Jericho

Jericho is possibly the oldest city in the world, having been inhabited since around 9500 BC. That's a long time! It's also probably the lowest city on Earth, being about 800 feet below sea level. It's still an important place too, being not very far from the Allenby/King Hussein Bridge Crossing into Jordan. It's the largest city in this part of the West Bank and even gets its own governate. Despite that, the city's not really the nicest place to visit. It's a bit of a rough town and when I visited there was some sort of curfew in effect. There are however some very nice places nearby, including the ancient city itself.

Having been continuously inhabited for over 10,000 years Jericho's had a lot of time to build up some nice ruins. The main place people visit is the old city itself, known as Tell es-Sultan. This is a pretty big settlement for a stone age site and is well worth the walk around, although most of the buildings are under a layer of dirt. Essentially what you're looking at is a mound of dirt, so I wouldn't recommend dedicating an entire day to it, but if you're seeing the area it's well worth a stop.

The most famous element of Jericho is probably its walls, which can just be made out in the top photo behind the fountain. Despite the stories, it wasn't Joshua who knocked them down by marching around playing the horns until they fell. The unfortunate place has a tendency to be destroyed and rebuilt and at this point it was still between rebuildings. In actuality, the walls had been torn down centuries earlier. They didn't rebuild them until well after Joshua. On the plus side, this would have made it much easier for him to slaughter every man woman and child in the city.

 

The area surrounding Jericho is actually a surprisingly fertile patch of land. They grow quite a lot of bananas from what I understand, and we saw several banana trees while we were there. This was where my camera ran out of juice, so from here on the pictures get a little spotty.

This site is on the outskirts of modern Jericho right next to a really nice shopping center that is well worth a visit. I understand it used to be a casino before it got shut down through lack of business. A real shame.

Overlooking Jericho is the Mount of Temptation, where Jesus was tempted by Satan. This place looks well worth a visit, but unfortunately we didn't even have time to get out of our bus. On the top of this mountain is the Monastery of the Temptation, which sounds like the name of the most happening Christian nightclub ever but is actually a quiet little Orthodox establishment. They have a cable car that goes up to the monastery from here, and it's all very civilized and easy to access.

This site is called Hisham's Palace and it's an Umayyad site from the early 8th century. It's history is frustratingly unclear, and they can't even say for sure whose it was. The complex itself is lovely and features some nice examples of early Arabic art. It seems very Persian to me.

The tree of Zacchaeus is one of the more popular tourist attractions in Jericho. Supposedly, this is the tree that Zacchaeus the tax-collector climbed to see Jesus talking. Riiiiiight. It's a pretty old looking tree though, and they have many places where you can stand and stare at it. If that's your idea of a good time.

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31°52'12.20"N, 35°26'37.41"E