Ascalon
The first constructed settlement was hewn into the sandstone outcrop along the coast in the Middle Bronze Age (2000–1550 BCE). A relatively large and thriving settlement for the period, its walls enclosed 60 hectares (150 acres) and as many as 15,000 people may have lived within these fortifications.
Its commanding ramparts measured 2.5 kilometres long, 15 m high and 45 m thick, and even as a ruin they stand two stories high. The thickness of the walls was so great that the mudbrick city gate had a stone-lined, 2.4-metre-wide tunnel-like barrel vault, coated with white plaster, to support the superstructure: it is the oldest such vault ever found.
In the early MB IIA, the Egyptians mainly sent their ships further north to Lebanon (Byblos). In the late MB IIA, the settlement phases 14-10 can be compared with Tell ed-Dab’a stratums. Contacts with Egypt increased in the late 12th Dynasty and early 13th Dynasty when maritime trade flourished.
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