The
Wadi Daliyeh (وادي دالية) is a
wadi in the
West Bank, located fourteen kilometres north of
Jericho, flowing east from the
Samaria down to the
Jordan Valley. The valley has caves containing archaeological material.
Archaeological discoveries
Mughâret Abū Shinjeh
In 1962 and 1963, Frank Moore Cross, former professor of
Hebrew language at Harvard University, purchased a hoard of ancient
Papyrus and
Stamp seal from looters from the
Bedouin 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 and dated to the end of Achaemenid rule over
Samaria. 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,
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 in Jerusalem.[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)][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.] 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 in the early 2nd century CE. The cave is the northernmost of the refuge caves of the rebels.
