Wall of Jericho

The Wall of Jericho was a Pre-Pottery Neolithic A (PPNA) defensive or flood protection wall suggested to date to approximately 8000 BC. If interpreted as an "urban fortification", the Wall of Jericho is the oldest city wall discovered by archaeologists anywhere in the world. It is built of undressed stones and is located at the archaeological mound known as Tell es-Sultan, in the city of Jericho on the West Bank.

The topic of this article is the unique Neolithic-age stone wall, the earliest one of its kind. Other walls, such as contemporary house walls, or later, Bronze and Iron Age city walls, are only mentioned for the sake of context.

One wall was excavated by Sir Charles Warren in 1868 at the request of the Palestine Exploration Fund. He dug through the mud bricks of the wall without realizing what it was, suggesting there was little of interest at the site. Ernest Sellin and Carl Watzinger excavated Jericho between 1907 and 1909 and found the remains of two walls which they initially suggested supported the biblical account. They later revised this conclusion and dated their finds to the Middle Bronze Age (1950-1550 BC). The site was again excavated by John Garstang between 1930 and 1936, who again raised the suggestion that remains of the upper wall was that described in the Bible.Kathleen Kenyon resumed extensive excavations between 1952 and 1958 and found no late Bronze Age defensive wall or pottery. Her excavations found a series of seventeen early Bronze Age walls, some of which she thought may have been destroyed by earthquakes. The last of the walls was put together in a hurry, indicating that the settlement had been destroyed by nomadic invaders. Another wall was built by a more sophisticated culture in the Middle Bronze Age with a steep plastered escarpment leading up to mud bricks on top. After this there was a hiatus until later Iron Age material dating to around the seventh century BC. They did not find substantial evidence for renewed occupation in the Late Bronze Age at the time of Joshua and the biblical story of the Battle of Jericho, which in general agreed with the earlier statement by Watzinger that "in the time of Joshua, Jericho was a heap of ruins, on which stood perhaps a few isolated huts". Perhaps the most important discovery was evidence that the earliest wall suggested by Kenyon to date to around 8000 BC based on Radiocarbon dating of material at 7825 BC from level IV, phase III of the site. This time period was thereafter called the Pre-Pottery Neolithic A, a late phase of the Stone Age predating the invention of pottery, and the wall considered part of an early proto-city. It surrounded and protected a Neolithic settlement which contained an organized community of between 2,000 and 3,000 people.

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