Jericho

Jericho ("Fragrant," or "City of the Moon") was the first place captured by the Israelites on the west side of Jordan, where it stood near the north end of the Dead Sea, 15 miles from Jerusalem, one of the approaches to which it entirely commanded. The original city was destroyed, and was not rebuilt until the time of Ahab, when the site was perhaps shifted. It still occupied part of the fertile and flowery valley from which it derived its appellation of "the city of palm trees." After suffering severely during the Babylonian Captivity, Jericho experienced a period of renewed prosperity, and was given by Antony to Cleopatra, from whom it passed to Herod the Great. His reconstructed city perished in its turn with the fall of Jerusalem, and another settlement sprang up, the ruins of which are marked by the squalid village of Riha, two miles from the Tell or Spring of the Sultan. For many years this was the seat of a bishopric, but about the 13th century all traces of former prosperity and cultivation faded away.