Gaza and Ashdod were separated from the Mediterranean by a line of sand-dunes, and had nothing in the nature of a sheltered port--nothing, in fact, but a “maiuma,” or open roadstead, with a few dwellings and storehouses arranged along the beach on which their boats were drawn up. Ascalon was built on the sea, and its harbour, although well enough suited for the small craft of the ancients, could not have been entered by the most insignificant of our modern ships. The Philistines had here their naval arsenal, where their fleets were fitted out for scouring the Egyptian waters as a marine police, or for piratical expeditions on their own account, when the occasion served, along the coasts of Phoenicia. Ekron and Gath kept watch over the eastern side of the plain at the points where it was most exposed to the attacks of the people of the hills--the Canaanites in the first instance, and afterwards the Hebrews. These foreign warriors soon changed their mode of life in contact with the indigenous inhabitants; daily intercourse, followed up by marriages with the daughters of the land, led to the substitution of the language, manners, and religion of the environing race for those of their mother country. The Zakkala, who were not numerous, it is true, lost everything, even to their name, and it was all that the Philistines could do to preserve their own. At the end of one or two generations, the “colts” of Palestine could only speak the Canaanite tongue, in which a few words of the old Hellenic _patois_ still continued to survive. Their gods were henceforward those of the towns in which they resided, such as Marna and Dagon and Gaza,* Dagon at Ashdod,** Baalzebub at Ekron,*** and Derketô in Ascalon;**** and their mode of worship, with its mingled bloody and obscene rites, followed that of the country. * Marna, “our lord,” is mentioned alongside Baalzephon in a list of strange gods worshipped at Memphis in the XIXth dynasty. The worship of Dagon at Gaza is mentioned in the story of Samson (Judges xvi. 21-30). ** The temple and statue of Dagon are mentioned in the account of the events following the taking of the ark in 1 Sam. v. 1-7. It is, perhaps, to him that 1 Chron. x. 10 refers, in relating how the Philistines hung up Saul’s arms in the house of their gods, although 1 Sam. xxxi. 10 calls the place the “house of the Ashtoreth.” *** Baalzebub was the god of Ekron (2 Kings i. 2-6), and his name was doubtfully translated “Lord of Flies.” The discovery of the name of the town Zebub on the Tell el- Amarna tablets shows that it means the “Baal of Zebub.” Zebub was situated in the Philistine plains, not far from Ekron. Halévy thinks it may have been a suburb of that town. **** The worship of Derketô or Atergatis at Ascalon is witnessed to by the classical writers. [Illustration: 294.jpg A PROCESSION OF PHILISTINE CAPTIVES AT MEDINET-HABU]