City walls and sieges

Most towns stood on hills, behind walls with towers, a moat or steep slope in front, and a gate of several chambers with heavy, metal-plated doors. Hazor, Megiddo and Gezer, cities Solomon rebuilt, had double “casemate” walls with rooms inside — by the traditional dating, which some archaeologists dispute. Attackers could climb with ladders, dig tunnels, or heap up an earthen ramp and roll a battering ram up to the wall, as Joab did at Abel-beth-maacah (2 Samuel 20:15). Or they surrounded the city and starved it: Samaria held out for three years. So cities protected their water — Hezekiah cut a tunnel of about 533 meters through the rock to bring the Gihon spring inside Jerusalem.

The best-known siege of the period is Lachish, taken by Sennacherib of Assyria in 701 BC. His palace reliefs at Nineveh, now in the British Museum, show archers and battering rams on the attack, defenders hurling firebrands, and people leaving the gate with bundles. At the site excavators found the Assyrian siege ramp of piled stones, a counter-ramp inside, and hundreds of arrowheads and sling stones.