U.S. archeologist flips a rock in Israel and confirms the discovery of the Biblical settlement Ekron

BY JOHN NOBLE WILPORD New York Times Service

All archeologists dream of turning over a stone and finding an inscription saying they have found the place they were looking for. For a team of U.S. and Israeli archeologists, the dream came true this month. Since 1983, they have been excavating the ruins of an ancient city at a site called Tel Miqne, 30 kilometres southwest of Jerusalem. The archeologists had good reason to believe they were uncovering the Philistine city of Ekron mentioned in the Bible and Assyrian annals. The geography was right – where the coastal plane of ancient Philistia met the hill country of Judah. All the artifacts looked Philistine.

Archeologists and other scholars, who assumed the site was Ekron, examined the decorated pottery and evidence of advanced town planning and concluded that, contrary to the age-old slander, Philistine culture was no oxymoron. They also saw the site must have been one of the major industrial cities of the far-flung Neo-Assyrian Empire of the seventh century BC. They gained important insights into how the Assyrians forged a new imperial ideology based on mercantile principles, creating what some scholars consider the first "world market"

But the archeologists could not be absolutely sure they had found Ekron. Until Seymour Gitin, director of the Albright Institute of Archeological Research in Jerusalem, turned over a stone found near the entrance to a building at Tel Miqne. He did not expect much because nothing with writing had been found there yet. "I had been getting tired of this" Dr. Gitin said. "Nothing ever showed up."

When the caked dirt was cleared away, though, he let out an unscholarly exclamation: "0 my God!" He saw a five-line inscription written in Phoenician script. Some of the 69 letters spelled out the name Ekron and the names of two known city kings, Achish and his father, Padi. The inscription said Achish had built a temple dedicated to a goddess. This is the first time the name of a biblical city and a list of its kings has been found on a site where its historical context is clear, he said.

The inscription could provide the first strong evidence of the Philistines’ language. They were descendants of the enigmatic Sea Peoples, from the Aegean region, who arrived in large numbers on the coast of Canaan soon after 1200 BC, Canaan included much of present-day Lebanon and Israel.

Whatever language these people first spoke, Greek or something else, in time the Philistines apparently adopted a Canaanite tongue. The Bible portrays them as having no trouble communicating with the Israelites. Phoenician and Hebrew were dialects of the Canaanite language. But scholars have never found any unambiguous example of Philistine writing, early or later.

A preliminary analysis of the inscription, Dr. Gitin said, showed that not only was the script Phoenician, but probably the language was too. But it may have been a variation of Phoenician used by the Philistines, with differences similar to those between British and U.S. English.

Dr. Gitin and Trude Dothan, an archeologist at Hebrew University in Jerusalem who is the other Tel Miqne-Ekron project leader, are conducting a closer study of the inscription. They are being assisted by Joseph Naveh, a Hebrew University epigrapher, one of the scholars who originally suggested the ruins might be Ekron.

Dr. Gitin said the inscription confirmed the link between Ekron and the Neo-Assyrian Empire, which in the late eighth century BC and most of the seventh was a superpower. Ekron was one of many vassal city-states in the empire and, as excavations are revealing, it must have been one of the largest industrial centres in the Middle East of the seventh century BC. The inscription documents a crucial period in Ekron’s history – its embrace by the Neo-Assyrian Empire and the expansion and, apparent prosperity that followed.

The stone attests to the city’s newfound wealth. It celebrated the construction of a temple on the
west side of a stately palace, a building of Neo-Assyrian design and one of the largest such structures excavated in Israel. Other digging in the past 13 years has shown that Ekron grew rapidly from about four hectares to a city of 34 hectares, complete with an elite central section and an industrial zone containing more than 100 olive-oil processing plants.

The excavations are part of an ambitious study of the Neo-Assyrian Empire, particularly its influence in the provinces and vassal city-states. The discovery of the stone, Dr. Gitin said, "is going to allow us to write, with a great deal of assurance, the history of the Neo-Assyrian Empire and its revolutionary economic developments." The kings in Nineveh, the Assyrian capital, controlled territory as far south as Egypt and across present-day Syria, Iraq and parts of Turkey and Iran. The empire’s Phoenician traders extended a Syrian influence as far west as Carthage, Sicily and Iberia. Other economic links reached east into Afghanistan and perhaps India.

In a report on his interpretation of Ekron’s imperial role, published last year, Dr. Gitin wrote the Philistine city "was apparently chosen as a focus of Assyrian economic activity because of its geographic and topographic advantages, with its proximity to sources of raw materials, land routes and Mediterranean harbours."

Archeologists were particularly impressed by Ekron’s extensive olive oil industry. In detailed excavations of only 3 per cent of the city’s area, they uncovered 105 olive-oil installations which contained stone presses, ceramic storage vessels and other artifacts. Other artifacts at Ekron pointed to a significant textile industry and extensive foreign contact, presumably through trade. Among the ruins are goblets and bottles from Assyria, ceramics from Greece and Carthage and Israelite and Phoenician religious objects. Hoards of silver in small ingots and jewelry were found.

Ekron’s prosperity was fleeting, however, as was the Neo-Assyrian Empire’s. In the late seventh century BC, Egypt and then Babylon broke away from the empire. Babylonian forces conquered Nineveh in 612. Ekron itself fell to the Babylonians in 603. The city with Achish’s recently discovered stone became ruins.

Then the Philistines largely disappeared. The Neo-Assyrian Empire, which scholars consider the first of the classical empires, was followed by those of the Babylonians, Persians, Greeks and Romans.

The Philistine city of Ekron was an important branch of the trade tentacles of the Neo-Assyrian Empire. It was but one of many conquered city-states, but may have been one of the largest industrial centres of any kind in the Middle East of the seventh century BC.

This article came from the July 23rd, 1996 copy of The Globe and Mail.