[photo from HIttite Monuments dot com] The better preserved rock relief of the two shows the Hittite King Muwatalli II (ca. 1290-1272 BC), opponent of Pharaoh Ramesses II in the famous Battle of Qadesh in Syria and is thus the oldest Hittite rock relief known so far.
Cultic City And Fortress Unearthed In Southern Turkey | November 5, 2007
I’m assuming a double skin wall consists of an inner and outer stone wall with the gap between them filled with packed earth. I have never gotten deep into the weeds on such matters, but my layman’s guess is that these might have been a common evolution. One would start with an earthen rampart, probably ditched, and perhaps with a wooden palisade (if in a wooded region) or light stone wall on top. A natural next step would be to add an outer face of stone to get a stronger and more nearly vertical wall on the business side. The inner stone facing would come last, to reduce erosion and stabilize the fighting platform along the top. Do you have a sense of how common such constructions were? Would there have been any added advantages to this method other than time and cost of construction? For example, is this a preferred building technique in earthquake prone territory?
