History of the city of Ashkelon

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Ashkelon Archaeological Park

The story of the city of Ashkelon is the story of the city of Ashkelon in the southern district of Israel . It goes back to the Middle Bronze Age . But there are also older finds on site, for example from the Neolithic Age .

Antiquity

economy

Excavations at an early Stone Age site

Ashkelon was an important trading city as early as the Bronze Age. Wine and olive oil were produced locally, but the town grew rich mainly through middlemen. The port was used for trade with the eastern Mediterranean, especially Phenicia in the north and Cyprus . The coastal road connected the city with Egypt and Syria. As found from a wreck off the Spanish coast in Playa de la Isla, Mazarrón , olive oil from Ashkelon was exported in the typical ovoid jugs to the western Mediterranean. The year of the Ascalonites began on 1st Hyperberetaeus, October 28th.

religion

According to Ktesias , the most important goddess of Ashkelon was Derketo , who was sacrificed at a pond near the city. She had the upper body of a virgin and the lower body of a fish and is believed to be related to Phoenician sea deities such as Dagān and Asherah .

Event history

The name Ashkelon as it is reproduced on the stele of Merenptah .

Ashkelon was a city of the Canaanites and later the Philistines . Around the 14th century BC It belonged to Egypt . In the reign of Amenhotep II , an ambassador from Ashkelon is mentioned at the court of the Pharaoh. Ashkelon was also mentioned in 1285 BC. On the occasion of Ramses II's campaigns against the Hittites ( Battle of Kadesch ). The city rebelled but was subdued. Ramses III. had a sanctuary of Ptah built here. The stele of Merneptah (1200) mentions the capture of Ashkelon, Gaza , Gezer and Yeno'am, towns that once the Hurrians were ( "Hurru"), but now part of Egypt were ( "Hurru has become like a widow") . It is possible that Merenptah was campaigning in Israel in the third year of his reign. Ashkelon later became a member of the Philistine City-State League ( Pentapolis ) and one of its five princely seats. The territory of Ashkelon extended from the Lachish River in the north to the Shikma River in the south. An exclave in the north included the cities of Beth-Dagon , Jaffa , Bnei Berak and Hazor .

Tiglat-Pileser III. moved against the Pentapolis in 743 and captured Gaza. In 733 Ashkelon rebelled. Tiglat-Pilesar deposed King Mitinti I in favor of his son Rukubti. After the death of Sargon II , Ashkelon rebelled again in 705. King Rukubti was deposed from his subjects and his brother Zidqa took the throne. Sennacherib conquered Ashkelon in 701, and King Sidqa and his son Mitinti were deported to Assyria . Sennacherib made Sarruludari, a son of Rukubti, king. This had an Assyrian name and may have been brought up at the Assyrian court. 679 Mitinti is mentioned together with other Philistine kings (Ahim-milki of Ashdod and Ikausu of Ekron ) in connection with building work in Nineveh and Sidon . Under Assurhaddon , Mitinti II paid tribute in 677; he was also subject to tribute under Assurbanipal (667). Assurhaddon made a stop in Ashkelon on his campaign against Egypt, as evidenced by an oracle text . King Mitinti is also attested on the inscription of a Philistine seal ('Abd-Ilib, son of Shabeath, servant of Mittit, son of Zidqa'). The eponym list mentions an Assyrian governor in 669 who oversees the kings of the Philistines. In 640 the Assyrians withdrew from Palestine, Ashkelon probably fell to Egypt.

Herodotus reports that the Scythians advanced as far as Egypt and on the way back some marauders robbed the temple of Aphrodite Urania ( Derketo ) in Ashkelon. The goddess then struck her with “a female disease” (I, 105). Their victims were called Enaraeans, transsexuals .

Ashkelon was besieged and conquered by Nabu-kudurri-usur II in 604 , the city "made into a hill of ruins and rubble", which the neo-Babylonian annals only report in the event of serious destruction. The layers of destruction contained numerous burnt plant remains, particularly of grain, pulses and fruit. The grain comes from the highlands of Judea , the northern Negev and the northern Palestine as evidenced by admixed weed seeds . It appears that supplies had been systematically stocked up before the siege.

Ration lists from Babylon mention hostages from Ashkelon ( Iš-qi-il-lu-nu ), e.g. B. the son of King Aga.

During the Maccabees from 104 BC The city was independent and at war with the Jewish settlements until it was conquered in the Jewish War . An important export good was an onion variety , the shallots . King Herod the Great , who had the city equipped with many buildings, was probably born here.

37 BC The Romans conquered Ashkelon. As a fortress on the road between Egypt and Syria, the city had an important strategic position for them too. The Romans ruled for over 600 years. Most recently the city was part of the Eastern Roman, Byzantine Empire . During the Roman Persian wars , the region was about 615-630 n. Chr. Persian occupied.

Antique sarcophagus in Ascalon

Kings of Ashkelon

  • Mitinti I, until 733 BC Chr.
  • Rukubti, son of Mitinti I, 733 BC Chr. -?
  • Zidqa, son of Mitinti I.
  • Scharruludari, son of Rukubti, 701 BC Chr. -?
  • Mittit II, son of Zidqa, from 679 BC - at least 667 BC Chr.
  • Aga, until 604 BC Chr.

Bible

Ashkelon is mentioned several times in the Bible, e.g. B. in Am 1,8  EU , where the prophet threatens the city's destruction: “And I want to exterminate the inhabitants of Asdod and the one who holds the scepter from Ascalon and turn my hand against Ekron that what should perish from is left to the Philistines , says the LORD. "

middle Ages

Map of the region around Askalon around 1870

As part of the Islamic expansion , the Byzantines also lost Ashkelon to the Arabs after the Battle of Yarmuk in 636.

In the Middle Ages, the port and fortress city of Ashkelon was of particular importance in controlling the land route between Egypt and Syria . After the Kingdom of Jerusalem was founded during the First Crusade , Ashkelon remained in the possession of the Egyptian Fatimids for a long time . Although the Egyptians were defeated by Godfrey of Bouillon in the Battle of Ascalon in 1099 , the Crusaders did not conquer the city until 1153.

A bishopric was established under Bishop Absalom and the county of Jaffa was expanded to include the counties of Jaffa and Askalon . In 1187, the Crusaders were to cede Ascalon to Sultan Saladin , who had captured him at the Battle of Hattin , in exchange for the release of their king, Guido von Lusignan . But even before the surrender of the king, the city surrendered on September 5, 1187 after an eleven-day siege by an army of Saladin. On the Third Crusade , the city was retaken for the Kingdom of Jerusalem by Richard the Lionheart in 1192 , but returned nine months later under the armistice agreement with Saladin. During the crusade of the barons 1239-1241, Ascalon was occupied for the last time for the crusaders, fortified and given to the Hospitaller Order. In 1244 the city was besieged by the Ayyubids without success . In the summer of 1247 a siege began by the Mamelukes , who conquered the city on October 15, 1247 and largely destroyed it. After the final end of the Crusades in 1291, the diocese was assigned as the titular diocese of Ascalon until Vatican II . The city fell into disrepair in the 14th century.

Excavations

In 1985, Lawrence Stager of Harvard University began archaeological digs in ancient Ashkelon. Traces of the Canaanites, Philistines, Phoenicians , Greeks , Romans, as well as Byzantine, Islamic and medieval Christian settlements were uncovered. The houses were originally made of sandstone .

The Philistine city of the 7th century was regularly laid out with right-angled streets, reminiscent of Megiddo III. Shops, houses and administration buildings were excavated. Ostraka are written in the local variant of the Hebrew script . The pottery is similar to that from Gaza and Ekron . Vessels from Ashdod, Cypriot and Greek imports (from Chios , Kos , Samos and Corinth ) were also found. The excavations also prove the massive destruction by the Babylonians in 604.

From the late Roman period, an infant mass grave found in 1988 in the sewer system of a bathhouse in which over a hundred children's skeletons were found became known. The bones of male newborns clearly predominate, as a DNA analysis showed. It is believed that the bathhouse was also used as a brothel and that the bones indicate the systematic infanticide of male children. Harvard University archaeologists dated the skeletons to the third century AD and determined that the infants were in excellent health. Patricia Smith and Gila Kahila from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem found during an initial examination that most of the skeletons are intact and complete. The lack of neonatal lines suggests that the children died shortly after they were born.

Since 1998, the Leon Levy Expedition under Lawrence Stager has been carrying out excavations in the urban area of ​​Askalon, which mainly focus on the New Assyrian classes.

Majdal

The Arab settlement of Majdal has been located near the ancient city since 1832 and has since become a part of modern Ashkelon. The originally Egyptian residents initially stayed there after the Palestine War (1948). Since trade with Egypt was no longer possible after the establishment of the state of Israel , they could neither import cotton nor export finished goods, their economic basis. In an agreement between Israel and Egypt, after the armistice, the residents with all their mobile belongings could move freely and the approximately 10,000 people in Egypt could be accommodated. The settlement was then abandoned.

In today's Israel

A reception camp for new Jewish immigrants had existed since 1948. In 1955 the formerly Arab Madschdal was incorporated. In order to promote Ashkelon, it was given the status of a development city .

On July 13, 2014, a 16-year-old boy was seriously injured and a 50-year-old man was slightly injured in a rocket impact. The youth had tried to hide behind a wall because he could not reach an air raid shelter in time. The rockets were fired in the Gaza Strip during the ongoing military aion, Operation Protective Edge .

On the southern outskirts of the city there is an archaeological park with the ruins of the ancient settlements by the sea.

On November 12, 2018, a 48-year-old Palestinian from Hebron in Ashkelon was killed in an attack with more than 460 bullets from the Gaza Strip, and two women were seriously wounded. Ten months after the rocket attack, one of the two women, 74-year-old Nina Ganisdova, died from her injuries. Her house had been hit directly by a projectile. She was then in a coma.

In another rocket attack from the Gaza Strip on the night of May 5, 2019, an Israeli was killed when a rocket hit his home. Another 83 people were injured.

See also

literature

  • Patricia Smith, Gila Kahila: Identification of infanticide in archaeological sites. A case study from the Late Roman-Early Byzantine periods at Ashkelon. In: Journal of Archaeological Science. 19/6, 1992, pp. 667-675.
  • Lawrence Stager: Merenptah, Israel and the Sea Peoples. New Light on an Old Relief. 18, Eretz Israel 1985, pp. 56-63.
  • Daniel M. Master: Trade and Politics: Ashkelon's balancing act in the seventh century. BCE In: Bulletin of the American School of Oriental Research. 330, 2003, pp. 47-64.

Remarks

  1. ↑ The results are published in the Final Reports of the Leon Levy Expedition to Ashkelon (Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns 2008ff.).

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Iván Negueruela and other: Seventh-Century BC Phoenician vessel discovered at Playa de la Isla. Mazarron, Spain. In: International Journal of Nautical Archeology , Volume 24, 1995, pp. 189-197.
  2. ↑ Ehud Weiss, Mordechai E. Kislev: Plant remains as indicators for economic activity. A case study from Iron Age Ashkelon. In: Journal of Archaeological Science , Volume 31/1, 2004, pp. 1-13.
  3. ↑ Marina Faerman and others: Determining the Sex of Infanticide Victims from the Late Roman Era through Ancient DNA Analysis. In: Journal of Archaeological Science , Volume 25/9, 1998, pp. 861-865.
  4. ↑ Newsletter of the Embassy of the State of Israel from July 14, 2014
  5. ↑ Rocket fire on Israel: one man killed, several wounded. In: Israelnetz .de. November 12, 2018, accessed December 1, 2018 .
  6. ↑ Woman from Ashkelon succumbs to injuries after rocket fire. In: Israelnetz .de. September 23, 2019, accessed October 1, 2019 .
  7. ↑ Rocket fire from Gaza continues - three dead in Israel. t-online, May 5, 2019, accessed April 10, 2020 .