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History of Lod


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Canaanite period

Pottery finds have dated the city's initial settlement to 5600–5250 BC. The earliest written record is in a list of Canaanite towns drawn up by the Egyptian pharaoh Thutmose III at Karnak in 1465 BC.

Jewish period

From the 5th century BC until the Roman conquest in 70 AD, the city was a Jewish city, and a well-known centre of Jewish scholars and merchants. According to Martin Gilbert, during the Hasmonean period, Jonathan Maccabee and his brother Simon Maccabaeus enlarged the area under Jewish control, which included conquering the city.

The city is mentioned several times in the Bible: in Ezra 2:33, it is mentioned as one of the cities whose inhabitants returned after the Babylonian captivity, and in the New Testament, it is the site of Peter's healing of a paralytic man in Acts 9:32-38.

In 43 AD, Cassius, the Roman governor of Syria, sold the inhabitants of Lod into slavery. During the First Jewish–Roman War, the Roman proconsul of Syria, Cestius Gallus, razed the town on his way to Jerusalem in 66 AD. It was occupied by Emperor Vespasian in 68 AD.

During the Kitos War, 117-115 AD, the Roman army laid siege to Lod, then called Lydda, where the rebel Jews had gathered under the leadership of Julian and Pappus. The distress became so great that the patriarch Rabban Gamaliel II, who was shut up there and died soon afterwards, permitted fasting even on Ḥanukkah. Other rabbis condemned this measure. Lydda was next taken and many of the Jews were executed; the "slain of Lydda" are often mentioned in words of reverential praise in the Talmud.

Roman period


In 200 AD, emperor Septimius Severus elevated the town to the status of a city, calling it Colonia Lucia Septimia Severa Diospolis. The name Diospolis ("city of gods") may have been bestowed earlier, possibly by Hadrian. At that point, most of its inhabitants were Christian. In 415, the Council of Diospolis was held here
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