THE HOME OF RAHAB.

Manawatu Times, Volume LXV, Issue 679, 31 March 1909, Page 2

THE HOME OF RAHAB.

The excavations on the site of the ancient Jericho have brought to light trapes of the various civilisations which at different times made the city their home, but not sullicient progress with the work has been made tq enable explorers always to determine the epoch -€anaanite, Israelite, or Jowish-lo ■which the interesting and important relics unearthed belonged, The most important discovery, after the excavation of tha walls of Jericho, was the former citadel. It lay on the slope of the north-westerly hills ot the seven on which Jericho was built, and was fortified by an external trad internal wall, both of which were crowned by strong corner towers and connected at irregular intervals by walls. The entire northern part of the citadel has been laid Iwre. On the northern slope of the city, without the walls, numerous remains of Canaanite houses were discovered. Some of those leant against the old city wall, and recalled, as one writer points out, the house of Rahab in which Joshua's spies took refuge. The partition walls of clay were in many cases still standing, and e ven ovens and a drainage canal were still to be .traced. In many cases the bodies of little children buried in "jars were found beneath the clay floors of the houses. The excavators believe that this slope was inhabited from the end oi 2000 B.C. up' to the last few centuries before Christ. At five different spots flights of broad) stone steps were discovered, but they are held to belong to a later time, when the city lay deserted and the once-inhabited higher parts wer e used for gardens and vineyards. ISRAELITE DWELLINGS.

Great hopes were set on the results of the investigation of the so-called Fountain Hill, on the sides of which is situated the "Sultan Spring," Ain-cs-Sultan, whose waters are thought to have attracted the first settlers, These hopes were disappointed, but ,a most interesting collection 'of Israelite houses (circa B.C. 700) was partly brought to light. One of flio excavated houses was particularly ' well preserved. It contained a courtyard open to the air, with a bench, a long ropm, and a kitchen opening on to the yard, in which the great water tun still stood in its accustomed place. But not. only could this house—obviously, as is pointed out, a relic of the recolonising of the city under Ahab—be reconstructed according to plan, but numerous domestic utensils were unearthed—plates and dishes, pots and amphorae, corn-mills and red sandstone, lamps and torcfrholdcrs, and a" kinds of iron implements. The forms of the- vessels bear a clear relationship to the Graeco-Phoenician pottery found in Cyprus, and have nothing to do with the fragments of ancient Canaanite ware found in the course of the excava-

tions, The excavators' work has demonstrated the fact that in much later centuries the site of ancient Jericho was. inhabited. A number of graves of the early Byzantine era, containing amphorae and pots, and a number of glass vessels in a complete state of preservation, were also found. The glass vessels will throw valuable light on the history of the glass industry in the east. 1> fortunately practically no inscriptions have been met with yet. All that has been discovered is a number of stamps on the handles of jars apparently bearing the name o't the divinity Jahu. The letters are Aramean, and seem to date from the fifth to the third century before Christ. The excavations will be resumed in the course of the winter, and further results are looked forward to with great interest.—Reuter.