Assyrian Palace Discovered in Ashdod

Home > Magazines > BAR > January/February 2007

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 […]

You have already read your free article for this month. Please join the BAS Library or become an All Access member of BAS to gain full access to this article and so much more.

Join the BAS Library!

Already a library member? Log in here.

Institution user? Log in with your IP address or Username

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.