rebuilt the foundations and gates, with the deaths of their firstborn and youngest child respectively. This was eventually fulfilled by Hiel the Bethelite under King Ahab's reign. Origins and historicity Excavations at Tell es-Sultan In 1868, Charles Warren identified Tell es-Sultan as the site of biblical Jericho. Ernst Sellin and Carl Watzinger excavated the site between 1907–1909 and in 1911, finding the remains of two walls which they initially suggested supported the biblical account of the Battle of Jericho. They later revised this conclusion and dated their finds to the Middle Bronze Age (1950-1550 BCE). In 1930–1936, John Garstang conducted excavations there and discovered the remains of a network of collapsed walls which he dated to about 1400 BCE. Kathleen Kenyon re-excavated the site over 1952–1958 and demonstrated that the destruction occurred at an earlier time, during a well-attested Egyptian campaign against the Hyksos of that period, and that Jericho had been deserted throughout the mid-late 13th century BCE, the supposed time of Joshua's battle. Sources differ as to what date Kenyon instead proposed; either c. 1500 BCE or c. 1580 BCE. Kenyon's work was corroborated in 1995 by radiocarbon tests which dated the destruction level to the late 17th or 16th centuries BCE. A small unwalled settlement was rebuilt in the 15th century BCE, but it has been agreed that the tell was unoccupied from the late 15th century until the 10th/9th centuries BCE. More recently, Lorenzo Nigro from the Italian-Palestinian Expedition to Tell es-Sultan has argued that there was some sort of settlement at the site during the 14th and 13th centuries BCE. He states that the expedition has detected Late Bronze II layers in several parts of the tell, although its top layers were heavily cut by levelling operations during the Iron Age, which explains the scarcity of 13th century materials. Nigro rejects the idea that these discoveries give credence to the biblical narrative about the conquest of Canaan by Joshua. Historicity Scholars agree almost unanimously that the Book of Joshua holds little historical value. Its origin lies in a time far removed from the times that it depicts, and its intention is primarily theological in detailing how Israel and her leaders are judged by their obedience to the teachings and laws (the covenant) set down in the Book of Deuteronomy. The story of Jericho and the rest of the conquest represents the nationalist propaganda of the