Tel Mikne, near the traditional border between Philistia and Judah, was identified as the biblical Philistine city of Ekron. The square tel (mound) rises only a few meters above the fertile plain and consists of a small upper tel and a large lower one to the south. In the second millennium BCE, Tel Mikne was a large Canaanite city, at first covering all parts of the tel, but later confined to a settlement on the acropolis, where a public building destroyed by conflagration in the 13th century BCE was uncovered. Many of its rooms were used as granaries, as evidenced by jars containing grain and carbonized foodstuffs; one jar contained figs threaded on a string, reminiscent of the biblical lump of dried figs.
