Jericho Mafjar
Project
The purpose of this excavation was to test an hypothesis that the pavilion stood central to a large garden area. The south gate marked one end of the garden should be balanced with another gate to the north. The resulting trench of 14 x 10m revealed a gate with two bastions, one with a guard room.
A mass of fallen carved stone seems to be earthquake damage, after which the paving stones were removed. Among these stones were numerous fragments of iron bands and square iron plates, which once covered the wooden gate itself. A drainage channel passed in front of the gateway. The northern part of both bastions curved inward and the inner face had waiting benches (one with a game scratched upon it). An earlier drainage channel showed two phases of construction, and curiously, Baramki describes similar phases and paving stone removal at the South Gate. Artifacts should represent secondary fill after the removal of the paving stone, and perhaps disuse of the gate, and are mixed Umayyad/Abbasid transitional types.
