The Ekron Royal Dedicatory Inscription

In the summer of 1996, during the last major season of excavation at Tel Miqne, the site of the Philistine city of Ekron, archaeologists working in the sanctuary of a large temple building found a rectangular block of limestone bearing an inscription of five lines. The text records that the temple had been built by Achish, son of Padi, ruler of Ekron, for a goddess whose name is written Ptgyh, and it asks her to bless and protect him and to prolong his days. It is the first inscription to name Ekron in its own territory, the first to give the names of its kings in a local language, and one of very few texts to throw light on the religion and language of the Philistines in the Iron Age. Two of the kings it names are known from the annals of the Assyrian empire, and one of its names is borne by a Philistine king in the Hebrew Bible. This article describes the city of Ekron and its excavation, the discovery and physical character of the inscription, its text, script and language, the historical setting provided by the Assyrian sources, the problem of the goddess, and the place of the inscription among the monumental texts of the Levant.¹²³

Ekron and Its Excavation

The City in the Sources

Ekron was one of the five principal cities of the Philistines named in the Hebrew Bible, together with Gaza, Ashkelon, Ashdod and Gath. It lay at the inland edge of the coastal plain, on the border between Philistia and the lowland of Judah, and in the biblical narratives it often appears as the city closest to Israelite territory. In the book of Joshua it is named as a point on the northern boundary of Judah, and in the first book of Samuel it is the city to which the Ark of the Covenant was sent after it had caused plagues in Ashdod and Gath, and from which it was returned to Beth-shemesh on a cart drawn by two cows. In the second book of Kings the Israelite king Ahaziah sends messengers to consult Baal-zebub, the god of Ekron, about his recovery from an injury. The prophets Amos, Zephaniah, Jeremiah and Zechariah all name Ekron in their oracles against the Philistines.⁴⁵⁶

The location of Ekron was long disputed. In the nineteenth century it was identified with the Arab village of Aqir, which preserved a form of the ancient name, but surveys found no substantial remains of the Iron Age there. In 1957 Joseph Naveh, then a young archaeologist working for the Israeli department of antiquities, surveyed the large mound of Khirbet el-Muqanna, known in Hebrew as Tel Miqne, some thirty-five kilometres south-west of Jerusalem, and proposed that it was Ekron. Its size, about twenty hectares in its lower city, made it one of the largest Iron Age sites in the country, and its position matched the biblical and Assyrian indications. The identification was widely accepted, but it was not confirmed by written evidence until the discovery of the dedicatory inscription.⁷⁸⁹

The Excavations at Tel Miqne

Excavations at Tel Miqne were carried out between 1981 and 1996 by a joint expedition of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and the W. F. Albright Institute of Archaeological Research, directed by Trude Dothan and Seymour Gitin. Dothan was the leading authority on the material culture of the Philistines, and her book on the subject had established the characteristic features by which Philistine settlement could be recognised. Gitin, the director of the Albright Institute, brought a particular interest in the cultic and economic history of the Iron Age. In fourteen seasons the expedition uncovered extensive remains of several periods, and the excavation became one of the principal sources for the history of the Philistines from their arrival in the twelfth century to the destruction of their cities in the late seventh.¹⁰¹¹¹²

The excavators found that the site had been occupied in the Bronze Age by a modest Canaanite town on the upper mound. In the early twelfth century, after the collapse of the Late Bronze Age system of the eastern Mediterranean, a new population settled there and built a large fortified city covering both the upper and lower mounds. Its pottery, including locally made vessels decorated in the style of the Aegean world, its hearths and its architecture showed that the newcomers came from or had close connections with the Aegean and Cyprus, and the city was identified with the Philistine settlement described in Egyptian and biblical sources. The early Philistine city flourished in the twelfth and eleventh centuries, then contracted during the tenth, when the lower city was abandoned.¹³¹⁴

The Seventh-Century City

In the late eighth and seventh centuries Ekron underwent a remarkable revival. The lower city was reoccupied and fortified, new residential and industrial quarters were laid out, and the city grew to its greatest extent. The most striking feature of this period was the olive oil industry. The excavators found more than a hundred olive oil installations, consisting of crushing basins, pressing vats and stone weights, arranged in an industrial zone along the inner side of the city wall. Gitin estimated that the city’s capacity for oil production was very large, perhaps the greatest of any known centre in the ancient Near East, and he argued that the industry was developed under the stimulus of the Assyrian empire, which incorporated Ekron into its system of vassal states and encouraged the production of goods for trade.¹⁵¹⁶

The prosperity of the city came to an end in 604 BCE, when the Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar II campaigned in the coastal plain after his defeat of the Egyptians and destroyed the Philistine cities. At Ekron the destruction was violent, and the buildings of the seventh-century city were buried under a thick layer of burnt debris. This destruction preserved much of what was in the buildings at the moment of their fall, including the dedicatory inscription, which was found lying where it had fallen from the wall of the temple in which it had been set.¹⁷¹⁸¹⁹

The end of the expedition’s fieldwork in 1996 meant that the inscription was found in the last season of a long project, and its discovery gave the excavators the written confirmation that their identification of the site had lacked for fifteen years. The final reports of the excavation, issued in a series of volumes, describe the architecture, pottery, olive oil installations and small finds of each period. Such reports allow the inscription to be studied together with the full record of the building in which it was found and of the city to which it belonged, and they make Ekron one of the best documented cities of the Iron Age Levant.²⁰²¹²²

The Discovery

Temple Complex 650

The largest building of the seventh-century city was a structure designated by the excavators Temple Complex 650. It lay in the lower city, near the centre of the site, and measured about fifty-seven by thirty-eight metres. It consisted of a palace or administrative building with a courtyard and rooms, and an attached sanctuary. The sanctuary was entered through a long hall divided by two rows of columns, which led to a cella or inner room at the western end. The plan resembles that of Neo-Assyrian palaces and of Phoenician temples, and it reflects the mixture of influences characteristic of seventh-century Ekron.²³²⁴

Inside the complex the excavators found a large collection of objects of cultic and luxury character, including hoards of silver, ivory carvings, gold jewellery and objects of Egyptian style bearing royal names. Many of these objects were old when they were deposited, and some had been made centuries earlier. Their presence suggests that the temple served as a treasury, where offerings and valuables accumulated over a long period. Several small inscriptions were also found in the area, written on pottery vessels, including dedications to a deity and the word qdš, holy, indicating that the contents were dedicated to the temple.²⁵²⁶

The Finding of the Stone

The inscription was found in the cella of the sanctuary, in the destruction debris of 604 BCE. It is carved on a rectangular block of limestone about sixty centimetres long and forty centimetres high, and it was evidently designed to be set into a wall, probably in the cella itself, where it would have been visible to those who entered. The block was found lying face up, and the inscription was in excellent condition. The excavators recognised immediately that it was a royal text of the highest importance, and it was published within a year by Gitin, Dothan and the epigrapher Joseph Naveh in the Israel Exploration Journal. The stone is now in the Israel Museum in Jerusalem.²⁷²⁸

The circumstances of the discovery give the inscription a secure archaeological context. It was found in the building whose construction it records, in a destruction layer that can be dated precisely, and in association with pottery and other objects whose chronology is well established. This sets it apart from many monumental inscriptions of the Levant, which were found out of context or acquired through the antiquities market, and it removes any doubt about its authenticity. The comparison with the Mesha Stele, whose discovery and fragmentary recovery in the nineteenth century are described in a separate article on this site, is instructive in this respect.²⁹³⁰

The publication of the inscription within a year of its discovery was itself notable. Many important inscriptions from the Levant have waited years or decades for a full edition, and the prompt appearance of the text, with photographs, a drawing and a commentary by the excavators and an experienced epigrapher, allowed other scholars to take part in its interpretation almost at once. A series of articles followed in the next few years, dealing with the language, the names, the goddess and the historical setting, and the inscription quickly entered the standard collections of West Semitic texts and the handbooks used in teaching. Its display in the Israel Museum, among the principal inscriptions of the biblical period, has made it one of the best known objects from the archaeology of the Philistines.^31323334

The Text

Reading and Translation

The inscription consists of five lines of text written from right to left, with words separated by dots. The editors read it as follows, in a translation that has been generally accepted with minor variations: “The temple which Achish son of Padi, son of Ysd, son of Ada, son of Yair, ruler of Ekron, built for Ptgyh his lady. May she bless him, and protect him, and prolong his days, and bless his land.” The text is complete and its reading is certain except for the vocalisation of the names, which are written, as in all West Semitic inscriptions of the period, without vowels.³⁵³⁶³⁷

The inscription begins with the word for temple or house, bt, followed by a relative pronoun and the name of the builder. It thus belongs to the type of the building inscription, in which a king records the construction of a sanctuary for a deity and asks for the deity’s favour in return. This genre is well known from Phoenician inscriptions of the first millennium, such as the inscriptions of the kings of Byblos, which follow a similar pattern of dedication and blessing. The Ekron text is short and formulaic, and it contains no narrative of the king’s deeds of the kind found in the Mesha Stele or the Tel Dan Stele.³⁸³⁹⁴⁰

The Royal Genealogy

The most remarkable feature of the text is the genealogy of the king. Achish is said to be the son of Padi, the son of Ysd, the son of Ada, the son of Yair. This gives five generations of the ruling family of Ekron, and it is one of the longest royal genealogies in any West Semitic inscription. The purpose of such a genealogy was to establish the legitimacy of the king by tracing his descent from earlier rulers, and its length suggests that the dynasty had held power for a considerable time. If each generation is reckoned at about twenty-five years, the founder Yair would have lived in the eighth century, at about the time when Ekron began to recover from its long decline.⁴¹⁴²

The title given to Achish is śr ʿqrn, which the editors translated “ruler of Ekron.” The word śr is used in Hebrew for officials and commanders of various ranks, and it is not the usual word for king. Its use here has been explained in several ways. It may reflect the subordinate position of Ekron as a vassal of Assyria, whose rulers did not call themselves kings in the presence of the great king. It may be a local Philistine usage, perhaps corresponding to the term seren used in the Hebrew Bible for the lords of the Philistine cities. Or it may simply be a variant of royal terminology in the language of the inscription. The Assyrian sources call the rulers of Ekron kings, and there is no doubt that Achish held royal power within his city.⁴³⁴⁴⁴⁵

The Name Achish

The name of the king, written ʾkyš, is identical with the name of Achish, king of Gath, who appears in the first book of Samuel as the Philistine ruler with whom David took refuge when he fled from Saul. In that narrative David feigned madness at Achish’s court, and later he served Achish as a vassal and received from him the town of Ziklag. The name is not Semitic, and it has been compared with names of Aegean or Anatolian origin. Some scholars have related it to the Greek name Anchises, the father of Aeneas in the Homeric tradition, and to a word meaning Achaean, though these comparisons are uncertain. Whatever its origin, the name shows that a Philistine royal dynasty of the seventh century preserved a name of foreign character that had been borne by a Philistine king several centuries earlier.⁴⁶⁴⁷⁴⁸

The other names in the genealogy are of mixed character. Padi and Yair appear to be Semitic names, and Ysd and Ada have been interpreted in different ways. The combination of a non-Semitic name for the king with Semitic names for his ancestors reflects the gradual assimilation of the Philistines to the culture of their Semitic-speaking neighbours, while preserving elements of their distinctive identity.⁴⁹⁵⁰

Other Inscriptions from Ekron

The dedicatory inscription is not the only written evidence from Ekron, and it should be read alongside the shorter texts found in the same city. During the excavations more than a dozen brief inscriptions were recovered from the seventh-century levels, most of them incised or painted on storage jars. One of them reads qdš lʾšrt, holy to Asherat, and indicates that the contents of the vessel had been set aside for a goddess whose name corresponds to that of the Canaanite Asherah. Others bear the letter tet with numerals, a notation that has been interpreted as a mark of capacity or of a tithe, and some carry personal names or the names of offerings. Taken together these texts show that writing was used at Ekron in the administration of the temple and its revenues, and that the cult of the city included Semitic deities as well as the goddess named in the royal dedication.⁵¹⁵²⁵³

These smaller inscriptions also help to fix the character of the local script. Their letter forms agree with those of the royal text in the features that distinguish it from Phoenician and from Hebrew writing, and they show that the scribes of the temple shared a common tradition. Naveh drew on this material in his analysis of the dedicatory inscription, and later studies of Philistine epigraphy have used the Ekron texts as a reference point for classifying inscriptions from Ashkelon, Ashdod, Tel Jemmeh and Tell es-Safi. The corpus remains small, and the identification of a distinctively Philistine script depends on a limited number of letters, but the Ekron finds give it a secure base in a dated context.⁵⁴⁵⁵⁵⁶

Questions of Interpretation

Although the text of the inscription is clear, several of its details have been debated since its publication. The reading of the name of the goddess is certain as a sequence of letters, but the division of the sequence and its vocalisation are not, and the proposals described below depend on different assumptions about the language from which it was borrowed. The verbs of the blessing formula have been analysed in different ways, some scholars treating them as jussive forms expressing a wish and others as perfects with a precative sense. The relation of the word for temple to the architecture of the building, whether it refers to the whole of Temple Complex 650 or only to the sanctuary within it, has also been discussed. None of these questions affects the general sense of the text, but they show how much can depend on a few letters in an inscription of this kind.⁵⁷⁵⁸⁵⁹

The genealogy, too, has been the subject of discussion. Some scholars have suggested that the names should not all be read as a single line of descent, and that one or more of them might be a title or an epithet rather than a personal name. The editors’ reading as a five-generation genealogy has nevertheless remained the most widely accepted, since it accords with the formula son of, repeated before each name, and with the practice of other royal inscriptions of the region. The appearance of Padi in the Assyrian annals as king in 701 confirms at least the first two generations of the sequence.⁶⁰⁶¹

Script and Language

The Script

The script of the inscription is a form of the Phoenician alphabet, but with features that distinguish it from the standard Phoenician scripts of the coastal cities. Naveh, who studied the palaeography of the text, noted that some letter forms resemble those of Hebrew inscriptions of the seventh century, and others those of Phoenician inscriptions. He concluded that the script represents a local Philistine development of the alphabet, influenced by both its neighbours. Similar scripts are known from shorter inscriptions found at Ekron and other Philistine sites, including ostraca and inscribed jars from Tel Jemmeh and Ashkelon, which suggests that a distinct Philistine writing tradition existed in the seventh century.⁶²⁶³⁶⁴

The script is of interest for the history of the alphabet in the southern Levant. It shows that the Philistine cities, like their neighbours, had adopted alphabetic writing for monumental and administrative purposes, and that they had developed their own forms of it. The relationship between this script and the Hebrew script of Judah, which is known from the Siloam inscription, the Lachish letters and many other texts of the period, is close in some respects, and it reflects the contacts between the two peoples across their common border. The Siloam inscription and the Lachish letters are treated in separate articles on this site.⁶⁵⁶⁶⁶⁷

The Language

The language of the inscription is a Northwest Semitic language closely related to Phoenician and Hebrew. Several features of grammar and vocabulary are shared with Phoenician, including the form of the relative pronoun and the word for lady, and others with Hebrew. The verbs of blessing and protection in the final lines belong to the common vocabulary of the West Semitic languages and are found in Hebrew blessings such as the priestly blessing of Numbers. The language of the inscription thus represents the dialect used by the Philistines of the seventh century for written purposes, which had developed from the Canaanite languages of the region.⁶⁸⁶⁹⁷⁰

This means that by the seventh century the Philistines of Ekron wrote, and probably spoke, a Semitic language. Their ancestors who settled in the twelfth century had spoken a language of Aegean or Anatolian origin, of which only a few words and names survive, but over the following centuries they adopted the language of the surrounding population. The inscription is therefore evidence for the cultural assimilation of the Philistines, which archaeologists have also traced in the gradual disappearance of the distinctive features of their early material culture. At the same time the non-Semitic name of the king and the uncertain name of the goddess suggest that elements of their original culture survived in the royal and religious spheres.⁷¹⁷²⁷³

The Historical Setting

Ekron in the Assyrian Sources

The kings Padi and Achish are both known from Assyrian sources. Padi appears in the annals of Sennacherib, king of Assyria from 704 to 681, in the account of his campaign of 701 against the western states that had rebelled against him. According to the annals, the officials and people of Ekron had deposed their king Padi, who was loyal to Assyria, and handed him over in chains to Hezekiah of Judah, who kept him prisoner in Jerusalem. Sennacherib marched against Ekron, killed the officials who had led the revolt, and forced Hezekiah to release Padi, whom he restored to his throne. He also gave Padi part of the territory of Judah as a reward for his loyalty.⁷⁴⁷⁵⁷⁶

Achish appears in the Assyrian sources under the name Ikausu, king of Ekron. He is listed among the twenty-two kings of the west who were required by Esarhaddon, king of Assyria from 680 to 669, to supply building materials for his palace at Nineveh, a list dated to about 673. He appears again in a similar list in the annals of Ashurbanipal, who succeeded Esarhaddon, among the kings who accompanied the Assyrian army on its campaign against Egypt in 667. In both lists he appears beside Manasseh, king of Judah, and the kings of the other Philistine and Phoenician cities.⁷⁷⁷⁸⁷⁹

The identification of Ikausu with the Achish of the inscription is supported by the name of his father, for the Assyrian sources make Padi the king of Ekron in 701, and Achish the king a generation later. The inscription thus confirms the Assyrian record and provides a fixed point for its dating. It was probably set up in the first half of the seventh century, during the reign of Achish, when Ekron was at the height of its prosperity as a loyal vassal of Assyria.⁸⁰⁸¹⁸²

Ekron and Judah

The episode of Padi’s imprisonment in Jerusalem shows how closely the affairs of Ekron were bound up with those of Judah. In the revolt of 701 Hezekiah attempted to form a coalition of western states against Assyria, with the support of Egypt, and the deposition of Padi was part of that attempt. Its failure cost Judah heavily, for Sennacherib devastated its countryside, besieged Lachish and other cities, and transferred part of its territory to the Philistine kings. The tunnel that Hezekiah cut beneath Jerusalem to bring water within the walls, recorded in the Siloam inscription, is usually connected with the preparations for this revolt.⁸³⁸⁴⁸⁵

In the seventh century Ekron and Judah were both Assyrian vassals, and their relations were probably governed by their common subjection to the empire. The growth of the olive oil industry at Ekron may have drawn on the produce of the Judaean lowlands, and the territory given to Padi by Sennacherib may have contributed to it. After the decline of Assyrian power in the last decades of the century, both states fell under the influence first of Egypt and then of Babylon. Ekron was destroyed in 604, and Judah survived until the Babylonian conquest of 587 or 586, whose last days are documented in the Lachish letters.⁸⁶⁸⁷⁸⁸

Assyria and the Philistine Cities

The prosperity of seventh-century Ekron has been interpreted by Gitin as a consequence of its integration into the Assyrian imperial economy. The Assyrians encouraged the development of specialised production in their vassal states, and the olive oil of Ekron was probably traded throughout the empire and beyond. The city also shows signs of Assyrian cultural influence, including the plan of Temple Complex 650 and the presence of Assyrian-style pottery. At the same time it maintained contacts with Phoenicia, Egypt and the Greek world, and its material culture reflects a mixture of influences.⁸⁹⁹⁰⁹¹

The dedicatory inscription belongs to this setting. Its form follows Phoenician models, its script reflects both Phoenician and Hebrew influence, and its content records the construction of a temple whose plan was influenced by Assyria. Yet its royal genealogy and the name of the king point back to the Philistine past, and its goddess is otherwise unknown. The inscription thus expresses the identity of a ruling family that had absorbed the cultures of its neighbours while preserving a sense of its own descent.⁹²⁹³⁹⁴

The Goddess Ptgyh

The Problem of the Name

The goddess to whom the temple was dedicated is named in the inscription as Ptgyh, followed by the word for his lady. The name is not known from any other source, and its interpretation has been the most debated aspect of the inscription. It is clearly not a Semitic name, and the editors and later scholars have sought its origin in the languages of the Aegean and Anatolia.⁹⁵⁹⁶⁹⁷

Several interpretations have been proposed. The editors suggested that the name might be connected with the Greek word potnia, mistress or lady, which was used as a title of goddesses in Mycenaean Greek and in Homer. Aaron Demsky proposed that the name should be read as Pythogaia, a Greek form meaning the earth goddess of Pytho, that is, the goddess of the oracle at Delphi before its association with Apollo. Christa Schäfer-Lichtenberger argued that the goddess was a form of the Greek goddess Gaia, the earth, worshipped in a local form at Ekron. Other scholars have suggested connections with Anatolian or Cypriot deities.^9899100

The Significance of the Goddess

None of these proposals has won general acceptance, and the goddess remains obscure. What is clear is that she was the principal deity of the temple built by Achish, and that her name preserved a non-Semitic element in the religion of the Philistines of the seventh century. This is consistent with the evidence of the early Philistine material culture, which includes figurines of a seated female figure of Aegean type, sometimes called Ashdoda after the site where the first example was found, and which suggests that a female deity of Aegean origin played an important part in Philistine religion from the time of their settlement.^101102103

The Hebrew Bible names several Philistine deities, including Dagon at Ashdod and Gaza, Baal-zebub at Ekron and Ashtoreth at Beth-shean, but it does not mention a goddess corresponding to Ptgyh. This does not mean that the biblical writers were ignorant of her, for their references to Philistine religion are few and incidental. It does show that the religion of the Philistine cities was more varied than the biblical texts reveal, and that inscriptions such as this one are essential for understanding it.^104105106

Place among the Inscriptions of the Levant

A Royal Building Inscription

The Ekron inscription is one of a small number of royal monumental inscriptions from the southern Levant in the Iron Age. The others include the Mesha Stele from Moab, in which the king of Moab records his victories over Israel and his building works, and the Tel Dan Stele, in which an Aramaean king boasts of his defeat of the kings of Israel and Judah. Both of these are commemorative inscriptions describing the deeds of a king, and they are much longer than the Ekron text. The Ekron inscription is of a different type, a dedication of a building to a deity, and its closest parallels are found in Phoenicia rather than in Israel, Judah or Moab.^107108109

From Judah and Israel themselves no royal monumental inscription has been found that records the deeds of a king, and the Siloam inscription, which records the cutting of a tunnel, does not mention a king at all. The Hebrew inscriptions of the period are mostly administrative or private, including the ostraca of Samaria, Arad and Lachish. The Ekron inscription therefore fills a gap in the epigraphic record of the region, giving an example of the kind of royal text that the kings of the southern Levant set up in their temples.^110111112113

Its Value for Biblical Studies

For students of the Hebrew Bible the inscription has several points of interest. It confirms the identification of Tel Miqne as Ekron and thus provides a fixed point for the historical geography of the biblical narratives. It gives the names of two kings of Ekron known from Assyrian sources and shows that the name Achish, borne by a Philistine king in the books of Samuel, was used by the Philistine royal families of a later period. It illustrates the language and script of the Philistines in the seventh century, and it provides evidence for their religion that the biblical texts do not supply.^114115116

It has also contributed to the debate about the date and historical value of the biblical narratives about the Philistines. Some scholars have argued that the name Achish in the story of David reflects the circumstances of the seventh century, when the inscription was written, rather than those of the tenth, and that the narrative was composed or revised in the later period. Others have held that the name was traditional among the Philistine kings and could have been borne by a king of Gath in the time of David. The inscription cannot decide this question, but it has given it a new basis in evidence.¹¹⁷¹¹⁸

Assessment

The royal dedicatory inscription of Ekron is a short text, but it is one of the most informative discoveries in the archaeology of the Philistines. Found in its original context in the temple whose construction it records, and dated precisely by the destruction of the city in 604, it confirms the identification of the site, names two kings known from the annals of Assyria, preserves a royal genealogy of five generations, and records the name of a goddess otherwise unknown. Its script and language show the extent to which the Philistines of the seventh century had adopted the culture of their Semitic neighbours, while its names point back to their Aegean origins.¹¹⁹¹²⁰

Like the other monumental inscriptions of the Levant described on this site, the Ekron inscription is a document of royal ideology, written to proclaim the piety and legitimacy of a king. It differs from them in its brevity and in its religious rather than military character, but it shares with them the purpose of addressing both the deity and the people who would see it. For the modern reader it opens a window onto a city that was for centuries a neighbour and rival of Judah, and onto a ruling family that, in the age of the Assyrian empire, built a great temple to a goddess of its own and recorded its descent in stone.^121122123

Notes

1. Seymour Gitin, Trude Dothan and Joseph Naveh, “A Royal Dedicatory Inscription from Ekron,” Israel Exploration Journal 47 (1997): 1–16. ↩
2. Grokipedia, “Ekron”. ↩
3. Grokipedia, “Philistines”. ↩
4. Grokipedia, “Ekron”. ↩
5. Grokipedia, “Ark of the Covenant”. ↩
6. Grokipedia, “Hebrew Bible”. ↩
7. Seymour Gitin, Trude Dothan and Joseph Naveh, “A Royal Dedicatory Inscription from Ekron,” Israel Exploration Journal 47 (1997): 1–16. ↩
8. Joseph Naveh, Early History of the Alphabet: An Introduction to West Semitic Epigraphy and Palaeography (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1982). ↩
9. Grokipedia, “Ekron”. ↩
10. Grokipedia, “Trude Dothan”. ↩
11. Trude Dothan and Moshe Dothan, People of the Sea: The Search for the Philistines (New York: Macmillan, 1992). ↩
12. Grokipedia, “Hebrew University of Jerusalem”. ↩
13. Trude Dothan and Moshe Dothan, People of the Sea: The Search for the Philistines (New York: Macmillan, 1992). ↩
14. Grokipedia, “Philistines”. ↩
15. Seymour Gitin, “Tel Miqne-Ekron in the 7th Century BCE: The Impact of Economic Innovation and Foreign Cultural Influences on a Neo-Assyrian Vassal City-State,” in Seymour Gitin, ed., Recent Excavations in Israel: A View to the West (Dubuque: Kendall/Hunt, 1995), 61–79. ↩
16. Grokipedia, “Neo-Assyrian Empire”. ↩
17. Grokipedia, “Nebuchadnezzar II”. ↩
18. Seymour Gitin, “Tel Miqne-Ekron in the 7th Century BCE: The Impact of Economic Innovation and Foreign Cultural Influences on a Neo-Assyrian Vassal City-State,” in Seymour Gitin, ed., Recent Excavations in Israel: A View to the West (Dubuque: Kendall/Hunt, 1995), 61–79. ↩
19. Seymour Gitin, Trude Dothan and Joseph Naveh, “A Royal Dedicatory Inscription from Ekron,” Israel Exploration Journal 47 (1997): 1–16. ↩
20. Seymour Gitin, “Tel Miqne-Ekron in the 7th Century BCE: The Impact of Economic Innovation and Foreign Cultural Influences on a Neo-Assyrian Vassal City-State,” in Seymour Gitin, ed., Recent Excavations in Israel: A View to the West (Dubuque: Kendall/Hunt, 1995), 61–79. ↩
21. Grokipedia, “Trude Dothan”. ↩
22. Grokipedia, “Hebrew University of Jerusalem”. ↩
23. Seymour Gitin, “Tel Miqne-Ekron in the 7th Century BCE: The Impact of Economic Innovation and Foreign Cultural Influences on a Neo-Assyrian Vassal City-State,” in Seymour Gitin, ed., Recent Excavations in Israel: A View to the West (Dubuque: Kendall/Hunt, 1995), 61–79. ↩
24. Seymour Gitin, “Seventh Century BCE Cultic Elements at Ekron,” in Avraham Biran and Joseph Aviram, eds., Biblical Archaeology Today, 1990 (Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society, 1993), 248–258. ↩
25. Seymour Gitin, “Seventh Century BCE Cultic Elements at Ekron,” in Avraham Biran and Joseph Aviram, eds., Biblical Archaeology Today, 1990 (Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society, 1993), 248–258. ↩
26. Seymour Gitin, “Tel Miqne-Ekron in the 7th Century BCE: The Impact of Economic Innovation and Foreign Cultural Influences on a Neo-Assyrian Vassal City-State,” in Seymour Gitin, ed., Recent Excavations in Israel: A View to the West (Dubuque: Kendall/Hunt, 1995), 61–79. ↩
27. Seymour Gitin, Trude Dothan and Joseph Naveh, “A Royal Dedicatory Inscription from Ekron,” Israel Exploration Journal 47 (1997): 1–16. ↩
28. Grokipedia, “Israel Museum”. ↩
29. Seymour Gitin, Trude Dothan and Joseph Naveh, “A Royal Dedicatory Inscription from Ekron,” Israel Exploration Journal 47 (1997): 1–16. ↩
30. See also “The Mesha Stele and the Moabite Stone” on this site. ↩
31. Seymour Gitin, Trude Dothan and Joseph Naveh, “A Royal Dedicatory Inscription from Ekron,” Israel Exploration Journal 47 (1997): 1–16. ↩
32. Shmuel Aḥituv, Echoes from the Past: Hebrew and Cognate Inscriptions from the Biblical Period (Jerusalem: Carta, 2008). ↩
33. William W. Hallo and K. Lawson Younger Jr., eds., The Context of Scripture, vol. 2, Monumental Inscriptions from the Biblical World (Leiden: Brill, 2000). ↩
34. Grokipedia, “Israel Museum”. ↩
35. Seymour Gitin, Trude Dothan and Joseph Naveh, “A Royal Dedicatory Inscription from Ekron,” Israel Exploration Journal 47 (1997): 1–16. ↩
36. Shmuel Aḥituv, Echoes from the Past: Hebrew and Cognate Inscriptions from the Biblical Period (Jerusalem: Carta, 2008). ↩
37. William W. Hallo and K. Lawson Younger Jr., eds., The Context of Scripture, vol. 2, Monumental Inscriptions from the Biblical World (Leiden: Brill, 2000). ↩
38. Shmuel Aḥituv, Echoes from the Past: Hebrew and Cognate Inscriptions from the Biblical Period (Jerusalem: Carta, 2008). ↩
39. William W. Hallo and K. Lawson Younger Jr., eds., The Context of Scripture, vol. 2, Monumental Inscriptions from the Biblical World (Leiden: Brill, 2000). ↩
40. See also “The Tel Dan Stele” on this site. ↩
41. Seymour Gitin, Trude Dothan and Joseph Naveh, “A Royal Dedicatory Inscription from Ekron,” Israel Exploration Journal 47 (1997): 1–16. ↩
42. Aaron Demsky, “Discovering a Goddess: A New Look at the Ekron Inscription Identifies a Mysterious Deity,” Biblical Archaeology Review 24, no. 5 (1998): 53–58. ↩
43. Seymour Gitin, Trude Dothan and Joseph Naveh, “A Royal Dedicatory Inscription from Ekron,” Israel Exploration Journal 47 (1997): 1–16. ↩
44. Shmuel Aḥituv, Echoes from the Past: Hebrew and Cognate Inscriptions from the Biblical Period (Jerusalem: Carta, 2008). ↩
45. Grokipedia, “Philistine language”. ↩
46. Grokipedia, “Achish”. ↩
47. Grokipedia, “Philistines”. ↩
48. Grokipedia, “Philistine language”. ↩
49. Seymour Gitin, Trude Dothan and Joseph Naveh, “A Royal Dedicatory Inscription from Ekron,” Israel Exploration Journal 47 (1997): 1–16. ↩
50. Aaron Demsky, “Discovering a Goddess: A New Look at the Ekron Inscription Identifies a Mysterious Deity,” Biblical Archaeology Review 24, no. 5 (1998): 53–58. ↩
51. Seymour Gitin, “Seventh Century BCE Cultic Elements at Ekron,” in Avraham Biran and Joseph Aviram, eds., Biblical Archaeology Today, 1990 (Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society, 1993), 248–258. ↩
52. Seymour Gitin, “Tel Miqne-Ekron in the 7th Century BCE: The Impact of Economic Innovation and Foreign Cultural Influences on a Neo-Assyrian Vassal City-State,” in Seymour Gitin, ed., Recent Excavations in Israel: A View to the West (Dubuque: Kendall/Hunt, 1995), 61–79. ↩
53. Joseph Naveh, Early History of the Alphabet: An Introduction to West Semitic Epigraphy and Palaeography (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1982). ↩
54. Joseph Naveh, Early History of the Alphabet: An Introduction to West Semitic Epigraphy and Palaeography (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1982). ↩
55. Grokipedia, “Ashdod”. ↩
56. Grokipedia, “Ashkelon”. ↩
57. Seymour Gitin, Trude Dothan and Joseph Naveh, “A Royal Dedicatory Inscription from Ekron,” Israel Exploration Journal 47 (1997): 1–16. ↩
58. Shmuel Aḥituv, Echoes from the Past: Hebrew and Cognate Inscriptions from the Biblical Period (Jerusalem: Carta, 2008). ↩
59. William W. Hallo and K. Lawson Younger Jr., eds., The Context of Scripture, vol. 2, Monumental Inscriptions from the Biblical World (Leiden: Brill, 2000). ↩
60. Seymour Gitin, Trude Dothan and Joseph Naveh, “A Royal Dedicatory Inscription from Ekron,” Israel Exploration Journal 47 (1997): 1–16. ↩
61. A. Kirk Grayson and Jamie Novotny, The Royal Inscriptions of Sennacherib, King of Assyria (704–681 BC), part 1, Royal Inscriptions of the Neo-Assyrian Period 3/1 (Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 2012). ↩
62. Joseph Naveh, Early History of the Alphabet: An Introduction to West Semitic Epigraphy and Palaeography (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1982). ↩
63. Grokipedia, “Phoenician alphabet”. ↩
64. Seymour Gitin, Trude Dothan and Joseph Naveh, “A Royal Dedicatory Inscription from Ekron,” Israel Exploration Journal 47 (1997): 1–16. ↩
65. Joseph Naveh, Early History of the Alphabet: An Introduction to West Semitic Epigraphy and Palaeography (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1982). ↩
66. See also “The Siloam Inscription and Hezekiah’s Tunnel” on this site. ↩
67. See also “The Lachish Letters and the Last Days of Judah” on this site. ↩
68. Seymour Gitin, Trude Dothan and Joseph Naveh, “A Royal Dedicatory Inscription from Ekron,” Israel Exploration Journal 47 (1997): 1–16. ↩
69. Shmuel Aḥituv, Echoes from the Past: Hebrew and Cognate Inscriptions from the Biblical Period (Jerusalem: Carta, 2008). ↩
70. Grokipedia, “Philistine language”. ↩
71. Grokipedia, “Philistine language”. ↩
72. Grokipedia, “Philistines”. ↩
73. Trude Dothan and Moshe Dothan, People of the Sea: The Search for the Philistines (New York: Macmillan, 1992). ↩
74. A. Kirk Grayson and Jamie Novotny, The Royal Inscriptions of Sennacherib, King of Assyria (704–681 BC), part 1, Royal Inscriptions of the Neo-Assyrian Period 3/1 (Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 2012). ↩
75. Grokipedia, “Sennacherib”. ↩
76. Grokipedia, “Hezekiah”. ↩
77. Erle Leichty, The Royal Inscriptions of Esarhaddon, King of Assyria (680–669 BC), Royal Inscriptions of the Neo-Assyrian Period 4 (Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 2011). ↩
78. Grokipedia, “Esarhaddon”. ↩
79. Grokipedia, “Ashurbanipal”. ↩
80. Seymour Gitin, Trude Dothan and Joseph Naveh, “A Royal Dedicatory Inscription from Ekron,” Israel Exploration Journal 47 (1997): 1–16. ↩
81. Erle Leichty, The Royal Inscriptions of Esarhaddon, King of Assyria (680–669 BC), Royal Inscriptions of the Neo-Assyrian Period 4 (Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 2011). ↩
82. Grokipedia, “Neo-Assyrian Empire”. ↩
83. Grokipedia, “Hezekiah”. ↩
84. Grokipedia, “Kingdom of Judah”. ↩
85. See also “The Siloam Inscription and Hezekiah’s Tunnel” on this site. ↩
86. Seymour Gitin, “Tel Miqne-Ekron in the 7th Century BCE: The Impact of Economic Innovation and Foreign Cultural Influences on a Neo-Assyrian Vassal City-State,” in Seymour Gitin, ed., Recent Excavations in Israel: A View to the West (Dubuque: Kendall/Hunt, 1995), 61–79. ↩
87. Grokipedia, “Kingdom of Judah”. ↩
88. See also “The Lachish Letters and the Last Days of Judah” on this site. ↩
89. Seymour Gitin, “Tel Miqne-Ekron in the 7th Century BCE: The Impact of Economic Innovation and Foreign Cultural Influences on a Neo-Assyrian Vassal City-State,” in Seymour Gitin, ed., Recent Excavations in Israel: A View to the West (Dubuque: Kendall/Hunt, 1995), 61–79. ↩
90. Grokipedia, “Neo-Assyrian Empire”. ↩
91. Grokipedia, “Assyria”. ↩
92. Seymour Gitin, Trude Dothan and Joseph Naveh, “A Royal Dedicatory Inscription from Ekron,” Israel Exploration Journal 47 (1997): 1–16. ↩
93. Seymour Gitin, “Seventh Century BCE Cultic Elements at Ekron,” in Avraham Biran and Joseph Aviram, eds., Biblical Archaeology Today, 1990 (Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society, 1993), 248–258. ↩
94. Seymour Gitin, “Tel Miqne-Ekron in the 7th Century BCE: The Impact of Economic Innovation and Foreign Cultural Influences on a Neo-Assyrian Vassal City-State,” in Seymour Gitin, ed., Recent Excavations in Israel: A View to the West (Dubuque: Kendall/Hunt, 1995), 61–79. ↩
95. Seymour Gitin, Trude Dothan and Joseph Naveh, “A Royal Dedicatory Inscription from Ekron,” Israel Exploration Journal 47 (1997): 1–16. ↩
96. Aaron Demsky, “Discovering a Goddess: A New Look at the Ekron Inscription Identifies a Mysterious Deity,” Biblical Archaeology Review 24, no. 5 (1998): 53–58. ↩
97. Christa Schäfer-Lichtenberger, “The Goddess of Ekron and the Religious-Cultural Background of the Philistines,” Israel Exploration Journal 50 (2000): 82–91. ↩
98. Seymour Gitin, Trude Dothan and Joseph Naveh, “A Royal Dedicatory Inscription from Ekron,” Israel Exploration Journal 47 (1997): 1–16. ↩
99. Aaron Demsky, “Discovering a Goddess: A New Look at the Ekron Inscription Identifies a Mysterious Deity,” Biblical Archaeology Review 24, no. 5 (1998): 53–58. ↩
100. Christa Schäfer-Lichtenberger, “The Goddess of Ekron and the Religious-Cultural Background of the Philistines,” Israel Exploration Journal 50 (2000): 82–91. ↩
101. Christa Schäfer-Lichtenberger, “The Goddess of Ekron and the Religious-Cultural Background of the Philistines,” Israel Exploration Journal 50 (2000): 82–91. ↩
102. Trude Dothan and Moshe Dothan, People of the Sea: The Search for the Philistines (New York: Macmillan, 1992). ↩
103. Grokipedia, “Ashdod”. ↩
104. Grokipedia, “Hebrew Bible”. ↩
105. Grokipedia, “Philistines”. ↩
106. Christa Schäfer-Lichtenberger, “The Goddess of Ekron and the Religious-Cultural Background of the Philistines,” Israel Exploration Journal 50 (2000): 82–91. ↩
107. See also “The Mesha Stele and the Moabite Stone” on this site. ↩
108. See also “The Tel Dan Stele” on this site. ↩
109. William W. Hallo and K. Lawson Younger Jr., eds., The Context of Scripture, vol. 2, Monumental Inscriptions from the Biblical World (Leiden: Brill, 2000). ↩
110. See also “The Siloam Inscription and Hezekiah’s Tunnel” on this site. ↩
111. See also “The Arad Ostraca and the Archive of Eliashib” on this site. ↩
112. See also “The Samaria Ostraca and the Administration of the Kingdom of Israel” on this site. ↩
113. See also “The Lachish Letters and the Last Days of Judah” on this site. ↩
114. Seymour Gitin, Trude Dothan and Joseph Naveh, “A Royal Dedicatory Inscription from Ekron,” Israel Exploration Journal 47 (1997): 1–16. ↩
115. Shmuel Aḥituv, Echoes from the Past: Hebrew and Cognate Inscriptions from the Biblical Period (Jerusalem: Carta, 2008). ↩
116. Grokipedia, “Hebrew Bible”. ↩
117. Grokipedia, “Achish”. ↩
118. Grokipedia, “Philistines”. ↩
119. Seymour Gitin, Trude Dothan and Joseph Naveh, “A Royal Dedicatory Inscription from Ekron,” Israel Exploration Journal 47 (1997): 1–16. ↩
120. Grokipedia, “Ekron”. ↩
121. Seymour Gitin, Trude Dothan and Joseph Naveh, “A Royal Dedicatory Inscription from Ekron,” Israel Exploration Journal 47 (1997): 1–16. ↩
122. Seymour Gitin, “Tel Miqne-Ekron in the 7th Century BCE: The Impact of Economic Innovation and Foreign Cultural Influences on a Neo-Assyrian Vassal City-State,” in Seymour Gitin, ed., Recent Excavations in Israel: A View to the West (Dubuque: Kendall/Hunt, 1995), 61–79. ↩
123. See also “The Mesha Stele and the Moabite Stone” on this site. ↩