62 THE BIBLICAL ARCHAEOLOGIST (Vol. VI. it is published quarterly (February, May, September, December: iental Research. Its purpose is to meet the need for a readable, | yet thoroughly raliable account of archaeological discoveries as they are related to the Bible. Editor: G. Ernest Wright, McCormick Theological Seminary, 2330 N. Halsted St Chicago 14, Ill. (Only editorial correspondence should be sant to this address.) Board: W. F. Albright, Johne Hopkins University; Millar Burrows, Yale Univer- fy: EA. Speiser, University of Penneyivania. : 50c per year, payable to the American Schools of Oriental Research, Entered as second-class matter, October 2, 1942, at the Post Office at New Haven Connecticut, under the Act of March 3, 1879. THE JORDAN Nelson Glueck Director, American School of Oriental Research in Jerusalem ‘There is no river in the world which is more important for the history of the settlement of men in cities along its shores, or for the tracing of the Pilgrim’s Progress along its banks, than the Jordan. Moses viewed its trough, impassable for him, from Mount Nebo. Elijah and Elisha were at home in its Valley. Jesus was baptized in its waters. Three companions of Mohammed are buried along its length. It is now well known that the earliest villages in Palestine were located in the Coastal Plains, in the Plain of Esdraelon, and in the Jordan Valley. What has not been well known or known at all until recently, with the exception of what has been learned from the immensely profitable ex- cavations at Teleilat el-Ghassul, Jericho, and Beth-shan, were the locations and numbers of the centers of settled agricultural civilization in the Jordan Valley. It has generally been assumed that the Valley of the Jordan River has never heen populous, that towns have always been few in the Valley, and that it has deserved the name of Wilderness. Three main reasons have been advanced for this supposed state of affairs: (1) the intolerable heat and malaria, (2) the wild beasts, and (3) the wild men, Without going into detail with regard to the heat, malaria, wild animals, or savage men of the Jordan River Valley, the fact, recently established by the j of the American School of Oriental Research in Jerusalem and the Smith- sonian Institution, is that in ancient times the Jordan Valley was thickly inhabited, and was dotted with large and small settlements, most of whose inhabitants devoted themselves to agriculture. The American School- Smithsonian expedition established the presence of more than seventy ancient sites along the east side of the Jordan River alone, in the region extending from the Wadi Yarmuk (just south of the Sea'of Galilee) to the northeast end of the Dead Sea. That covers a stretch of approximately 65 miles, about one fourth of which was never inhabited in historical times. ‘The oldest of these ancient settlements go hack in time as far as about 3500 B.C., and as far forward as about 1200 A.D. The reasons for their coming into existence and flourishing over long periods of history are: (A) the exuberant fertility of the soil, and (2) a plentitude of water for irrigation. The reasons for their disappearance may be ascribed to the vagaries of mankind. Tt would have been well if those who have hitherto, mostly from afar, or at best very superficially, concerned themselves with the Jordan Valley,1943, 4) THE BIBLICAL ARCHAEOLOGIST 63 had taken the Bible in hand, and read the following statement in Gen. 13:10: “And Lot lifted up his eyes, and he saw all the Valley of the Jordan, that all of it was irrigated . . » like a garden of the Lord.” Now Lot may frequently have been wrong in the eyes of his shrewish wife, who to be sure apparently got her just desserts, but he was certainly right when it came to describing the Jordan Valley. It is true that his statement refers only to the lower section of the Jordan Valley, which includes the entire Jericho area, and extends on the east side from the Wadi Nimrin (Wadi Sha‘ib) to the northcast end of the Dead Sea. His statement ap plies equally well, however, to the east side of the north half of the Jordan Valley, and to part of the west side. It is possible to say now that the Jordan Valley in ancient times was perhaps the richest single part of all ancient Palestine or Transjordan. Its potentialities are enormous. T spent the winter and spring months of 1942-1943 riding along the entire length of the east side of the Jordan Valley, sleeping each night in a different Arab tent. I made it a point of asking my hosts about the so-called terrible weather and living conditions in general in the Jordan Valley. The invariable answer was that these living conditions were not considered intolerable at all by the inhabitants of the Valley. With few exceptions the Arabs resident there live there all the year round. While some of them suffer from malaria, they are no more afflicted than the inhabitants in the highlands of Transjordan. As for the heat, it seems quite bearable. There is furthermore the experience of European workers and settlers, who of recent years have lived in the Jordan Valley under hygienic conditions without any apparent impairment of their health. It may be added, furthermore, that the climate of the Jordan Valley has definitely not changed from earliest prehistoric times on. The general living conditions are no worse or better there today than they have been for some thousands of years. And the indisputable fact remains, that the Valley was very thickly inhabited from early historical times by large, and permanently settled, and highly developed agricultural communities. Granting that the heat and malaria and wild men and savage animals have not been and need not be any bar to settlement in the Jordan Valley, what, then, is the explanation of its past attractiveness for ancient settle ments, in view of the apparent barrenness and desolateness which have so impressed men like George Adam Smith, H. V. Morton, and a host of others? The answer is that the barrenness and desolateness are illusory, being temporary phenomena caused and removable by human factors. The particular reason for the abiding richness of most of the east side of the Jordan Valley, with the exception of the area between Damieh and the Wadi Nimrin, are, as has been pointed out above. the exuberant fertility of the soil, and the presence of plentiful water. One need only list the perennial streams which course across the width of the east side of the Jordan Valley to understand why it is so blessed with water. They are: Wadi Yarmuk; Wadi ‘Arab; Wadi Ziqlab; Wadi Jurm; Wadi Yabis; Wadi Rajeb; Wadi Kufrinji; Wadi Zerqa; Wadi Nimrin; Wadi Kefrein; Wadi Rameh; Wadi ‘Azeimeh. With all of these streams (none of which ever runs dry) irrigating the lands of the east side of the Valley, it is hardly to be wondered at that it was full of ancient cities. One of these ancient agricultural settlements was located near the confluence of the Wadi Zerqa (River Jabbok) with64 THE BIBLICAL ARCHAEOLOGIST (Vol. VI, the Jordan River. Its surface remains cover an area some two kilometers long and half a kilometer wide. On the surface the writer found the greatest numbers of fragments of ancient pottery that he has ever seen on any site in all of Palestine and Transjordan. This place, called Khirbet ‘Umm Hamad, was inhabited intensively as early as about 3500 B.C. There is more pottery on this one ancient site in the Jordan Valley than is used or exists in ali of the Jordan Valley today It is now possible to identify all of the Biblical sites located on the east side of the Jordan Valley. Jabesh-gilead=Tell Abu Kharaz and Tell el-Meqbereh Zaphon=Tell el-Qos Zarethan= Tell es-Sa‘idiyeh Succoth= Tell Deir ‘Alla ‘Adamah (Adam) =Tell ed-Damich Beth-nimrah= Tell Bleibil Abel-shittim=Tell el-Hammam Beth-haram (or Beth-haran) =Tell Tktanu Beth-jeshimoth= Tell el-‘Azeimeh This list does not mean that these were the only sites on the cast side of the Jordan Valley occupied during Biblical times. It does mean that the Bible for one reason or another mentioned only some of the towns which existed. Actually, in the north half of the east side of the Jordan Valley, in the area between Jisr Mejami* and Damieh, there are over thirty sites which were occupied between approximately the 13th and 6th centuries B.C, not to mention sites of earlier and later dates. It is probable that all of these towns were known to the various Biblical writers, but they did not mention many of them because for one reason or another they did not play a role in the accounts they were narrating. The silence of the Bible with regard to the area between Damieh and the Wadi Nimrin, however, is explained by the fact that because of an absence of water, there were no settlements there. The dating of the ancient sites in the Jordan Valley was based primarily upon the fragments of pottery found on them — a means of dating developed and perfected in Palestine especially by Vincent, Fisher, and Albright, It was found that all of the Biblical sites identified above were built on easily fortified and usually isolated hills, dominating perennial streams and strategic roads. The question of security was obviously para~ mount in the minds of the settlers in the Jordan Valley throughout the 13th-6th centures B.C. They chose sites for their towns and fortresses which could guard the fertile, irrigated plains from which they derived their sustenance. It was during the subsequent Greek or Hellenistic period that town sites were frequently built for the first time in the center of broad plains, with no attention being paid to the question of security. Frequently, such sites took with them the names, or adaptations of the names of the original site, which in the preceding Iron Age (Israelite period) had been built on high hills, situated perhaps in much more inconvenient places than in the center of the plain proper. In the case of the Cities of the Plains of Moab (east of Jericho), each of the Biblical sites there was built as a fortress on a high hill at the east end of the plains, while in the subsequent Hellenistic period, the towns which succeeded them, and whose inhabitants by and1943, 4) THE BIBLICAL ARCHAEOLOGIST 65 large worked the same lands, were situated in the center of the plains oper. Thus, for instance, the name of Beth-haram was moved in Hellen- istic times (3rd-Ist cents. B.C.) from its original site on Tell Iktanu into the plains and established itself at the place known today as Tell er-Rameh, a name which still bears a clear reminiscence of the original name. In similar manner, dhe name of the original site of Beth-jeshimod: wandered with the post-Israelite settlement to the place in the plains known today as Khirbet Sweimeh. That list could be greatly lengthened. And it was because of names such as Tell er-Rameh and Khirbet Sweimeh, which were clearly to be derived from the ancient Biblical names, that for a long Fig. 2. Abd thmeid Abdul Heir, servant of Mohammed Zeinat, at the coffee “table” in a tent fee the Wack Yabis inthe Jordan Vally. The excellence’ of the coffee pots undoubtedly ReptesetiN Ma Vase efontiie State, of the Peinat family. Tne tants in which the zeae Sf ihe Walley live are survivals Gf the old nomadic ike inthe” Arabian "desert: Photo Retton Glueck, ‘Dect 1942. time these sites were definitely identified with the Biblical towns. Archaeo- logical examination has shown now that they were never inhabited before the Hellenistic period at the very earliest. Inall periods of settlement in Transjordan, the civilizations there may be characterized as belonging to an irrigation culture. Their livelihood de- pended upon the uninterrupted flow of the life giving waters. It was not till Roman times, apparently, that the inhabitants of the Jordan Valley (and of other parts of the ancient world) learned how to tap and utilize underground supplies of water. It has been pointed out above that between Damieh and the Wadi Nimrin there were no settlements in Biblical times, because of a complete absence of surface water anywhere in that region. At one point, however, about six kilometers northwest of Shuneh, the66 THE BIBLICAL ARCHAEOLOGIST (Vol. VL, modern Arab village by the Wadi Nimrin, modern engineers have restored an interesting water system, which probably goes back to Roman times. Near the western part of the gentle slope from the eastern foothills, a long line of east-west pits was noticed. At the very bottom of this slope a small trickle of water emerged. The engineers opened up these pits, and found that in reality they were deep shafts filled with debris, which, when cleared, led to an underground water channel. This channel in turn had a slight east-west gradient. Eighteen shafts were opened up, each of them about three meters in diameter and about ten meters apart from each other. In addition, each shaft, which separately taps the water table, is connected to the one west of it by a tunnel about the height of an average man and about half as wide. Thus each shaft collects a certain amount of water from the water-bearing earth it penetrates, passing it on through the tunnel to the next shaft, and so on, until finally a very strong stream of water is collected. It is done without any effort except to keep the tunnel and the connecting shafts free of debris — which, however, is no small task. This method of obtaining water is extensively used in various parts of the Near East till this very day. Where the descending slope of the surface and the slightly descending slope of the underground water channel approach each other, a deep ditch was sunk, hecoming progressively shallower, until it merges with the irrigation ditches at its west end. ‘There is much in the present day Near East which can be tied up intimately with its ancient past To an archaeologist wha has worked long and intensively with the ancient history of Transjordan, to any one whose imagination can quicken the artifacts of by-gone civilizations with the breath of life, there is frequently no perceptible difference between what is and was, between what was and might be. Events and peoples and places not of days or years, but of centuries and millennia have a tendency to tele- scope themselves in his thinking. It was not so long ago that the writer was sitting in goodly company one night around the fire in Aref Zeinati’s tent, pitched in the Valley close to the Wadi Yabis. The talk turned to the men of ancient Jabesh-gilead, part of which name is retained in that of the Wadi Yabis today. Across the field, on top of an isolated hill was the great ancient fortress of Jabesh-gilead, known today as Tell Abu Kharaz. It is still surrounded by the remains of an ancient fortress wall. The site com- mands a view of the entire north half of the Jordan Valley, looking on to Beisan (ancient Beth-shan), which is about four hours’ walk from it. I was telling the people in the tent about the men of Jabesh-gilead, whose former lands they were now tilling in part, and in whose veins, for all I knew, some of their blood may still flow. I repeated to them the Biblical account of how the Ammonite king, Nahash, proposed to put out the right eye of every man in Jabesh-gilead, how they had appealed to Saul of Israel for help, and how he and his army had rescued them from the danger which threatened them. I went on to tell how later on the men of Jabesh- gilead remembered and repaid this kindness. When Saul and his sons subsequently died in battle against the Philistines, who thereupon impaled their bodies and hung their armor on the city wall of ancient Beth-shan, the men of Jabesh-gilead made an all night march to Beth-shan and back, removing the hodies of their benefactors from the wall, and giving them honorable burial in their city (I Sam. 11 and 31). Beth-shan (or Beisan, it is known today) is still the market place for the north half of the1943, 4) THE RIRLICAL ARCHAEOLOGIST a Jordan Valley. What occurs there during the day is subject for conversa tion in the tents of Zeinati at night. ‘The interest of my listeners was so keen, their questions so to the point, that soon I almost forgot to whom I was talking. Were these the men of Zeinati, or were these the men of Jabesh-gilead? It was all I could do to refrain from turning to one of them and asking him how on that memorable night the men of Jabesh-gilead had gotten past the Philistine Fig. 3. Tell el Meqbereh and Tell Abu Kharaz (in the background), discovered in the past year to be the true site of ancient Jabesh-gilead. Photo Nelson Glueck, Feb. 1943. guards on the city wall of Beth-shan! Or had none been posted that even- ing following the victory aver Tsrael? The past and present jastle each other in the Jordan Valley. From the time that prehistoric Palestinian man hunted clephiants there to our own day is just a hop, skip, and jump. “Roll Jordan roll, roll Jordan roll, T want to go to heaven when T die, To hear sweet Jordan roll.”