Gaza

   In the second and first millennia b.c., an important Palestinian town located southwest of Jerusalem and northeast of the Egyptian town of Pelusium. Like Pelusium, Gaza was strategically situated in the coastal corridor connecting Egypt to lower Palestine. Thus, traders and armies passing from Mesopotamia and Palestine into Egypt, or vice versa, had to pass through or near Gaza. Archaeology shows that Gaza was inhabited as early as the fourth millennium b.c., but the first written mention of the town was in the war annals of the Egyptian pharaoh Thutmose III in about 1470 b.c. After Egyptian power in Palestine waned in the twelfth century b.c., those venerable biblical folk, the Hebrews and the Philistines, fought over Gaza, and the Philistines held it for some time. In about 720 b.c. the Assyrian king Sargon II captured Gaza. One of his successors, Esar-haddon, also occupied the town on his way to conquer Egypt. In the late 600s b.c., after Assyria's fall, Babylonia's King Nebuchadnezzar II seized Gaza, and later the town's unfortunate inhabitants had to contend with still more foreign occupiers, notably the Persians and the Greeks. The Hebrews destroyed Gaza circa 96 b.c., but the Romans rebuilt it a few decades later.

   See also: Egypt; Esarhaddon; Palestine