Buried Treasure (1954) s03e02 Episode Script

The first verse of the second chapter of the Book of Joshua - "And Joshua, the son of Nun, sent out of Shittim, two men, to spy secretly, "saying, 'Go, view the land and Jericho.
'" Good evening.
The Jericho to which Joshua sent his two spies lies some 20 miles east of Jerusalem, near where the River Jordan enters the Dead Sea.
It lies within the area known as the Fertile Crescent, which stretches from the River Nile to the rivers Tigris and Euphrates and it is generally agreed, I think, that civilisation and settled community life first started in this area.
Today, the site of Jericho is marked by this low, sandy mound on which once stood the town that Joshua took to the sound of trumpets.
Excavations during the last four years have however shown that any traces of Joshua's Jericho must have been washed off the top of the mound.
Nevertheless, the results of these excavations are most important and exciting and they're the subject of our programme this evening.
There are three people with me in the studio tonight and they're going to tell you about these excavations.
First of all, the director of the British School Of Archaeology, who has been in charge of these excavations, Dr Kathleen Kenyon.
We've been excavating Jericho now for five years, since 1952.
Three bodies have been sponsoring our work - the British School Of Archaeology in Jerusalem, the Palestine Exploration Fund and the British Academy.
And the American School Of Oriental Research and the Royal Ontario Museum Of Toronto have joined us on certain years.
And then, a number of universities and museums have supported us with especially important contributions from the Ashmolean Museum, Birmingham City Museum and Sydney University.
Now, among the archaeologists who've dug at Jericho and written about it is Lady Wheeler.
But although she's an Australian, she tells me that she's not feeling defeated tonight.
Lady Wheeler.
The film that you will be shown tonight will give you some idea of the hard and serious work that goes on on an excavation.
But at the same time, it will give you an idea of dig life.
How we get up in the morning at dawn.
Or, at least, it always seems to me dawn! And how we work all through the day, with our very entertaining, charming Arab friends, our workmen.
And how in the evening, we indulge in most light-hearted pleasures.
It is a life that we enjoy very much.
And then, the third is Sir Mortimer Wheeler.
He didn't take part in these particular excavations but he visited the site when our cameras were there.
On three occasions, I have visited excavations at Jericho and on each occasion, I have found them more and more exciting and more and more important.
And now, my colleague Kathleen Kenyon, with unsurpassed skill, has probed deeply into the famous mound and at the base of it has found traces of a civilisation older than any previously known.
Well, those, then, Dr Kenyon, Lady Wheeler and Sir Mortimer Wheeler, are the commentators in the film which you're now going to see - a film about the excavations on the ancient site of Jericho and its very important results.
KATHLEEN KENYON: This stream runs through our camp at Jericho.
Its source is the spring which lies at the foot of the great mound or tell.
In fact, it is the cause and origin of the tell, because it was the spring which originally attracted man to the site.
To the south-east of the site lies the oasis and the modern town of Jericho.
To the east lies the valley of the River Jordan, with the mountains of Gilead rising beyond it in the distance.
To the north, there are the neatly laid out mud houses of the settlement which houses 20,000 Arab refugees from Israel.
To the west, the site is dominated by the Mount of Temptation, which is said to be the place where Christ was taken to be tempted by the sight of all the rich cities of the plain.
Altogether, the site is a spectacular one.
But we don't think much about that at 6.
45 in the morning, when we all foregather in the mess room of the camp house, which is the headquarters of the excavation.
There, the great teapot dominates the centre of the table as the 22 supervisory members of the excavation consume tea and thick marmalade sandwiches before work starts.
Meanwhile, the 200 or so Arab workmen who are employed on the excavation are gathering in front of the camp house, together with the women from the refugee village, who are already bringing their water jars to fill at the spring.
They collect their tools and baskets from the camp house and then, at seven o'clock, everybody troops up onto the tell to start the day's work.
There are seven main trenches on the mound, each in charge of a supervisor, a trained archaeologist.
The supervisor of this particular site is Dr Tushingham, the assistant director of the excavation, who is the director of the Archaeology Division of the Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto.
The workers are divided into three main types - pick men, hoe men, and basket boys.
Here, a hoe man is filling the earth into a basket.
The boys who pass the baskets up the steps on the side of the cuttings don't always work as hard as this.
These pick men, who may sometimes use a trowel and not a pick, are working under the immediate supervision of Pru Oliver, one of the Americans in the excavation party.
In another trench, some skeletons have emerged from beneath the floor of a Late Stone Age house.
They are being painted with preserving fluid and will be plotted and photographed before being lifted and studied by the expedition's anatomist.
A child has been buried here as well, the victim, perhaps, of some epidemic.
The supervisor of this site is Bill Power, from the University of Toronto, another of the Canadian members of the expedition.
The site supervisor next door is Henk Franken from Leiden University in Holland.
And whereas Bill had a skeleton without a skull, Henk's site has produced this group of seven skulls.
The Late Stone Age people of Jericho had a particular interest in skulls, as we shall show you later.
At every stage in the excavation, careful records are made.
Here, Peter Dorrell, our photographer, is photographing a stone with some unusual markings which has appeared in another site.
It may be just a doodle by some ancient stonemason, or evidence of the ancient Jerichoans' knowledge of geometry.
But, in any case, it is photographed.
We also have a surveyor working with the excavation, so that we can record the plans of all the superimposed houses before we remove them to find out what is underneath.
And in addition, we make drawings, at the side of every section, note the details of the composition of every layer.
LADY WHEELER: But Miss Kenyon, our director, has another very important task on the tell, apart from her many official duties.
Scallywags such as these are very entertaining characters to meet, but it doesn't need much of an excuse to distract their attention from work.
It's remarkable, though, to see the effect of the director's presence on them.
Even the prospect of being filmed cannot compete, and the director's shouted words of reproof puts the fear of the Lord into them.
Not all the excavation takes place on the tell.
We have found many tombs of the ancient inhabitants of Jericho in the refugee village.
Once it became known we were interested, many were reported to us by the villagers, who found them in the course of their own digging.
So we were constantly having the excitement of opening a new tomb.
They are normally at the bottom of a shaft, with the entrance to the actual tomb blocked by a large stone.
When the shaft has been cleared, the stone door is then heaved away.
MEN SPEAKING IN ARABIC And finally, there is revealed for the first time for thousands of years, the dramatic sight of the interior of the tomb, the bodies and the rich grave offerings.
These have to photographed, recorded and studied.
It can be a cramped job but, fortunately, not all the tombs are as small as that one.
This one was so large we christened it the Albert Hall! Unlike the other, which contained several bodies, this had only one skeleton - typical of a different burial custom.
Near him were placed the offerings to accompany him on his journey to the next world - pots containing food and drink, joints of meat and this lamp, whose fluttering light was the last to illumine the tomb.
Earth tremors shook it to the ground.
KATHLEEN KENYON: The finds, both from the tell itself and the tombs, are all carefully numbered, registered and card-indexed by Dorothy Marshall and her helpers.
At the end of each year's season, the best finds go to the Kingdom of Jordan, and the rest are divided between the various bodies who've supported the excavations, after we've hardened them sufficiently for travelling.
Outside, all the pottery found during the day is washed and placed in heaps, according to its source, ready for study later.
Drawings are also made of the different types of pot because they are one of the most useful of all sources of information.
And while all this archaeological activity is going on, there are domestic affairs to be dealt with.
Elizabeth, our housekeeper, has to satisfy the hungry appetites gained on excavation.
A conference with the cook will probably be followed by a shopping trip to the bazaar in modern Jericho.
The morning sick parade, too, is a regular happening.
And Dorothy ably deals with the ills and accidents of workmen - blistered toes, for instance.
All the time, Fatima is doing the washing.
She's indefatigable, rinsing and wringing away all day.
While at the other end of the room, Riziq, ex-Royal Navy, with a passion for keeping everything shipshape, does the ironing.
At 4.
30pm, work on the tell ends and there's no need to point out that the men don't waste any time at this moment.
MEN WHISTLE AND CHATTER LADY WHEELER: And this is when the scene outside the camp house is at its liveliest and most social.
After the men have returned their tools and baskets to the camp house, there is a rush to the stream and a great deal of splashing as the dust from the tell is washed off arms and legs and shaken out of clothing.
Further up the stream, the women from the refugee village are filling their water pots - an activity that can have altered little in the thousands of years since the first settlement.
KATHLEEN KENYON: After tea, I hold an inquest on the day's pottery finds, choosing those of particular significance to be drawn and photographed, and generally discussing the problems presented by the different finds.
For instance, this piece had an engaging portrait of a dog stamped on it, to whom we gave the name Pluto.
Although work on the excavation stops after tea, much else has to be done.
Here, Doug Tushingham, the assistant director, and Saleh, our foreman, are working out the accounts of our complicated wage bill.
In the conservation room, Ann is at work painting with preserving fluid and trying to fit together a 3,000-year-old wooden plate, which has appeared in one of the Middle Bronze Age tombs.
In the kitchen, too, there is a busy scene as dinner is prepared.
But perhaps the most dramatic scene is the fortnightly payday.
The pay parade takes place outside the camp house.
The men and boys are called up one by one by Saleh and receive their money.
Most can sign their names, but some have to make a mark with their thumbs.
Soon after pay parade, dinner will be ready and the hungry excavation appetites will be in the process of being settled in the mess room.
After dinner there will be letter writing or reading, or bridge, or even occasional entertainment from amongst our own ranks.
Playing the local drum is an occupation at which some of party have become quite skilful, as you can judge for yourself from this duet.
RHYTHMIC DRUMS AND HANDCLAPS But with work starting at 7am next morning, it's not long before most people are in their tents, if not in bed.
And soon the sound of the frogs, the crickets and the stream can all be heard outside the camp house.
MORTIMER WHEELER: That gives you an idea of the life the excavators lead.
But now, you may well ask, what have the excavations revealed? This untidy, dusty mound contains the material remains of several thousand years of occupation.
But over and above that, it has one unique feature which makes it perhaps the most important excavation that has happened since the war.
Down on the bedrock, at the very heart of this mound, under 70ft of debris, lie a ditch and stone wall.
Take a good look at them, because this ditch and wall guarded the earliest town yet discovered.
KATHLEEN KENYON: This wall and ditch belong to a very early stage in the occupation of the site.
There's already evidence there's a still earlier one behind it.
By great good luck, our trench hit the place where the defences were strengthened by a great internal tower.
You can see here the shape of it.
Our excavations this year also revealed an extraordinary feature, that there was a staircase built through the centre of the tower.
It had 20 stairs and went down 19ft before opening through a door at the foot of the tower.
The tower with its stairway is by far the earliest piece of architecture that has yet been discovered.
These defences belong to an extremely early stage in the history of the town.
This drawing shows what the settlement may have looked like, with defences impressive enough to have belonged to the Middle Ages, but we now have evidence that they were built more than 9,000 years ago.
Eventually these Jerichoans were succeeded, perhaps driven out by new people between 7000-8000 BC who made this large building, which we think may have been a temple.
In the middle was a burnished plaster basin which had been stained black with burning.
Then there was another building, which, too, may have been a temple.
All its entrances are sealed and at one end there's a pillar in a niche.
This little figure - mother goddess - was perhaps associated with fertility rites.
These foundations show that the second inhabitants of Jericho lived in square-built rooms probably grouped around a courtyard.
They had polished, plastered floors which curved up into the walls, so the mistress of the house had her sweeping made easier.
In other houses we found evidence of rush mats - it must've made the floors more comfortable.
The mats had long since vanished but left their traces in a grey film.
On this one, you can see the track that had been eaten by white ants.
Pottery had not yet been discovered, so the inhabitants used stone vessels.
In querns like this they would grind the corn from the irrigated fields beyond the town.
The numbers of layers of floors show that this stage of Jericho must have lasted a very long time - hundreds or even thousands of years.
Time and time again the houses were rebuilt.
In places, there are the remains of no less than 21 houses, one on top of another, which show in the layers of these successive courtyards.
The builders of these houses had one other particular habit which is of interest to us.
In 1953, we found here a deposit of seven human skulls with plaster features.
They lay above one plastered floor and been buried beneath a later one.
The modelling is amazingly realistic.
The heads are not only unmistakable works of art but give us an impression of what the ancient Jerichoans must've looked like.
They were probably either trophies - the heads of defeated enemies - or, more likely, deified ancestors preserved in admiration and worship until some new people occupied the site and threw them away for us to find some 7,000 years later.
This year, we were fortunate enough to discover two more.
Here is one find at an early stage.
After a day or two's work, it's apparent there's another behind it.
Clearing round is very delicate work because the plaster is very easily damaged.
At last, before anxious eyes, the moment arrives when the skull can be lifted to give us yet another lifelike portrait from the past - the start of the process which led, through Greek sculpture, to our own traditions of sculpted portraiture.
These, then, were the inhabitants of Jericho some 8,000 years ago.
We can get some idea what their city looked like from this aerial photograph of a modern Middle Eastern town.
With the help of our excavations, we can reconstruct .
.
what Jericho looked like.
It's a revolutionary discovery to find that, as early as this, people were already living in a town and had developed agriculture and domestication of cattle which alone made a settled life possible.
Perhaps about 5000 BC, this civilisation came to an end and there followed a less impressive period, perhaps when the rest of the world was catching up with Jericho.
Successive waves of newcomers appeared, who had discovered the use of pottery but otherwise were far more primitive.
Little remains of their occupation except these pits.
Next come people with better pottery, sometimes using a wheel.
About 3000 BC, the mound was once more covered by a city surrounded by these mud-brick walls.
Within their protection, town life thrived and seven or eight acres were occupied by houses.
These walls are a very prominent feature of the period.
We've found 17 successive rebuilds of them, more than the actual fabric that survives.
The method used to make these mud bricks can be seen going practically unchanged in many places today.
First of all, the mud and straw is pounded to the right consistency.
Then it is ladled into moulds.
Finally, the moulds are removed and the bricks left to dry in the sun.
Easy to imagine how houses built of these can crumble and be washed away.
Nevertheless, Early Bronze Age Jericho must've been a fine sight, standing well up from the plain on the debris of the thousand of years of occupation which the site had already seen.
MORTIMER WHEELER: Let me remind you here of some of some of the problems of deciphering the evidence for these events.
Decaying walls were strengthened front and back.
Others were completely destroyed by earthquakes.
Some just fell into disrepair.
All these are problems for the archaeologist to interpret.
KATHLEEN KENYON: There is no doubt, though, of the disaster which finally overtook them.
This red and white streak is the remains of a tremendous fire which was so fierce that the ten-feet-thick walls were burnt through and through.
The people who seem to have wrought this destruction were the Amorites.
These wandering tribesmen left relics, more in their tombs than the mound itself - where they only camped.
LADY WHEELER: Here on the hillside above the refugee camp, trial pits are being dug to find these graves.
When we hit one, we usually find a shaft that goes down some eight feet with a small rock-cut room leading off it.
They're not all as easy to get into or as big as this one.
Inside, in these tombs of these Amorite tribesmen, there is usually only one body lying neatly, in a crouched attitude, with its knees folded up and arms folded on chest.
Generally the women have a bronze pin and beads.
But this is a man's grave, because together with the pot and javelin is the regular accompaniment - a dagger, about ten inches long .
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with the rivets still lying near the handle.
KATHLEEN KENYON: The Amorites who made these graves were replaced about 1900 by a people who, once again, built a wall around the city to protect a flourishing community.
But in addition to this stoutly and carefully constructed wall, they introduced a new defensive measure.
MORTIMER WHEELER: This is a glacis - a steep, slippery, plastered slope.
I'm standing at the top of one surviving stretch.
This long slope would make a surprise attack difficult - it would help the defending archers.
Here, you can see another part of the sloping defence in profile, which shows how it was built up with men standing on each successive step as it rose higher and higher.
In this drawing, you can see how the town probably looked, surrounded by the defences built by the warlike Hyksos.
This was the town as it was in the days of Abraham, and Abraham may even have seen it in his wanderings.
KATHLEEN KENYON: We can also get a good idea of the life lived by its inhabitants from the tombs of the period, which lay outside the town.
LADY WHEELER: The Dead Sea Valley is an area of great rock movement.
Professor Zoyna tells us that it may be gases seeping through the disturbed rocks of the earth crust which kill the bacteria and so preserve, in this remarkable way, the contents of the tombs.
There are six bodies laid out in the last burial here.
The earlier burials have been all piled to one side.
On top of these bones you can see this basketwork in a state of extraordinary preservation, remembering that it's over 3,000 years old.
Then here's a wooden platter, a little alabaster jug of the most attractive shape, and a well-turned wooden chair leg.
In this wooden bowl there are still the remains of the food that it once held.
Then there's this lamp with the burnt-out wick still clearly visible.
And one of my favourites - this delightful, turquoise blue faience perfume vase.
But perhaps the most unusual find of all was this human brain, which is so complete that you can see the convolutions on it quite clearly.
KATHLEEN KENYON: That is the nearest we can get to the plaster skulls of the earlier period.
But this vase shows that they went in for far more elaborate hairdos at this time.
Other vases, like this alabaster one with ram's-head handles .
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and this one, in the shape of a ram's head, show the importance of the herds of goats to the economy of the town.
This vase was actually found in the grave of a young warrior who was buried with another unique possession - this beautifully decorated bronze belt.
Plain belts have been found before but none decorated like this.
Amethyst rings, like these, also give evidence of the luxury and refinements of life in Jericho about 1700 BC.
From these remains, it is possible to reconstruct a scene like this.
On a wooden table are platters of fruit, jars and boxes.
The chairs and bed have wood and rush seats.
Contrast this with the life led by Abraham and his little band, the Children of Israel, who, at this time, moved into Canaan.
They lived a sort of humble, nomadic life and it is shown well on this Egyptian papyrus.
One of these travelling metalworkers has his bellows carried by a donkey and himself carries a lyre.
But though the inhabitants of this great city might seem rich and powerful in comparison, a violent fate awaited them.
Egyptians revolted against the Hyksos and pursued them into Palestine, where they destroyed their strongholds - Jericho among them.
Here, in this section of the excavation, you can see the evidence of this destruction - the tumbled walls.
The storage jar blackened in the fire.
And the streaks of ash, where remains of the conflagration have been washed down the mound.
The grain in these storage jars has been carbonised in the fire and survives also - additional melancholy evidence of the destruction of Middle Bronze Age Jericho.
At the higher levels in this trench, we hope to find traces of the Late Bronze Age Jericho - the town which Joshua destroyed - but the rains have washed any traces away.
Nor does the mound bear many traces of the Iron Age inhabitants who briefly defied Joshua's curse and settled there.
By the time Cleopatra was given an estate by Antony nearby, the mound, if a little higher, must've been as barren as it is today.
But for all that, it is a key site in world history.
There's no doubt that these excavations have been of extreme importance hitherto.
Now what are your future plans? Oh, we're hoping very much to have enough money to dig for at least one more year.
And here we have Mr Awni Dajani, the Inspector of Antiquities for Western Jordan, who has been a very good friend to us, both officially and unofficially.
- Ahlan marHaban.
- Alaikum.
I was born in Jericho and I am proud really to be one of the descendants of those Neolithic people who lived in Jericho for 10,000 years ago consecutively.
The Jordan government welcomes every new expedition to the country.
And I won't reveal a secret if I tell you that we are giving a very good share for the excavators.
The share depends upon how much money is spent.
You increase, Miss Kenyon, your amount of money? The share will be more.
If Lady Wheeler increases the funds, the share will be more.
I hope that they continue their digging in Jericho and in other sites of the Jordan and they will have very good future, prosperous years.
- Inshallah.
- ALL: Inshallah.
Well, now with that power swish with which I concur, from all of us, at the end of this programme, good night.