The Market of Ashkelon — Buy Cheap, Sell Dear

The name Ashkelon comes from shekel.

Shekel is the name of Israel's currency. The word shekel has the same root as lishkol, which means to weigh.

In earlier times goods were paid for with things of equal weight. That is why some names of currencies are also names of weights.

Drachma–dirhem; pound means both a currency and a weight (about half a kilo); libra–lira; peso–peseta comes from pesar, to weigh.

Ashkelon was thus a centre of buying and selling, with an important trade. If archaeologists want a place to study the economy of antiquity, Ashkelon is the best one. In that period Ashkelon had the largest port on the Mediterranean.

2,700 years ago Ashkelon had between twelve and fifteen thousand inhabitants inside its walls. With the little land Ashkelon had to plough and sow, it was impossible to feed so many people. But Ashkelon knew how to trade. Sadly, Ashkelon and Jerusalem would both be destroyed at the end of the Iron Age by the new world power, Babylon.

Some thirty years ago excavations were carried out in Ashkelon and a market resembling today's supermarkets was found, which helped us understand the economic activity of the Middle East. The details that were found taught us how a market worked in those days. The way of thinking that had not existed before was what we call today 'girişimcilik' — entrepreneurship: the ability to start a new business.

In Kanish, a great Assyrian trading centre near Kayseri, clay tablets were found. Kayseri has the same name as Caesarea in Israel. To this day the people of Kayseri are known as very sharp in buying and selling. In Kanish the Assyrians sold cloth for clothing in exchange for the gold and silver that came from Bolkar, the mountain between Mersin and Niğde, part of the Middle Taurus range. These mountains rise to 3,500 metres and are the continuation of the Alps.

On the clay tablets we read about taxes, customs duties, supply and demand, transport, and the difference between cost and price. All these details make us think of today's commerce.

Two Phoenician ships that sank near Ashkelon were discovered in 1999. These two ships show the mastery of the Assyrians in 'logistics', the science of planning in the best way. They knew very well how to load a ship with oil or wine without damage. They also knew who gave the best price, so as to sell the goods at the highest value. Ezekiel (27:5-7) tells us that from Tarshish (Tarsus) came iron, tin and lead. From Beth-Togarmah (Cappadocia) came the famous horses and mules. Products such as wheat, honey, oil, wine, wool and much more. All of it would sink to the bottom of the sea (prophecy of Ezekiel 27:27).

Neither the Assyrian writings, nor the Phoenician ships, nor the prophecy of Ezekiel, however, can give us the economic picture of those times. After weights and scales were found in a certain street, it became known that silver was weighed there to pay for services and goods. Professors Mordechai Kislev and Ehud Weiss examined grains of wheat from that period and found that the grain came from Egypt. Besides grain, the market yielded meat, fish, dishes in which egg was eaten with fish, and ceramic plates imported from Yavan (Greece). So almost everything needed for daily life was in the famous market of Ashkelon — a market where retail and wholesale were sold in the same place.

All these things found in the archaeologists' excavations give us an idea of how people lived and what the economy of that time was like.

The star of Ashkelon went out with the arrival of Nebuchadnezzar.

Adapted from the article by D.M. Master and L.E. Stager