Seems odd historians would doubt the chronicler’s account without evidence one way or another. A moat to defend a city under siege sounds like a fairly standard tactic.
I wholeheartedly agree. The Oracle of Delphi was "dubunked" by some French nitwit in the late 19th or early 20th century. He claimed that the surviving ancient descriptions of the temple interior were all made up. Turns out, when some actual scientists and scholars finally decided to check things about at the site about 25 years ago, they found the site in perfect accord with the ancient description. It ain't just the Bible that has been taking it on the chin for the past 170 years...