Footnote 2 – The Fury of Babylon: Ashkelon and the Archaeology of Destruction
The prodigious efforts of Seymour Gitin to link the prosperity of Ekron to the Assyrian Empire have produced an anachronistic conclusion. The economic “take off” did not occur during the late eighth or early seventh centuries B.C.E., but later in the second half of the seventh century B.C.E. What propelled the olive oil industry at Ekron into the international sphere was not a dying Assyria but a rising Egypt, ever the greatest consumer of Levantine olive oil. The expansion of Ekron and the development of its oil industry occurred after Assyrian interest and power in the West had begun to wane in the late 640s.