AZOTO (Hebr. ʾAšdādh; Assyr. Ašdādh; Greek ʾAšḏōr; today Ešdādh). — One of the five Philistine cities (Ios. 13:3), it always remained so (I Sam. 5:1-8). Five kilometres from the Mediterranean, equidistant (55 km.) between Gaza and Giaffa, on the road between Egypt and Syria, it possessed strategic and commercial importance. It was famous for the temple of Dagon, the Philistine deity, where the Philistines brought the ark of the covenant that they had captured in battle (I Sam. 5:1-8; Iudc. 16:23).
Sargon, king of Assyria, seized it in 711 B.C. (Is. 20:1), and, according to Herodotus (II, 157), so too did Psammetichus I, king of Egypt (663-610). In 163 and 143 it was conquered by the Maccabees (I Mach. 5:68) and destroyed (ibid. 10:77-84; 11:4). Under Roman rule, Pompey declared it free, and it was rebuilt in 55 B.C. by Gabinius, proconsul of Syria (Flavius Josephus, Antiq. Iud., XIV, 5, 3; Bell. Iud., 1, 8, 4). Inhabited by Jews and Greeks, it later belonged to the kingdom of Herod, who bequeathed it in his will to his sister Salome (4 B.C.).
In I Mach. 9:15, in place of “the mountain of A.,” which is unknown and conflicts with the context, it has been proposed to read “the mountain of Hasor,” which would be the Baal-Hasor of II Sam. 13:23, the present-day Gebel el-ʾAsār (F.-M. Abel, in Revue Biblique, 33 [1924], pp. 380-87; L. Pirot, Azot, in DBs, I, cols. 682-84).
Evangelized by the deacon Philip (Act. 8:40), it was an episcopal see of Palaestina prima in the fourth-sixth centuries. Silvanus, bishop of A., took part in the Council of Nicaea in 325; three other bishops of A. are known: Charisius, Heraclius, and Lazarus. Since the fourteenth century it has been a titular see which, until the middle of the eighteenth century, was conferred upon the auxiliaries of Trier.