Labwe: an Early Bronze Age Walled Town in the Lajat

A walled Early Bronze Age town built of basalt in the south-eastern corner of the Lajat lava field, west of the village of al-Mutuna. No other town in the southern Levant from the first half of the third millennium BC is known from a complete plan. Two things explain it: the building stone is basalt, and the remains were never deeply buried. The rampart, three gates, the street pattern and a temple quarter can all be read from the surface.

Why the plan matters

The large towns of the same period in the southern Levant, such as Khirbet az-Zeraqun, Ai, Megiddo, Tell el-Far’ah, Tel Yarmuth and Arad, are known only in fragments. With the whole of Labwe on paper, those partial plans can now be completed with more confidence. Frank Braemer, Gourguen Davtian, Hélène Criaud and Michel al-Maqdissi published the town in 2010, in the Hauran V volume of the French Institute of the Near East (Ifpo).

What the town contains

A massive rampart of complex construction encloses the town. Three monumental gates pierce it, each built to a different plan. Inside, the fabric is dense and unbroken. Houses sit on a rectangular grid with a module of about 4 metres, which suggests the town was planned in advance. The house blocks share their walls. No streets were laid out; the lanes are simply the space left between blocks. The line of the rampart sets the orientation of the whole town.

To the east, a quarter set apart from the rest has its own gate in the rampart. At its centre stands a double monument, which the excavators read as probably a temple.

What not to miss

The deep hollow at the centre of the town. From it a passage runs beneath the basalt crust to an underground cistern. The cistern sits at the heart of the plan, not at its edge.

A name that causes confusion

There is also a village called Labweh in Lebanon. The Suwayda site appears in Arabic sources as Khirbet al-Labwa and lies west of al-Mutuna. Arabic Wikipedia counts it among nine main Bronze Age sites of the third millennium BC in the Lajat; Tell ad-Dubba near Braykah is on the same list.

Current situation and access

Labwe lies in Shahba district, inside the roadless, rocky ground of the Lajat. Suwayda governorate has been caught up in armed conflict since July 2025, and the present condition of the site could not be confirmed by an independent source. On 23 August 2026 the newspaper Al-Watan reported that the Damascus–Suwayda road had been cut at the Umm al-Zaytoun checkpoint. Snack Syrian reported on 2 and 10 September 2026 that entry to and exit from the governorate were effectively restricted. This page describes what Labwe is; it does not say the site can be visited today. Anyone thinking of going should first check the current situation with official sources.