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The Philistines: Their History and Civilization

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Victoria Liss
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« Reply #375 on: October 28, 2009, 12:54:33 am »

put it in its place again. The second time it was fallen again, but the projecting parts of it were broken off. In other words, the first fall of the statue was just as bad as the second, except that it was not broken: there is no statement made that on the second occasion the image, whatever its form, snapped across in the middle. In both cases it fell as a whole, being smashed the second time, just as might happen to a china vase; this would imply that what was left standing and intact was not so much any part of the statue itself, as the pedestal or some other accessory.

The difficulty lies in the words which follow the account of the fracture of the statue—‏רק דגון נשאר עליו‎. In the English version these are rendered 'only [the stump of] Dagon was left'. The words in brackets, for which the Hebrew gives no warrant, are inserted as a makeshift to make some kind of sense of the passage. Wellhausen ingeniously suggested omission of the ‏ן‎ at the end of ‏דגון‎, supposing that it had been inserted by dittography before the initial ‏נ‎ of the following word. This would make the word mean 'only his fish was left'. But this assumes the thesis to be proved.

When we turn to the Greek Version we find that it represents a much fuller text. It reads thus: …. The passage in brackets has no equivalent in the Hebrew text: it suggests that a line has been lost from the archetype of the extant Hebrew Version. 1 If with some MSS. we omit the first χειρῶν (which makes no satisfactory sense with ἴχνη), this lost line would imply that Dagon's feet were also fallen on the threshold (ἀμαφέθ = Hebrew ‏המפתתן‎). This does not accord with the 'fish-tail' hypothesis. But, on the other hand, it shows that the fishtail conception is considerably older than Kimhi, for χειρῶν must in the first instance have been inserted by a glossator obsessed with it.

And what are we to make of πλὴν ἡ ῥάχις ὐπελείφθη? 'The backbone of Dagon was left' is as meaningless as the traditional Hebrew, if not worse. But when we look back at the Hebrew we begin to wonder whether we may not here be on the track of another Philistine word—the technical term for, let us say, the pedestal or console on which the image stood; or, it may be, some symbol associated with it. Wellhausen (Text d. Buch. Sam. p. 59) has

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« Reply #376 on: October 28, 2009, 12:54:48 am »

put forward the suggestion that ῥάχις really depends on ‏רק‎ 'only'. But the translators would presumably have understood this simple word—they have indeed rendered it correctly, by πλήν. We need a second ‏רק‎ to account for ῥάχις, and such, I submit, must have stood in the Hebrew text. Some word like (let us say) ‏רקד‎, especially if unintelligible to a late Hebrew copyist, would certainly drop out sooner or later from the collocation ‏רק רקד דגון‎. It would be very natural for the original author to use such a word, for the sake of the paronomasia; and it would fully account for ῥάχις, which in this case is not the Greek word at all, but a transliteration of an unknown word in the Hebrew original. The word ἀμαφέθ, immediately before, which has given much trouble to the copyists of the Greek text (see the numerous variants in Holmes and Parsons), is an example of an even easier word in the Hebrew being transferred to the Greek untranslated.

Further we are told that the priests and those who entered the house of Dagon—an indication that the temple was open to ordinary worshippers—did not tread on the threshold of the temple in Ashdod, in consequence, it was said, of this catastrophe; but, as the Greek translators add 'overstepping they overstepped it' (ὑπερβαίνοντες). That the explanation was fitted to a much more ancient rite we need not doubt: the various rites and observances relating to thresholds are widespread and this prohibition is no isolated phenomenon. 1 It is not certain whether the threshold of the Ashdod temple only was thus reverently regarded, or whether the other Dagon temples had similar observances: the latter is probable, though evidently the writer of Samuel supposed that the former was the case. The possible connexion between the Ashdod prohibition and the 'leaping on (preferably over) the threshold' of Zephaniah i. 9, has already been noted.

We must, however, face the fact that Dagon cannot be considered as exclusively a Philistine deity, even though the Semitic etymologies which have been sought for his name are open to question. There are ‏דג‎ 'fish', as already mentioned, and ‏דגן‎ 'corn'. Philo Byblios favoured the second of these. The inscription of Eshmunazar, king of Sidon, is well known to refer to Joppa and Dor as ‏ארין דגן‎, which seems at first sight to mean 'the land of Dagon'. But more probably this is simply a reference to that fertile region as 'the land of corn'. However we have, through Philo, references associating Dagon with the Phoenicians. In the Sanchuniathon cosmogony reported in the

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« Reply #377 on: October 28, 2009, 12:55:10 am »

fragments of Philo we have an account of his birth from Ouranos and Ge, 1 with his brethren Ēlos and Kronos and Baetylos; he is equated to Σίτων 'corn', which is apparently personified; and by virtue of this equation he is identified with a Ζεὺς Ἀρότριος. All this is very nebulous: and not more definite is the curious note respecting the gods Taautos, Kronos, Dagon and the rest being symbolized by sacred letters. 2 If these passages mean anything at all, they imply that the people who taught the Phoenicians the use of letters (and possibly also of baetylic stones) also imparted to them the knowledge of the god Dagon. But stories which ostensibly reach us at third hand afford a rather unsafe apparatus criticus.

In Palestine itself there is clear evidence of the presence of Dagon before the coming of the Philistines. A certain Dagan-takala contributed two letters 3 to the Tell el-Amarna correspondence. By ill-luck they do not mention the place of which he was apparently the chieftain, nor do they tell us anything else to the point: the one letter is merely a protestation of loyalty, the other the usual petition for deliverance from the Aramaean invaders. 'Dagan' is not here preceded by the usual determinative prefix of divinity; but neither is the name so preceded in the references to the town of Beth-Dagon in the inscriptions of Sennacherib.

This name, Beth-Dagon, appears in several Palestinian villages. They are not mentioned in the Tell el-Amarna correspondence; and we might fairly infer that they were Philistine foundations but for the fact that the name appears in the list of Asiatic towns conquered by Ramessu III at Medinet Habu—a list probably copied from an earlier list of Ramessu II. There seems no possibility of escaping the conclusion that by
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« Reply #378 on: October 28, 2009, 12:55:32 am »

Bty-Dkn which appears in this list, is meant one of the towns called Beth-Dagon. 4

Of these villages, one was in the tribe of Asher, another in Judah. The southern village described by Jerome 5 as of large size,

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« Reply #379 on: October 28, 2009, 12:55:43 am »

was in his time called Caferdago, between Diospolis and Jamnia (Lydd and Yebnah). Jerome's village is probably to be identified with a ruin known as Dajun, close by the present village of Beit Dejan; the latter has preserved the old name and is built on a mound which is possibly the old site.

Moreover, the name Dagan appears in Mesopotamia: there seems no longer to be any doubt that a certain group of cuneiform signs, relating to a deity, is to be read Da-gān. In Babylonia it enters into the composition of proper names of about 2400 B.C.: a king dated 2145 B.C. was Idin-Dagān and he had a son Išme-Dagān: a seal-cylinder exists of a certain Dagān-abi son of Ibni-Dagān. In Assyria we find it in the name of Dagān-bīlu-uṣur, eponym of the year 879 B.C.: and the name is several times coupled with that of Anu 1 in cosmogonies and in invocations of various Assyrian kings. The name disappears after the ninth century: the late reference to Dagon in the Hebrew version of Tobit, chap. i 2, speaking of Sennacherib being killed ‏בשעה שנבנם להחפלל לפני דגון טעותו‎ 'at the hour when he went in to pray to his idol Dagon', is not of any special importance.

The fragments of Berossos relate how originally the people of Babylon lived like animals, without order: but a being named Oannes rose out of the Erythraean sea, with a complete fish-body, and a man's head under the fish-head, and human feet and voice. This being was a culture-hero, teaching the knowledge of the arts, writing, building, city-dwelling, agriculture, &c., to men: he rose from the sea by day, and returned to it at sunset.

Other fragments of Berossos tell us that Oannes was followed by similar beings, who appeared from time to time under certain of the antediluvian kings. There were in all seven, the second and probably the following four being called Annedotos, and the last being called Odakon (᾽Ωδάκων or Ὀδάκων). The last resembles 'Dagon' in outward form: but the elaborate discussion of Hrozný 3 has shown that the comparison between the two cannot stand: that the -ων of Ὠδάκων is a mere termination: that the names Oannes and Odakon (not however Annedotos, so far as has yet been discovered) have their prototypes in Sumerian, and cannot be equated to the Babylonian and Assyrian Dagan. The sole evidence for the fish-form of Dagan therefore disappears. The statements of Damascius (de Principiis,

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« Reply #380 on: October 28, 2009, 12:55:55 am »

c. 125) about a Babylonian divine pair, Δάχος and Δαχή 1 add nothing to the problem: as Rev. P. Boylan and Mr. Alton have both pointed out to me, the D is a mistake for an A in both cases, and the beings referred to are evidently Lahmu and Lahamu.

That Dagān and the pre-Philistine Dagon of Palestine are one and the same being can scarcely be questioned. Hrozný (op. cit. p. 103) points out that the difference of the vowel is no difficulty, especially as the name appears once in Assyrian as an element in a proper name in the form Dagūna. But we may perhaps ask if the post-Philistine deity was identical with the pre-Philistine god, and whether there may not have been a conflation analogous to that which has taken place between Britomartis and Atargatis.

It is relevant to notice here in passing that the Philistine religion never had any attraction for the reactionary kings of the Hebrews. Only in a rather vague passage (Judges x. 6) is there any indication of the influence of Philistine worship on that of the Israelites. Elsewhere we read of altars built to the abomination of the Zidonians, of Moab, of the Ammonites, but never of the Philistines. The solitary exception is the consultation of the Ekronite oracle, which, as we have seen, was not Philistine at all. In spite of the semitization of the Philistines during the latter part of the Hebrew monarchy, their cult still remained too exotic to attract the Semitic temperament.

Now strange though it may seem, there is a possibility that the Philistines brought with them from their western home a god whose name was similar to Dagon. We have not found any trace of him in or around Crete: the decipherment of the Minoan tablets may possibly tell us something about this in the future. But the Etruscans, kinsmen of the Philistines, had a myth of a certain Tages, who appeared suddenly 2 from the earth in the guise of a boy, and who, as they related, was their instructor in the arts of soothsaying. This took place 'when an Etruscan named Tarchon was ploughing near Tarquinii'—names which immediately recall the Tarkhu, Tarkon-demos, and similar names of Asia Minor. 3 Festus (sub voce) describes Tages as a 'genii filius, nepos Iouis'. As the Etruscans rejected the letter D,

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« Reply #381 on: October 28, 2009, 12:56:08 am »

 Tages is closely comparable to a name beginning with Dag-; and indeed the -es termination is probably not part of the Etruscan name, but a nominative termination added by the foreign writers who have reported the story. If the Philistines brought such a deity with them in their Syrian home, they might well have identified him with the god Dagon, whom they found there before them.

It is difficult otherwise to explain how Dagān, whose worship seems to have been on the whole of secondary importance, should have acquired such supreme importance among the foreigners.

But after all, the Canaanite Dagon and the hypothetical Philistine Dag- may have been one—the latter having been borrowed by the 'proto-Philistines', as we may for convenience call them, at some remote period. The intercourse which led to the adoption of clay tablets as writing materials by the Cretans at the beginning of the middle Minoan period, and to the adoption of certain details of legal procedure (if there be any value in the conjectures given in this book regarding the Phaestos disk)—may well have led to the borrowing of the god of one nation by the other.

The Etymologicon Magnum calls Dagon—or rather Βητάγων, substituting the place Beth-Dagon for the name of the god—ὁ Κρόνος ὑπὸ Φοινίκων.

After the collapse of the Philistine power in David's time, we hear nothing more about Dagon except the vague guesses of etymologists and mythographers. The temple, and presumably the worship of the deity, under the old name, lasted down to the time of the Maccabees in Ashdod (1 Macc. x. 83, 84). But in Gaza the case was different. Here powerful Hellenic influences introduced numerous foreign deities, which, however, there is every reason to believe were grafted on to the old local gods and numina. Josephus tells us of a temple of Apollo; but our leading source is the life of Porphyrius, bishop of Gaza at the end of the fourth and beginning of the fifth century, written by his friend the deacon Marcus.

This valuable little work gives us a picture of the last struggle of heathenism, of which Gaza was the storm-centre. The descriptions are terse but vivid. We see Porphyrius, after his appointment to the bishopric, making his way painfully from Diospolis (Lydd) because the heathen living in the villages on the way erected barriers to prevent his passing, and annoyed him by burning substances that gave forth fetid odours. After they had arrived, a drought fell in the same year, which the heathen ascribed to the wrath of Marna their god, on account of the coming of Porphyrius. For two months no rain fell, notwithstanding their prayers to Marna ('whom they say

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« Reply #382 on: October 28, 2009, 12:56:21 am »

is Zeus') in his capacity of lord of rain. There was a place of prayer outside the city, and the whole of the heathen population frequented this for intercession to the κύριος τῶν ὄμβρων. This place was no doubt a sanctuary with an ancient tradition; most probably to be identified with the Aldioma, or place of Zeus Aldemios. This, according to the Etymologicon Magnum, was the name of the chief god of Gaza, and a god of fertility; probably therefore identical with Marna. 1 We hear of the same sanctuary in the Talmud: near Gaza was a place called Yerīd or ‘Ithōza (‏עטלוזה‎, also written ‏אטליז‎ and ‏אטלים‎) outside the city where an idol was worshipped. 2 In the sequel we learn that Porphyrius took from the Aldioma the stones with which he built the church erected by him on the site of the Marneion.

Near modern Gaza is a hill, crowned by the shrine of a Muslim saint called Sheikh Muntar. As usual, this true believer has succeeded to the honours of a pagan divinity. Muntar means 'a watch tower'; but possibly the name is a corruption of Marna or [Brito]martis.

The name Marna is capable of being rendered in Aramaic, Mar-na, 3 Our Lord,' and not improbably this is its actual meaning. If so, it is probably an illustration of the widespread dislike to, or actual prohibition of, the mention of the real name of a divinity. 4 At some time a hesitation to name the god—who can hardly be other than Dagon—had arisen: the respectful expression 'Our Lord' had by frequent use become practically the personal name of the divinity, and had assumed a Greek form Μάρνας, with a temple called the Μαρνεῖον, the chief temple of Gaza.

It is likely that Gaza at the time claimed to be a sacred city: the rigidness of the tabu against carrying a dead body into it suggests that such an act would pollute it. The Christians had serious trouble, soon after the coming of Porphyrius, on account of the case of one Barōchus, a zealous young Christian, who was set upon by heathen outside the city and beaten, as was thought, to death. His friends happening to find him lying unconscious, wished to carry him

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« Reply #383 on: October 28, 2009, 12:56:33 am »

home; but only succeeded in doing so with the greatest difficulty, owing to the uproar caused by their carrying the apparent corpse into the city.

Stirred by events of this kind, Porphyrius determined to invoke the civil power to aid him in his struggle with heathendom, and sending Marcus to Constantinople obtained an order for the closing of the temples of Gaza. As usual, however, in the East, the official responsible for the carrying out of the order did so with one hand, allowing the other hand to be 'greased' to undo the work surreptitiously. In other words, Hilarios, the adjutant sent to carry out the order, and especially charged to close the Marneion and to put a stop to the consultation of the oracle, while appearing to execute the duty committed to him, secretly took bribes to permit the rites of heathen religion to be carried on as before. Porphyrius therefore went in person to Constantinople; interviewed the empress Eudoxia; obtained her favour by the prophecy of the birth of a son to her, which was fulfilled by the birth of Theodosius; and obtained her intercession with the emperor to secure the closing of the temples. So Porphyrius returned with his suite, and was received at Gaza with jubilation on the part of the Christians, and corresponding depression on that of the Pagans.

Some valuable hints are preserved to us by Marcus of the nature of the worship thus destroyed. A few excerpts from his work may be here given.

'As we entered the city, about the place called the Four Ways, there was standing a marble pillar, which they said was Aphrodite; and it was above a stone altar, and the form of the pillar was that of an undraped woman, ὲχουσης ὅλα τὰ ἄσχημα φαινόμενα, 1 and they all of the city used to honour the pillar, especially the women, lighting lamps and burning incense. For they used to say of her that she used to answer in a dream those who wished to enter into matrimony; and telling falsehoods they used to deceive one another.' The worship of this statue evidently retained some of the most lurid details of the High Place worship. This statue was the first to be destroyed—by a miracle, Marcus says, on the exhibition of the Cross. He is probably mindful of the prostration of Dagon on the Ark being brought into his presence.

Ten days afterwards Cynēgius, the emperor's messenger, arrived with a band of soldiers, to destroy the temples, of which there were eight—of the Sun, Aphrodite, Apollo, Korē (Persephone), Hekatē,

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« Reply #384 on: October 28, 2009, 12:56:50 am »

the Hērōeion, the Tychaion or temple of the Luck (τύχη) of the city, and the Marneion, or temple of the Crete-born Zeus, the most honourable of all the temples, which has already been mentioned. Besides these there were a countless number of minor deities in the houses and the villages. The destroying party first made its way to the Marneion. The priests, however, had been forewarned, and blocked the doors of the inner chamber with great stones. In the inner chamber or adytum they stored the sacred furniture of the temple and the images of the god, and then fled by other exits, of which it was said there were several, opening out of the adyta of the temple in various directions. Baffled therefore for the time, the destroying party made their way to the other temples, which they demolished; Porphyrius, like another Joshua, laying under an anathema any of the Christians who should take to himself any plunder from the treasuries. This work occupied ten days, and the question of the fate of the Marneion was then discussed. Some were for razing it, some for burning it, others again wished to preserve it and after purifying it, to dedicate it for Christian worship. Porphyrius therefore proclaimed a fast with prayer for Divine guidance in the difficulty. The Divine guidance came in strange wise; and though it has nothing to do with the Philistines, the story is so curious that it is well worth relating exactly as Marcus himself tells it. As the people, fasting and praying, were assembled in the church, a child of seven years, standing with his mother, suddenly cried out in the Syrian tongue, 'Burn the temple to the ground: for many hateful things have taken place in it, especially human sacrifices. And in this manner burn ye it. Bring liquid pitch and sulphur and lard, and mix them together and smear the brazen doors therewith, and lay fire to them, and so the whole temple will burn; it is impossible any other way. And leave the outer part (τὸν ἐζώτερον) with the enclosing wall (περίβολος). And after it is burnt, cleanse the place and there build a holy church. I witness to you before God, that it may not be otherwise: for it is not I who speak, but Christ that speaketh in me.' And when they all heard they wondered, and glorified God. And this portent came to the ears of the holy bishop (Porphyrius), who stretching his hands to heaven gave glory to God and said, 'Glory to Thee, Holy Father, who hast hidden from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed even these things to babes.' When the people were dismissed from the church he summoned the child and his mother to him in the bishop's house, and setting the child apart he said to the woman, 'I adjure thee by the Son of the Living God to say if it was on thy suggestion or of some other known to thee that

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« Reply #385 on: October 28, 2009, 12:57:03 am »

thy son spoke as he did concerning the Marneion.' The woman said, 'I deliver myself to the dread and awful judgement-seat of Christ, if I had fore-knowledge of any of those things that my son spoke this day. But if it seem fit to thee, behold the boy, take him and examine him with threats, and if he said these things on the suggestion of any, he will confess it in fear; if he says nothing else it will be clear that he was inspired by the Holy Spirit.' So to make a long story short, the boy was brought in, and the bishop bade him speak and say who had put these words in his mouth—brandishing a whip as he spoke. The poor bewildered child kept silence, even though 'We who were around him '—Marcus speaks as an eye-witness—repeated the questions likewise with threats. At last the child opened his mouth and made exactly the same utterance as before, but this time in Greek—a language of which, as appeared on inquiry from the mother, he was ignorant. This settled the matter, and sealed the fate of the Marneion. The bishop gave three pieces of money to the mother, but the child, seeing them in her hand, said in the Syrian tongue, 'Take it not, mother, sell not thou the gift of God for money!' So the woman returned the money, saying to the bishop, 'Pray for me and my son, and recommend us to God.' And the bishop dismissed them in peace. It is a strange coincidence that the first and last events in the recorded history of Philistia have a mantic prodigy as their central incident!

The reference to human sacrifices is for our immediate purpose the most noteworthy point in this remarkable story. The sequel was equally remarkable. The method approved by the oracle was applied, and immediately the whole temple, which on the first occasion had resisted their assaults, was wrapped in flames. It burnt for many days, during which there was a good deal of looting of treasures; in the course of this at least one fatal accident occurred. At the same time a house-to-house search for idols, books of sorcery, and the like relics of heathenism, was effected, and anything of the kind discovered was destroyed.

When the plan of the new church came to be discussed some were for rebuilding it after the fashion of the old temple; others for making a complete break with heathen tradition by erecting a building entirely different. The latter counsel ultimately prevailed. Important for us is the fact of the dispute, because, à propos thereof Marcus has given us a few words of description which tell us something of what the building was like. It was cylindrical, with two porticoes, one inside the other; in the middle like a ciborium (the canopy above an altar) 'puffed out' (i.e. presumably domed) but stretched upwards (= stilted),

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« Reply #386 on: October 28, 2009, 12:57:17 am »

and it had other things fit for idols and suited to the horrible and lawless concomitants of idolatry. 1

This clearly takes us far away from the megaron plan of the old Dagon temple. We have to do with a peristyle circular building, not unlike the Roman Pantheon, but with a stilted dome and surrounded by two rows of columns (see the sketch, p. 124). The 'other things' suitable for idol-worship were presumably the adyta of which we have already heard, which must have been either recesses in the wall or else underground chambers. The apparently secret exits made use of by the priests seem to favour the latter hypothesis. Not improbably they were ancient sacred caves. I picture the temple to myself as resembling the Dome of the Rock at Jerusalem, substituting the double portico for the aisle that runs round that building.

In clearing off the ashes and débris of the Marneion, Porphyrius came upon certain marbles, or a 'marble incrustation'—μαρμάρωσις—which the Marna-worshippers considered holy and not to be trodden upon, especially by women. We are of course reminded of the threshold of Dagon at Ashdod, but as we have no information as to the part of the temple to which the marbles belonged, we cannot say if there was any very close analogy. Porphyrius, we are told, paved the street with these sacred stones, so that not only men, but 'women, dogs, pigs, and beasts' should be compelled to tread upon them—a proceeding which we learn caused more pain to the idolaters than even the destruction of their temple. 'But yet to this day', says Marcus, 'most of them, especially the women, will not tread on the marbles.'

On coins of Gaza of the time of Hadrian a different temple is represented, with an ordinary distyle front. This type bears the inscription GAZA MARNA, with figures of a male and female divinity, presumably Marna and Tyche. The coin is evidence that the distyle temple—the old megaron type—survived in Gaza till this time, and it is not improbable that the Marneion destroyed by Porphyrius was built immediately afterwards. The resemblance to the Dome of the Rock at Jerusalem may be more than merely superficial. This structure was built on the ruins of Hadrian's temple of Jupiter, the Dodecapylon, which he erected over the sacred Rock, when he made his determined effort to paganize the Holy City. We have no description of this building, which was already in ruins in AḌ. 333; but its situation seems to require a round or symmetrically polygonal structure, and the name dodecapylon suggests a twelve-sided

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« Reply #387 on: October 28, 2009, 12:57:27 am »

building. The Dome of the Rock (an octagon) may well have been built after this model; and the Pantheon, which has also been compared with the building indicated by the account of Marcus, is likewise of the time of Hadrian. The Marneion, therefore, might have been erected under the auspices of that enthusiastic builder, or at least after the model of other buildings which he had left behind
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« Reply #388 on: October 28, 2009, 12:57:52 am »



Fig. 5. Coins of Gaza and Ashkelon
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« Reply #389 on: October 28, 2009, 12:58:06 am »

Fig. 5. Coins of Gaza and Ashkelon:—1. Coin of Gaza showing Temple of Marna. 2. Coin of Gaza bearing the figure and name of Io, and a debased Phoenician M, the symbolic initial of Marna. 1 3. Coin of Gaza bearing the figure and name of Minos. 4. Coin of Gaza bearing the initial of Marna. 5. Coin of Ashkelon, with the sacred fishpond. 6. Coin of Ashkelon, with figure of Astarte. 7. Coin of Ashkelon, with figure bearing a dove: below, a sea-monster. 8. Coin of Ashkelon, with figure of a dove.
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