Fortifications

VIEW:18 DATA:01-04-2020
Fortifications. See Fenced Cities.
Smith's Bible Dictionary
By Dr. William Smith.Published in 1863


Fenced Cities

Fig. 185?Wall Towers
Inventions for the defense of men in social life are older than history. The walls, towers, and gates represented on Egyptian monuments though dating back to a period of fifteen centuries before the Christian era, bear evidence of an advanced state of fortifications?of walls built of squared stones, or of squared timber judiciously placed on the summit of scarped rocks, or within the circumference of one or two wet ditches, and furnished on the summit with regular battlements to protect the defenders. All these are of later invention than the accumulation of unhewn or rudely chipped uncemented stones, piled on each other in the form of walls, in the so-called Cyclopean, Pelasgian, Etruscan, and Celtic styles, where there are no ditches, or towers, or other gateways than mere openings occasionally left between the enormous blocks employed in the work. As the three first styles occur in Etruria they show the progressive advance of military architecture, and may be considered as more primitive, though perhaps posterior to the era when the progress of Israel, under the guidance of Joshua, expelled several Canaanitish tribes, whose system of civilization, in common with that of the rest of Western Asia, bore an Egyptian type, and whose towers and battlements were remarkably high, or rather were erected in very elevated situations. When, therefore, the Israelites entered Palestine, we may assume that the 'fenced cities' they had to attack were, according to their degree of antiquity, fortified with more or less of art, but all with huge stones in the lower walls, like the Etruscan. Indeed, Asia Minor, Armenia, Syria, and even Jerusalem, still bear marks of this most ancient system. Stones from six to fifty feet in length, with suitable proportions, can still be detected in many walls of the cities of those regions, wherever quarries existed, from Nineveh, where beneath the surface there still remain ruins and walls of huge stones, sculptured with bas-reliefs, originally painted, to Babylon, and Bassorah, where bricks, sun-dried or baked, and stamped with letters, are yet found, as well as in all the plains of the rivers where that material alone could be easily procured. The wall was sometimes double or triple (2Ch_32:5), successively girding a rocky elevation; and 'building a city' originally meant the construction of the wall.

Fig. 186?Tower
Before wall-towers were introduced, the gate of a city, originally single, formed a kind of citadel, and was the strongest part of all the defenses: it was the armory of the community, and the council-house of the authorities. 'Sitting in the gate' was, and still is, synonymous with the possession of power, and even now there is commonly in the fortified gate of a royal palace in the East, on the floor above the door-way, a council room with a kind of balcony, whence the sovereign sometimes sees his people, and where he may sit in judgment. The tower was another fortification of the earliest date, being often the citadel or last retreat when a city was taken; or, standing alone in some naturally strong position, was intended to protect a frontier, command a pass, or to be a place of refuge and deposit of treasure in the mountains, when the plain should be no longer defensible. Watch-towers used by shepherds all over Asia, and even now built on eminences above some city in the plain, in order to keep a look-out upon the distant country, were already in use and occasionally converted into places of defense (2Ch_26:10; 2Ch_27:4). The gateways were closed by ponderous folding doors, the valves or folds being secured by wooden bars: both the doors and bars were in aftertimes plated with metal. A ditch, where the nature of the locality required it, was dug in front of the rampart, and sometimes there was an inner wall, with a second ditch before it. As the experience of ages increased, huge 'counter forts,' double buttresses, or masses of solid stone and masonry were built in particular parts to sustain the outer wall, and afford space on the summit to place military engines (2Ch_26:15).

Fig. 187?A series of towers
In fig. 187, taken from another Egyptian work, we have a series of towers, that in the middle being evidently the citadel or keep, and a gateway indicating that the wall is omitted, or is intended by the lines of the oval surrounding the whole. Here also we see a regular labarum, the most ancient example extant of this form of ensign, and the towers are manned with armed soldiers. The fig. 185 is taken from a seal, and is a symbol of Babylon, where the city, sustained by two lions, is shown standing on both sides of the Euphrates, having an outer wall; the inner rampart is flanked by numerous elevated and embattled towers. There is another, but less antique representation of Babylon, with its lions and towers, etc.; but the battlements are squared, not pointed, as in the first. The towers are here crowded with soldiers, some of whom, from the form of their shields, are obviously Egyptians. These are sufficient to give a general idea of cities fenced entirely by art.
The Popular Cyclopedia of Biblical Literature
by John Kitto.





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