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.