The Ashkelon dog cemetery is a burial ground in the city of

Ashkelon Ashkelon or Ashqelon (; Hebrew: , , ; Philistine: ), also known as Ascalon (; Ancient Greek: , ; Arabic: , ), is a coastal city in the Southern District of Israel on the Mediterranean coast, south of Tel Aviv, and north of the border with ...

in Israel where possibly thousands of dogs were interred in the fifth to third centuries BC. The majority of the dogs were puppies; all had similarities to the modern

Canaan Dog The Canaan Dog is the oldest breed of pariah dog still existing and abundant across the Middle East. It can be found in Israel, Palestine, Jordan, Lebanon and the Sinai Peninsula, and these, or dogs nearly identical, were also found in Iraq and ...

, perhaps representing the ancestral population from which the modern breed is descended. It is the largest known cemetery of this kind in the ancient world. Dogs are thought to be connected to the worship of

Astarte Astarte (; , ) is the Hellenized form of the Ancient Near Eastern goddess Ashtart or Athtart (Northwest Semitic), a deity closely related to Ishtar (East Semitic), who was worshipped from the Bronze Age through classical antiquity. The name i ...

in Ashkelon. M. Heltzer notes evidence from Sicily of a possible cultic link between dogs and the Middle Eastern goddess Astarte, and

Herodotus Herodotus ( ; grc, , }; BC) was an ancient Greek historian and geographer from the Greek city of Halicarnassus, part of the Persian Empire (now Bodrum, Turkey) and a later citizen of Thurii in modern Calabria ( Italy). He is known f ...

mentions that the oldest temple in Ashkelon was dedicated to

Aphrodite Aphrodite ( ; grc-gre, Ἀφροδίτη, Aphrodítē; , , ) is an ancient Greek goddess associated with love, lust, beauty, pleasure, passion, and procreation. She was syncretized with the Roman goddess . Aphrodite's major symbols include ...

, who the Greeks associated with Astarte.

Description

The cemetery was discovered in the

Ashkelon National Park Ashkelon National Park ( he, גן לאומי אשקלון) is an Israeli national park along the shore of the Mediterranean Sea southwest of the city of Ashkelon. The national park is situated in the heart of ancient Ashkelon. It is surrounded b ...

Lawrence Stager Lawrence E. "Larry" Stager (January 5, 1943 – December 29, 2017) was an American archaeologist and academic, specialising in Syro-Palestinian archaeology and Biblical archaeology. He was the Dorot Professor of the Archaeology of Israel in t ...

during excavations undertaken between 1986 and 1994 for the

Leon Levy Leon Levy (September 13, 1925 – April 6, 2003)
April 8, 2003. was an American investor, They had been buried at a time when the

Phoenicia Phoenicia () was an ancient thalassocratic civilization originating in the Levant region of the eastern Mediterranean, primarily located in modern Lebanon. The territory of the Phoenician city-states extended and shrank throughout their histor ...

n-populated city was ruled by

Achaemenid Persia The Achaemenid Empire or Achaemenian Empire (; peo, 𐎧𐏁𐏂, , ), also called the First Persian Empire, was an ancient Iranian empire founded by Cyrus the Great in 550 BC. Based in Western Asia, it was contemporarily the largest emp ...

as a client state. Most of the dogs were found buried in a series of terraces which had previously been occupied by a large warehouse overlooking the sea. The burial ground extended south into an area that appears to have only been briefly been used as a dog cemetery before being built upon, and probably extended west into an area that has been lost to coastal erosion. The burials have been dated to between the fifth and the first part of the fourth century BC. The burial ground may have been in use for about fifty years. Stager notes that as "only the eastern limits of the cemetery have been established, we can speculate that it was originally much larger, with dog burials probably numbering in the thousands." He describes it as "by far the largest dog cemetery known in the ancient world." Another series of burials was found to the north-east, where dogs had been buried in streets or in thoroughfares between large buildings. These were of later dates, from the late Persian period to the early Hellenistic period. Each animal occupied an individual shallow pit and was laid on its side with its tail tucked between its hind legs. The burials were not marked, there were no offerings in the pits and the dogs were not oriented in any consistent direction. The corpses were carefully interred, in some cases perhaps having their limbs bound at the ankles before burial. In contrast, the burial pits were dug somewhat haphazardly, overlapping and occasionally intruding on each other. At least sixty percent of the dogs were puppies; some were probably fetuses. The burials appear to have taken place individually over time, rather than ''en masse''. The cause of death does not appear to have been sacrificial. None of the skeletons show evidence of fatal injuries, and they do not show any signs of having been cut up or skinned before burial. It is possible that they could have been poisoned, which would have left no traces on the skeletons. However, it seems more likely that the deaths were due to natural causes, as the death rates for urban dogs in a pre-veterinary environment were very high; perhaps as many as fifty percent are likely to have died in their first year. An alternative hypothesis has been put forward suggesting that the dogs died in an epidemic. However, this is inconsistent with the demographics of the buried dogs, as an outbreak would be expected to affect all members of the affected population, whereas the Ashkelon population is heavily skewed towards puppies. The dogs were physically similar, with close anatomical similarities to the present-day

. Rather than being a single breed, they appear to represent examples of a naturally occurring

canid Canidae (; from Latin, ''canis'', "dog") is a biological family of dog-like carnivorans, colloquially referred to as dogs, and constitutes a clade. A member of this family is also called a canid (). There are three subfamilies found within the ...

population adapted to the hot and semi-arid conditions of the region. Dogs of this type gave rise to the Canaan Dog through

selective breeding Selective breeding (also called artificial selection) is the process by which humans use animal breeding and plant breeding to selectively develop particular phenotypic traits (characteristics) by choosing which typically animal or plant mal ...

in modern times.

Interpretation

Numerous dog burials with religious contexts have been found in the

southern Levant The Southern Levant is a Region, geographical region encompassing the southern half of the Levant. It corresponds approximately to modern-day Israel, State of Palestine, Palestine, and Jordan; some definitions also include southern Lebanon, southe ...

, dating back as far as 3500 BC. The phenomenon of dog burials in the region appears to have reached a peak under the Persian rule (586–332 BC) and continued into the

Hellenistic period In Classical antiquity, the Hellenistic period covers the time in Mediterranean history after Classical Greece, between the death of Alexander the Great in 323 BC and the emergence of the Roman Empire, as signified by the Battle of Actium in 3 ...

, though the reasons for the growth and decline of the practice are unclear.Ackerman-Lieberman & Zalashik, p. 32 Individual or small numbers of dog burials have been found throughout the region, though the Ashkelon cemetery is in a class of its own for its sheer size. Stager hypothesizes that "the best explanation seems to be that the Ashkelon dogs were revered as sacred animals. As such, they were probably associated with a particular deity and with that god's sacred precinct, about which the dogs were free to roam." The care taken with the individual interments indicates "an intense relationship between dogs and humans." Dogs were revered in Persian

Zoroastrian Zoroastrianism is an Iranian religion and one of the world's oldest organized faiths, based on the teachings of the Iranian-speaking prophet Zoroaster. It has a dualistic cosmology of good and evil within the framework of a monotheistic on ...

tradition, but were also associated with healing gods in Canaanite, Phoenician, Babylonian and

Assyria Assyria (Neo-Assyrian cuneiform: , romanized: ''māt Aššur''; syc, ܐܬܘܪ, ʾāthor) was a major ancient Mesopotamian civilization which existed as a city-state at times controlling regional territories in the indigenous lands of the A ...

n tradition. For instance, the Babylonian goddess of health,

Nintinugga Nintinugga (also transcribed Nintinuga) was a Mesopotamian goddess associated with medicine and cleansing. She belonged to the local pantheon of Nippur. While she has been compared to other similar goddesses, such as Ninisina and Gula, and in a n ...

or Gula, had the dog as her symbol and was described as "she who by the touch of her pure hand revives the dead." M. Heltzer notes evidence from Sicily of a possible cultic link between dogs and the Middle Eastern goddess

, and

mentions that the oldest temple in Ashkelon was dedicated to

, who the Greeks associated with Astarte. The dogs may have been part of a healing cult in which they were trained to lick the wounds or sores of humans, in exchange for a fee. Stager speculates that future archaeologists may discover a temple dedicated to the cult somewhere in the ruins of ancient Ashkelon. The identity of the deity concerned is unknown, but he suggests that it may have been

Resheph Resheph (also Reshef and many other variants, see below; phn, 𐤓‬𐤔‬𐤐‬, ''ršp''; Eblaite ''Rašap'', Egyptian ') was a deity associated with plague (or a personification of plague), either war or strong protection, and sometimes th ...

, the Phoenician god of healing and plague. The

Book of Deuteronomy Deuteronomy ( grc, Δευτερονόμιον, Deuteronómion, second law) is the fifth and last book of the Torah (in Judaism), where it is called (Hebrew: hbo, , Dəḇārīm, hewords Moses.html"_;"title="f_Moses">f_Moseslabel=none)_and_th ...

may refer to this obliquely in a verse (23:18) which reads: "You shall not bring the hire of a prostitute or the wages of a dog into the house of the Lord your God in payment for any vow." Biblical scholars have interpreted "the wages of a dog" ( ''məḥîr keleḇ'') as a reference to male prostitution. However, it is possible that the phrase refers instead to healing dogs. Stager speculates that a similar cult may have operated in the vicinity of the

Temple in Jerusalem The Temple in Jerusalem, or alternatively the Holy Temple (; , ), refers to the two now-destroyed religious structures that served as the central places of worship for Israelites and Jews on the modern-day Temple Mount in the Old City of Jerusa ...

, whose attendants may have received fees for their services. This could have prompted the

Deuteronomist The Deuteronomist, abbreviated as either Dtr or simply D, may refer either to the source document underlying the core chapters (12–26) of the Book of Deuteronomy, or to the broader "school" that produced all of Deuteronomy as well as the Deutero ...

to prohibit using such fees as payments for vows in the Temple. The dogs would have been seen as doubly impure for being associated with a foreign religion and consuming the filth emanating from sores and wounds. The main area where dogs were buried has often been termed a cemetery, implying a sacred area set aside for burials, but Paula Wapnish and Brian Hesse note that "dogs were buried where there was space, rather than a space being prepared to receive dogs." If the dogs were buried in conjunction with religious activities, the combination of careful burial with a lack of markers or

grave goods Grave goods, in archaeology and anthropology, are the items buried along with the body. They are usually personal possessions, supplies to smooth the deceased's journey into the afterlife or offerings to the gods. Grave goods may be classed as a ...

and the disturbance of previous burials may indicate that the dogs were revered up to the point of burial, then granted no significance thereafter. Alternatively, Wapnish and Hesse suggest that the dogs were simply semi-feral urban dogs whose burial in one principal site was simply the result of local custom rather than any religious motivation. Another explanation has been put forward by Anne Marie Smith, who argues that the dogs could have been bred for trade to supply dog-venerating cults in the eastern Mediterranean and Middle East, and were buried on the same site where they lived.

References

{{reflist, 30em Buildings and structures completed in the 5th century BC 3rd-century BC disestablishments 1994 archaeological discoveries Buildings and structures in Ashkelon Archaeological sites in Israel Ancient Israel and Judah Animal cemeteries Cemeteries in Israel Dogs in religion Astarte