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190 Ashirah

THE JEWISH ENCYCLOPEDIA

Ashkenaz

marked C, banded down by tlie Portuguese and transmitted to the daughter congregations by Amsterdam especially. The French rendering (compare Naumbourg, "Agudat Shirim,"No. 60) is a variant which establishes the original idenversion

tradition,

tity of the Italian and of the Dutch, the latter being the source of the English and the American forms. The essential notes of all of them, despite several characteristic phrases of the Sephardic "hazanut," recall those of the trumpet-call here suggested as

The rhythmic

and tuneful deflnitenessof the Portuguese variant result from its developed struc-

their original.

clearness

190

"Askaruni," among the cities revolting against Rameses II. (see illustration, p. 192) and Meneptah in

the

El-Amarna

tablets, the prince Yitia of

Askaluna,

mentioned as being obedient to Egypt. Ashkelon never seems to have been in the hands of the Israelites, though hard pressed by Samson (see Judges xiv. 19; I Sam. vi. 17; Josh. xiii. 3; II Sam. i. 20, etc.). In Judges i. 18, it is stated that " Judah took Ashkelon with the border thereof" but this statement is



is

which the did not take. Assyrians frequently mention Iskaluna (or Askaluna). Tig-

in contradiction to the Septuagint, in

verse states

The

what Judah

"

ture (similarly to

lath-pileser

many

subjected it, and about 732 B.C., Rukibti made king instead of Mitinti. Sen-

other

chants of the Sephardim, as in their versions of

Ps.xix.andxcii.)

II.

in the binary or

nacherib, in 701

two-part

b.c,

form.

The two

sym-

captured

Sidka,

whom

he

metrical yet contrasting musical sentence,

and

a usurper rebel, .and

put

Sharru-

marked a and b

ludari, the son of

calls

preceding

Rukibti, again in

transcription of four the first verses, permit of the fitting of the

The his place. kingdom of Ash-

chant to sentences of varying length and outline in the text

pa,

itself.

Esarhaddon and Assurbanipal.

in the

This

was

kelon comprised at that time Jop-

melody

first

scribed

Herodotus

tran-

about

105)

1856 by Emanuel



Bible] plundered the temple of the

"heavenly AphPlan of the Ancient City of Ashkelon.

martial conception has been

its

(From "Zeilscbrift des Dtutschen

Palastiuerjs. Vereius. ")

rodite" in Ashkelon about 620 B.C.

emphasized in its adoption for the " Parade March" of the Jewish Lads' Brigade. The melody has been applied by the Sephardim, accordinterestingly

ing to their custom, to

many

other texts, particu-

psalms of the Hallel and it has also been associated by the writer with Thomas Moore's " Song of Miriam, " to form a hymn. It has been further utilized by Asger Hamerik, a Norwegian composer, formerly director of the Peabody Conservatory at Baltimore, Md. as one of the three Hebrew themes of his admirable " Sinf onia Trionfale, " entitled a " Jewish Trilogy. larly the



,

F. L. C.

a.

ASHKABAH. ASHKELON

See

Hashkabah.

City on the southern coast of occurs in Egyptian texts twice as

It

(i.

narrates

that the Scythians [that is, Cimmerians or Ashguzi (Ashkenazim) of the

Aguilar for the Rev. D. A. De Sola's " Ancient Melodies of the Liturgy of the Spanish andPortuguese Jews." Quite recently

Palestine.

Bet-Dagon,

Bene'-Barak, etc. Mitinti was king in the time of

The

prin-

Ashkelon was the fish goddess Derket6 (=Atargatis?), to whom fishes were sacred; some were kept in a tank near the city (Diodorus, ii. 4 cipal deity of

Pausanias, i. 14, 6). Her daughter, "the heavenly Aphrodite," whose sacred animal was the turtledove, was sometimes called Semiramis. "Zarifa, " the general name for a building with a cone-shaped roof, occurs as the name of a temple at Ashkelon ('Ab.

Zarah 11&). According to Seylax ("Periplus"), the Tyrians held Ashkelon in the Persian time. Although thoroughly Hellenized, it surrendered twice easily to Jonathan the Maccabee (I Mace. x. 86, xi. 60), and later to Alexander Jannreus. Strabo (vii. 59) still calls it "a small city." Herod the Great, who, according to some traditions (Justin, " Dialogus cum