When did what walls fall?

In the first half of the second millennium BC, Jericho encompassed ten or twelve acres, though much consisted of ramparts. According to Kathleen Kenyon, this city was destroyed (along with many others in the country) when the Egyptians established control in Canaan after driving out the Hyksos -- an event usually dated to 1550 BC, long before the time of Joshua. She finds no city at Jericho again until the 11th century, well after the time of Joshua.

In the early eighties, a few years after Kenyon's death, her detailed reports were published. Bryant G. Wood took a new look at her findings and re-evaluated them in the Biblical Archaeology Review (March-April 1990). The city with the impressive ramparts, he holds, endured all through the Middle Bronze Age (2100-1550 BC) and was destroyed in a period called Late Bronze IIA: about 1400 BC.

There are problems with all but one of Wood's arguments. I shall outline them here and mention the difficulties.

1. Bryant Wood says: Kenyon asserted that there was no city here in the Late Bronze period (1550-1200 BC) because she found no imported Cypriot pottery, such as characterizes the LB finds from tombs at Megiddo. On the other hand, both she and her predecessor, Garstang, did find lots of ordinary pots which are typical of the Late Bronze. It appears, moreover, that Garstang did find Cypriot ware, though he did not recognize it as such. Even without this, however, the absence of a certain kind of pot proves nothing. Unlike Megiddo, Jericho was not a big wealthy city on a major trade route, so it would not have had such pots. Besides, Kenyon dug in what seems to have been a poor section, where people would not have had expensive, imported vessels.

Problems with Wood's argument: Cypriot pottery was imported to the land in the Middle Bronze period, but its import became massive in the Late Bronze Age. Since Kenyon's time, archaeologists have found it not just at Megiddo, but at many of the other 29 sites they identify as Late Bronze - in the Jordan Valley as well. The same is true for Mycenean pottery. The import of both stopped abruptly at the end of the Late Bronze, before 1200 BC. On the other hand, the local pottery of the Middle Bronze period evolved very gradually into the Late Bronze, and it is hard to distinguish between them. Cypriot and Mycenean ware, therefore, constitute a clear and firm ceramic indicator for the existence of a city in the Late Bronze Age. (See Mazar, pp. 218, 261- 264.)

Wood might answer: the presence of such ware may positively indicate the existence of an LB city, but its absence does not indicate its non-existence.

2. Wood says: In a cemetery just northwest of the tell, Garstang found scarabs with the names of pharaohs from the Late Bronze period.

Problem: He found three scarabs and a seal. Since such items were passed through the generations as heirlooms, they could have been laid in the grave in the Iron Age. Also, during times of pastoral nomadism, people sometimes buried their dead near tells that were not in use. (Mazar, p. 279.)

3. Wood says: "One Carbon-14 sample was taken from a piece of charcoal found in the destruction debris of the final Bronze Age city. It was dated to 1410 B.C.E. plus or minus 40 years." (Wood, p. 53)

Problems: The British Museum later re-dated this sample to about 1550 BC. In 1995, when methods of radiocarbon dating had become more efficient, Hendrik J. Bruins and Johannes van der Plicht conducted C-14 tests on eighteen samples from this same destruction layer at Jericho. They did this not in order to refute Wood, but "as a contribution toward the establishment of an independent radiocarbon chronology of Near Eastern archaeology." (Radiocarbon Vol. 37, Number 2, 1995.) They included six samples consisting of charred cereal grains (more reliable for dating than wood, which might have been used over a long period). The samples, it turned out, had lived and died in the 16th century BC. This confirmed Kenyon's dating.

Since the amount of C-14 in the atmosphere varies at different times, raw C-14 dates are calibrated to actual dates by checking the C-14 in trees when their rings can serve as an independent indicator. Wood cites studies showing regional differences among trees with respect to the quantity of C-14 at given times. Since there is not enough data from local trees to calibrate raw C-14 dates, Wood refuses to accept the above findings for Jericho. (For more, see dating.)

Wood has made further arguments:

If Jericho was destroyed in 1550 BC, who would have done the deed? This was the time when the Egyptians drove the Hyksos out. It does not make sense that the fleeing Hyksos would have destroyed the town. As for the Egyptians, their records show them pursuing the Hyksos only as far as Sharuhen, a city in the Negev. Moreover, the Egyptians preferred to attack before the harvest, taking the crops for their troops and laying siege to the cities. In the destruction layer of the last Bronze Age Jericho, however, Kenyon made an unusual find: storage jars containing six bushels of grain.

Problem: Since Kenyon's dig at Jericho, archaeologists have found evidence of numerous destructions throughout the country, all dated to around 1550 BC. (To name just some of the better-known cities that fell: Hebron, Shiloh, Jerusalem, Gezer, Aphek -- in addition to Sharuhen.) The destroyers may have been local people, taking advantage of the collapse of Hyksos control. Or they may have been, pace Wood, the Egyptians, who established control over Canaan during the next hundred years. (See Mazar, pp. 226-27.)

Wood: Archaeologists divide the Middle Bronze Age into three sub-periods. The last (III) is normally dated from 1650 to 1550 BC, when Kenyon says the city was destroyed. At Jericho she found 20 architectural phases within this hundred-year stretch, including three major and twelve minor destructions. That seems rather much for a century. It does not seem too much if the city lasted 250 years -- till 1400.

Problems: None. This argument remains standing, but it may not suffice to support Wood's thesis.

© 2003 Near East Tourist Agency (NET)

Text © 2003 Stephen Langfur