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Hello and welcome to Empire with me, Anita Arnon.

And me, William Durimple.

So welcome to our second in the series on the history of Gaza. And you might remember we ended the first episode with the Philistines living in Gaza and the coastal plains around it.

Their civilization extremely sophisticated. They lived in some of the biggest cities in the region.

But at the main Philistine sites, and we were talking about Gath,

home of Goliath in the last episode, archaeologists have found that it was beautifully put

by William actually, that there was a sort of black line that goes across the historical record

if you've cut down in the layer cake of history, which suggests that this city was violently destroyed. It was

burned and it left behind a layer of charcoal, which sort of seems to be like a full stop

to that civilisation there at the time. Anita, do you know what the inhabitants of Gath were called?

No. They were called Gitts. I did not know that. When you say someone is a GIT, that is someone that comes from Gaff.

Is that where that comes from? He's a right GIT. He means he's from Gaff. And anyway, someone clearly thought the people of Gath were Gits, because at the end of this period, we see this black layer of charcoal. And that's where we're going in this episode, because from this period we see Gaza and the coastal plain around it invaded by a succession of extremely

violent and aggressive empires. There's a whole succession, and there's a great deal of smiting.

So buckle up, because this episode is going to

take us through some horrifically violent imperial dust-ups. So first of all, we have to ask

our wonderful guest, Joe Quinn, who we haven't, I don't think formally welcome back properly.

No, let's reintroduce Joe Quinn, the professor of ancient history at the University of Cambridge

and who has been our extremely able guide through this period of history. Can we go back to that

thick black line in the historical record? What happened? Do we know what sort of raised Gath or

...