Type: Pottery Shards

Age: 1500-1200 BC

Era: Late Bronze Age

Excavated: Jericho

The ancient city of Jericho lay about 6 miles from the Jordan River, 7-1/2 miles northwest of the Dead Sea and 14 miles from Jerusalem. A large gushing spring and the fertile plain surrounding the city earned it the distinction, “The City of Palms” (Deuteronomy 34:2; 2 Chronicles 28:15). A major east-west road ran next to the city, intersecting with the Jordan at a ford nearby, making Jericho a strategic crossroads. The city had already been occupied for many centuries before the Israelites arrived. It had an inner wall and an outer fortified wall, several feet think, enclosing about 9 acres of land. To the Israelites entering the Primised Land, Jericho presented a major obstacle. According to the Bible, Joshua and the Israelites crossed the Jordan in the springtime and then celebrated the Passover on the plains outside Jericho, eating some of the fresh grain of the land since it was harvest time (Joshua 3:15-17; 5:10-12). For seven days the Israelites marched around the city, accompanied by priests blowing trumpets. on the seventh day, after their seventh circuit around the city, the priests blew their trumpets, the people shouted, and the walls of the city, as the old song goes, “came a-tumblin’ down.” “Then the people went up into the city, every man straight before him, and they took the city. And they utterly destroyed all that was in the city…with the edge of the sword” (Joshua 6:20-21). The Bible also tells us that the city was burned (Joshua 6:24). It has been noted by archaeologists…”The destruction was complete. Walls and floors were blackened or reddened by fire, and every room was filled with fallen bricks, timbers, and household utensils; in most rooms the fallen debris was heavily burnt, but the collapse of the walls of the easter rooms seems to have taken place before they were affected by fire.” This pottery was taken from the wall at Jericho and the burn marks on the pottery can be clearly seen as noted in the Joshua account.