A fortified port controlled
by the Assyrians suggests that the seal lanes were not safe and sudden sea
borne invasions needed to be guarded against.
At the same time, all other ports along the Levant including Tyre were
active parts of the Assyrian hegemony and were economically improving and
sending out colonies.
At the same time, such
a fortress would anchor defenses against renewed Egyptian ambitions.
It is thus an excellent
example of the era’s military architecture.
Sea access allowed it to hold off any siege indefinitely. Of course we still do not have that
confirmed, but it fits the sense of it.
Archaeologists discover
massive fortifications from the Iron Age in Israel
The
Assyrians controlled the southeastern portion of the Mediterranean basin at the
time the fortifications were built.
Thursday, August 22, 2013
According
to an August
19 news release from American Friends of Tel Aviv University,
researchers from the Israeli academic institution have excavated the remnants
of gigantic ancient fortifications constructed in defense of an Iron Age
Assyrian harbor in Ashdod, Israel.
A 12-foot by 15-feet mud-brick wall
forms the heart of the crescent shape fortifications, which were constructed in
800 B.C. and cover over 17 acres, and extends for hundreds of feet on either
side.
The
discovery came at the conclusion of the first excavation season at the
Ashdod-Yam archeological dig, south of Tel Aviv. Leading the project is
Tel Aviv University’s Doctor Alexander Fantalkin, of the Department of
Archaeology and Ancient Near Eastern Cultures, on behalf of the Sonia and Marco
Nadler Institute of Archaeology.
Commenting
on the find, Fantalkin said, “The fortifications appear to protect an
artificial harbor. If so, this would be a discovery of international
significance, the first known harbor of this kind in our corner of the Levant.”
The
Assyrians controlled the southeastern portion of the Mediterranean basin at the
time the fortifications were built. According to Assyrian inscriptions,
at the end of the century, the rebel king of Ashdod, Yamani, led an
insurrection against Sargon II, king of the Assyrian Empire. Yamani
fruitlessly attempted to convince the Kingdom of Judah, ruled by King Hezekiah,
to join the rebellion.
In
a violent response to the insurrection, the Assyrians eventually destroyed
Philistine Ashdod. Accordingly, control moved to the nearby area of
Ashdod-Yam, where the TAU excavations are now taking place. According to
archeologists, the fortifications appear to be related to these events, but it
is not yet clear how. The fortifications could have been built prior to
or after the Ashdod rebellion was put down, either at the enterprise of the
locals, or at the orders of the Assyrians.
According
to Fantalkin, “An amazing amount of time and energy was invested in building
the wall and glacis [embankments].”
The
scholars engaged a potent new digital technique, photogrammetry, to create a 3D
reconstruction of excavation, using equipment proffered by the University of
Nebraska-Lincoln. Doctor Philip Sapirstein, a postdoctoral fellow at TAU,
functioned as a digital surveyor on the assignment.
Previously
completed archeological digs at Ashdod-Yam was a series of probing digs led by
late Israeli archaeologist Doctor Jacob Kaplan on behalf of the Tel Aviv-Jaffa
Museum of Antiquities from 1965 to 1968. Kaplan alleged the Ashdod rebels
fabricated the fortifications in anticipation of an Assyrian attack; however,
Fantalkin stated that the construction appears too remarkable to have been done
under such circumstances.
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