Ekron Identity Confirmed	Volume 49 Number 6, November/December 1996
by Haim Watzman

An inscription discovered at Tel Miqne, in central Israel, confirms that the site was ancient Ekron, one of five Iron Age (1200-600 B.C.) Philistine capitals. The five-line inscription, written in Phoenician, notes the dedication of a temple to a goddess by Achish, the son of Padi and king of Ekron, who is also known from Assyrian records. While archaeologists have thought that Tel Miqne was Ekron since the late 1950s, no records had been found linking the ruins to the ancient city. The inscription was discovered this past summer by a joint American-Israeli expedition directed by Seymour Gitin of the W.F. Albright Institute of Archaeological Research and Trude Dothan of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

© 1996 by the Archaeological Institute of America www.archaeology.org/9611/newsbriefs/ekron.html

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