Destruction of Judean Fortress Portrayed in Dramatic Eighth-Century B.C. Pictures
Stunning new book assembles evidence of the conquest of Lachish
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Footnotes
Tel Aviv: Tel Aviv University Publications of The Institute of Archaeology No. 6, 1982, 135 pp., 13 × 13 inches, $72.
One or two scholars still question the identity of Lachish. See, most recently, G. W. Ahlström, “Tell ed-Duweir: Lachish or Libnah?” Palestine Exploration Quarterly (July–December 1983). Ussishkin finds the identification for the site of Lachish “weighty.”
From the reliefs and the excavations, it has been assumed that two walls surrounded Lachish. Ussishkin believes only one wall protected the city. The supposed outer wall was, in his view, a strong revetment retaining the bottom of a glacis, which in turn supported the base of the city wall itself. What appears in the reliefs to be the outer wall, Ussishkin suggests, are battlements and parapets erected on the revetment wall to provide additional positions for soldiers manning the first line of defense.