The Canaanite City Gate and Roman Basilica

 

The partially reconstructed Canaanite Gate you are viewing was built in the Middle Bronze Age, in around 1,850 BCE, and was once considered the oldest discovered arched city gate in the world. However, an ancient city gate in Tel Arani near Kiryat Gat has recently been dated to the Early Bronze Age, some 5,500 years ago. This gate in Ashkelon is about 100 years older than a similar Canaanite city gate at Tel Dan.

 

This fortified gate was part of the city’s massive fortifications. It was constructed of calcareous sandstone blocks and mud bricks and had a vaulted archway through which you can pass onto the tel. It was used for some 250 years before it was buried under an earthen rampart and a new city gate built elsewhere. The Canaanite tel is the second largest tel in the country after Hatzor in the north, indicating its importance.

 

Around the city was a 15-meter-high wall, just over 2 km in circumference, that was made of predominantly mud bricks, A wall made of mud brick was more stable than one of stone, in that the bricks could not be as easily dislodged by a battering ram. The wall was built on top of a massive glacis, and underneath this was a moat. A glacis is a paved sloping rampart that made it extremely difficult for attackers to scale the wall, and even to approach it.

 

Approaching the gate, the glacis you see on your left is from the Crusader period built on a Fatimah base, while that on the right is Canaanite. On a ledge low down on this glacis was found a bronze calf with silver legs (now in the Israel Museum), and this area could have allowed visitors to worship before entering the city.

 

During the Late Bronze Age (1550 to 1200 BCE) the city was under Egyptian rule. It became one of the five Philistine city-states during the Israelite period, although then smaller in size than the Canaanite city. Ashkelon participated in the unsuccessful revolt of Hezekiah against the Assyrians. The city was eventually conquered and destroyed by the Babylonian Nebuchadnezzar in 604-603 BCE.

 

Adjacent to the Basilica Parking Lot are the ruins of an imposing Roman basilica. Ashkelon reached its peak as a regional commercial center in the Roman period in the 3rd century CE. This building was then the administrative center for the city and its splendor attests to the importance of Ashkelon for trade, including the export of wine and olive oil. The basilica took the form of a courtyard surrounded by rows of high columns supporting a roof. The walls and floor were made of marble. Ashkelon had no constructed port, and ships would have anchored several hundred meters from the shore and goods ferried to the shore by smaller boats.  

 

The city was inhabited during the Byzantine period and there was also a Jewish community here, as there was prior to the Great Revolt. The majority of the wells in the park are from this period and were used for agriculture.

 

The Muslims occupied Ashkelon during the 7th century CE and it was fought over by the Crusaders. The Mamluke sultan Baibars destroyed the city in 1270 and it was not rebuilt.

 

There was a large Arab town here until 1948 called al-Majdal, and the area of the town was incorporated into the modern city of Ashkelon.

 

An interesting trivia. An onion famously grown in ancient Ashkelon was the scallion or green onion. This, along with the shallot, derives its name from the city. These onions were celebrated for their delicate flavor and thrived in the region's sandy soil.