At a Glance

• Location: Adjacent to modern Jericho city, Palestinian Authority, Jordan Valley
• Coordinates: 31.8708° N, 35.4444° E
• Altitude: Approximately −258 m (below sea level); Jordan Valley
• Period: c. 10,000 BC – present (Natufian period onward)
• UNESCO status: Palestinian Tentative World Heritage List
• Key excavations: John Garstang (1930–1936); Kathleen Kenyon (1952–1958)

Key Facts

Oldest continuously inhabited city

Settlement at Tell es-Sultan began c. 10,000 BC with Natufian hunter-gatherer camps drawn to the Ain es-Sultan spring; permanent occupation has continued with only brief interruptions for 12 millennia

The Neolithic Tower

A stone tower approximately 8.5 m tall with an internal staircase of 22 stone steps, constructed c. 8000 BC during the Pre-Pottery Neolithic A period — the oldest known stone monument in the world, predating the pyramids by 5,500 years

Ain es-Sultan spring

A perennial freshwater spring that has sustained the settlement for millennia; still flowing and still used for local irrigation

Kathleen Kenyon’s discovery

Kenyon’s 1952–1958 stratigraphic excavation proved that Jericho had no occupation layer corresponding to the Late Bronze Age (c. 1550–1200 BC) — the period of the biblical Joshua narrative; the famous “fallen walls” belonged to an earlier era

History

The tell’s sequence begins with Natufian camps c. 10,000 BC, when hunter-gatherers established seasonal settlements near the spring. By 9500 BC the Pre-Pottery Neolithic A (PPNA) community had built permanent mud-brick houses and, most remarkably, the stone tower — a structure of unknown purpose (watchtower, granary marker, ritual monument?) that demonstrates a degree of communal organization previously unknown for this period.

Jericho passed through Bronze Age and Iron Age occupation before achieving biblical fame. John Garstang excavated the site in the 1930s and identified a series of collapsed mud-brick walls as the walls destroyed in the Book of Joshua. His findings were accepted for two decades. Then Kathleen Kenyon, applying the stratigraphic methods she had refined at Verulamium in Britain, demonstrated in the 1950s that Garstang’s walls dated to the Early Bronze Age (c. 3000–2400 BC) — more than a thousand years before Joshua — and that the Late Bronze Age had left almost no archaeological trace at Jericho. The city appears to have been largely unoccupied or minimally inhabited precisely during the period the biblical narrative describes its conquest.

Control of the site passed from Ottoman Palestine to British Mandatory Palestine, to Jordanian administration (1948–1967), to Israeli military occupation (1967–1994), and then to the Palestinian Authority under the Oslo Accords. The modern city of Jericho, population approximately 25,000, sits immediately adjacent to the tell.

What You See Today

The tell is modest in height — perhaps 15 metres above the valley floor — but the exposed excavation trenches reveal the density of the accumulated layers: mud brick upon mud brick, each generation building on the debris of the last. The Neolithic Tower stands in the main excavation trench, its staircase visible, its scale surprising for its age. Nearby, the ruins of Hisham’s Palace (an Umayyad winter retreat, 8th century AD) offer the site’s most ornate architecture, including a remarkable mosaic floor with a tree-of-life pattern in intact color.

Stand at the tell’s northern edge and the modern city’s noise rises from below while the Jordan Valley extends flat and brown to the Dead Sea in the distance — one of the oldest views in the human world, largely unchanged in topography if not in meaning.

Kathleen Kenyon and the Science of Stratigraphy

Kathleen Kenyon (1906–1978) approached Tell es-Sultan differently from her predecessors. Rather than digging for objects and identifying layers by their artifacts, she documented the soil composition, color, and texture at every point — the Wheeler-Kenyon method. This painstaking approach revealed not just what was there but what was absent: the absence of Late Bronze Age pottery at Jericho was as significant as any presence. Her willingness to let the evidence contradict a cherished interpretation, including one her own profession had accepted, defined a standard for archaeological honesty that the discipline still invokes.

Practical Information

• Opening hours: Daily 08:00–17:00; entrance via ticketed gate at the site perimeter
• Entry fee: Palestinian Authority managed site; local currency accepted
• Hisham’s Palace: Separate nearby site (1 km north); Umayyad period; combined visits common
• Climate: Jericho is among the hottest spots on earth in summer (July average 38°C); visit October–April
• Cable car: The cable car to the Greek Orthodox Monastery of the Temptation (Quarantal) begins near the tell; panoramic views of the site and valley

Getting There

• From Jerusalem: Approximately 35 km east via Route 1 (the Dead Sea road); 40–50 minutes by car through the Israeli checkpoint at the edge of the PA
• By shared taxi: Sherut/service taxis from Jerusalem’s Damascus Gate to Jericho; frequent departures
• Within Jericho: The tell is walkable from the town center; taxis available locally
• Note: Entry into Palestinian Authority-administered Jericho does not require special permits for most visitors; verify current travel requirements before visiting

Nearby

• Hisham’s Palace (Khirbet al-Mafjar) — Umayyad winter complex (8th century AD) with spectacular mosaic floors, 1 km north of the tell
• Monastery of the Temptation — Greek Orthodox cliff monastery marking the traditional site of Christ’s temptation; cable car access
• Dead Sea — 20 km southeast; lowest point on earth; float in salt water at numerous beach resorts
• Qumran — Site of the Dead Sea Scrolls discovery, 20 km south along the Dead Sea shore; National Park with visitor center

Sources

• UNESCO Tentative List — Tell es-Sultan / Ancient Jericho
• Wikipedia — Jericho
• Kenyon, Kathleen M. Excavations at Jericho. 5 vols. British School of Archaeology in Jerusalem, 1960–1983.
• Finkelstein, Israel and Neil Asher Silberman. The Bible Unearthed. Free Press, 2001.