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Supplies and Necessities
A fortress’s overall greatest weakness was in the people’s
ability to sustain themselves both during a period of siege and
in peace times. People must have food and water to survive.
Since rainfall was scarce and unpredictable in Moab, the ancient
people built cisterns to store water. Many sites, like Mudaybic,
have cisterns scattered on the hillside outside and around the
fortress. However, these cisterns were nearly useless to the
inhabitants in times of besiegement; therefore, some water had
to be kept inside the fortress. Beyond the discovery of an
occasional cistern, excavations in the Moab region have not
revealed how ancient people prepared fortresses to maintain a
water supply during a siege. We do have information from
contemporary fortresses in Israel. At Megiddo and Jerusalem, the
people built tunnels, concealed from outside, to bring water
from an outside spring into the fortress. Hazor had a well
inside its walls.
Food was another concern. Inhabitants
could survive a siege only as long as they had food
stored inside their fortress walls. Such food was stored
in pottery jars and in grain silos dug into the ground.
A site may have storehouses for storage of food and
other supplies. (See the city drawing of Beersheba in
Benjamin’s article listed below.) In
peace times, supplies may be brought in from nearby villages. If
a fortress depended upon outside support, then the inhabitants
also had to consider protecting their supply lines.
The volute capitals of Mudaybi<sup>c</sup>
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Last Updated on
10/25/2002 08:49 AM
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