ASHKELON ăsh’ kə lən (Heb. אַשְׁקְלֹ֖ון). An ancient Canaanite city situated on the Mediterranean sea coast about midway between Ashdod and Gaza. It is mentioned in classical and Biblical lit. as one of the five cities of the Philistines. The earliest mention of the name is in certain execration texts from the 12th dynasty of the Egyp. Middle Kingdom; the name is written in hieratic characters and scratched on a small figurine, prob. representing the local ruler who was thus to be rendered hapless before Egyp. might through the ritual smashing of his figurine (c. 1800 b.c.). The city is mentioned in two letters from the cuneiform cache of Amarna, No. 287 written by Abdiḥiba, ruler of Jerusalem, and No. 320 written by a certain Widia of Ashkelon. Both were addressed to the pharaoh whom they served in the period (1400-1350 b.c.). The city revolted and threw off the overlordship of the pharaoh Ramses II after his defeat at the hand of the Hittites under Muwatallis, and then Ramses had to recapture Ashkelon. In 1282 b.c. he recorded the event on the walls of his great temple at Karnak. Apparently the faithful following of the subject princes of Syria-Pal. was not assured because in 1230 b.c. Merneptaḥ again reconquered the town and recorded the event on his famous stele from his temple W of Thebes. This is the inscr. which contains the earliest mention of Israel yet discovered in Egyp. sources. When the city was overcome by the Indo-European Philistines, a Gr. people, is not certain; but Ashkelon was in their hands from Joshua’s time until well into the period of the Israelite monarchy (Josh 13:3; the MT states in Judg 1:18 that the tribe of Judah took the city, however the LXX distinctly states that Judah did not do so; 1 Sam 6:17; 2 Sam 1:20). The prophets inveighed against Ashkelon and her pagan inhabitants (Jer 25:20; 47:5, 6; Amos 1:8; Zeph 2:4, 7; and Zech 9:5). The westward expansion of Assyria under the rule of Tiglath-pileser III (the “Pul” of 2 Kings 15:19 and 1 Chron 5:26) caught the petty states of Syria and Ashkelon was conquered in 734 b.c. But the cycle of conquest and rebellion took its course and Sennacherib set out from his palace in Nineveh in 701 b.c. against Sidka, the king of Ashkelon, who was defeated and carried off to captivity in Assyria. The Assyrians set one of their puppet rulers on the throne of the city and both Esarhaddon (c. 677 b.c.) and his successor Ashurbanipal (c. 667 b.c.) collected tribute from their vassals. The city was the victim of all the conquering hordes which poured down upon the remains of the Assyrian empire after the rise of Persia. In time it was overrun by the Scythians (Herodotus 1:105), the Chaldeans, and finally the Persians. Ashkelon became completely Hellenized after Alexander, and it became known as ̓Ασκαλῶν, from which the Eng. “scallion,” for a tender young onion, is derived. The large Jewish population appears to have sided with the Maccabees, and having subsequently made peace with Rome, it was declared a free area. In the rebellion of a.d. 66 the Jews attacked Ascalon and were thrown back in a furious assault (Jos. War. II. 18. 1 and III. 2. 1-2). The city had a vivid history during the Islamic period and the Crusades. It was excavated by the Palestinian-Exploration Fund 1920-22.
Bibliography J. Garstang and W. J. Phythian-Adams, “Excavations at Ascalon,” PEQ (1920-1924); W. F. Stinespring, “Ashkelon,” IDB, 1 (1961), 252-254.