It is thought to have been built by the Hasmonean king Alexander Jannaeus (103-76 BC) and to have been occupied by the last Hasmonean rulers, and then by Herod, who enlarged and embellished it. Location: 2 kilometers north of Elisha's Spring, JerichoĮxcavations here have brought to light a large palace showing clear signs of Hellenistic influence. It is famed for its completely preserved mosaic, a work of consummate craftsmanship depicting three gazelles under an orange tree, one of them being attacked by a lion. In the bath house's northwest corner is a small room with an apse, no doubt a rest room or reception room for the Caliph. Immediately north is a large bath house with a bare ceiling, which originally contained alternating male and female figures and had a roof borne on sixteen pillars. The palace is laid out on a square plan, with four ranges of buildings opening off an inner courtyard and no entrances on the outside. Numerous finds from the site, including the figural representations characteristic of early Islamic art, can be seen in the Rockefeller Museum in Jerusalem. The earthquake of AD 746 destroyed it completely, and the site remained forgotten until British archaeologists excavated here in 1937.
This 8th-century palace was built by the 10th Umayyad Caliph Hisham in AD 724 but never completely finished. To the north of this is a shrine made by Mesolithic nomads, dating from 8,000 BC. On the east side, you see the entrance leading to 22 steps of a spiral staircase (the world's oldest staircase) and an opening higher up. In the trench, you can see remains of the Neolithic town dating to approximately 7,000 BC, consisting of a section of the town wall and the nine-meter-high round tower built against it. Jericho's settlement dates from the Neolithic era, and so this site lays claim to the title of the world's oldest continuously inhabited town. The most noticeable feature is the broad trench archaeologists cut through the hill in order to investigate the various levels down to undisturbed soil.ĭespite the modest appearance, this site's importance in our understanding of early human settlement and civilization cannot be over-estimated. There are only scant remains of the famed Jericho walls mentioned in the Bible. To the ordinary visitor, the remains of this early period in human history may not seem particularly sensational. She identified 23 occupation levels, with the oldest traces of human settlement dating from around 8,000 BC. The real breakthrough came with Kathleen Kenyon's investigations in the 1950s. Just 2.5 kilometers northwest of Jericho's central square, opposite Elisha's Spring (also known as the Sultan's Spring) is the ancient 21-meter-high tell (settlement mound) of Jericho - also known as Tell al-Sultan.Īrchaeological investigation on this site began in 1860, but nothing of true importance was uncovered until the British excavations of 1930-31. Top of the things to do list in town itself is Jericho Tell.
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