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Photographer: Tzila Sagiv, courtesy Israel Antiquities Authority

A bathtub-shaped basin lies where it fell in a plastered room of the Ashdod palace. Two other such basins—one of clay, one of stone—were also found here. Although these types of basins were sometimes used as coffins by the Assyrians or for other ritual purposes by various ancient peoples, excavator Elena Kogan-Zahavi believes that this clay example was simply part of a bathroom. She adds that the bathtub mostly likely fell from its original location on a raised platform or a second-story room that collapsed during the fiery destruction of the site.