The Wadi Daliyeh (وادي دالية) is a

wadi Wadi ( ; ) is a river valley or a wet (ephemerality, ephemeral) Stream bed, riverbed that contains water only when heavy rain occurs. Wadis are located on gently sloping, nearly flat parts of deserts; commonly they begin on the distal portion ...

in the

West Bank The West Bank is located on the western bank of the Jordan River and is the larger of the two Palestinian territories (the other being the Gaza Strip) that make up the State of Palestine. A landlocked territory near the coast of the Mediter ...

, located fourteen kilometres north of

Jericho Jericho ( ; , ) is a city in the West Bank, Palestine, and the capital of the Jericho Governorate. Jericho is located in the Jordan Valley, with the Jordan River to the east and Jerusalem to the west. It had a population of 20,907 in 2017. F ...

, flowing east from the

Samarian hills Samaria (), the Hellenized form of the Hebrew name Shomron (), is used as a historical and biblical name for the central region of the Land of Israel. It is bordered by Judea to the south and Galilee to the north. The region is known to the ...

down to the Jordan Valley. The valley has caves containing archaeological material.

Archaeological discoveries

Mughâret Abū Shinjeh

In 1962 and 1963,

Frank Moore Cross Frank Moore Cross Jr. (July 13, 1921 – October 16, 2012) was the Hancock Professor of Hebrew and Other Oriental Languages at Harvard University, notable for his work in the interpretation of the Dead Sea Scrolls, his 1973 '' magnum opus'' ''Ca ...

, former professor of

Hebrew Hebrew (; ''ʿÎbrit'') is a Northwest Semitic languages, Northwest Semitic language within the Afroasiatic languages, Afroasiatic language family. A regional dialect of the Canaanite languages, it was natively spoken by the Israelites and ...

Harvard University Harvard University is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Founded in 1636 and named for its first benefactor, the History of the Puritans in North America, Puritan clergyma ...

, purchased a hoard of ancient

papyri Papyrus ( ) is a material similar to thick paper that was used in ancient times as a writing surface. It was made from the pith of the papyrus plant, ''Cyperus papyrus'', a wetland sedge. ''Papyrus'' (plural: ''papyri'' or ''papyruses'') can ...

and stamp seals from looters from the

Bedouin The Bedouin, Beduin, or Bedu ( ; , singular ) are pastorally nomadic Arab tribes who have historically inhabited the desert regions in the Arabian Peninsula, North Africa, the Levant, and Mesopotamia (Iraq). The Bedouin originated in the Sy ...

tribe of Ta'amireh. The purchase also included a few coins and two gold rings. As part of the deal, the looter revealed the place where from where the artifacts were looted. They lead him to Mughâret Abū Shinjeh cave () and in 1963-1964, Cross conducted excavations at the site in the and unearthed more papyri along with stamp seals, some still intact, and various human remains. The papyri are written in

Aramaic Aramaic (; ) is a Northwest Semitic language that originated in the ancient region of Syria and quickly spread to Mesopotamia, the southern Levant, Sinai, southeastern Anatolia, and Eastern Arabia, where it has been continually written a ...

and dated to the end of

Achaemenid The Achaemenid Empire or Achaemenian Empire, also known as the Persian Empire or First Persian Empire (; , , ), was an Iranian empire founded by Cyrus the Great of the Achaemenid dynasty in 550 BC. Based in modern-day Iran, it was the large ...

rule over

Samaria Samaria (), the Hellenized form of the Hebrew name Shomron (), is used as a historical and Hebrew Bible, biblical name for the central region of the Land of Israel. It is bordered by Judea to the south and Galilee to the north. The region is ...

. The material of the site was understood as the remains of noble Samaritans who had fled from the reprisals of Alexander the Great in 331 BCE, following the murder of his

satrap A satrap () was a governor of the provinces of the ancient Median kingdom, Median and Achaemenid Empire, Persian (Achaemenid) Empires and in several of their successors, such as in the Sasanian Empire and the Hellenistic period, Hellenistic empi ...

Andromachus. In the wadi were discovered 18 partially legible Aramaic legal papyri and clay seals inscriptions from the 4th BCE, during the reigns of Artaxerses and Artaxerses II. These were excavated in 1963 and the papyri are now housed in the

Rockefeller Museum The Rockefeller Archeological Museum, formerly the Palestine Archaeological Museum ("PAM"; 1938–1967), is an archaeology museum located in East Jerusalem, next to Herod's Gate, that houses a large collection of artifacts unearthed in the exca ...

in Jerusalem. The contents of the documents include the deeds for the sale of slaves. The most recent studies are: ''Wadi Daliyeh II: the Samaria papyri from Wadi Daliyeh'' by Douglas Marvin Gropp, pp. 1–116 in DJD XXVIII (2001); ''The Wadi Daliyeh Seal Impressions Vol.1'' by Mary Joan Winn Leith(Oxford, 1997); and "Les manuscrits araméens du Wadi Daliyeh et la Samarie vers 450–332 av. J.-C." by Jan Dušek (Leiden: Brill, 2007).

Iraq en-Na'sana

During the second season of the British excavations in Wadi Daliyeh, the cave of Iraq en-Na'sana was excavated. It contained material from the Intermediate Bronze Age (2500-2000 BCE) and from the time of the

Bar Kokhba revolt The Bar Kokhba revolt (132–136 AD) was a major uprising by the Jews of Judaea (Roman province), Judaea against the Roman Empire, marking the final and most devastating of the Jewish–Roman wars. Led by Simon bar Kokhba, the rebels succeeded ...

in the early 2nd century CE. The cave is the northernmost of the refuge caves of the rebels.

References

{{Authority control Archaeological sites in the West Bank Aramaic papyri