Jericho’s latest dig seasons have delivered story-book material. Archaeologists from Sapienza University of Rome and the Palestinian Department of Antiquities report finding a potsherd inscribed in early Moabite script atop Tell es-Sultan. Its letters match the dialect of the Mesha Stele and fall in the era when the Bible says Moabite king Eglon held Jericho for “eighteen years” (Judges 3) .
Just below that layer, two separate palaces tell a fiery tale of upheaval. Charred grain and carbon dating place one destruction around 1 635 BCE and a second around 1 530 BCE—dates that overlap proposed timelines for the Exodus and underline Jericho’s reputation for sudden collapse .
Even deeper, excavators re-examined the famous Early Bronze double wall. Its battered mud-brick top shows how a quake—or the kind of loud assault described in Joshua 6—could have sent the upper courses cascading outward .
The discoveries appear in the Interim Report on the Excavations at Tell es-Sultan, Ancient Jericho (2019-2023), published in Vicino Oriente XXIX (2024) by Lorenzo Nigro and Jehad Yasine . With Jericho now a UNESCO World Heritage site, the team plans more laboratory work on the Moabite ostracon and additional radiocarbon samples. Each fresh layer, they say, keeps narrowing the gap between sacred text and archaeological trench—giving Eglon, Joshua and their stories new footholds in the soil of the world’s oldest city.
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