Stone inscription identifies ancient Philistine city of Ekron, a major industrial city of the Neo-Assyrian Empire in the 7th. Century B.C.
by John Noble Wilford

Archeologists dream of turning over a temple stone and finding an inscription saying this is the place you are looking for. For a team of American and Israeli archeologists, the dream came true early this month. Since 1983, they have been excavating the ruins of an ancient city at a site called Tel Miqne, 20 miles southwest of Jerusalem. They had good reason to think that this was the Philistine city of Ekron, mentioned in the Bible and Assyrian annals. The geography was right: where the coastal plane of ancient Philistine met the hill country of Judah. All the articles seemed recognizably Philistine.

On the assumption that this was Ekron, archeologists and other scholars examining the decorated pottery and evidence for advanced town planning
concluded that contrary to the age-old slander, Philistine culture was no
oxymoron. They could also see that this must have been one of the major industrial cities of the far-flung Neo-Assyrian empire in the 7th century BC. That gave them important insights into the Assyrians forged a new imperial ideology based on mercantile principles, creating what some scholars consider the first " world market ". But the archeologists could not be absolutely sure that this was indeed Ekron until Dr. Seymour Gitin, director of the Albright Institute of Archeological Research in Jerusalem, turned over a large block of stone found near the entrance to a colonnade building at Tel Miqne. His expectations were low because nothing with writing had been found there yet.

When the caked dirt was cleaned away, though, he let out an unscholarly exclamation: "Oh, my God !" He saw a five-line inscription written in Phoenician script, and some of the names of two spelled out the name Ekron and the names of two of the city's known kings, Achish and his father Padi. The inscription recorded that Achish had built a temple here dedicated to a goddess.

Dr. Gitin said the inscription had already confirmed the close link between Ekron and the Neo-Assyrian empire, which in the late 8th century B.C. and most of the 7th. century B.C. was the superpower of what was then considered the known world. Ekron was one of many vassal city-states in the empire and, as current excavations are revealing, must have been one of the largest industrial centers of any kind in the ancient Middle East in the 7th century B.C.

The name Achish in the text established the linkage for archeologists. Achish was the name of a Philistine king mentioned in the Bible I the Books of I Samuel and I Kings during the time of King David and King Solomon of Israel. But he is not the Acish referred to in the inscription. Instead, the Achish in the text, archeologists have determined, corresponds to the name Ikausu, who is mentioned in Assyrian annals of the 7th. century B.C. as the King of Ekron.

Ikausu, scholars noted, was 1 of 12 kings of the Mediterranean coast called upon by the Assyrian king in the first quarter of the 7th. century B.C. to provide building materials and their transport for the construction of a palace in Nineveh. Ashurbanipal, the successor, ordered the vassal kings of the Philistine cities, including Ikausu of Ekron, to support his military campaigns against Egypt.
The other name in the text, Padi, the father of Achish or Ikausu, is referred to in Assyrian documents at the time the empire's army conquered Ekron, which had been under the control of neighboring Judah. The Assyrians restored Ekron's status as a city-state, though now subservient to Nineveh, and reinstated Padi as its king.

The inscription thus documents a critical period in Ekron's history, its embrace by the Neo-Assyrian empire and the expansion and apparent prosperity that followed. The stone itself attests to the city's newfound wealth, for it celebrated the construction of a new temple on the west side of a stately palace, a building of Neo-Assyrian design and one of the largest structures of its kind to be excavated in Israel.

Other digging in the last 13 years has shown that Ekron in the 7th. century B.C. grew rapidly from not much more than 10 acres to a city of 85 acres, complete with an elite quarter in the center and an industrial zone containing more than 100 olive-oil processing plants. The discovery of the inscribed stone, Dr. Gitin said, "is going to allow us to write with a great deal of assurance the history of Neo-Assyrian empire and its revolutionary economic developments."

Through military might and political maneuvers, as well as innovative economic practices, the kings in Nineveh, the Assyrian capital on the upper Tigris River in what is now northern Iraq, controlled territory as far as Egypt and across present day Syria, Iraq and parts of Turkey and Iran. The empire's Phoenician traders, operating out of the ports of Tyre and Sidon, extended a Syrian influence as far west as Carthage, Sicily and Iberia. Other economic links reached east into Afghanistan and perhaps India.

Another of the Neo-Assyrian innovations, it seems, was the widespread use of silver as a currency to supplement and, in some cases, replace conventional modes of payment by goods and services. In Spain, new silver mines were opened to meet the increased currency demands.

This was a portion of the New York Times article, published Tuesday,
July 23, 1996. Printed in Nineveh magazine, 4th quarter, 1998 issue.