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Gallery|History

Jericho’s Tell es-Sultan added to UNESCO World Heritage list

The ruins at Tell es-Sultan have been declared the ‘oldest fortified city in the world’.

Jericho
Tell es-Sultan has been deemed a World Heritage Site in Palestine. [Ayman Nobani/Al Jazeera]
By Ayman Nobani
Published On 18 Sep 202318 Sep 2023
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Jericho, occupied West Bank – Tell es-Sultan has been deemed a World Heritage Site in Palestine, with the United Nations declaring it the “oldest fortified city in the world”.

Iyad Hamdan, director general of the Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities in Jericho, told Al Jazeera that the decision “strengthens Palestinian identity and international recognition”.

The ruins near the ancient city of Jericho in the occupied West Bank had their special status declared on Sunday at a meeting of the UN World Heritage Committee of the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.

Tell es-Sultan, an oval mound containing evidence of prehistoric human activity dating back to the ninth millennium BCE with a perennial spring nearby, is 10km (6 miles) northwest of the Dead Sea and 1.5km (nearly one mile) north of the modern city of Jericho.

Fortification walls and trenches, as well as the remains of palaces, staircases and towers from the Neolithic and Bronze Ages, were found as well.

Hamdan said: “Tel es-Sultan is the oldest fortified agricultural settlement in which the Palestinian individual moved from hunting and gathering to agriculture and animal domestication.”

Meanwhile, Hani Noureldin, professor of archaeology at Abu Dis University in Jerusalem, said the site “confirms the extent of the importance of human civilization in Palestine”.

Tel es-Sultan is an “exceptional case … distinguished by its transitional dimension between the stages of hunting and gathering food, to a stable settlement that possesses the basic elements of natural resources”, Noureldin told Al Jazeera.

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It “represents the civil development that characterised the Fertile Crescent region in general, Mesopotamia and the Levant, during the third and second millennium BCE”, he continued.

The creativity of the site’s inhabitants, said Noureldin, “was reflected in the burial rituals, which included decorating human skulls with a smooth layer of plaster before painting it with natural colours.”

Tell es-Sultan joins three other UN-designated World Heritage Sites in Palestine: the birthplace of Jesus including the Church of the Nativity and the pilgrimage route in Bethlehem, the old town of Hebron, and the “cultural landscape” of the village of Battir south of Jerusalem.

Jericho
UNESCO said Tell es-Sultan "exhibits the interchange of cultural and spiritual ideologies with civic living, creating developments in architecture, technology, arts, and the domestication of plants and animals, particularly during the Neolithic and the Bronze ages". [Ayman Nobani/Al Jazeera]
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Jericho
Jericho is one of the oldest continually inhabited cities on Earth, and is in a part of the Israeli-occupied West Bank that is administered by the Palestinian Authority (PA). [Ayman Nobani/Al Jazeera]
Jericho
The PA's Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Expatriates said on Monday the decision "reflects the international community’s endorsement of Palestine’s invaluable contribution to world history and human heritage and Palestinian right to self-determination over their cultural resources and rights". [Ayman Nobani/Al Jazeera]
Jericho
"Ancient Jericho dates back more than 10,000 years and 4,000 years before any other similarly fortified city. Its inhabitants were among the first humans to rely on agriculture for subsistence, which is attested by its granaries and stone tools used for harvest," UNESCO said. [Ayman Nobani/Al Jazeera]
Jericho
Israel’s foreign ministry criticised the decision. “The foreign ministry considers today’s decision another sign of the cynical use the Palestinians are making of UNESCO and the organisation’s politicisation,” a statement on Sunday said. [Ayman Nobani/Al Jazeera]
Jericho
According to UNESCO, "skulls and statues found on the site testify to cultic practices amongst the Neolithic populations living there, and the Early Bronze Age archaeological material shows signs of urban planning. Vestiges from the Middle Bronze Age reveal the presence of a large Canaanite city-state occupied by a socially complex population." [Ayman Nobani/Al Jazeera]
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Jericho
"A permanent settlement had emerged here by the 9th to 8th millennium BC, due to the fertile soil of the oasis and easy access to water," the UN agency continued. [Ayman Nobani/Al Jazeera]
Jericho
Tell es-Sultan joins three other UN-designated World Heritage sites in Palestine: the birthplace of Jesus including the Church of the Nativity and the pilgrimage route in Bethlehem, the old town of Hebron, and the "cultural landscape" of the village of Battir south of Jerusalem. [Ayman Nobani/Al Jazeera]


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