Image Details

Section drawing of Middle Bronze glacis at Shiloh. The glacis consisted of five principal layers of earth, debris and small stones, seen in the photo as alternating light and dark bands and in the section drawing as colored layers. The retaining wall and city fortification wall were constructed from large field stones.

Strings stretching across the exposed section of the glacis enabled details of the earthwork to be drawn to scale. Bordered by sandbags, the opening to the left of the woman is a sounding probe. The probe went down to the bedrock, on which the retaining wall of the glacis rests. The section of the glacis shown in the section drawing was located on the northern perimeter of the tell in Area D (see general plan of Shiloh).

In some places an earthen glacis may have shielded the city wall from battering rams and attacking bodies, but the glacis at Shiloh was intended, primarily, to reinforce the city wall. The buried slopes of the glacis give the tell its present prominent shape.