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Ekron

Coordinates: 31°46′39″N 34°51′7″E / 31.77750°N 34.85194°E / 31.77750; 34.85194
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This article is about the Philistine city. For other uses, see Ekron (disambiguation).
Ekron is located in Israel
Ekron
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Location of Ekron in modern Israel

31°46′39″N 34°51′7″E / 31.77750°N 34.85194°E / 31.77750; 34.85194 The city of Ekron (Template:Lang-he-n ʿeqrōn, also transliterated Accaron) was one of the five cities of the famed Philistine 'pentapolis,' located in southwestern Canaan.

During the Iron Age, Ekron was a border city on the frontier contested between Philistia and the kingdom of Judah.

1939 map showing surrounding region

Robinson identified the Arab village of Aqir as the site of Ekron in 1838[1] [2] and this was accepted until it was contested by Macalister in 1913, who suggested Khirbet Dikerin, and Albright in 1922, who suggested Qatra.[2] The identification of Ekron as Tel Mikne (Tel Miqne, Khirbet Muqanna) was suggested by Naveh and Kallai in 1957–1958[3][4], a theory widely accepted in light of a royal dedication inscription found during the 1996 excavations.[5]

Ekron lies 35 kilometers west of Jerusalem, and 18 kilometers north of Gath, on the western edge of the inner coastal plain. Excavations in 1981-1996 at the low square tel have made Ekron one of the best documented Philistine sites.

Ekron was a settlement of the indigenous Canaanites. The Canaanite city had shrunk in the years before its main public building burned in the 13th century BCE; it was refounded by Philistines at the beginning of the Iron Age, ca 13th century BCE.

Ekron is mentioned in the Book of Joshua 13:2-3:

"This is the land that still remains: all the regions of the Philistines and all those of the Geshurites from Shihor, which is east of Egypt, northward to the boundary of Ekron."

Joshua 3:13 counts it the border city of the Philistines and seat of one of the five Philistine city lords, and Joshua 15:11 mentions Ekron's satellite towns and villages. The city was reassigned afterwards to the tribe of Dan (Joshua 19:43), but came again into the full possession of the Philistines. It was the last place to which the Philistines carried the Ark of the Covenant before they sent it back to Israel (1 Samuel 5:10; 6:1-8).

There was here a noted sanctuary of Baal. The Baal who was worshipped was called Baal Zebul, which some scholars connect with Beelzebub, known from the Hebrew Bible: (2 Kings 1:2):

Ahaziah fell through the lattice in his upper chamber at Samaria and was injured. So he sent messengers whom he instructed: "Go inquire of Baal-zebub, the god of Ekron, whether I shall recover from this injury." (JPS translation)

Non-Hebrew sources also refer to Ekron. The siege of Ekron in 712 BCE is depicted on one of Sargon II's wall reliefs in his palace at Khorsabad, which names the city. Ekron revolted against Sennacherib and expelled Padi, his governor, who was sent to Hezekiah, at Jerusalem, for safe-keeping. Sennacherib marched against Ekron and the Ekronites called upon the aid of the king of Mutsri. Sennacherib turned aside to defeat this army, which he did at Eltekeh, and then returned and took the city by storm, put to death the leaders of the revolt and carried their adherents into captivity. This campaign led to the famous attack of Sennacherib on Hezekiah and Jerusalem, in which Sennacherib compelled Hezekiah to restore Padi, who was reinstated as governor at Ekron. Ashdod and Ekron survived to become powerful city-states dominated by Assyria in the 7th century BCE. The city may have been destroyed by the Neo-Babylonian King Nebuchadnezzer II around 603 BCE, but it is mentioned, as "Accaron", as late as 1 Maccabees 10:89 (2nd century BCE).

Excavations in the temple complex at Tel Miqne in 1996 recovered a significant artifact for the corpus of Biblical archaeology, a dedicatory inscription of the seventh-century king of Ekron 'Akish. The inscription not only securely identifies the site, it gives a brief king-list of rulers of Ekron, fathers to sons: Ya'ir, Ada, Yasid, Padi, 'Akish.[5]

Ekron imagined in a medieval fresco illustrating 1 Samuel 5-6 (Cathedral crypt, Anagni, Italy, c.1255)

Of more than local interest is the recipient of the inscription, 'Akish's divine "Lady. May she bless him, and guard him, and prolong his days, and bless his land." The name or title of the Lady of Ekron is Ptgyh or Ptnyh. Aaron Demsky (Demsky 1997) reads the name as Ptnyh and relates it to the title Potnia ("Mistress")[6] that was applied to the Great Goddess of the Aegean, in her various local manifestations, which include Mycenaean sites. A much earlier representation of the Lady of Ekron, perhaps thirteenth century BCE offers her left breast.

More recently, Stephen R. Berlant [7] argued that the name of this goddess was Petryah, a Hebraized variation or corruption of the name Pidray of Baal's daughter, in accordance with Demsky's suggestion that "the reading will be strengthened if it results in a recognizable term that more aptly fits the context."

Berlant theorizes that the cult activities that revolved around Petryah at Ekron were a theophagic right, wherein a priestess would ingest Petryah's botanical embodiment, the A. muscaria, which seemingly rendered this priestess Petryah's human embodiment, after which the priestess would use her mediumship to channel Petryah's voice to her supplicants.[8]


R. Gordon Wasson and Valentina Pavlovna Wasson argued that Baal Zebub was a personified Fly Agaric, which Hieronymous Bosch was alluding to by including in the Garden of Earthly Delights flies, mushrooms, naked people under mushroom-like canopies, and strawberries with white spots that, thus, resemble A. muscaria caps [9]

Notes

  1. ^ C. R. Conder and H. H. Kitchener (1882). The Survey of Western Palestine. Vol. II. London: The Committe of the Palestine Exploration Fund. p. 408.
  2. ^ a b Template:Cite article
  3. ^ Template:Cite article
  4. ^ Seymour Gitin (1989). "Tel Miqne-Ekron : A type-site for the inner coastal plain in the Iron Age II period". In Seymour Gitin and William Dever (ed.). Recent Excavations in Israel: Studies in Iron Age Archaeology. Eisenbrauns. p. 24. ISBN 978-0897570497.
  5. ^ a b S. Gitin, T. Dothan, and J. Naveh, "A Royal Dedicatory Inscription from Ekron," Israel Exploration Journal 47 (1997): 9-16
  6. ^ See Potnia theron the "Mistress of the Animals".
  7. ^ Berlant, JANES 31:15-22/
  8. ^ Berlant, Stephen R., Mycolatry and Theophagy in The ancient Near Eastern City of Ekron. In Press
  9. ^ Mushrooms Russia and History, Pantheon Books, New York. 1957

References

  • Demsky, Aaron. "The Name of the Goddess of Ekron: A New Reading," Journal of the Ancient Near Eastern Society vol. 25 (1997) pp. 1–5
  • M. G. Easton, Illustrated Bible Dictionary 1897
  • Schoville, Keith; Stone Campbell Journal, Vol. 4, No. 1
  • Berlant, Stephen. "The Mysterious Ekron Goddess Revisited," Journal of The Ancient Near Eastern Society vol. 31 pp. 15–21 [1]

Bibliography

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