Ashdod (ancient city) in the context of "Pentapolis"

Salome I (c. 65 BCE – c. 10 CE) was the sister of Herod the Great and the mother of Berenice by her husband Costobarus, governor of Idumea. She was a nominal queen regnant of the toparchy of Iamnia, Azotus, Phasaelis from 4 BCE.

Ekron (Philistine: 𐤏𐤒𐤓𐤍 *ʿAqārān, Hebrew: עֶקְרוֹן, romanized: ʿEqrōn, Arabic: عقرون), in the Hellenistic period known as Accaron (Ancient Greek: Ακκαρων, romanized: Akkarōn) was at first a Canaanite, and later more famously a Philistine city, one of the five cities of the Philistine Pentapolis, located in present-day Israel.

In 1957, Ekron was first identified with the mound of Khirbet el-Muqanna (Arabic) or Tel Miqne (Hebrew), near the depopulated Palestinian village of 'Aqir, on the basis of the large size of the Iron Age archaeological remains; the judgement was strengthened by the discovery in 1996 of the Ekron inscription. The tell lies 35 kilometres (22 mi) west of Jerusalem, and 18 kilometres (11 mi) north of Tel es-Safi, the almost certain site of the Philistine city of Gath, on the grounds of Kibbutz Revadim on the eastern edge of the Israeli coastal plain. The other main cities of the Philistine Pentapolis beyond Ekron and Gath were Gaza, Ashkelon, and Ashdod.

Philistia was a confederation of five main cities or pentapolis in the Southwest Levant, made up of principally Gaza, Ashkelon, Ashdod, Ekron, Gath, and for a time, Jaffa (part of present-day Tel Aviv-Yafo).

Scholars believe the Philistines were made up of people of an Aegean background that from roughly 1200 BC onwards settled in the area and mixed with the local Canaanite population, and came to be known as Peleset, or Philistines. At its maximum territorial expansion, its territory may have stretched along the Canaanite coast from Arish in the Sinai (today's Egypt) to the Yarkon River (today's Tel Aviv), and as far inland as Ekron and Gath. Nebuchadnezzar II invaded Philistia in 604 BC, burned Ashkelon, and incorporated the territory into the Neo-Babylonian Empire; Philistia and its native population – the Philistines – disappear from the historic record after that year, until the second century BC, when both Philistea and its cities (Joppa, Jamina, and Azotus) reappear in biblical and Greek texts, in the context of the Maccabean Revolt and the Hellenistic period.