Wadi Daliyeh

The Wadi Daliyeh (وادي دالية) is a valley fourteen kilometres north of Jericho.

In 1962 excavations in the Cave of Abu Shinjeh (مغارة ابو سخبه) in the Daliyeh valley unearthed the bones of 205 people. Archaeologists judge that these were Samaritans who had fled from the reprisals of Alexander the Great in 331 BCE, following the murder of his satrap Andromachus. Two other caves, the Cave of Daliyeh, and the Cave of Shib Qubur, were also excavated.

In the wadi were discovered 18 partially legible Aramaic legal papyri and clay seals inscriptions from the 4thC BCE, during the reigns of Artaxerses and Artaxerses II. These were excavated in 1963 and the papyri are now housed in the Rockefeller Museum in Jerusalem.[1][2] 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).

References

  1. ↑ A history of the Jews and Judaism in the Second Temple Period: Volume 1 - Page 55 Lester L. Grabbe - 2006 "Wadi Daliyeh Papyri and Seals Cross (1969b) 'Papyri of the Fourth Century BC from Daliyeh'; (1974)
  2. ↑ The book of Haggai: prophecy and society in early Persian Yehud - Page 46 John Kessler - 2002"Turning to the Aramaic data from the fifth and fourth centuries, we have evidence from the Egyptian papyri, the Wadi Daliyeh papyri, and the Beer-Sheba and Idumean ostraca.
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