466 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1941 



On the south side near the southwest comer was found a monu- 

 mental gateway, with three pairs of doors and two opposite sets of 

 guardrooms between them, which will be described in more detail 

 later (pi. 5, fig. 1). The glagis of each of the outer fortification 

 walls is broken off before arriving at the gate, so it is impossible to 

 say exactly what the connection between them and the gate was. This 

 double-walled fortification extended a considerable distance south 

 and east, respectively, of the industrial square, built in the preceding 

 period of Ezion-geber I. On the north side, and part of the west 

 side, however, it cut through and in part was built over the line of 

 rooms of this industrial square, with no attempt to make use of its 

 rooms on these sides. The rooms of the industrial square on the 

 other two sides were reused. The north half of the outermost 

 glagis on the west side was built against the outermost west wall of 

 the industrial square. It is interesting to note that the scheme of 

 double-walled outer defenses with a dry moat between the walls, is 

 known elsewhere in Transjordan. It is particularly clear at the 

 Early Iron Age site of EZhirbet el-Medeiyineh overlooking the Wadi 

 Themed.^^ It is difficult to understand why the builders of this 

 complex fortification scheme in Ezion-geber II did not extend the 

 outer walls beyond the north and west sides of the industrial square 

 as they had on the south and east sides. Indeed, on the north side, 

 the larger of the two fortification walls was built partly over the 

 north side of the smelter, and over the glagis built against the smelter 

 on that side in the preceding period of Ezion-geber I. 



The main wall had been built so well and so regularly that it was 

 possible, after parts of it had been exposed, to plot out its course 

 and determine its exact line, where it had not been completely weath- 

 ered away or destroyed, by merely trenching at intervals along its 

 length. At the now preserved top of the wall, which is almost flush 

 with the level of the desert, being covered with a layer of debris, the 

 wall is from 2.5 to 3 meters thick. Its foundation courses go down 

 below the soil from 75 centimeters to a meter, and in many places 

 the lowest foundation course rests on a natural, hard-clay stratum. 

 As the wall goes downward, it widens out, sometimes in three suc- 

 cessive steps of two rows of bricks each, with the result that in some 

 places the wall is almost 4 meters thick at its base. It is built of 

 sun-dried brick, like the rest of the site, laid carefully in alternate 

 rows of headers and stretchers, and must easily have been 8 meters 

 high. There are strongly marked offsets along the sides of the walls, 

 and particularly at the corners. 



"Galling, Kurt, Biblisches Reallexikon. P. 372. Tflbingen, 1937; Glueck, Nelson, Ex- 

 plorations in Eastern Palestine. Ann. Amer. Schools Oriental Res., vol. 14, p. 13, 1934 ; 

 The other side of the Jordan. P. 143. Amer. Schools Oriental Res., New Haven, 1940. 



