[2][3] The tell stands prominently amidst agricultural lands on a strip of plain fronted by the Mediterranean Sea and backed by a range of hills.

From the top of mound, Sidon can be seen to the north, and to the south rising above Ras el-Qantara, the tell of the Late Bronze Age/Phoenician city of Sarepta can be seen.

During this earliest Middle Bronze Age stage, the mound was built as part of a defensive structure serving as the base for a fortress on its top.

Previously, there was a big gap in this history from the end of the Early Bronze Age until the middle of the 2nd millennium BC, when Sidon is first mentioned in the historical texts.

There is no apparent occupation in the intervening Late Bronze Age as the site was seemingly abandoned in favor of Sarepta, four kilometers to the south.