The Tell es-Sultan archaeological site in Jericho was designated a “World Heritage Site in Palestine” on Sunday during the 45th session of the United Nations World Heritage Committee in Riyadh. The designation makes the prehistoric mound the fifth Palestinian site to be added to UNESCO’s existing World Heritage list.
Having been around since the 1970s, the list identifies places of cultural, historical, scientific, or other importance and asks for their conservation and protection for future generations.
The Permanent Delegate of Palestine to UNESCO, Munir Anastas, expressed his pride in this historical success, which “credited all Arabs, especially the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, which made every effort to host the session and spared no effort to support the Palestinian cause in all international platforms”, according to the Saudi Press Agency.
Located in the Jordan Valley, the newly designated site contains ruins dating back to the ninth millennium BCE. Dating back to the Neolithic period and continuing into the Byzantine period, Jericho itself is one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in the world. Tell es-Sultan is characterized by a huge circular tower and a protective wall. The site has been excavated for over a century and has revealed remains of a fortified city claiming to be the oldest inhabited megalopolis on the planet, which encouraged the international organization to classify it on the World Heritage list. In 2010, Jericho celebrated being the oldest walled city in the world, dating all the way back to the Stone Age.
According to a statement published on Sunday, the Palestinian Authority Foreign Affairs Ministry lauded the decision as a recognition of Jericho’s “cultural, economic, and political significance” and a testament to “10,000 years of human development.”
The Palestinian Delegate to UNESCO emphasized that Jericho will be the fifth Palestinian site to be inscribed on the World Heritage List, with three of them on the List of World Heritage in Danger and two on the regular list. He noted that the most important site among these from the perspective of historical significance to Abrahamic religions was the Old City of Jerusalem.
