Ascalon / Ashkelon

• SCHOLARLY AND FICTIONAL WORKS: see Category:Ascalon (subject)
• ANCIENT SOURCES: see Ascalon (sources)

Ascalon / Ashkelon (modern Ashkelon, Israel) is a city on the Mediterranean coast.

History

Ascalon was, like Gaza and Azotus, a very ancient and important settlement of the Philistines. It is often recorded in ancient Jewish sources and was known to Herodotus.

In the Persian period, Ascalon belonged to Tyre. After the conquest of Alexander the Great in 332 BCE, it came, together with the whole of Palestine and Phoenicia, under the rule of the Ptolemeis, until Antiochus III made it a possession of the Seleucids.

Ascalon was the only coastal town that Alexander Jannaeus did not attack. Cleopatra VII used the city as her place of refuge when her brother and sister exiled her in 49 BCE.

Pompey and the Romans recognized the autonomy of the city. Ascalon was not annexed to the kingdom of Herod the Great, even though the king adorned it with public buildings and had probably a palace there.

During the Jewish War, Ascalon remained loyal to Rome, and in the following centuries it grew to be an important center in Roman and Byzantine Palestina.

References

• Ascalon / The History of the Jewish People in the Age of Jesus Christ (1973-1987 Schurer / Vermes), book / 2 (1979) 105-108

• Ashkelon / Douglas L. Esse / In: The Anchor Bible Dictionary (1992 Freedman), dictionary, 1:487-490

External links

• Wikipedia / BiblePlaces.com