page_title: Ashkelon
section_title: Canaanite settlement
hierarchical_section_title: Ashkelon / History / Canaanite settlement
caption_attribution_description: Restored Canaanite City Gate of Ashkelon
context_page_description: Ashkelon or Ashqelon, also known as Ascalon, is a coastal city in the Southern District of Israel on the Mediterranean coast, 50 kilometres south of Tel Aviv, and 13 kilometres north of the border with the Gaza Strip. The ancient seaport of Ashkelon dates back to the Neolithic Age. In the course of its history, it has been ruled by the Ancient Egyptians, the Canaanites, the Philistines, the Assyrians, the Babylonians, the Greeks, the Phoenicians, the Hasmoneans, the Romans, the Persians, the Arabs and the Crusaders, until it was destroyed by the Mamluks in 1270.
  The Arab village of al-Majdal or al-Majdal Asqalan was established a few kilometres inland from the ancient site by the late 15th century, under Ottoman rule. In 1918, it became part of the British Occupied Enemy Territory Administration and in 1920 became part of Mandatory Palestine. Al-Majdal on the eve of the 1948 Arab–Israeli War had 10,000 Arab inhabitants and in October 1948, the city accommodated thousands more refugees from nearby villages. Al-Majdal was the forward position of the Egyptian Expeditionary Force based in Gaza.
context_section_description: The city was originally built on a sandstone outcropping and has a good underground water supply. It was relatively large as an ancient city with as many as 15,000 people living inside the walls. Ashkelon was a thriving Middle Bronze Age (2000–1550 BCE) city of more than 150 acres (61 ha). Its commanding ramparts, measuring 1.5 miles (2.4 km) long, 50 feet (15 m) high and 150 feet (46 m) thick,, and even as a ruin they stand two stories high. The thickness of the walls was so great that the mudbrick city gate had a stone-lined, 8 feet (2.4 m) wide tunnel-like barrel vault, coated with white plaster, to support the superstructure: it is the oldest such vault ever found. Later Roman and Islamic fortifications, faced with stone, followed the same footprint, a vast semicircle protecting Ashkelon on the land side. On the sea it was defended by a high natural bluff. A roadway more than 20 feet (6.1 m) in width ascended the rampart from the harbor and entered a gate at the top.
  In 1991 the ruins of a small ceramic tabernacle was found a finely cast bronze statuette of a bull calf, originally silvered, 4 inches (10 cm) long. Images of calves and bulls were associated with the worship of the Canaanite gods El and Baal.
  Ashkelon is mentioned in the Egyptian Execration Texts of the 11th dynasty as "Asqanu." In the Amarna letters (c. 1350 BC), there are seven letters to and from Ashkelon's (Ašqaluna) king Yidya, and the Egyptian pharaoh. One letter from the pharaoh to Yidya was discovered in the early 1900s.
caption: Restored Canaanite city gate of Ashkelon[10] (2014)
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