In this episode I shall contend that the “Ella Valley tribe” lived on its land for 1,100 years, beginning in the Middle Bronze Age I, around 1,800 BC, until the Assyrian king Sennacherib’s campaign in 701 BC. During this long period, the tribe was active in the geo-political area of the Shephelah, between the cities of Gat, Ekron, Beit-Shemesh and Lachish, and was not related to the geo-political system of the mountain area. The city built in Tel Azekah was the tribe’s centre, and during long periods in the second millennium BC, it was a strong, rich, and fortified Urban centre. The Judean kings gradually established their rule over the Ella Valley tribe and the area’s urban centre, beginning after Gat’s destruction by the king of Aram-Damascus Hazael in the last third of the 9^th century BC, probably completing their takeover not before the middle of the 8^th century BC. Sennacherib’s campaign brought the end of the Ella Valley tribe and the city of Azekah. A large part of the population that survived was deported to Assyria, and others probably escaped, some finding refuge around Jerusalem. Only after the Assyrian withdrawal from the area in the 630s BC, during King Josiah’s reign, could Judah take over the Shephelah and the Ella Valley again. The place became an important centre of the kingdom’s olive oil industry, and Azekah was rebuilt as an administrative centre and military fort on Judah’s border, when for the first time in its history a population originally from Judah lived in it, among them, perhaps, the grandchildren of those who escaped from Azekah to Jerusalem during Sennacherib’s campaign.  

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