WALLS OF JERICHO

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume LXIV, 7 January 1931, Page 6

WALLS OF JERICHO

CAUSE OR THE FALL EXPLORERS' NEW IDEA A British archaeological expedition to Palestine believes it has discovered, almost 4000 years later, the real reason why the walls of Jericho fell when Joshua and the invading Israelites finished their seventh day's inarch around them and sounded the trumpets. Months of excavation on the site of the ancient city have, it is stated, convinced archaeologists that the march of the Jews round the city was merely intended to divert attention from a more important move. On the seven, days the Jews marched, .they believe Joshua’s “sappers” were busy undermining the walls, placing in holes and crevices trunks of trees which were set alight when the signal was givpels oil the seventh day. Members of the expedition say they arc certain their discoveries will be accepted as reinforcements of the Biblical account of Jericho’s fall. They say they have ample evidence that the city was destroyed by fire, as the Bible narrates. Along the principal thoroughfares they found reddened bricks, stones cracked by heat, charred timber and ashes. The excavation showed that Jericho, like many other fortified towns in the East, had two parallel walls surrounding the citadel. The outer wall was six to eight feet thick. The inner one was twelve feet. . The outer wall, almost entirely demolished, appears to have fallen down the slope on which the city was built. One small section of the inner wall, however, was found to bo fairly well preserved, standing eighty feet in height. The discovery of a charred beam underneath one part of the wall gave rise to the theory that the Jewish engineers, and not the trumpeters, were responsible for the conquest of the city. The site of ancient Jericho to-day is marked by a series of mounds a little distance from the' present village of Jericho. On one side looms the Mount of Temptation, where Christ is said to have passed his forty days’ fast in the wilderness. On the opposite side of the ruins is Elisha’s Fountain, said to be the waters which Elisha sweetened by throwing salt into them. The excavators hope to continue their work next year and completely explain the fall of Jericho.