WALLS OF JERICHO

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 73, Issue 460, 29 December 1930, Page 3

WALLS OF JERICHO

CAUSE OF 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 fininshed 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 inarch of the Jews around 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 given by the shouting and blowing of trumpets on the seventh day. Members of the expedition say they arc certain their discoveries will be accepted as reinforcement 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 thoroughfare they found reddened bricks, stones cracked by heat, charred timber and ashes. The excavations showed that Jericho, like many other fortified towns iu 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 be fairly well preserved, standing eighty feet- m 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 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 tne 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.