Endnote 3 – Buy Low, Sell High: The Marketplace at Ashkelon

Several potential locales for ancient markets have been identified in the ancient Near East. See Larry Herr, “Tripartite Pillared Buildings and the Market Place in Iron Age Palestine,” Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research (1988), pp. 47–67 and Avraham Biran, “The hûṣôt of Dan,” Eretz-Israel 26 (1999), pp. 25–29 (in Hebrew). The oldest proposed market is at Mari; see J.C. Margueron, Mari, métropole de l’Euphrate au IIIe et au début du IIe millénaire avant JC (Paris: Picard, 2004), pp. 160–162 (in French). But Mari and the other proposed markets lack the in situ artifacts that show trade in action. Ashkelon’s market is the sole space in which the architecture, goods for sale and receipts of sale are all found together; it is the only archaeologically demonstrated market in the ancient Near East.