Ascalon was an ancient Near East port city on the Mediterranean coast of the southern Levant that played a major role in several historical periods up until the destruction of its strategically significant fortifications and port in the 13th century by the Mamluks, diminishing its importance.

The Amarna letters are an archive, written on clay tablets, primarily consisting of diplomatic correspondence between the Egyptian administration and its representatives in Canaan and Amurru, or neighboring kingdom leaders, during the New Kingdom, spanning a period of no more than thirty years between c. 1360–1332 BC. The letters were found in Upper Egypt at el-Amarna, the modern name for the ancient Egyptian capital of Akhetaten, founded by pharaoh Akhenaten (1350s–1330s BC) during the Eighteenth Dynasty of Egypt.