292. Ancient Gaza: From The Assyrians to The Romans (Part 2)

14:56Anita:3, I mean, you made such a strong case, which just seems to be like common sense that, you know, if you are an invading force, why would you want to scorch the earth if you want to carry on using those trade routes? Why did the Babylonians crush and crunch and smite and squash in the way that they did when their predecessors didn't? I mean, were they just not that bright? I mean, what was going on here? It's a really good question. People have really kind of wondered about this because it is, it seems irrational. So one rational theory, though, is that what they're doing is trying to neutralise any potential support for Egypt.

15:30So Egypt is still their big enemy. And that these cities have traditionally, Egypt's been their ally, rebelling against the Egyptians and so on from time to time. So getting rid of them is one way to neutralise that. I mean, another way to look at it is that the Babylonians don't seem to be nearly as interested in the Mediterranean end of things as the Assyrians have been. And what they're really looking for from these campaigns is loot new labour for their own heartland, and their own interests are in different directions. That's another compatible possibility.

16:02William:One thing I've read, Jo, this is something that you're an expert on, the Phoenicians is one of your main areas of research and one of your previous books. There are some theories that these coastal cities in the southern Levant are repopulated by Phoenicians. Does that hold up to you, or is that just a theory? Yes, yes, particularly Ashkelon. So when Ashkelon is in ruins for basically most of the Babylonian period, perhaps all of it, then in the subsequent of a collapse of the Babylonian Empire, Ashkelon is beginning to be rebuilt and so on. There are a lot of Phoenician language inscriptions there.

16:40We know there's a temple of a goddess called Heavenly Aphrodite, who's a Phoenician goddess.

16:46William:She turns up in our exhibition in Paris that you're going to see this week. There's a nice picture of Aphrodite there, a statue of Aphrodite from Gaza. But I mean, there are also Greek commentators by this stage are writing about the place. And Herodotus says that the Phoenicians live in this part of Syria when he's talking about Ashkelon. He also calls it Palestina in places. Which again implies some measure of continuity. You won't call it Palestina if there's no Philistines there at all. I mean, Herod just has a quite vague idea of the geography of this part of the world, but his basic model is that everywhere is Syria and the northern coastal part is also called Phoenicia and the southern coastal part is also called Palestina.

17:25And exactly what the boundary is between them seems to depend what day it is.

17:29William:We're jumping ahead, Jo, because we're going on to the Greeks and we haven't done Violent Empire No. 3.

17:35Anita:We have these headings, Jo. This is just simply titled Violent Empire No. 3, The Persians. So we're talking about the 6th century BC. Describe Gaza at this time and who's in charge and what's happening. We're coming to the end of the Babylonian period. Just as the Babylonian kings killed off the Assyrians before them, the Persians move in as the Babylonians are weakening and kill off the Babylonians. And so Levant falls to them in turn. And Gaza is a particular prize in this era. This is an important phase for the land route down to South Arabia in the hands of the Nabataeans. And the Levant is really important to the Persians, much more so, I think, than to the Babylonians.

18:22And especially as they get drawn into conflict with the Greek city-states, There's all sorts of ways of understanding what we now call the Persian Wars. Persians themselves may have considered to be basically minor punishment raids, but they do have to operate in the Mediterranean. And it's the Phoenicians and Palestinians, people who live on that coastal part of the Levant, who provide the navy. It becomes strategically an important area to them. And perhaps that's why they don't try to control it too hard. So one thing we know from Persian Gaza is that the city is minting its own coins, kind of models actually on those of Athens.

19:02Some of them have Phoenician inscriptions, a very mixed area as always. But they do have, by the 4th century, they do have a Persian military governor.

19:11William:So Joe, we know about Violent Empire No. 3 because one of the people living under it is the father of history, Herodotus, who despite being a Greek was a subject of the Persians. Am I right about that? Yeah, well, he's actually from Caria. He's writing in Greek. Where is Caria? It's in Western Turkey. Okay. That's the part of the world Herodotus is from. And so, yeah, he grows up as a subject of the Persian Empire, Persian vassals. Herodotus, as you say, writes about Gaza. He says it's in the fifth satrapy of the Persians. As you said, he calls it Syria-Palestina. It's the part of Syria, which is Palestine.

19:50William:and he also says, which is interesting, that on the outskirts of Gaza to the south, on the way down to Egypt, there are already people that he calls Arabs. Not so much on the outskirts of Gaza, but the next port down, he says the ports from Gaza south, basically, are controlled by, he says the Arabian. So he means the king of Arabia, or the king of the closest Arabians.

20:13Anita:So, I mean, yeah, what exactly does that mean? I mean, just explain what he's talking about. Who is the king of the Arabians in his mind? What's he talking about? Well, he doesn't say. He just says the Arabian. He's probably a king of, I mean, there are various communities in the peninsula of Arabia in general who could be gathered together under the broader label of Arabian who also have kind of more specific labels in some of the, not for Herodotus, but in some of the documents from the time. So these are probably people called Kedirite in some of these documents.

20:46William:I know that there's a very big misconception abroad that the Arabs arrive in this part of the world on camels in the 7th century with Islam. They come out of Mecca and Saudi Arabia and take over this area. Let's just dwell a second before we go to the break on the fact that there are Arabs in this region already many centuries before Islam. that these guys are inland as well as on the coast, that they're trading with frankincense and with perfumes through the desert routes, and that Gaza and Ashkelon beside it are the ports which they export their goods to the wider world. So it isn't that the Arabs suddenly turn up in the 7th century.

21:36William:In fact, you've got Roman emperors, Philip the Arab, who is described as part of this world. Just before we go to the break, could you just give us an idea of what Arab means at this point, what the pre-Islamic history of the Arabs is in Gaza and the regions around it? We're right on the borders of Arabia here. I mean, the Arabian Peninsula is considered to go up into these deserts. So it's not a question of people moving out of some original place. It's that south of Syria is Arabia from the ancient point of view. So when Syria stops, Arabia starts. These places are always Arabian from that point of view.

22:09And there's a long history of Arab engagement with the coastal cities in the Mediterranean and the Roman Empire subsequently.

22:20William:So we're going to see in subsequent episodes this very important fact that the 7th century invasions at the time of the rise of Islam, you don't get a massive change of population. It isn't that the Arabs write in, it's that the language Arabic takes over in this region. And this is an important point because there is this misconception that the people of Gaza and the people of Palestine are just later rivals on the scene. In fact, they're there at this period and they're coming in as traders. Right. And even when you look at the language, I mean, Arabic is, you know, what's called technically a Canaanite language.

22:54All these languages come out of the same family. Arabic is close to Aramaic and so on. It's not that far from Hebrew. These are all languages that are coming out of the Levantine area and spreading from there onwards. So in a way, the language is kind of returning in the later period.

23:15Anita:Jo, will you stay with us? We're going to take a break now. And when we come back from the break, we're going to talk about, well, another violent empire, a violent empire number four, if you're keeping count. and that is the Greeks of Alexander the Great. Join us then.

23:35Anita:Welcome back. So, okay, we've just talked about the Persians, before that the Babylonians, before that the Assyrians. Now, though, the Greeks are a-coming and we're talking about violent empire number four. Alexander the Great turns up. I mean, his beef is with the Persians, Jo, but how much does this region kind of get caught up in all of that? Yeah, so Alexander the Great, Macedonian king, inherits a throne from his father, 336 BCE. He also inherits the Greeks from his father. So, you know, the Greeks are the first subjects, the Macedonians. And he then invades the Persian Empire and he crosses Turkey with his army.

24:20He fights the Persian king. and then he turns south and he sort of sweeps down the levantine coast he's on his way to egypt essentially but he seizes the cities in his his path um including tyre um but then he besieges

24:36William:gaza hang on before we can't just finish tyre like that so the phoenician city of tyre resists him and he takes it and then he crucifies all the survivors so this is not one of the happier and more sort of funster moments in Alexander the Great's reign. This is a brutal and barbaric taking of the city just to the north of Gaza. So if you're sitting in Gaza and you know these guys are coming at you, you have a choice. Do you surrender and take your chances or do you resist? What do the Gazans do, Jo? Oh, well, they resist. No, it's remarkable. I mean, Gaza is a Persian fortress at this point. So it's actually the Persian commander who is in charge of the resistance.

25:16But the sources, the Greek sources who are commenting on all of this, and not from very much later, make a particular point of how brave the people of Gaza are in their defence of the city.

25:28Anita:There's a Greek historian called, is it Polybius? Polybius, Polybius. Polybius, oh thank God you're both here. So he's writing about this in 120 BCE. And he talks about this bravery of the Gazans. Although in war they display no more valour than the people of Kölz Syria in general, they are far superior as regards acting in unison and keeping their faith. And to put it shortly, they show a courage which is irresistible. And he goes on and on and on, talking about just what stuff they are made of. And even though they'd seen what Alexander had done to Tyre, they still stood up against him.

26:03William:He's a lovely little thing at the end of it. He says, they resisted the Persians, they resisted the Medes, they stood alone. And at the present time, they acted similarly. Therefore, just as it is our duty to make separate mention of the brave men in writing history, so we should give due credit to such whole cities as our want to act nobly by tradition and principle. And he puts Gaza at the top of that rank. Gaza is the city of the brave.

26:29Anita:You can be praised in history, but Alexander doesn't like a resistor, does he? So what does he do when they stand up to him, Joe? What's his response to that? Well, he puts the whole city under siege for at least two months.

26:42William:And this is fascinating because this is the first mention we get historically of the soft sands of Gaza and how easy it is to excavate. So the same thing, you know, reading in the papers every day about their mass tunnels and all the stuff that's meant to be going on in them. Alexander the Great finds the same thing. And I'd love to just read a short reading from one of my favorite history books, which if you're looking for something to take to a beach and you're going to somewhere classical, take Robin Lane Fox's Alexander the Great, which is a very old book now, but it's still a cracker of a tale.

27:12William:Catapults and siege towers were to be hauled to the top of the embankment on wooden ramps, and the defenders were to be battered from the point which overtook them. At the same time, sappers were to dig tunnels under the walls and cause them to subside, an effective method against cities set on a tell of earth, which was standard practice at this time. In 83 BC, even the Romans were besieging a town in Sri Lanka. The defenders stole out and released a bear and a swarm of wasps down an enemy siege tunnel in order to discomfort the diggers. battered by artillery and rammed from the siege towers the city walls of gaza soon subsided into the sappers tunnels as the macedonians poured in the natives resisted heroically and alexander himself sustained two wounds one came from an arab who knelt as if in surrender only to stab with a dagger concealed in his left hand the other more serious from an enemy arrow catapult which cut a bolt through the king's shields and breastplate and embedded itself in his shoulder causing a wound which was treated with difficulty.

28:15William:So all action stuff.

28:17Anita:But nonetheless, I mean, Alexander prevails, doesn't he?

28:20William:Alexander prevails. And then we get this wonderful description, which is one of these rare moments where you actually get a picture of Gaza. Gaza is always something that's being besieged or being attacked or there's always massacres taking place. But what we get after they've taken the city and after they've done this horrible thing to Battis, who's captured alive, and like Hector in the Iliad, his knees are broken and he's dragged around in Alexander's chariot around the city walls, a horrible grim ending. But when they break inside, what they find is they're amazed by the riches of Gaza. Because in Greece, they are very aware of the price of frankincense.

28:58William:It's a distant and exotic product. And they put tiny amounts onto the shrines of their gods and burn this precious stuff very economically. And there was a moment when Alexander was a boy, when he was ticked off by his tutor Leonidas for scooping up handfuls of precious frankincense and throwing them onto the altar. Leonidas, at least with posterity, telling the story, clucks reprovingly. Alexander, when you've conquered the lands which produce these aromatics, then you can scatter incense in this profligate manner. And so Alexander, of course, sends a great chariot full of incense to Leonidas and says, now you can have as much as you like.

29:34William:But this is the important point. They find that Gaza is just packed with all this wealthy merchandise. It's an incredibly rich city. And even the Macedonians think this is a kind of dazzlingly wealthy place.

29:46Anita:And if you love this story, it is part of a big episode that we did on the Nabateans and the frankincense. It was a nice Christmassy thing that we did. Episode 214, God, we've done a lot of episodes. Episode 214 is all about the Nabateans and frankincense.

30:01William:And we passed over quite quickly over Valentemba number four, which was the Persians. If you want to know more about them, Cyrus and the rise of the Persian Empire is episode 97.

30:11Anita:So, Jo, back to you, though. What happens in the region after this gigantic figure, Alexander, dies? Because, you know, whenever you have somebody with that much personality, stroke, fist of iron, who leaves the stage, you get something of a vacuum. Is that what happens here as well? Yeah, exactly. So Alexander dies in June 323. Various theories, why? Fever, poison, excessive drinking. He's only 33 years old at the time. And what this unleashes is 20 years of warfare between his generals, basically, to sort out who gets what from what remains.

30:49William:He's alleged to say it should go to the strongest, doesn't he, when he's dying? That's the story. Yeah, but he doesn't say who that is. It's a problem. So in the end, the southern Levant passes to his Macedonian general Ptolemy. So he's taken the throne of Egypt, as that's the most obvious place for Gaza and that region to sit. And it remains a Ptolemaic possession for more than a century until around the year 200, King Antiochus, the third of the Seleucid Macedonian dynasty, that's a dynasty based in Syria and Mesopotamia, seizes it from the Ptolemies. Yet again, it's this contested land between these larger empires.

31:32And it's an interesting period. What we know about Gaza itself in this period is that like a lot of the Eastern Mediterranean, it starts getting interested in Greek things. There are some Greek gods in the city. They have their own gods as well. But they also, and I think this is really interesting, invent a foundation myth that gives them shared origins with the Greeks through Heracles and King Minos. So there's a sort of you get these moments of people in the city kind of trying to position themselves in a very complicated world of bigger powers above them. But they're still doing some work to kind of organize who they are in all of this.

32:10William:And a similar thing is going on up in the hills with the Israelites, isn't it? Because you get the Hasmonians who are Hellenized Jewish dynasty. Right, that's right. Yeah. So Gaza's next sacking is from this ruler, the Hasmonean ruler, Alexander Jeneas. Jeneas is the Greek version of his Hebrew name, so Yonatan. And it's another siege, poor Gaza. But yeah, Alexander Janais, he's one of these Hasmoneans. It's the priestly dynasty that rules Judea from the 150s. They revolt against the Seleucid king and they basically become autonomous. And Alexander is ruling both as king and as high priest. And the attack on Gaza, in theory, it's the punishment because the city's allied with the king of Egypt.

32:58But it's really part of a broader expansion under Alexander. And so the Hasmoneans are really asserting Judean control over much of southern Levant in this period.

33:08Anita:And Joe, I mean, the Hasmoneans, maybe people haven't heard of that name, but they may have heard of the Maccabees, the Maccabeans, if you like, because that's a very biblical name. I mean, how do these puzzle parts fit together? Yeah, so the Maccabean revolt is this big revolt against the Seleucid king. And the Hasmoneans are the name of the dynasty that then takes control of Judea. So it's sort of like the Windsors or something. Great. Thank you, God. That's the clearest explanation I've ever, ever had. Okay. This is another siege of Gaza then in the offing. They've just got over Alexander's siege and now you've got Alexander Gineas who's going to do the same thing.

33:44Anita:I mean, how destructive is that? It's pretty destructive. So the later Jewish historian Josephus says that he has the councilmen of Gaza massacred in the Temple of Apollo, and then he completely destroys the city. Now, that's unlikely given the strategic and economic importance of the port, but it gives a sense of the brutality of this particular defeat.

34:10William:And as if that isn't enough, we now have just to conclude this violent empire number five, who are our old friends, the Romans. Pompey turns up. So Alexander Gineas sacks Gaza and only 30 years after that, we get Pompey in 63 BCE. Take us to Pompey now. Who's he? He's a Roman general in the last generation of the Roman Republic. This is a period when Rome has been advancing relentlessly on the rest of the Mediterranean. It's swallowed Carthage, it's swallowed Greece, it's swallowing Turkey, and it's got to basically what the Romans would call Syria. And Pompey basically organises the whole of the Eastern Mediterranean as a Roman possession in 63 BCE.

35:00So he deposes the final Seleucid king. So this extends the Roman Empire east to the border with the Iranians at this point, the Iranian Parthian Empire, who are the successors of Darius, who Alexander had defeated. And Pompey, this is not, in terms of the southern Levant, this isn't necessarily particularly violent conquest. So Pompey travels with an army, but he doesn't seem to have to use it much. People already know how dangerous the Romans are.

35:29William:And don't interfere, yeah. Yeah, exactly. They know it's best just to agree to what's being suggested. And actually, it's not too bad for Gaza. So Gaza is declared a free city. It has local autonomy, which is as good as it's had under many of the previous empires. It's within the Roman province of Syria, and it's later rebuilt by the Romans. And by the late 50s, so only about 10 years later, it's minting its own coinage again. Now, as everyone knows, the Romans are a catastrophic thing for the Israelites. The Romans destroy the temple and excessively tax Jewish people. There are multiple Jewish-Roman wars, three major Jewish revolts, including the Bar Kochba revolt of 132 AD, which initially succeeds in expelling the Romans from Judea.

36:18William:Coins were even minted celebrating Jewish freedom from Roman rule. But in 136 AD, the rebellion was crushed by Emperor Hadrian, the same guy who builds Hadrian's Wall. Jews were expelled or enslaved, and their towns were destroyed. Yet in nearby Gaza, like in the Syrian period, where the Israelites were getting deported while the Gazans were okay, again now in the Roman period, Gazans did not suffer in the same way. And Gaza continues to grow as this very prosperous port, again trading with Petra, which is now at the peak of its power. All those lovely buildings you see when you go as a tourist down the souk into Petra and see those amazing facades.

37:00William:This is built at this period, at the height of the frankincense trade, when every temple in Europe wants to get its hands on a little bit of frankincense so they can do proper offerings to gods. And this is all coming through Gaza. What oil is from the Middle East today, frankincense is at this period. Joe, just before we go, something which I'd love you to explain as best you can, and I know it's a very difficult thing. We've seen in this episode a whole succession of violent empires. the Syrians, Babylonians, Persians, the Macedonians, and the Romans all coming through, making havoc and smashing through.

37:38William:And yet Gaza survives. The city is always there. It may be depopulated briefly, but it's resettled. And the impression we get, I believe, from DNA studies in a very general sense, not in a specific sense, but in a general sense, that there is continuity, that it's not a story of that each of these empires comes, slaughters everybody, and then you start again from scratch. Give us your impression of how we leave Gaza at this period. Yes. So, I mean, everything we've been talking about, the Levant has always been a particular centre of movement, migration, upheaval, and so on. There's an awful lot of evidence for discontinuity everywhere.

38:16But at the same time, as you say, on a sort of very broad genetic level, there is what we see in the Levant as a whole is more continuity than not. I think it's a question of what that really means. Labels remain. People only last, you know, 100 years at most anyway. So, you know, what are we going to privilege when we look at the past? I think that's the question.

38:41William:But Gaza is still, as we saw at the beginning of the period, it's the major port in the southern Levant. Gaza and Ashkelon. And there are elements which survive all these successive sackings. It's in the same place. The trade is the same. It's got Arabs coming in and out, and some probably living in the city as traders. And it's all set to have a very prosperous future. Because what is a surprise is that at the same time as we have this terrible cataclysm for the Jewish people and the great exile of the Jews from their homeland, we see Gaza flourishing as never before. In the next episode, we're going to look at late Roman, early Byzantine Gaza, when Gaza is a centre of knowledge, of learning, and has this extraordinary reputation as second only to Alexandra, as a place you want to go and study.

39:33William:Something we've totally forgotten today, when Gaza is always associated with helplessness and hopelessness and destruction.

39:39Anita:Huge thank you to you, Joe. Absolutely wonderful to have you on and recommend Joe's almost award-winning book to anyone who's listening. We will be back to pick up the Gaza story. Till the next time we meet, it is goodbye from me, Anita Arnand. And goodbye from me, William Durenpool.