Damascus. The narrative in the first book of Chronicles relates that Ezer and Elead, sons of Ephraim, were killed by men who were natives of Gath, because "they came down to take their livestock". Gath is named as one of 15 cities fortified by king Rehoboam, son of King Solomon, which were captured by Shishak, king of Egypt. Identification A tradition reported by Ishtori Haparchi (1280–1355) and other early Jewish writers is that Ramla was the biblical Gath of the Philistines. Initial archaeological claims seemed to indicate that Ramla was not built on the site of an ancient city, although in recent years the ruins of an old city site were uncovered on the southern outskirts of Ramla. Earlier, Benjamin Mazar had proposed that ancient Gath lay at a site called Ras Abu Hamid east of Ramla. Avi-Yonah, however, considered that to be a different Gath, usually now called Gath-Gittaim. This view is also supported by other scholars, those holding that there was, both, a Gath (today's Tell es-Safi) and Gath-Rimmon (in or near Ramla). Israeli archaeologist, Y. Aharoni, relying upon Eusebius' Onomasticon where he fixes the ancient site of Gath near the Roman road 5 miles (8 km) from Eleutheropolis (Beth Gubrin) on the way to Diospolis (Lod), suggested to identify the biblical Gath with either Tell ej-Judeideh, or Tel Safi. The 19th-century scholar Edward Robinson proposed that Gath be identified with Tell es-Safi, and this identification was generally accepted until the early 20th century, when it began to be questioned. In the 1920s, famed archaeologist W. F. Albright disputed this identification, writing that "The archaeological exploration of Tell el-Safi did not yield a shred of evidence for the identification with Gath." Albright suggested another site, Tell 'Areini (now close to the city of Kiryat Gat) which, despite some opposition, was accepted to the point that the Israel Government Names Committee renamed it as Tel Gat in 1953. However, excavations at Tell 'Areini starting in 1959 found no Middle Bronze Age traces and the excavators proposed instead that Gath be identified with a third site, Tell en-Nejileh (Tel Nagila), a proposal abandoned after excavations in the 1980s. Attention then returned again to Tell es-Safi, which is thought to be the location of Gath. In the Madaba map of the 6th century, Tell es-Ṣāfi / Tell el-Ṣāfiyya occurs under the name Saphitha (). The Madaba map identifies a second town,