The known history of Gaza spans more than 5,000 years, and it has been ruled, destroyed and inhabited by various dynasties, empires, and peoples. Its position at the intersection of two ancient trade routes, the Via Maris and the Perfume route, meant that all manner of exotic and essential goods, as well as people, from all over the Old World passed through its port for more than three millennia. Gaza’s own people and products also moved through these trade networks.Rodan, 2019, p. 106.
Originally an independent Canaanite cultural hub already renown in the 15th century BCE, Gaza first came under the control of the ancient Egyptians before re-emerging as an independent city kingdom, one of the pentapolis of Philistia. Gaza's king Hanunu was obliged to pay tribute to the Assyrian Empire beginning around 730 BC; however, the kingdom retained a degree of political and economic autonomy, even after being incorporated into the Achaemenid empire, and was among the first polities to mint its own coins in the Mediterranean region.
Alexander the Great besieged and assaulted the city in 332 BCE, killing and capturing most of its inhabitants, and the city was resettled by its neighbouring inhabitants, becoming a center for Hellenistic learning and philosophy. The area changed hands regularly between two Greek successor-kingdoms, the Seleucids of Syria and the Ptolemies of Egypt, until it was besieged and taken by the Hasmoneans in 96 BC, shortly before their own dynasty disintegrated.
Gaza was rebuilt by Roman General Pompey Magnus after 63 BCE, and allotted to the administrative territories of Roman client king Herod the Great thirty years later, but as an independent unit, and the Herodian dynasty too disintegrated, while Gaza endured. Throughout the Roman period, Gaza maintained its prosperity, receiving grants from several different emperors. A diverse, 500-member senate governed the city during this time. Conversion to Christianity in the city was spearheaded and completed under Saint Porphyrius, who destroyed its eight pagan temples between 396 and 420 AD.
Gaza was conquered, along with the rest of Palestine and Syria, by general Amr ibn al-'As in 637 AD. Most of its inhabitants adopted Islam over the course of the next 1,300 years of Islamic rule, interrupted only by a century or so when Crusaders wrested control of Gaza from the Fatimids in 1100, but were driven out by Saladin. Gaza was in Mamluk hands by the late 13th century, and had again became a regional capitol. It witnessed a golden age under the Ottoman-appointed Ridwan dynasty in the 16th century.
Gaza experienced destructive earthquakes in 1903 and 1914. In 1917, during World War I, British forces captured the city. Gaza grew significantly in the first half of the 20th century under Mandatory rule. The population of the city swelled as a result of the Palestinian exodus during the 1948 Arab–Israeli War. Gaza became a center of confrontation during the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, being occupied and blockaded by Israel. The city was largely destroyed during the Gaza war and genocide, though hundreds of thousands of inhabitants still live there.
Bronze Age Tell es-Sakan
The earliest documented urban settlements in the region of Gaza date back to the 34th century BCE at Taur Ikhbeineh. Its immediate successor site emerged around the same time at Tell es-Sakan (3300-3000 BCE) – a site located south of the present-day Gaza City – which began as an Ancient Egyptian fortress. The archaeologists who excavated Tell es-Sakan, Pierre de Miroschedji and Moain Sadeq, suggest that there were three areas of Egyptian settlement in Gaza and the wider region of Palestine: an area of permanent settlement with Tell es-Sakan as the administrative centre; areas of seasonal habitation extending north up the coast; and the rest of Palestine where Egyptians had trading contact with Canaanites. Tell es-Sakan prospered as Canaanite cities began to trade agricultural goods with the Egyptians. However, when Egypt's economic interests shifted to the cedar trade with Lebanon, Gaza's role was reduced to that of a port for ships carrying goods and it declined economically. The site was virtually abandoned and remained so throughout the Early Bronze Age II.
Gaza enjoyed demographic and economic growth again when the local Canaanite population began to resettle Tell es-Sakan around 2500, but in 2250, the area experienced a total collapse of civilization and all of the cities in the Gaza region were abandoned by the 23rd century BCE. In its place emerged semi-nomadic cultures with pastoral camps made up of rustic family dwellings which continued to exist throughout the Early Bronze Age IV.
Tell el-Ajjul
An urban center known as Tell el-Ajjul began to arise inland along the northern bank of the Wadi Ghazza riverbed, along with al-Moghraqa which was likely a satellite settlement less than from Tell el-Ajjul. Burial practice at Tell el-Ajjul was found to be similar to those of the Bronze Age site of Taur Ikhbeineh. More than 500 scarabs, all but a dozen the work of local Canaanite artisans, were found in Tell el-Ajjul in excavations by Flinders Petrie, who dated the finds to between the Twelfth and Fifteenth dynasties of Egypt, some carrying the names of Egyptian Pharaohs like Amenemhat II, and others, those of the Canaanite Hyksos dynasty, like Yakbim Sekhaenre and Apepi.ERA 56 Petrie, Flinders - Ancient Gaza 4 (1934)
One of the most significant ancient artisanal precious metal collections ever found in the region of the Levant was also discovered during Petrie's excavations. The Tell el-Ajjul gold hoards included finely worked gold jewellery using a variety of techniques, expressing both Egyptian and Syrian influences, as well as local Canaanite religious beliefs. One of the pendants is made from hammered gold sheet and depicts a mother goddess figure, likely Astarte, resembling a find from Minat el-Beida in northern Syria. Many of the items were taken outside of Palestine and appear in collections in the British Museum. British Museum Collection
During the Middle Bronze Age, Tell es-Sakan was the southernmost locality in Canaanite territory, reduced to serving as a fort. It enjoyed a brief revival by 1650 BCE, while Egypt was ruled in part by these Canaanite Hyksos, with a second city developing on the ruins of the first, but was destroyed about a century later.
Another important site to understanding the history of Gaza is Tell el-Jemmeh, located on the southern bank of the Wadi Gaza more inland on a small hill rising 45 m, and identified with the Canaanite town of Yurza (neo-Assyrian era site of Arza), continuously inhabited from the Bronze Age though to the Persian period.Ben-Shlomo, pp. 59-60.
The name Gaza enters history
The city which would develop into Gaza began to emerge on the site of Tell el-Ajjul around the 17th-16th centuries BCE. In the mid-16th century BCE, Egyptian pharaoh Ahmose I completed his victory over the Hyksos by conquering their stronghold Sharuhen, identified by some as Tell el-Ajjul, after a three-year siege. Egypt settled Gaza once again and Tell el-Ajjul rose for the third time in the 15th century BCE.
It is in this period that the name Gaza appears, and frequently, in Egyptian and Assyrian records. A caravan point of strategic importance from the earliest times, it was constantly implicated in the wars between Egypt and Syria and the Mesopotamian powers. Inscribed on the walls of the Temple of Karnak is a description of Tuthmosis III's annual military campaigns along the Syrian-Egyptian caravan route, where he mentions reaching "That-Which-The Ruler Seized, [of which the Syrian name is] Gaza", on the feast day for the king's coronation (est. April 25, 1486 BCE).
Gaza is also mentioned in the Amarna letters as "ḫazzatu". These letters record that Gaza served as the capital of southern Canaan and was the residence of the Egyptian governor of the region, Addaya, who was also the commander of the Egyptian garrison, and seems to have held jurisdiction over Shechem (Amarna letter EA 254) and Jerusalem (EA 289). Abdi-Heba laments that Jerusalem is not accorded the same attention or support by the pharaoh as is Gaza (Amarna letter EA 289).Morris, p. 248.
In the Papyrus Anastasi I, a satirical hieratic Egyptian text used for the training of scribes in the period of the Ramessid dynasty, Gaza makes another appearance. In a description of the places on the high road to Canaan (Way of Horus) through the Sinai, Hori mocks the lack of knowledge of Amenemope, asking if he knows how far Gaza, the final stop, is from Rafah. The mention to "the town of the Canaan" in this same text is also seen as another way of referring to Gaza, emphasizing its status as an important capital of this area.Gardiner, 2023: "In this section both Gaza and the Canaan are mentioned. Certainly there is no doubt about the identity of Gaza; but the expression phwy p K'n-n, "of the end of the Canaan," raises questions. The Egyptian word phwy is equivalent to the most distant end from the point of view of the Egyptian, or, in our case, the most remote north. We believe that phwy refers to the northern end of the "Ways of Horus," which was the main road from Sile in Egypt to Gaza in Canaan. The scribe is simply playing with the different names of the same town: Gaza and the Canaan. This double naming of the town fits well the style of Papyrus Anastasi I, in which the scribe boasts about his great geographical knowledge."
Iron Age
Several early Iron Age sites near Gaza City have been investigated by archaeologists, yielding incredibly rich finds dated to the Ramessid era, such as the Deir el-Balah sarcophagi, some 14 km to the south. Created locally and influenced by Egyptian styles, many of the coffins were looted by Moshe Dayan in the late 1960s before salvage excavations were conducted in the 1970s and 1980s, and some of the sarcophagi have ended up in the Israel Museum, the Hecht Museum, and the Bible Lands Museum..: "Perhaps the worst case of antiquities robbery by Dayan happened at Deir el Balah in the Gaza strip and concerned dozens of Late Bronze Age anthropoid coffins and their contents". Note that a recent reassessment of the chronology of the site places it no earlier than the 13th century, right at the beginning of the Iron Age. The practice of using anthropoid sarcophagi for burials began in Egypt and was later adopted by the Philistines.
Philistia
Investigation of the Iron Age activity on the tell upon which the Old City of Gaza itself sits has been hindered by the dense urban fabric and sociopolitical conditions. Excavations at Tell Jemmeh, the closet Philistine city located 12 km to south of Gaza City in the Negev has helped shed more light on the history of the early and late Iron Age period.Ben-Shlomo, pp. 59-60.
What is clear in the historical record is that in this period, Gaza emerged as one of five Philistine city-states, each ruled by a king, and that for some 550 years, this city-centered kingdom exercised some independence, even when subjected to overarching and alternating Egyptian or Assyrian imperial rule.
Gaza is one of three cities mentioned in the Egyptian Onomasticon of Amenope (c. 1100 BCE), along with Isdud (Ashdod) and Asqalan. It is mentioned in association with a people named as Peleshet. Several scholars also see "the Canaan" of "Philistia" mentioned in an inscription (c. 950-800 BCE) on the Padiiset statue as referring to Gaza.The Philistines in Transition: A History from Ca. 1000-730 B.C.E., Carl S. Ehrlich, p65
In the Hebrew Bible