Two buried treasures were found in excavations of Trude Dothan and Seymour Gittin in 1992. One treasure had been placed within a jug that was in turn placed within another vessel and then buried beneath the floor of the building. Inside the broken jug, archaeologists found 77 silver ingots, and a gold bead. The ingots are folded and elongated in shape and weigh more than two pounds altogether. According to professors Dothan and Gitin, these ingots served as a kind of currency in the seventh century B.C.E., at about the same time that minted coins first began to come into use. The other was a cache of 31 pieces of jewelry lay in the hole of a large perforated stone weight, found in a destroyed 7th-century room of the city’s acropolis.
Buried Philistine Treasures Unearthed at Tel Miqne-Ekron, BAR 19-01, Jan-Feb 1993.
Iron Knife
The many artifacts of iron found at Ekron, including a knife with a carved ivory handle, also underscore the biblical statement on the Philistine monopoly of production of iron weaponry. (1 Samuel 13-19)
Geva, Hillel, Archeological Sites in Israel, No. 4. Jerusalem- Israel Information Center, 1999.
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