any case, Kathleen Kenyon herself was convinced of the almost complete absence of traces of a settlement in Jericho in 1500-1200 BC. Only a few graves and debris have survived from this time. She explains this fact by the fact that after the death the city was in desolation for a long time, so it was not difficult to take an insignificant settlement located on the ruins.
Fear and fire
Later, another researcher, Brian Wood of the University of Toronto, challenged Kenyon's findings, claiming that the city's walls did collapse at a time that fits the biblical account. He did his own analysis at the site, found a thick layer of ash, and agreed that Jericho was captured and burned. The Bible says about the same: “… everything in it was burnt with fire” (Joshua 6:23). But the city was not conquered by the Egyptians, but still by the Israelites.
According to Wood, Joshua used a psychic attack in the first six days. And then the acoustic processes went into action. The sounds of the trumpets and the unanimous scream of the Israelites caused such powerful ultra-low sound vibrations that they sowed panic and terror among the defenders of the fortress, and also resonated with the masonry of the fortress wall and shattered it! Then Joshua, the commander and, obviously, the first expert in the laws of physics, rushed with his soldiers into the city filled with horror and destroyed it to the ground.
However, not all scientists agree with Wood. According to one version, the main role in the capture of Jericho was played by the usual mining of its fortress walls. It is known that undermining and undermining of fortress walls are among the most ancient means of siege technology.
Under cover of night (it is assumed that the procession began with darkness, when the defenders of the walls are less visible and the heat does not torment the attackers), while the trumpets of the Israelites hummed to drown out the noise of the sappers, and the people circled around with their Ark to divert the eyes of the besieged, the soldiers of Joshua dug under the foundation of the fortifications and laid thick logs there. On the seventh day, at a certain point, the logs were set on fire. From a strong fire, the walls heated up and slid into the dug ditches, and the burnt city was covered with a thick layer of ash. Radiocarbon dating has allowed the ash to be dated to 1400 BC.
On the whole, the story with the "Jericho trumpets" turns out to be very contradictory. By the way, none of the researchers recalls the harlot Rahab. But it was she who probably played a fatal role in the fall of Jericho, allowing those who could open the gates or set fire to the walls from the inside into the city. The truth is still hidden in the shadow of millennia.
Magazine: Mysteries of History No. 36, Mikhail Efimov