Tell es-Sultan
— — a hill made of ten thousand years.
Not only on a wall.
“The ancient mound of Jericho, a low oval tell on the western edge of the modern city in the Jordan Valley. Layer on layer of mudbrick settlement going back to the Pre-Pottery Neolithic, around 10,000 years ago. A round stone tower built into the western edge of the mound is among the earliest known stone monuments anywhere. The spring Ain es-Sultan runs at the foot of the hill and still waters the gardens around it. UNESCO listed the site in 2023. — from the studio
Tell es-Sultan, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
The place, in three passes.
Tell es-Sultan is the ancient mound of Jericho, a low oval rise on the western edge of the modern Palestinian city, in the Jordan Valley about ten kilometres north of the Dead Sea. The site sits at roughly 258 metres below sea level, among the lowest inhabited places on Earth. Excavations led by Ernst Sellin in the early twentieth century, by Kathleen Kenyon between 1952 and 1958, and by Italian-Palestinian teams since 1997 have traced occupation from the Pre-Pottery Neolithic, around the tenth millennium BCE, through the Bronze Age and later periods.
The signature feature is a round stone tower roughly 8.5 metres tall, built into the western edge of the mound and dated to about 8000 BCE. It is among the earliest known stone monuments anywhere and predates the invention of pottery on the site. An adjoining stretch of wall and a deep rock-cut interior staircase rise alongside it. Later layers preserve Bronze Age mudbrick fortifications, Middle Bronze Age palatial buildings, and the famous plastered human skulls of the Pre-Pottery Neolithic B, now in Amman, Jerusalem, and London.
The reason the place has been lived in for so long is at the foot of the hill: Ain es-Sultan, the Sultan's Spring, also called Elisha's Spring in Christian tradition after the prophet who is said to have sweetened its water. The spring discharges roughly seventy litres per second of fresh water into the surrounding gardens and orchards, irrigating date palms, citrus, and bananas in a valley that otherwise reads as desert. The Mount of Temptation rises directly west of the tell, with a Greek Orthodox monastery cut into its cliff face.