Masada and the Dead Sea

Előszó

The oasis of Jericho glowing green in the Judean desert.
JERICHO
« And the people came up out of Jordan on the tenth day of the first month and encamped in Gilgal, in the east border of Jericho » (Joshua 4:19) and « and when the people heard the sound of the trumpet the wall fell down flat and they took the city. And they utterly destroyed all that was in the city, both man and woman, young and old, and ox, and sheep, and ass, with the edge of the sword. » (Joshua 6:20-21). This is one of the best known passages in the Bible, describing how Jericho, « the city of the palms » (Judges, 3:13) was besieged by the Israelites under the leadership of Joshua, and how for seven days the ark was carried in procession and all the trumpets of his army were blown until on the seventh day the mighty walls fell.
This exploit of the Hebrews on their way towards the Promised Land made the city famous, but in terms of archaeology Jericho holds a record, for it is considered the most ancient city in the world. Jericho, a dazzling green oasis surrounded on all sides by the deserted arid plain, ten kilometers north of the Dead Sea, was already visited by man all of 12,000 years ago, when it was a seasonal stopover for groups of nomad hunters. In the 10th millennium the presence of man became stable. The knowledge of Jericho's ancient history is the result of a series of archaeological digs on the mound of Tell es-Sultan. The first real campaign was that of Ernst Sellin and Carl Watzinger in 1907, followed — in 1929 — by that of John Gar-stang and finally, in the early 1950s, by that of the
3 Vissza