The Middle Bronze Age (1900–1550 bc) Fortifications

The Middle Bronze fortifications initially consisted of a solid mud-brick wall on stone foundations with rectangular towers (Middle Bronze I, 1900–1800 bc), soon replaced by three successive massive earthen ramparts during the two following phases of the period (Middle Bronze II—III, 1800–1550 bc).

The earliest Middle Bronze I mud-brick city wall (1900–1800 bc) was excavated on the eastern side of the mound, where it had already been identified by Garstang’s and Kenyon’s expeditions, along with the mud-brick eastern tower. Later excavations unearthed another monumental Middle Bronze I tower at the southern foot of the tell: the so-called Tower A1 (Marchetti and Nigro, Scavi a Gerico, 124–135; Excavations at Jericho, 199–207; Nigro and Taha, “Renewed Excavations”, 731–734). The tower was a rectangular building (21 feet by 18 feet), northwest-southeast oriented, built on a 6.5-foot-wide stone foundation made of orthostatic blocks (large limestone slabs set upright) supporting a massive mud-brick superstructure, 5 feet wide and up to 8 feet high. The superstructure was built of square reddish-brown mud bricks, tied up by a gray mortar (Nigro et al., “Early Bronze Age Palace,” 575). Access to the blind room inside the tower was from the top, via a wooden staircase with a stone basement protruding into the room from the stone foundations; such a device was a typical of Middle Bronze A defensive architecture (such as Tell el-Jazari/Gezer and Tell el-Mutesellim/Megiddo).

In Middle Bronze II (1800–1650 bc), after a fierce destruction around 1800 bc, Tower A1 was reconstructed with repairs and additions (Nigro et al., “Early Bronze Age Palace,” 576–77), and a series of private houses was built north and east of the tower (Marchetti and Nigro, Excavations at Jericho, 194–95, 207–16). These houses provided a large inventory of domestic items and pottery, as well as some particularly interesting finds: a calcite alabastron and a bronze adze. The discovery of a Middle Bronze II lower city, encompassing the tell on the eastern and southern sides, is a major result of the latest excavations and testifies that in this stage, the city extended beyond the lower limit of the mound toward the south and east, probably reaching the extension of 17 acres and including the spring of ‘Ain es-Sultan within its perimeter.

At the beginning of Middle Bronze II (1800–1650 bc), the mud-brick city wall was replaced by earthen ramparts, a characteristic defense system of southern Levantine cities in this stage, built up to prevent erosion and possible attacks with machines.

A monumental stone-built structure supporting the Middle Bronze II rampart has been unearthed on the southern side of the site, west of Kenyon’s Trench III: the curvilinear stone structure (Nigro and Taha, “Renewed Excavations,” 735–37; Nigro et al., “Early Bronze Age Palace,” 581–83). The structure was a sustaining wall, 3.5–5.5 feet wide, preserved with a varying elevation of 5 to 10 feet, made of large limestone boulders irregularly set in at least six superimposed courses. It was built up in 13- to 20-foot interconnected stretches, gradually curving from southeast to northwest following the natural contour of the mound.

Around 1650 bc the whole area was interred for the construction of the third and last Middle Bronze. A rampart fortification encircled Jericho during the Middle Bronze III (1650–1550 bc). It was a huge earth-and-rubble rampart supported by terrace walls and, at its base, by an impressive Cyclopean wall, 13 to 20 feet high (similar supporting structures have been brought to light in other major cities of Palestine, such as Tell el-Jazari/Gezer, Khirbet SeilunShiloh, and Tell BalatahShechem). A stretch of 115 feet of the Middle Bronze III Cyclopean wall has recently been excavated at the southern foot of the tell. These latest excavations definitively clarified that the Cyclopean wall was a massive stone retaining wall, set within a foundation trench and fully buried by the rubble filling of the sloping embankment (Marchetti and Nigro, Scavi a Gerico, 135–54; 2000, 217–18; Nigro and Taha, “Renewed Excavations,” 734). The embankment was then covered by a superficial revetment of crushed limestone and crowned by a mud-brick wall. This fortification went out of use when Jericho was destroyed around 1550 bc, a blow from which the ancient city never recovered.