Nigro (2006c:359) reports that Kathleen Kenyon identified Jericho’s earliest known fortification wall in Squares FI and DI on the western side of the city, adjacent to Trench I. This wall, designated “Wall A,” was attributed to the Early Bronze Age. Wall A “was replaced (and partially incorporated) by Wall B, which was in turn destroyed by a violent earthquake,” and together these structures form “Town Wall I” in Kenyon’s reconstruction. At Site A, nearly 70 m north of Squares FI–DI, Nigro (2006c:360) notes additional earthquake-induced collapse belonging to Town Wall I. Kenyon (1957:176) describes this destruction as mud-bricks that fell outward from the stone foundations, peeling away the face of the wall, with a more “confused tumble” above, interpreted as “more gradual crumbling of the core of the wall.” The succeeding wall—Town Wall 2—was constructed directly atop this debris. Nigro (2014:72 n. 56) adds that “evidence of such a tremendous earthquake, and related widespread destruction, was detected by Kenyon all over the site, namely in Trench I, Trench II, Trench III, Square M, Site A, and in the houses on the northern plateau (Squares EIII–IV),” and assigns the event an intensity of IX–XI (9–11). Nigro (2006c:Table 2) places this collapse in Early Bronze II, but also dates it to immediately before Phase Sultan IIIc1, which refines the destruction to Early Bronze IIB. According to Nigro (2016:Table 1), Early Bronze IIB spans 2850–2700 BCE. Nigro (2014:73 n. 57) dates the earthquake to around 2700 BCE in EB II, although noting that the event could instead fall between 3000 and 2900 BCE if one relies on “newly calibrated radiocarbon dating (Bruins – van der Plicht 1998, 623–627; 2001, 1327–1328).”
Nigro (2008:87 n. 30) pointed out possibly synchronous destructions at:
- Megiddo – “Such a conflagration apparently caused by an earthquake is attested to also at Megiddo (Finkelstein, Ussishkin and Peersmann 2006, 49–50).”
- ‘Ai (Callaway 1980, 147; 1993, 42)
- Khirbet ez-Zeraqon – “phase 3 (EB II) ends in a fierce conflagration (Douglas 2007, 27–28), though it is not surely ascribable to an earthquake.”
Left - Figure 38 - Example of a town wall of the Early Bronze Age destroyed by an earthquake - JW: Ordered fall of mud-bricks from the face of the town wall is shaded red while the disordered wall of mud-bricks from the core of the wall is shaded pink. - click on image to open in a new tab - Kenyon (1978)
Right - Figure 16 - Dune-yellowish mudbricks tumble down from the EB II city wall at Kenyon’s Site A - (after Kenyon 1981, pl. 200b) - click on image to open in a new tab - Nigro (2014)
