How did Sir Sir Charles Warren know where to excavate I know he did not find ancient Jericho but how did he know that it could be around there?

Answer 1

WiTaimre: Answering "How did Sir Sir Charles Warren know where to excavate I know he did not find ancient Jericho but how did he know that it could be around there?"

The military field's research of the "Royal Engineers" young Sir Warren was a part of military surveillance, which learns to look themself for rivers, passages, caverns, wells, rocks and hills in any place.

Sir Warren had learnt the job of surveying lands, any lands, and with some other's experience in his teams he can think himself about where such a place should be - and where not, p.e.if he had to cross a river regularly, where should be the watchtowers site?

- Only he didn't now about the river Jordan in the time of Abraham oder Moses, its bed in former times went between a thick jungle.

- But until nowadays a city named Jericho exists and people cross the Jordan not far away, but far enough, no matter, whether a jungle or not, today there is the desert around.

There was not the question, where Jericho city might be located in the world, but only: how could the "ancient" city of Jericho (that one of The Bible Josua conquered) to be found in the depth of a hundred-times-destroyed, burnt, built-and-re-re-re-re-bouilt place, still named Jericho by the chain of still living Jewish wits until today. And it has an Arab name with wits for this since 1400 years

- and: there is no other possibility in that region to make a good guarding castle cite at the Jordan banks on this side, by a) military needs to defend it, b) with enough sweet waters inside to endure besieges, c) a good frequented street leading nearby which needs to cross the Jordan river.

If you visit Jericho today, you could see an excavation, a "sanctuary for the moon" in a pitch, so deep(7-8m) situated that you may look down to the top of that tower in that pitch - so much sand, ashes and stones heaped around that tower in the past, it is from a time before Moses.

Archaeologists call this a "tel" a hill of ruines, rubble, thrown away vessels, stones, like shells of an onion, with sand and ashes between or not. Old Jericho Tel might have more than 20 "shells" in its walls - Jerusalem less.

On the other hand: In the Holy Land there continued a population since the time before Abraham, who crossed the Jordan to come in, and the Holy bible tells a lot of stories located here and there about a lot of places, to know which place must be near to which other place. Between places are ancient "streets" - millions of people took the direction Jordan - Jericho - Jerusalem since several thousands of years - there are not very much possibilities to do so.

So we have the Holy Bible tales on Jerusalem, too, and we have different ancient books, chronicles which are mentionng Jerusalem, know all its names (p.e.Arabs call it "El Quds" =The Holy)

- but Jerusalem is not so often burnt down as Jericho because its position is much safer - imagine, it is in the mountains, 700m to go upstairs from Jericho: the Romans with a very powerful force needed years to conquer it. You need to climb the mountains - you need heavy "machines" in former times to fight the heavy walls there upstairs, You have to transport anything with oxen, mules, men and not in waggons, that all needs wood, not growing here in that time

- the army must eat and drink daily - but here are not the lots of gardens or fields or cattle to eat from the population - the enemy has to fetch it from far away, weekly etc. - Inside the city, there are stores and stocks, and the own waters, and cisternes - they could stand a longtime besiege.

Therefore the "shells" of the "Tel" Jerusalem are not so many, but we know about some of them.

The site of the Holy Temple Mount is clear, where it is, because the Jews had no generation which didn't pray there(least very nearby, if forbidden), paying a lot of money for each prayer - for some hundreds of years, or paying with their lifes in times of danger for this, but the witness is clear

- and the topographic site cannot be another, here.

Since the 4th Kaliph Muawia of Damascus, "El Quds" (Jerusalem) was created the 3rd or 4th Holy Site of Islam(to fulfill the Law of Doing A Hadjj Once in Life) between here and Damascus - instead of Mekka and Medina), even when they did forget it as a city and did nothing for the city's welfare, the site had a guard.

- Christians could visit the Church of The Holy Tomb, if it was allowed - but not cross or touch the Holy Temple Mount - but then the site had a permanent Muslim guard.

Sir Charles Warren describes the huge, black and furious guards of his time.

He only managed to go in at the SW-ridge of the mount - he had only this chance

The Temple Mount has a "Gate" to the east and there the mountain falls very deep down in a valley, called the Gey Hinnom. Sometimes a rains makes a bit water passing through this, but it is a dry wadi and very hot there by nature.

Coming from Gej Hinnom to the left hand the Temple Mount begins with some human made caverns, they are called "Salomo's stables" something to be "enough far-away"-seeming for the Temple Guards - not really stables for horses, but known as a shadow place, with some "and-so-on" deeper inside, nobody went deeper in, maybe even not the crusaders in their times.

By the way

- I saw a film of visiting those channels under the Temple Mount and near Salomo's Stables, made in the 1920th by a comission of visitors, Jewish, Christian and Muslim archaelogists together, I remember, the film was done in the time before the most aggressive politics of the Great Mufti finished such cooperatives since 1929.

It was not, that Sir Warren knew exactly what he was looking for - it was the only possibility to look at anything very near to the Holy site - to find or find not some relicts of the Jesus time or before.

The British Baroness Angela Burdett-Coutts,who created the fund PEF he was digging for, had the question: which fresh waters drank Jesus and which drank king David? - this gave the first idea what to dig.

- They knew that king Hosea of Judah in the 8th century BC, built a tunnel leading sweet waters inside the mountain from the Siloah Pool, a hidden channel.

- Today this tunnel is found (I saw it) and iclearly dentified by an inscription in Canaanite letters where the diggers met inside, digging this channel from both sides

- but this couldn't be a hidden channel to the "Salomo's stables" ridge, because Gej Hinnom is and was dry.

Sir Warren digged in pure hope to find "anything", maybe interesting, too.

There is a report, that King Herode had destroyed the Jewish old Holy Sanctuary II which the people built coming back from Babylon (the Bible tells this, who built it)

- it was not so huge - they were poor people, but maybe as great as Salomo's was the site to build it - they could remember, the eldest of them saw it - ruines proved it

- and unto Herode's times it was "grown" to an ensemble of buildings and cells and chambers, from about 500 to 100 years old, not so nice to look at, with many severly rotten walls and roofs, and it is told, that king Herode took the rubble of stones of all that together - filled up with this some lowering places there, and made the top of the mountain greater, plane, surely double wide - and put his great noble Hellenic modern "Second" Temple (it was the third!) on this - grand, beautiful, great to look at (but "built with bloody hands"...)

- in David's and Ezra's time it was by far not so wide - imagine now the thoughts of an archaeologist who thinks about this: under the great place of the Temple Mount is only a little place, solide built on the rocks

- and this is true - under the great Mesdjid "Al Aqsa" the ground on the mountain is not built on the solide rocks. And this is in the direction to "Salomo's Stables".

In the moment when understanding this, that the "rock" below Al Aqsa might be a stony "cheese" with tunnels, holes, caverns, filled up with ancient rubbish - all the archaelogists would cry for joy ! - and surely, young Ltn.Warren thought about this, too

- but, if this was so, then the Muslim Pascha (and his still existing Caliph) had to fear a great great problem - may be the diggers are not cautious - and in his times they surely were not all cautious if they began to find some worthy things to sell - coins, vessels, stones with inscriptions, anything a human could have touched in former times.

Not this foreigners, maybe - because the scientific archaelogist had learnt something unto 1867, to be cautious - but his own poor people would try to dig illegally - here and there - etc - and the great Mesdjid Al Aqsa walls could glide away - downstairs to the Gej Hinnom !

- uj - and Gej Hinnom is the prototype-name for the Arabian word Gehenna, hell: In the Days of Last Judgement - is taught - it will be again filled with burning coal and oils and the manhood has to cross it over a long rope to the other side of this valley, the justice can manage this, the injustice will fall down and burn...

This problem - that the Great Mesdjid's walls might glide away - still exists - but the other problem is the same - the Temple Guard officials dare not to allow some technical research to fix the underground below Al Aqsa - full of fear it might crash down, with or without repairing this

- and, surely - each team, that comes and tries to look in that mountain, even if they wish only to repair the ground - they should rescue any ancient human relict from this underground before filling this "cheese's holes" with beton or steel-constructions.

- And, surely, nobody would touch the old Mesdjid on the top to hurt this walls.

Directly under this building situated, very near by, is the "Western Wall" of the Jews, the last wall of Herodian Temple times and the only Holy site for Jews in all the world.

But - if all the world waits - the next earthquake can"do it" - it is a region with earthquakes - it's more a wonder that in all the time it didn't glide away since then, I assume.

mfG

WiTaimre