Ekron Royal Dedicatory Inscription

In Situ, in the Fourteenth and Final Season

The Tel Miqne-Ekron Excavation ran for fourteen seasons, from 1981 to 1996, directed jointly by Trude Dothan of the Hebrew University and Seymour Gitin of the W. F. Albright Institute of Archaeological Research. In the summer of the last season the dig produced a rectangular limestone block with five incised lines on it, lying in the destruction debris of the sanctuary of the building the excavators call Temple Complex 650. Press accounts at the time describe Gitin himself turning the dirt-covered stone over and seeing the writing; that detail comes from journalism rather than from the excavation report, which names no individual finder, and it is given here on that footing. Sources say only "summer 1996" — a month is often printed and could not be sourced.

What matters more than the finder is where it lay. The block was found in situ, in a datable destruction layer, inside the building it was cut for. Almost nothing else in this section of the app has that. An inscription bought on a market can be genuine and still be nearly weightless, because nobody can say what it was next to; this one comes with its room, its floor and its date attached. It was published the following year by Gitin, Dothan and J. Naveh in the Israel Exploration Journal, and is in the Israel Museum as IAA 1997-2912, catalogued epigraphically as KAI 286.

It Names the City, and Five of Its Kings

The text is a building dedication: the temple which Akhayus, son of Padi, son of Ysd, son of Ada, son of Ya'ir, ruler of Ekron, built for his lady — followed by a request that she bless him, guard him, and lengthen his days. Five rulers in a single line of descent, and the name of the city itself. Padi and Akhayus are not only known from this stone: Padi appears in Sennacherib's account of the 701 BC campaign as the king of Ekron whom the citizens handed over to Hezekiah and whom Sennacherib restored, and a ruler of Ekron with the same name as Akhayus appears in the annals of Esarhaddon and Ashurbanipal in the 670s and 660s. The stone slots into an Assyrian record that already existed.

For a Bible reader the identification is the payoff. Ekron is one of the five Philistine cities — the last stop on the ark's grim tour in 1 Samuel 5-6, the city whose god Baal-zebub Ahaziah consulted, the city Amos names in judgement. Which mound in the Shephelah it was had been argued over for a century. This inscription ended the argument by naming the place in a text found on it, which is as clean as site identification ever gets in this field.

The Third Letter of the Goddess's Name

The name of the deity the temple was built for is written with letters that can be read more than one way, and the reading is not settled. The editors read Ptgyh, a goddess otherwise unknown. A. Demsky proposed Ptnyh, connecting the name to the Greek potnia, "Lady" or "Mistress". Others have suggested Ptryh, which would make her Pidray, a goddess already known from the Ugaritic texts. Each reading depends on how one worn letter is taken.

That sounds like a small thing and is not, because the Greek reading is a plank in a much larger argument: that the Philistines arrived in Canaan from the Aegean world and kept something of it for centuries. If the goddess is a potnia, the stone is evidence of Aegean religion surviving in Philistia into the seventh century. If she is Pidray, it is evidence of thorough absorption into local Canaanite religion instead. The app takes no side, because the specialists have not taken one either; what a reader should carry away is that the identification of the city is secure and the identification of its goddess is not, and that those are two different kinds of claim resting on two different amounts of evidence. A smaller question runs alongside: whether the Akhayus of this stone is the same man as the Ikausu of the Assyrian annals. Most say yes; it is an inference from name and date, not a demonstration.

Scripture references

• Joshua 13:3 — Ekron listed among the five Philistine lordships
• 1 Samuel 5:10 — The ark sent to Ekron, and the Ekronites' reaction
• 1 Samuel 6:16-17 — One golden tumour for each of the five cities, Ekron among them
• 2 Kings 1:2 — Ahaziah sends to "Baal Zebub, the god of Ekron"
• Amos 1:8 — "I will turn my hand against Ekron"

Sources

• Holding institutionASOR photo collection: Ekron Royal Dedicatory Inscription, Tel Miqne-Ekron — American Society of Overseas Research, the parent body of the W. F. Albright Institute that co-directed the excavationSupports: The object, the excavation and the find context
• ScholarshipS. Gitin, T. Dothan and J. Naveh, "A Royal Dedicatory Inscription from Ekron" — Seymour Gitin, Trude Dothan and Joseph Naveh · Israel Exploration Journal 47/1-2 (1997), 1-16. The editio princeps, including the Ptgyh reading. Print onlySupports: The text, the reading of the goddess's name, and the identification of Tel Miqne as Ekron
• ReferenceArchaeology Magazine: "Ekron Identity Confirmed" — Archaeological Institute of America, Archaeology 51/1 (1998)Supports: The site identification and the 1996 find, as reported at the time
• EncyclopediaWikipedia: Ekron Royal Dedicatory Inscription

Further reading

• ASOR: Ekron Royal Dedicatory Inscription
• Wikipedia: Ekron Royal Dedicatory Inscription

Reflect

A Philistine ruler carved four generations of his fathers into a temple wall so a goddess would lengthen his days. What are you building to be remembered by?