Domitian - Roman Caesar: 69-81 A.D. Emperor: 81-96 A.D. -
Bronze 21mm (11.3 grams) of Ashkelon in Judaea: 84/85 A.D.
Reference: Sear GIC 884; B.M.C.27.121,119
CEBACTOC - Laureate bust right.
ACKAΛΩ. HΠP (= year 188 of the Era of Ascalon =
A.D. 84/85) - City-goddess standing left on prow, holding standard and aphlaston;
altar on left, dove on right.
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Ashkelon was the oldest and largest seaport in
Canaan, one of
the "five
cities" of the
Philistines, north of
Gaza and south of
Jaffa (Yafa).
Archaeological excavations begun in 1985 led by
Lawrence Stager of
Harvard University are revealing the site with about 50 feet (15 m) of
accumulated rubble from successive
Canaanite,
Philistine,
Phoenician,
Iranian,
Hellenistic,
Roman,
Byzantine,
Islamic, and
Crusader
occupation.
In the oldest layers are shaft graves of pre-Phoenician Canaanites. The city
was originally built on a
sandstone
outcropping and has a good underground
water
supply. It was relatively large as an ancient city with as many as 15,000
people living inside walls a mile and a half (2.4 km) long, 50 feet (15 m) high
and 150 feet (50 m) thick. Ashkelon was a thriving Middle
Bronze Age
(2000-1550 BCE) city of more than 150 acres (61 ha), with commanding
ramparts including the oldest
arched city gate in
the world, eight feet wide, and even as a ruin still standing two stories high.
The thickness of the walls was so great that the mudbrick Bronze Age gate had a
stone-lined tunnel-like
barrel
vault, coated with white plaster, to support the superstructure: it is the
oldest such
vault ever found.
The Bronze Age ramparts were so capacious that later Roman and Islamic
fortifications, faced with stone, followed the same footprint, a vast semicircle
protecting Ashkelon on the landward side. On the sea it was defended by a high
natural bluff.
Within the huge ramparts, in the ruins of a sanctuary, a votive silver calf
was found in 1991. During the Canaanite period, a roadway more than 20 feet
(6.1 m) in width ascended the rampart from the harbor and entered a gate at the
top. Nearby, in the ruins of a small ceramic tabernacle was found a finely cast
bronze statuette of a bull calf, originally silvered, 4 inches (100 mm) long.
Images of calves and bulls were associated with the worship of the Canaanite
gods El
and
Baal.
The
Amarna letters
correspondence of Ashkelon/(Ašqaluna), of
1350 BC,
contains seven letters to the
Egyptian
pharaoh, from its 'King'/mayor:
Yidya. Yidya was
the only ruler of Ašqaluna during the 15-20 year
time period. One letter from the pharaoh to Yidya, was subsequently
discovered in the early 1900s.
The Philistines conquered Canaanite Ashkelon about
1150 BCE.
Their earliest pottery, types of structures and inscriptions are similar to the
early Greek urbanised centre at
Mycenae in
mainland Greece,
adding weight to the hypothesis that the Philistines were possibly one of the
populations among the "Sea
Peoples" that upset cultures throughout the eastern
Mediterranean at that time. Ashkelon became one of the five Philistine
cities that were constantly warring with the
Israelites
and the
kingdom of Judah. According to Herodotus, its temple of Venus was the oldest
of its kind, imitated even in Cyprus, and he mentions that this temple was
pillaged by marauding "Scythians" during the time of their sway over the Medes
(653-625 BCE). When this vast seaport, the last of the Philistine cities to hold
out against
Nebuchadnezzar finally fell in 604 BCe, burnt and destroyed and its people
taken into exile, the Philistine era was over.[citation
needed]
Ashkelon was soon rebuilt. It was an important
Hellenistic seaport. In the period of the
Hasmonean
Kingdom, Rabbi
Simeon ben Shetach -
Pharisee
scholar and Nasi of
the Sanhedrin
in the
First Century BCE - is reported to have on a single day
sentenced to death eighty Ashkelon women who had been charged with
witchcraft. Later, the women's relatives took revenge by bringing false
witnesses against Simeon's son and causing him to be executed in turn[6].
Ashkelon may have been the birthplace of
Herod the Great.
Josephus
makes it clear that Ashkelon was not ceded to Herod the Great in 30 BCE (War
1.396; Ant. 15.217), yet he built monumental buildings there: bath houses,
elaborate fountains and large colonnades.[7]
The city remained loyal to Rome during the First Revolt, AD 66-70, and in the
following centuries it grew to be an important centre. It appears on a fragment
of the 6th century AD
Madaba Map.[8]
During the period of the
Crusades,
Ashkelon (which was known to the Crusaders as Ascalon) was an important
city due to its location near the coast and between the
Crusader States and
Egypt. In 1099,
shortly after the
Siege of Jerusalem (1099) an Egyptian
Fatimid army which had been sent to relieve
Jerusalem
was defeated by a Crusader force at the
Battle of Ascalon. The city itself was not captured by the Crusaders because
of internal disputes amongst their leaders. This battle is widely considered to
have signified the end of the
First
Crusade. Until 1153, the Fatimids were able to launch raids into the
Kingdom of Jerusalem from Ashkelon which meant that the southern border of
the
Crusader States was constantly unstable. In response to these incursions
into Outremer,
King
Fulk of Jerusalem constructed a number of Christian settlements around the
city during the 1130s, in order to neutralise the threat of the Muslim garrison.
In 1148, during the
Second Crusade, the city was unsuccessfully besieged for eight days by a
small Crusader army which was not fully supported by the Crusader States. In
1150 the Fatimids fortified the city with fifty-three towers as it was their
most important frontier fortress. Three years later, after a
five month siege, the city was captured by a Crusader army lead by King
Baldwin III of Jerusalem. It was then added to the
County of Jaffa to form the
County of Jaffa and Ascalon which became one of the four major seigneuries
of the
Kingdom of Jerusalem.
After the
Crusader conquest of Jerusalem the six elders of the
Karaite Jewish community in Ashkelon contributed to the ransoming of
captured Jews and holy relics from Jerusalem's new rulers. The
Letter of the Karaite elders of Ascalon, which was sent to the Jewish elders
of Alexandria, describes their participation in the ransom effort and the
ordeals suffered by many of the freed captives.
Titus Flavius Domitianus (24 October 51 – 18
September 96), known as Domitian, was a
Roman
Emperor
who
reigned from 14 September 81 until his death. Domitian was the third and last
emperor of the
Flavian dynasty, the house which ruled the
Roman
Empire between 69 and 96 and encompassed the reigns of Domitian's father
Vespasian
(69–79), his older brother
Titus (79–81),
and that of Domitian himself.
Domitian's youth and early career were largely spent in the shadow of his
brother Titus, who gained military renown during the
First Jewish-Roman War. This situation continued under the rule of
Vespasian, who became emperor on 21 December 69 following the
civil war
known as the
Year of the Four Emperors. While Titus effectually reigned as co-emperor
with his father, Domitian was left with honours but no responsibilities.
Vespasian died on 23 June 79 and was succeeded by Titus, whose own reign came to
an unexpected end when he was struck by a fatal illness on 13 September 81. The
following day Domitian was declared emperor by the
Praetorian Guard, commencing a reign which lasted fifteen years—longer than
any man who had governed Rome since
Tiberius.[1]
As emperor, Domitian strengthened the economy by revaluing the
Roman coinage, expanded the border defenses of the Empire, and initiated a
massive building programme to restore the damaged city of
Rome. Significant
wars were fought in Britain, where
Gnaeus Julius Agricola expanded the Roman Empire as far as modern day
Scotland,
and in Dacia,
where Domitian was unable to procure a decisive victory against king
Decebalus.
Domitian's government nonetheless exhibited
totalitarian characteristics. As emperor, he saw himself as the new
Augustus,
an enlightened despot destined to guide the Roman Empire into a new era of
Flavian renaissance. Religious, military, and cultural
propaganda
fostered a
cult of personality, and by nominating himself perpetual
censor,
he sought to control public and private morals. As a consequence, Domitian was
popular with the people and the army but despised by members of the
Roman
Senate as a tyrant.
Domitian's reign came to an end on 18 September 96 when he was assassinated
by court officials. The same day he was succeeded by his friend and advisor
Nerva, who
founded the long-lasting
Nerva-Antonine dynasty. After his death, Domitian's memory was
condemned to oblivion by the Roman Senate, while senatorial authors such as
Tacitus,
Pliny the Younger and
Suetonius
published histories propagating the view of Domitian as a cruel and paranoid
tyrant. Modern history has rejected these views, instead characterising Domitian
as a ruthless but efficient autocrat, whose cultural, economic and political
programme provided the foundation of the peaceful 2nd century.
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