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Page 14 THE SOUTHERN 1SRAEUTE February 9, 1979
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(Right) desert scenery between
Jerusalem and Jericho.
The Road
to Jericho
A photo essay by
Michael Zimmerman
Israel Digest
The past keeps flashing back
everywhere in Judea, especially on
the way to Jericho. In Judea, the
politics and emotions of the past
and present are constantly mixed.
Someone joked, on a visit to
Jericho, about how many Roman
soldiers must have grumbled two
millenia ago during one of the
repeated campaigns against Jewish
freedom fighters. He role-
played. "Jericho: a place of flash
floods in winter, and fried brains in
summer. Judean guerrillas. Oh, why
couldn’t I be stationed at Caesarea
on the Med, with its Hellenistic
women, fresh seafood, and fast mail
service?”
Halfway down the 20 mile
Jerusalem-Jericho highway one
comes to Israeli construction at
Maaleh Adumim. The settlement
and industrial areas were initiated
and approved during the Labor
Party’s governing coalition about
the time of the Yom KippurWar. The
Book of Joshua mentions the place
as on the border of the tribes of
Jud&h and Benjamin (15:7, 18:17).
Maaleh Adumim may mean “Red
Ascent’’ or ‘‘Ascent of the
Edomites,” since the hills have a red
color, and ancient Edom was nearby
across the Jordan River. The Arabs
call it Talat ad Damm, Way of Blood.
Near Maaleh Adumim is a
Crusader fort, Chastel Rouge
which guarded the eastern
approach to Jerusalem and the
pilgrimage route from Jerusalem to
the supposed place of Jesus’
baptism in the Jordan River. An
ancient khan alongside the road
marks the Inn of the Good
Samaritan, from where derived the
parable reported in Luke (10:25-37),
so long used for anti-Jewish effect.
The Turks converted the khan into a
police station. During the 1918
fighting, the British bombarded and
destroyed the place as it was
defended by Turkish forces.
Defensive entrenchments which
date from 1941-42 can be seen on
nearly all nearby hills. These tied in
with the British and the Jewish
“Palestinian" plan to defend the land
against the Nazi threat. At that time
Rommel’s corps were advancing
into Egypt and toward the Suez
Canal and Palestine from the West.
There was also a threat from the
north and east. The Maaleh Adumim
defensive positions complemented
the better known fortifications of
Mount Carmel.
During the 1967 war, the Jordan
government ordered a reserve
armored regiment to ascend from
the Jordan Valley to reinforce the
garrison in the East Jerusalem area,
just 20 miles distant. (Artillery can
fire that distance.) A good
automobile makes the trip from the
Jordan Valley to the capital city in
just over half an hour. By a miracle,
good intelligence reporting and
reaction, or coincidence, the Israeli
Air Force successfully intercepted
the massive tank movement near
Maaleh Adumim. The arrival of the
strong Jordanian unit in Jerusalem
would have seriously inhibited the
rapidity of the Israeli liberation of
their capital, and possibly
prohibited it. Without question its
arrival would have caused a vast
increase of material damage from
the fighting and many more
casualties.
The ancient and little used Wadi
Qilt road to Jericho can be taken via
a turnoff a few miles further. One
sees St. George’s monastery
plastered against the cliffside of the
wadi, along with many caves. These
were used for over fifteen hundred
years by Christian monks and
ascetics, and before them by Jewish
prophets, dissidents, rebels,
fighters—men avoiding corruption,
seeking refuge, hideouts, silence,
meditation or communion with God.
The Jericho story, of course, goes
back to biblical times, over 1,600
years before the Moslem Arabs
arrived as conquerors, and over a
thousand years before the Romans
entered the picture.
Excavations have been probing
Jericho for the past century. There
is clear evidence that the site was
first settled at the dawn of
civilization, sometime about the 9th
millenium BCE. A defensive tower is
visible, built about a millenium later,
indicating perhaps, the earliest city
discovered anywhere. Dramatically,
no pottery was found within it.
Apparently men then knew how to
construct a giant tower, but not how
to bake clay dishes.
Perhaps the most dramatic period
of Jericho's history is one about
(Lett) St. George's Monastery at
Wadi Qilt; (below) part of the
Jericho excavations.
which little was known until a recent
excavation beginning in 1973
unearthed the story. Rabbinic
commentators have referred to the
“sheer luxury" of Jericho, the period
being the two centuries about the
turn of the millenium, 1978 years
ago. The excavation uncovered the
story of the city as its greatest—
during the days of the Hasmonean
kings (2nd and 1st centuries BCE),
King Herod (1st century BCE), and
the following century or so, into the
common era, the time of the great
Jewish wars against Roman
oppression.
The palaces of ancient Jewish
Jericho spread over many acres on
both sides of Wadi Qilt stream bed,
downsteam, east of the mountains.
A find of great excitement for
archeologists was the excavation of
the first Hasmonean palace ever
discovered. Mikvaot (ritual baths),
perhaps the oldest ever found, were
also uncovered. The full grandeur of
the Herodian palace is becoming
clear. In some cases Herod’s
buildings were found literally built
on top of Hasmonean foundations.
The drama of the last of the
recurring Jewish wars against
oppressive Roman rule also came to
light recently in Jericho. A large
house, apparently destroyed by fire
during the time of the Bar Kokhba
revolt (132-135 CE) was uncovered.
One element dating the building and
the probably time of its ruin was the
find of a round oil lamp of the period.
It was decorated with a grapevine
motif, and had, exceptionally , no
less than seventeen apertures for
wicks.
The Jewish wars against the
Romans can be linked up with the
present day Arab-Jewish conflict
over the Land of Israel. Following
Bar Kokhba's defeat, the Romans
erased the name Judea, the name of
the country of the Jews, and
renamed the area Syria-Palestina.
The war of words today bears a
bitter legacy to the Roman Empire,
the enemy of the Jews long ago.
(Left) British defense trench
scratched Into desert rock.
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Page 15 THE SOUTHERN ISRAELITE February 9, 1979