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Ashkelon’s excavators found evidence of Babylonian devastation throughout the city. The most disturbing sign of the invaders’ ferocity, however, lay in one of the bazaar’s shops: the skeleton of a 35-year-old woman, who had sought to hide from her attackers among the shop’s large storage jars. Lying on her back with her legs recoiled in terror, she lifted her left arm up to her head, as if to ward off a blow. The physical anthropologist who examined this skeleton determined that the woman had been clubbed in the head with a blunt instrument.