Ancient Jericho's Egyptian connections: Insights into early Levantine trade

AMMAN – The Levant represented the natural outlet for ancient Egypt which exercised its political dominance since 4th millennium BC. The Sinai and Syria-Palestine were the first neighbour of the Nile Valley.

“This was much true in the case of the Jericho oasis, which strongly resembles the Nilotic environment, thus attracting Egyptian interest since the remote past,” noted the professor Lorenzo Nigro from Sapienza University of Rome. On the other hand, from a Levantine perspective, Egypt was a tremendously vast and rich neighbour, a major opportunity for exchanges, and a power to fear. 

It was a two -way trade: From Palestine and Sinai to Egypt came copper, bitumen, salt, sulfur, olive oil, precious resins and wine From Egypt to Palestine, several valuable products were imported: gold, precious and semi-precious stones, marble, ivory, mother-of-pearl, mace-heads, slate palettes, and vases made of various qualities of stone, marble, and pottery. Also flint knives; beads; figurines and amulets; cosmetics holders.

"Besides these archaeologically documented items, one may add other goods not preserved in the archaeological record, such as textiles [predominantly line]), treated animal leather, wooden furniture, dyes, and essences. The diffusion of imported goods in the Levant and Egypt became systematic starting from the Early Bronze Age I (3,500-3,000 BC) and certainly had to do, from the Egyptian side, with the rise of the Pre and Proto-dynastic kingdoms and, from the Levantine one, with the progressive affirmation of the urban model, the accumulation of wealth, and the establishment of stable commercial relations thanks to the foundation of Egyptian outposts in the Levant," Nigro explained, adding that during this time span, Jericho witnessed the progressive transformation of a large village into a flourishing city-state ruling over the oasis and its surroundings up to the Dead Sea.

Tell es-Sultan (ancient Jericho has made it possible to study in depth the origins and characteristics of the urban model in the peculiar environment of the Jericho Oasis, an almost unique area extending from the western bank of the river Jordan to the slopes of the Jebel Quruntul (Mount of Temptations), and the northern shore of the Dead Sea, Nigro highlighted, adding that Jericho provides an example of a complex society, which, in all likelihood, owes much to cultural and commercial relations with Egypt, where, in the same centuries, a hierarchised state and a complex society had taken shape.

Due to its proximity to Egypt and the relationship with it, Jericho may illustrate how these developed over time and impacted the economy, political organisation, ideology and society of one of the earliest cities of the Levant. "Egyptian and Egyptianising items are a constant presence at Jericho in the different archaeological contexts [public buildings, houses, workshops, walls, tombs] of the first city of the Early Bronze Age [Sultan IIIa-c, EB I-III, 3,500- 2,300 BC], suggesting a durable interconnection exchanging products, ideas, and people from the Pre- and Early Dynastic Periods to the end of the Old Kingdom," Nigro said.

During the Early Bronze Age, the oldest Egyptian finds came from the Sultan IIIa (Early Bronze I, 3,500-3,000 BC) strata and tombs and consist of four palettes and twelve mace-heads made of marble and calcite.

"Three palettes and six mace-heads were truly Egyptian; the fourth palette, the other six mace heads and the two ‘lotus vases’ were locally manufactured, showing nonetheless the pervasiveness of Egyptian influence, especially during Sultan III a2 [EB IB, 3200-3,000 BC]. The earliest Egyptian palette has an elongated shape, with signs of re-working and a hole for hanging, the underlying incised lines may be those of a graffito or an inscription; the two other Egyptian schist palettes belong to the finer type with double-grooved frames," Nigro elaborated, adding that mace-heads made of calcite or marble are deemed Egyptian and belong to the spherical and pear-shaped types.

“Mace-heads were found inside two tombs, where they accompanied burials as indicators of rank of the buried person who might have been a priest or a community leader,” Nigro said, adding that these imported items were basically status indicators connected with the symbology of power (scepters, wands, containers for eye makeup), that originated in Egypt but were also common in coeval Syro-Palestinian and Mesopotamian cultures. 

"Their reception was, thus, quite natural, as they were useful to the self-representation of leaders and emerging ruling elites. In any case, they soundly testify to the establishment of an active trade route to and from Egypt from the Early Bronze I/Predynastic Period involving the emerging upper class of the Levantine society," Nigro concluded.