CHAPTER VI

THE CITIES OF PALESTINE

THEIR SITES. THE WALLS. THE STONE WORK. HOUSES. PALACES: At Taanach. At Samaria. At Jericho. At Megiddo. FOUNDATION SACRIFICES. CITY GATES. WATER SUPPLY: Springs. Underground tunnels. Reservoirs.

=1. Their Sites.=--The cities of Palestine were usually built on hills. These elevations, surmounted as they were by walls, created a natural means of defence from attack; (see Fig. 33). Even more important than an elevated situation was a water supply, hence all Palestinian cities of importance are near springs. The necessity of being near a spring led, in some cases, to the erection of a city on a level plain. This was the case with Jericho; the only mound at its site is that created by the city itself.

The hills on which the cities were erected varied in height. That at Megiddo rose to a height of but 45 to 90 feet above the surrounding land, but even this elevation was a great protection from the simple methods of attack known to ancient warfare. The hill Ophel, the site of Jebusite Jerusalem, rises today from 60 to 150 feet above the valley of the Kidron, and in ancient times that valley was from 20 to 50 feet deeper than it is now. The same hill was separated from the land on the west by a valley the bed of which in ancient times was from 50 to 100 feet below the top of the hill. The hill on which Samaria was situated rose some 300 feet above the surrounding valley on all sides except the east, and when fortified presented such an impregnable front that it took even an Assyrian army three years to capture it. (2 Kings 17:5.) In the Seleucid and Roman periods, when some cities expanded in size, the hilltops were sometimes abandoned and they spread out over the plain. This was the case with Gerasa and Philadelphia (Rabbah Ammon).[133] But “a city set on a hill” (Matt. 5:14) was a common feature of the Palestinian landscape.

=2. The Walls.=--The walls by which the cities were surrounded varied according to the advancement of the different periods, and according to the importance of the place. As has already been pointed out in