Assyrian Palace Discovered in Ashdod

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As so often happens in Israel, so it happened in 2003 when the Israel Railway Authority was constructing a rail connection between Ashdod and Ashkelon, those ancient Philistine, now modern cities on the Mediterranean coast: Ancient remains were discovered, work stopped, and the Israel Antiquities Authority was called in to investigate and excavate. What was unusual this time, however, was that the excavators came upon a massive hitherto-unknown neo-Assyrian palace dating to the late eighth century B.C.E.a This is especially tantalizing because it will take a major excavation to fully excavate the palace. So far only a small portion […]

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Footnotes

Neo-Assyrian distinguishes the first-millennium B.C.E. Assyrian empire from the Assyrian empire of the third millennium B.C.E.

Sargon I ruled an earlier Assyrian empire in about 2000 B.C.E.

Endnotes

In 2004, the excavation was co-directed by P. Nahshoni.

See James B. Pritchard, ed., Ancient Near Eastern Texts: Relating to the Old Testament, 3rd edition with supplement (Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1969), pp. 285–287.

See Wayne Horowitz and Takayoshi Oshima, Cuneiform in Canaan (Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society and Hebrew University, 2006), pp. 40–41.