Massive 3,000-Year-Old Industrial Center of Biblical People : Philistine City Yields Secrets to Archeologists

Archeologist Trude Dothan stood at the edge of a pit in the Israeli flatlands and looked past the brim of her straw hat 3,000 years back in time.

Below her, dozens of students were slowly uncovering the walls of what may have been a royal palace of the Philistines, the Biblical people who produced the giant Goliath and Samson’s seductress Delilah.

“This looks now like ‘The Raiders of the Lost Ark,”’ Dothan said, gesturing at the bending, stooping students working with ant like precision in the 100-square-foot dig.

“Go back into the 7th Century,” she shouted to one youth, who took several steps backward, passing through six centuries worth of ruins--from 1200 BC to a relatively modern 700 BC.

Dothan and colleague Seymour Gitin are finishing their fifth year of excavation on the 50-acre Philistine city of Ekron, the largest archeological mound from the Biblical period yet uncovered in Israel.

Ancient Industrial Site

Experts say the size of the mound plus the 103 olive presses uncovered so far--capable of producing an estimated 1,000 tons of olive oil annually, one third of the amount produced in all of Israel today--make it the largest ancient industrial site ever excavated in the Middle East.

“This was the first fully organized industrial center in this part of the world,” Gitin said. “Our engineers tell us it is the largest industry of any city in the ancient world.”

But Gitin and Dothan are hoping the 10-year excavation eventually will produce something more dramatic, a first sample of the writing and language of the Philistines.

“This was a big industry, thousands of people,” said Gitin, of the Albright Institute of Archeological Research. “You had to build it, you had to organize it, you had to count it. You needed writing.”

The chances of such a find are slim. The Philistines, whose name has become synonymous with a lack of culture, were a notably silent people, producing no known writings to dispel the picture of them painted by their neighboring enemies, the Israelites.

‘What Did They Speak?’

“The big question is, ‘What did they speak? What did they write?’ Unfortunately they are still mute,” said Dothan, a staff member of the Hebrew University Institute of Archeology.

The Bible does not speak highly of the Philistines. The Israelite strongman Samson delighted in tormenting them, clubbing 1,000 to death with the jawbone of an ass and setting their crops ablaze by tying a torch to the tail of a fox.

But archeologists now are beginning to piece together a fairer picture of their culture from the artifacts they left behind.

The Philistines brought iron-producing technology to what is now Israel during the early Iron Age. They were part of a group of tribes known as the Sea People who began invading the eastern and southeastern Mediterranean coast around 1200 BC.

Driven from the southeastern Mediterranean by Egyptian ruler Ramses III, whose tomb contains pictures depicting their sea and land battles, the Philistines moved up the coast and established five major cities mentioned in the Bible.

Fortified City

Ekron was the farthest inland. Gitin and Dothan said evidence at the site indicates that the Philistines built a fortified city with mud-brick walls on the burned ruins of a Canaanite village.

“Immediately they begin to produce,” Gitin said. “They begin to make their own pottery, made at the spot by people who brought the know-how, built the kilns.”

Gitin and Dothan estimate that the town, now on croplands 15 miles southeast of Tel Aviv, grew to become a thriving city of about 6,000 to 8,000 people covering some 50 acres. Then, after growing for 200 years, it shrank to become a fortress town during a period of invasions by Assyrian kings. During the last 200 years of its life, Ekron again grew to become a large city of about 10,000 people.

Babylonian invaders destroyed Ekron in the 6th Century BC. The mound rising from the irrigated green fields of Kibbutz Revadim remained sealed until this century, when the city was surveyed by archeologists and positively identified as Ekron.

The city was well organized, Gitin said. The Philistines located an industrial zone just inside the city walls and placed workers’ dwellings further inside. The center of the city was reserved for the ruling elite.

Four-Horned Altars

The archeologists discovered several four-horned altars in the industrial zones near the olive oil workshops, suggesting the Philistine rulers may have organized and controlled their labor force with some form of cult worship.

The Bible mentions male gods worshiped by the Philistines, including Beelzebub, Ekron city’s god. But diggers also have uncovered statuettes of goddesses.

This year workers focusing on a palatial building at the center of the site unearthed a courtyard with a hearth and two rooms containing altars. Dothan said some excavated walls had intact masonry and red and blue paint. A knife with bronze rivets and an ivory handle was in one of the altar rooms.