Genesis 10:14; 21:32, 26:1 et al; Exodus 15:14; Judges 10:6; 1 Samuel 17:16; Amos 9:7 etc - far too many references to list here, , but the Amos is the most important:
הֲל֣וֹא כִבְנֵי֩ כֻשִׁיִּ֨ים אַתֶּ֥ם לִ֛י בְּנֵ֥י יִשְׂרָאֵ֖ל נְאֻם יְהוָ֑ה הֲל֣וֹא אֶת יִשְׂרָאֵ֗ל הֶעֱלֵ֙יתִי֙ מֵאֶ֣רֶץ מִצְרַ֔יִם וּפְלִשְׁתִּיִּ֥ים מִכַּפְתּ֖וֹר וַאֲרָ֥ם מִקִּֽיר
To me, you Beney Yisra-El are just like the Kushim, declares YHVH. True, I brought Yisra-El up from the land of Mitsrayim (Egypt), but also the Pelishtiyim from Caphtor, and Aram from Kir.
Peleshet (פלשת), as in Psalm 60:10, or possibly Pheleshet (פְלֶשֶׁת) as in Isaiah 14:29, was the name from which Philistia was taken by the Romans; it meant "Wales", pronounced Walès (i.e. "foreigners", "strangers" or "wanderers", in Anglo-Saxon) and was an example of the standard derogation of all "illegal immigrants", "fake asylum seekers", and the otherwise "not one of us" throughout human history; they inhabited the south and west of Kena'an (Canaan), roughly today's Gaza Strip, though their continuous attempts to expand their territory make it impossible to define this precisely.
They originated in Crete (Kaphtor), fleeing at the time of the sacking of Knossos, and regularly attacked the Kena'ani coast, much as the Saxons did the British coast. Some say (Campbell, Graves, et al) that they were the Greek Puresati or Pulesati, the worshippers of Pyrrha, who was herself a Greek version of Ishtar.
The lengthy essay at the end of these preliminary notes will explain that more fully.
The Pelishtim are regularly referred to as Kaphtorim (usually rendered as Caphtorim in English); scholars have wondered if this referred to an Egyptian colony, though it is equally likely that they were in fact the pre-Greek Dana'ans (the original tribe of Dan occupied the same territory as the Pelishtim, and the Dana'ans claimed to have come from or via Kena'an), or that the Dana'ans, and therefore the tribe of Dan, were actually the same people. Again, the lengthy essay below will explore this. Either way we can state for pretty close to certain that they were originally a Phoenician people, rooted in the Beney Chet (Hittites), but in the No'achic division they would count as Beney Yaphet (Caucasian) and not Beney Shem.
The Pelishtim are regularly referred to as Kaphtorim (usually rendered as Caphtorim in English); scholars have wondered if this referred to an Egyptian colony, though it is equally likely that they were in fact the pre-Greek Dana'ans (the original tribe of Dan occupied the same territory as the Pelishtim, and the Dana'ans claimed to have come from or via Kena'an), or that the Dana'ans, and therefore the tribe of Dan, were actually the same people. Again, the lengthy essay below will explore this. Either way we can state for pretty close to certain that they were originally a Phoenician people, rooted in the Beney Chet (Hittites), but in the No'achic division they would count as Beney Yaphet (Caucasian) and not Beney Shem.
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| The ruins of Knossos |
And now, for those of you who are genuinely interested, an extended exploration of the probable roots and origins...
The truth is, that we simply do not know what the word that is rendered in English as "Philistine" meant, or even to what language it originally belonged.
Our main source, which is the Tanach, is no help: it names them either in the plural as Pelishtim (פְּלִשְׁתִּים), or in the singular as Pelishtiy (פְּלִשְׁתִּי), and on two occasions - both of which are probably errors by the later Masoretic scribes - as Pelishtiyiym (פְּלִשְׁתִּיִים), and their land simply as Erets Pelishtiym (אֶרֶץ פְּלִשְׁתִּים), "the Land of Philistines", or as Peleshet (פֶּלֶשֶׁת), which tends to be rendered in English, as in Latin, as "Philistia".
Josephus regularly calls them Παλαιστινοί (Palestini), except once, in his version of the Table of Nations in Genesis 10 (Ant. I. vi. 2), where we have Φυλιστίνου (Phulistinou)... and I am no expert in Greek but I believe that this is simply the genitive singular.
But nowhere in the Tanach is the etymology of the name explained; not even, as is commonplace, by stating it as the name of some founding ancestor. Like Habiru (Hebrew) amongst the Egyptians, like the "n" word in America, it was probably a derogatory name for a despised and unwanted people, who in today's terminology were "seeking to establish illegal settlements in occupied Kena'ani territory on the east bank of the Great Sea". But where did they come from to do that? I shall return to that shortly.
Not knowing has never yet precluded scholars from hypothesising, however. A man named Fourmont, in "Réflexions critiques sur l’origine, l’histoire et la succession des anciens peuples (1747), ii. 254, connects it with the traditional Greek name Πελασγοί (Pelasgi); but as we are not entirely sure what that originally meant either, it doesn't really resolve anything.
Hitzig, who wrote a lengthy account of the Pelishtim, noted the similarity of the word with the Sanskrit "valakṣa", meaning "white" - though precisely which letters in each word he was cross-referencing is not something I have yet been able to deduce; he also drew comparisons between Marna, the principal deity of Azah (Gaza), and the Indian Varuna - these deities are all eventually universal, so he may well be correct, but it doesn't take us forward an iota (how do you say iota in Sanskrit anyway?) in this particular piece of research.
Gesenius, as he usually is, is much more interesting, finding a Semitic etymology through the Kushite (Ethiopic) verb "falasa" = "to wander, roam", from which the word "fallási" for "a stranger" - and ask any Ethiopian Jew in contemporary Israel if the word "Falashah" is still in use, and does it connote like the "n" word or the "y" word (the "zh" word in Russian) or indeed like Walès, and they will smile, and look sad, and probably walk away.
Gesenius did not in fact come up with this theory; he merely gave it scholarly weight; the source was the Septuagint, the Greek Version made by Jews for Jews two thousand years before him. There the Pelishtim are almost invariably rendered by the Greek ἀλλόφυλοι (Allophulos) - which is even closer to Falashah than it is to Pelishtim - even when it is put into the mouths of Gol-Yat (Goliath) or Ach-Ish, when speaking of themselves - Ach-Ish is a name to keep in mind as we progress through this investigation.
The only issue with the Septuagint version is that their Greek was 2nd century BCE-limited, and Alexandria-dialect-limited, in its available lexicon, so Falasa-Pelishtim is far enough apart to be mere expedience. And with the Gesenius version, that a Semitic origin is precisely what we should not be looking for, if the Pelishtim meet every other plausible fact that we know about them - they were Yaphetic, the third of No'ach's sons, and therefore Caucasian, not Middle Eastern; and secondly, that the Kushite (Ethiopic) language wasn't Semitic anyway, but Hamitic - Gesenius is mixing up his Ethiopian Kush with his Arabian Kush, as the Tanach does throughout.
There are other sources besides the Tanach of course, including the Mitsri (Egyptian) of Ramessu (Rameses) III, and various documents from the archives of the kings of Ashur (Assyria); and it is worth pointing out that the scribes in each of the three cases are unlikely to have known of each other's writings, so the fact that all three agree must say something - though precisely what remains to be determined.
There are other sources besides the Tanach of course, including the Mitsri (Egyptian) of Ramessu (Rameses) III, and various documents from the archives of the kings of Ashur (Assyria); and it is worth pointing out that the scribes in each of the three cases are unlikely to have known of each other's writings, so the fact that all three agree must say something - though precisely what remains to be determined.
The tendency among the scholars is to assume that the name must have been derived from "Philistine" sources, and that it must therefore have been the native designation. To which the obvious reply is: Habiru was an offensive term, and though the writers throughout the Tanach constantly play word-games with it, they never use it as a self-descriptor, but only ever put in the mouths of their foes. In the same way, no one has yet heard an American of slave-African origin calling either their original or their new home "n-land", unless they are being very ironic, and the Welsh insist on Cymru with the same determination that Jews will not call it the "Old Testament".
And as to Redslob's suggestion (in "Die alttest Namen der Bevölkerung", p4) that Peleshet (פלשׁת - Philistia) was an anagram for שׁפלה, the Shephelah, or the foot-hills of Yehudah, I can forgive the man his unfortunate name but not his unfortunate deficiences as a scholar, and have already wasted enough time just reporting the theory's existence; I shall simply note that the two places are not the same, let alone the two words, that anagram is an anagram of Argaman, but so what?, and then move on...
In Genesis 10 we read that the sons of Cham (Ham) were Kush, Mitsrayim, Phut (or possibly Put, but the grammar requires the removal of the dagesh, so it could be either) and Kena'an, all of which are in fact the names of countries, not people. But this is only one of the important significators in our denotion of the Pelishtim: it defines the aboriginal Kena'anim as Hamite, not Semite, and as such differentiates them from the Beney Yisra-El, who are always presented as Arami, and therefore Semite!
Nonetheless, the text provides us with a first mention of the Kaphtorim, and as such a starting-point. Scholars, by the way, have never liked the the interjected note "whence went forth the Philistines", reckoning it to have been "a marginal gloss that has crept into the text" (http://www.sacred-texts.com/ane/phc/phc02.htm); and insist, "in the light of other passages, presently to be cited", that the gloss did not originally refer to the "unknown" Kasluchim at all, but "must have intended the Kaphtorim" - all of which is simply ludicrous; and would remain so, even if it were to turn out that the Kasluchim were a clan of the Kaphtorim, or vice verse, or by some other means related - which of course they are, as siblings in the descent of Cham.
You can hear that I am tending towards, indeed favouring, the Kaphtor theory against the Kasluchim... but I am also conscious that a) I need to provide more evidence, and b) if Kaphtor was Kaprisin (Cyprus), then the entire Knossos theory of the origins of the Pelishtim goes up in smoke - Knossos being Crete, not Cyprus. So first we have to determine: where was Kaphtor? And only then the secondary issue of: were the Kasluchim and Kaphtorim from the same place; and if so, as clans of the same, or of different tribes?
Let us begin to answer that by seeming not to answer it at all, but going down a side-road to explore another term that has caused some difficulty: in my novel "City of Peace" King David never uses the name Pelishtim at all, but refers to them either as the Beney Pelet (to which further side-road I shall return in a moment), or mostly as the Beney Cheret, Cheret being the Yehudit name for the IY or "island" of Crete; Biblical texts generally call these people Chereti (כְּרֵתִי).
In 1 Samuel 30:14 the young Egyptian servant, describing the Amalekite raid, reports that "we raided the south of the Chereti (הַכְּרֵתִ֛י), and the property of Yehudah, and the south of the Kalevi (Calebites), and burnt Tsiklag with fire". In Ezekiel 25:16, not only are the Pelishtim and the Cheretim linked with the "remnant of the island" in a common denunciation, but Yechezke-El actually calls them Keretim (כְּרֵתִים) and not Cheretim, which takes us even closer to the island of Crete.
And the same spelling, hard K not soft CH, in Zephaniah 2:5; where a woe is pronounced upon the dwellers of the "sea-coast" - and I note, thinking back to the previous discussion of this term, that Tsephan-Yah really does mean "sea-coast", which is to say the Gaza Strip colonies and not their aboriginal homeland, because the term he uses is CHEVEL HA YAM (חֶבֶל הַיָּם) - who he calls "the nation of the Keretim", and on "Kena'an, the land of the Pelishtim", which is probably something of an over-statement.
I note also that the Septuagint has no qualm about rendering them as Κρῆτες - "Cretans" on almost every occasion; on those where it offers Χελεθί - Chelephi - instead, I am going to avoid the "scribal errors" suggestion and go for: I have no idea why this would be the spelling.
I noted earlier that "Pelishtim" was likely a derogation first, and then evolved into a name, and it is entirely possible that "Cheret" was the same. We have no knowledge of its etymology in its own language, but we do know that it came to mean "cut" or "cut off" in Yehudit - the phrase for making a covenant is LICHROT BRIT (לכרות ברית), because the terms were cut into a piece of molten wax or carved into a stone - so there is a very real possibility that some kind of distinction was being made between, to use contemporary language once more, genuine asylum seekers (Pelishtim) and economic migrants (Keretim).
In three passages (2 Samuel 20:23, 2 Kings 11:4 and 11:19) the name of the royal body-guard, normally rendered as Keretim ("Cherethites") appears as כָּרִי ("Kari") or "Carians". If this had only happened once, it might have been a mere scribal error, the dropping of a ת by a sloppy copyist; but once is chance, twice coincidence, and three times the apologia to a thesis.
And then, on every other occasion when the Cheretim or Keretim are alluded to as part of the bodyguard of the early Yisra-Eli kings - probably paid mercenaries - they are coupled with the name פְּלֵתִי - Pelethites - which is also the source of the other possibility for their name; that is was Pelet (פלת) and not Pelesht (פלשת) - too many sources to list, but they are all at the link; I do need to point out one in particular however, because the reference to them in Judges 12:4 - or at least to PELITEY, describes them unequivocally as "fugitives", or "refugees".
How does Pelesht become Pelet? Is it the same, thinking as a Londoner, as Saint Chad's Well becoming Shadwell or Mary La Bonne becoming Marylebone? These sorts of modification happen with time, and changes to language, and general human laziness - the town by the Caen Ditch, as it was originally called, ended up as Kentish Town, and Candlewick Street was reduced to Cannon Street. Generally the scholars prefer to call these variations "scribal errors", but Shakespeare, or Shakspere, or Shakespear, are three ways that he himself signed his name, so the sloppiness may be more generally human. With the Kari, the Tav (ת) from Keretim may have been dropped, or they may be two completely different words describing similar but still different army groups. In the case of פלשתי the letter Sheen (ש) has been omitted, and the scholarly argument is that it was done "in order to produce an assonance between the two names. The Semitic languages go in for these sorts of assonances, and they are not infrequent in modern Arab speech; there are other Biblical examples, such as the combination of Shupim (שֻׁפִּ֤ם) and Chupim (חֻפִּם֙) in 1 Chronicles 7:12" - this again from the "sacred texts" document referenced earlier, though I have added the Yehudit.
And if we accept that they are the same people, but that the name has evolved or altered over time or dialect, does it not also invite a third possibility, based on a third example of the same "scribal error" that isn't: that Chet (Hittite) became Cheret (Crete) in exactly the same manner? Which can easily be resolved by then asking: were the Minoans themselves Hittites, colonists of that vast empire, the first known in human history, which stretched through eastern Europe, southern Russian, north Africa, and across the Middle East into the Indus Valley? And the answer to that is... click here for the latest evidence ...
yes they were.
Before we move on, we need to take a longer look at the term Carians, used three times in the Tanach for a section of the royal guard, but not one of the names that occur in any of the Egyptian lists. Were they perhaps another of the sub-groups from Crete? Or did they come from elsewhere? Or was it less an ethnic denotion than a "professional" one - Carians originally being "pirates" or "mercenaries" or "merchant adventurers"? Any or all of these is possible, and further suggestions welcomed.
How does Pelesht become Pelet? Is it the same, thinking as a Londoner, as Saint Chad's Well becoming Shadwell or Mary La Bonne becoming Marylebone? These sorts of modification happen with time, and changes to language, and general human laziness - the town by the Caen Ditch, as it was originally called, ended up as Kentish Town, and Candlewick Street was reduced to Cannon Street. Generally the scholars prefer to call these variations "scribal errors", but Shakespeare, or Shakspere, or Shakespear, are three ways that he himself signed his name, so the sloppiness may be more generally human. With the Kari, the Tav (ת) from Keretim may have been dropped, or they may be two completely different words describing similar but still different army groups. In the case of פלשתי the letter Sheen (ש) has been omitted, and the scholarly argument is that it was done "in order to produce an assonance between the two names. The Semitic languages go in for these sorts of assonances, and they are not infrequent in modern Arab speech; there are other Biblical examples, such as the combination of Shupim (שֻׁפִּ֤ם) and Chupim (חֻפִּם֙) in 1 Chronicles 7:12" - this again from the "sacred texts" document referenced earlier, though I have added the Yehudit.
And if we accept that they are the same people, but that the name has evolved or altered over time or dialect, does it not also invite a third possibility, based on a third example of the same "scribal error" that isn't: that Chet (Hittite) became Cheret (Crete) in exactly the same manner? Which can easily be resolved by then asking: were the Minoans themselves Hittites, colonists of that vast empire, the first known in human history, which stretched through eastern Europe, southern Russian, north Africa, and across the Middle East into the Indus Valley? And the answer to that is... click here for the latest evidence ...
yes they were.
***
Before we move on, we need to take a longer look at the term Carians, used three times in the Tanach for a section of the royal guard, but not one of the names that occur in any of the Egyptian lists. Were they perhaps another of the sub-groups from Crete? Or did they come from elsewhere? Or was it less an ethnic denotion than a "professional" one - Carians originally being "pirates" or "mercenaries" or "merchant adventurers"? Any or all of these is possible, and further suggestions welcomed.
The connexion of Caria with Crete was traditional at the time of Strabo, who writes (XIV. ii. 17) that "the most generally received account is that the Carians, then called Leleges, were governed by Minos, and occupied the islands; then removing to the continent, they obtained possession of a large tract of sea-coast and of the interior, by driving out the former occupiers, who were for the greater part Leleges and Pelasgi."
Strabo also (XIV. ii. 3) quotes Alcaeus's expression "shaking a Carian crest", equivalent to our "preening his peacock's feathers", the Carian term derived from the plumed head-dress of the Pelishtim (which bears a remarkable similarity with the plumed head-dress of the Meso-American warriors, but this doesn't make them Inca or Iroquois, though those two names are quite similar-sounding). And in the same passage, speaking of the city of Caunus (that should be Kaunos), on the shore opposite Rhodes (which should be Rhodos), he tells us that its inhabitants "speak the same language as the Carians, came from Crete, and retained their own laws and customs" - which is as definitive as you can get, but still dosn't necessitate its also being correct. Herodotus (loc. cit.) for one thinks he is wrong, and though he gives us the same tradition as Strabo regarding the origin of the Carians, he insists that they:
"...had come from the islands to the continent. For being subjects of Minos, and anciently called Leleges, they occupied the islands without paying any tribute, so far as I can find by inquiring into the remotest times; but whenever Minos required them, they manned his ships; and as Minos subdued an extensive territory, and was successful in war, the Carians were by far the most famous of all nations in those times. They also introduced three inventions which the Greeks have adopted; of fastening crests on helmets, putting devices on shields, and putting handles on shields. . . . After a long time the Dorians and Ionians drove the Carians out of the islands and so they came to the continent. This is the account that the Cretans give of the Carians, but the Carians do not admit its correctness, considering themselves to be autochthonous inhabitants of the continent . . . and in testimony of this they show an ancient temple of Zeus Carios at Mylasa."And, of course, both sides are capable of being correct, because all nations are comprised of multiple ethnic groups, all of whom claim, let us say, to be Israeli, yet my origins are entirely in Poland, my neighbours on one side came from north Africa, and on the other from Russia, while the family across the street were mixed Yemeni-Iraqi, and let's not get into heated discussion about the abslutely lovely Falashim who just arrived next door to them.
Except that it doesn't - because the chain here is supposed to link Carians with Pelasgians, not with Pelishtim, and so it is entirely possible that it was a Carian shrine, without proving anything Pelasgian at all.
And also it doesn't for two other reasons, which turn out to be the same reason. The first is that Beit Kar is rendered in Yehudit, in a Yehudit text, and has a meaning unconnected with Caria: and no, not "the shrine of the lamb", as per the link, though Kar is used (Deuteronomy 32:14, Isaiah 34:6 et al) for a lamb that has been well fattened up for sacrifice. But that is because the root means "cut" (whence, guess what, the notion of "cutting a covenant", as in Cheret!), and was used for the execution of criminals and war-prisoners - which may be synonymous with the "refugees" and "fugitives" of Judges 12:4 cited above - and presumably the Cherethites of the royal guard had this name for this reason.
The second is that, in the Greek versions of the Samuel text, Beit Kar is rendered either as Βαιθχόρin, or as Βαιθχόρ (Baethchor), the latter being the singular, and that too conveys a possible connection with lamb-sacrifices - the place may well have been an abattoir, managed by the Kohanim, as well as a place de la guillotine.
Among the scholars who have pressed this hypothesis, several appear to expect the rejection of the argument, and the author of the piece on the website of the Russian Orthodox Apostolic Church even goes so far as to posit instead that, if the Cretans and the Carians together were represented by the Zakkala-Pulasati-Washasha league, "we might expect to find some elements from the two important islands of Rhodes and Carpathos, which lie like the piers of a bridge between Crete and the Carian mainland."
Way too bold, I am sorry to reply. Because this stretches things even beyond the "too far-fetched". The Mississauga must be Anglo-Saxons because there is a London in Ontario as well as in England - something of that order. Pulesati sounds a little bit like Pelasgian, so they must be the same people. Ophiussa ditto with Washasha - at least Ach-Ish has some written evidence to question, albeit only in Yehudit.
Which leaves the Zakkala, who we now learn are elsewhere called the Zakkara, though of course those could also be two completely different people (an Ostrogoth is not a Visigoth, as a Mongolian is not mongoloid. Praszka is a village in south-west Poland, but also the Slovak name for Prague). Petrie (Proc. Soc. Bib. Arch., 1941, p. 41.) identifies the Zakkala with Zakro in Crete; but we do not know how old the name Zakro may be - and even if it is correct, then all the various designations may likewise have been Cretan villages: Carians, Pelishtim, et al. "As we have seen that all the other tribes take their name from the coasts of Asia Minor, it is probable that the Zakkala are the Cretan contingents to the coalition: and it may be that in their name we are to see the interpretation of the mysterious Casluhim of the Table of Nations (כסלחים being a mistake for סכל׳)."
Do my interjections sound like a man who is getting frustrated? Apologies if they do, but this is desperately frustrating. A scholar who has mocked another scholar for imagining anagrams (see Shephelah, above), now using the same dejetcer dethmoology himslef, for lack of any better answer. My teacher's note on this occasion reads (once again ): It is perfectly okay, once having looked at all the available data, to admit that "we don't know". But such admissions do not come.
And by the same logic, Saxon is an error for Scot, and Walsall is in Wales. There has to be forensic evidence; that is to say, and very slowly please, labouring each syllable, for-en-sic ev-i-dence. Walt Disney does not own Walmart just because the names sound similar.
"The conclusion indicated therefore is that the Philistines were a people composed of several septs, derived from Crete and the southwest corner of Asia Minor. Their civilization, probably, was derived from Crete, and though there was a large Carian element in their composition, they may fairly be said to have been the people who imported with them to Palestine the memories and traditions of the great days of Minos."With that last paragraph, based on the data given above, I cannot express any disagreement whatsoever.
***
Two other hypotheses nevertheless require consideration. The first is very simple, and can be dismissed in as little time as it takes to mention it:
Herodotus' Philitis (paragraph 128 at the link), known elsewhere as Philition, a shepherd after whom the Egyptians were alleged to have named the Pyramids, has often been quoted in connexion with the Pelishtim, or in this case it would have to be the Philitim; and with the coincidental similarity, various consequent speculations as to whether the Pelishtim were the Hyksos, and thence whether the "People of the Sea" who were finally expelled by Ramessu III were in fact the Hyksos who had already been expelled by Ach-Mousa - a distance of about three hundred years between those two events. I shall return in a moment to the former of them.
The second hypothesis is more complex, though equally wrong, but will require more than a paragraph to explain why. It is known as "The Keftiu Hypothesis":
In the Egyptian records (once again I am essentially copying the ROAC document, but adding my own comments as I go along), there is mention of a region known as Keftiu, which sounds vaguely similar to "Kaphtor" - but then Colombo sounds similar to Colombia, though Sri Lanka is neither in Central America nor mis-spelled as Columbia in Upper West Side New York. Nor is it simply the problem of the final "R" - Keftiu is known to be in Egypt, which would render the Pelishtim native Egyptians, and nothing in the documentary archive has ever so much as hinted at such a possibility; settlers definitely, but not aboriginally.
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The first occurrence - as a hieroglyph which is phoneticised either as k-f-tïw or k-f-ty-w - is on Egyptian monuments of the Eighteenth Dynasty, a period spanning 1550 to 1292 BCE. It is apparently an Egyptian word, and the experts in hieroglyphs have deciphered it as meaning "behind" or "beyond", most likely in the sense of "the Back of Beyond", but comparably with Habiru, the root that branches into Hebrew, and which means "over there". And if this is indeed its meaning, then there is nothing to be gained from seeking it out on ancient maps of Egypt!
Its first appearance as the name of an actual place, and thence of the people of that place, is in the archives of Thutmose III. On the great stele in the Cairo Museum in which the king's mighty deeds are summarised, in the form of a "Hymn to Amon", we can read:
"I came and caused you to smite the western land, and the land of Keftiu and Asi are terrified."
In the Annalistic Inscription on the walls of the Temple of Karnak the name appears in an interesting connexion with maritime enterprise:
"The harbours of the king were supplied with all the good things which he received in Ashur, namely ships of Keftiu, Byblos, and Sektu, cedar-ships laden with poles and masts."
Ashur is what we would call Syria; Byblos is on the Phoenician coast of Syria, north of the Levanon; Sektu has not yet been identified.
"A silver vessel of Keftiu work" was part of the tribute paid to Thutmose by a certain chieftain. Keftiu itself did not send any tribute recorded in the annals; but tribute from the associated (but also unidentified, unless it is a variant of Ashur) land of Asi is enumerated, with copper the most conspicuous item. This in itself proves nothing, for the copper might have been brought to Asi from somewhere else, before it passed into the coffers of the all-devouring Pharaoh: but on the Tell el-Amarna tablets a copper-producing country, with the similar-sounding name Alashia, is prominent, and as Cyprus was the chief if not the only source of copper in the Eastern Mediterranean, the balance of probability seems to be in favour of equating Asi and Alashia alike to Cyprus - and no great distance from Cyprus to the Phoenician coast of Byblos. In this case Keftiu would denote some place, generally speaking, on the island, or in the neighbourhood of Cyprus. There are hundreds of Greek islands to choose from, but none - so runs the hypothesis - quite so proximate as Crete.
The next important sources of information are the wall-paintings in the famous tombs of Sen-mut, the architect to Queen Hatshepsut, as well as those of Rekhmara, the Vizier of Thutmose III, and of Menkheperuseneb, the son of the last-named official, high priest of Amun and royal treasurer. In these wall-paintings we see processions of persons, with non-Semitic, European-looking faces; attired simply in highly embroidered loin-cloths folded round their singularly slender waists, and in high boots or gaiters; with hair dressed in a distinctly non-Semitic manner; bearing vessels and other objects of certain definite types. The tomb of Sen-mut is much damaged, but the Cretan ornaments drawn there are unmistakable (Cretan ornaments, the glories of Minoan civilisation, are utterly unique in the world, and therefore easily recognisable).
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| detail from the tomb of Rekhmara |
In the tomb of Rekhmara , or example, we see the official standing, with five rows of foreigners carrying their gifts, a scribe recording the inventory at the head of each row, and an inscription explaining the scene as the "Reception by the hereditary Prince Rekhmara of the tribute of the south country, with the tribute of Punt, the tribute of Retenu, the tribute of Keftiu, besides the booty of all nations brought by the fame of Thutmose III".
In the tomb of Menkheperuseneb there are again two lines of tribute-bearers, described as "the chief of Keftiu, the chief of Kheta, the chief of Tunip, the chief of Kadesh" (Kadesh is much mentioned in the Mosaic journey); and an inscription asserts that these various chiefs are praising the ruler of the Two Lands (Upper and Lower Egypt), celebrating his victories, and bringing on their backs silver, gold, lapis lazuli, malachite, and all kinds of precious stones.
Excavations on the island of Crete, from the late 19th through the 20th century, have enabled the experts to identify with certainty the sources of the civilisation which these messengers and their gifts represent. Wall-paintings have been found there representing people with the same facial type, the same costume, the same methods of dressing the hair; plus exact equivalents of the fancy vases found in such profusion in Egypt as to leave no doubt that they are there on their native soil. The messengers in those Egyptian frescoes are clearly presenting to Egypt some of the masterpieces of Cretan art; specifically art of the periods known as Late Minoan I (1600-1450 BCE) and II (1450-1350 BCE), the time of the greatest glory of the palace of Knossos; and, given that they are definitely described in the accompanying hieroglyphs as messengers of Keftiu, it follows that Keftiu was at least a centre of distribution for the products of Cretan civilisation, and therefore a place under the influence of Crete, even if it wasn't actually the island of Crete itself.
Nor should we be surprised - American goods are on sale today in London and Paris, just as Chinese handbags can be found on New York's Canal Street. The Minoans were one of the world's major trading empires. We can easily imagine the sheikh of Qatar giving his friend the tribal chieftain of Lsoto a Pierre Cardin gown and a bottle of Chanel No 5 perfume as a gift for his wife's birthday, and no one is going to jump to any anthropological or archaeological conclusions about the French being an African or Middle Eastern nation.
Nevertheless, the hypothesis now enters very dangerous water, this is "very clear evidence of a back-wash of Egyptian influence on Cretan civilization at the time of the coming to Egypt of the Keftian envoys, all of which turns the probability into as near a certainty as it is at present possible to attain." Surely the back-wash is the other way around: the Egyptians wanting high-quality Cretan goods, whether as tribute from a conquered people or simply as fashion-items?
And for a second "however" (there has always to be at least one "however" in any act of serious scholarship; two is undergraduate level, three a PhD)... even before the discoveries of the last few decades - the ROAC document agrees - "it was obvious that the Keftiu of Rekhmara's tomb were as unlike Phoenicians as they could possibly be; and their gifts were also incompatible with what was known of Phoenician civilisation" (I have altered the American "civilization" to the English "civilisation" throughout; it is not a "scribal error").
In modern times, even before the days of scientific archaeology, the equation of Kaphtor = Crete has always been the theory most in favour. Apart from Yirme-Yahu's (Jeremiah's) description of the place as an "island" - which as we have already mentioned is not sufficiently conclusive for the howeverists - the obvious equation "Cherethites = Keretim = Cretans" would strike any student.
In ancient times, indeed, the linking of Philistia with Crete was well in place. Tacitus clearly mis-heard it, the passage in "Hist. v. 2" confuses the Jews with the Pelishtim, and makes the former the Cretan refugees. The Cretan King ΜΕΙΝΩ (Minos) is even named on some of the coins of Azah (Gaza), which was not called Azah anyway by the Pelishti settlers, but rather Minoa, which is as much of a give-away as a historian could dare to dream of; and its god Marna was equated with "Zeus the Cretean born".
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Were the Philistines Philistines?
A play on words that someone with as bad a sense of humour as mine was bound to include eventually. A Philistine, today (not a Palestinian, which is an entirely different race and culture) is a Yahoo, a '60s abstract artist, an idol-worshipper of Premier League footballers, a person who prefers TV drama to Shakespearian tragedy, who fantasises one day being a guest performer on Celebrity Clog-Dancing, but who wouldn't go to an exhibition of Minoan culture if you gave him free tickets to Glastonbury as a reward. A Philistine, back then, clearly was Minoan culture, and Minoan culture, until the latter-day equivalent of the modern "philistines" came along and destroyed it for no other bad reason than loot and pillage, Minoan culture was the highest point of cultural achievement yet reached by Homo Sapiensish.
It is not until the beginning of Late Minoan III, after the sack of Knossos, around 1400 BCE, that Minoan culture actually took root in the eastern lands of the Mediterranean, in places such as Cyprus, and along the coasts of Asia Minor and Syria - presumably as a direct consequence of the sudden easy availability of previously unaffordable luxury items. The very narrowness of the area in which "Mycenaean" art has been found is sufficient to demonstrate that its distribution cannot have been the result of peaceful trade. The Hittite domination of Central and Western Asia Minor was still strong enough to prevent foreign settlers from establishing themselves in those provinces: in consequence Mycenaean civilisation is absent there.
Which paragraph requires us to add another caveat, because our most recent archaeology has identified the Cretans as originally a Hittite people. It should not be an issue though: English culture is rooted in Norman culture, but the British Empire was at loggerheads with the French empire, centuries further on. There is no reason for the Phoenician Hittites and the Cretan Hittites to be any more friendly than were, say, the Phoenician Greeks and the Trojan Greeks.
More significant is the confirmation that the spread of the debased Cretan culture over southern Asia Minor, Cyprus and north-west Ashur, which took place between 1400 and 1200 BCE, must have been due to a significant period of human transmigration, and not just because of (though it may also have been one of the reasons for) the sack of Knossos; and this remains true, whether those who carried the Cretan art were themselves refugees from Crete, or the conquerors of Crete seeking yet further lands to spoil, or simply merchants with illicit goods to fence.
In short, the sack of Knossos and the breaking of the Cretan power was an episode - it may even have been the crucial and causative episode - in a general disturbance witnessed over the entire Eastern Mediterranean basin between the 14th and the 12th centuries BCE. The mutual relations of the different communities were as delicately poised as in mid 20th century Europe: any abnormal motion in one part of the system tended to upset the balance of the whole. Egypt was internally in a ferment, thanks to the eccentricities of the idiosyncratic Pharaoh Akhenaten (he of the sun-disc, the earliest known form of monotheism), and was thus unable to protect her foreign possessions; the nomads of Arabia, the Sutu and Habiru, were pressing from the South and East on both Kena'an and Ashur; the dispossessed Cretans were crowding to the neighbouring lands on the south and east - the might of the Hittites, themselves destined to fall to pieces not long afterwards, blocked progress northwards. It is little wonder that disorders of various kinds resulted from the consequent congestion.
It is just in this time of confusion that we begin to hear, vaguely at first, of a number of little nationalities, people never definitely assigned to any particular place, but appearing now here, now there, fighting sometimes with, sometimes against, the Egyptians and their allies. We first meet these tribes in the Tell el-Amarna letters. The king of Alashia (we are taking this to be Cyprus) complains that his coasts are being raided by the Lukku (probably the Lycians), who yearly plunder one small town after another. That indefatigable correspondent, Rib-Addi, in two letters, complains that one Biḫura has sent people of the Sutu to his town and slain certain Sherdan men - apparently Egyptian mercenaries in the town guard; Sherdan is likely to mean people from Sardis, which we would call Sardinia. In a damaged section of another letter Rib-Addi mentions the Sherdan again, in connexion with an attempt on his own life. Then Abi-Milki reports that "the king of Danuna is dead, and his brother has become king after him, and his land is at peace". It is almost the only word of peace in the whole dreary Tell el-Amarna record. But it is also the naming of a previously unnamed people: the Danuna.
The next time we hear of these tribes, they are in league with the Hittites against Ramessu II, after he set out in 1333 BCE to recover the ground lost to Egypt during the futile reign of Akhenaten. Ramessu's army included mercenaries, named as the Šȝrḍȝhȝ (Sherdan), of whom we have heard already in the Tell el-Amarna letters. These people were evidently ready to sell their services to whoever paid them, for we find them later operating against their former Egyptian masters (the same is true of the Taliban and al-Qaeda today, so we have to consider the possibility of a political rather than a financial motive to the change).
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| Menneptah "Israel" stele |
About thirty years later, when Merneptah was on the throne, there was a revolt by the Libyans, and an attack on Egypt, supported by allies from what were called "the Peoples of the Sea". Though the Pelishtim do not actually appear among the names of these people, it is likely that some refugees from Crete had found asylum further west than Egypt, and may well have been among the rebels. Either way, the history of this invasion is one of the most important in their post-Cretan history. The details are recorded in four inscriptions set up by the king after his victory over the invaders, one of which is the famous "Yisra-El" stele, the one that states that "Yisra-El is laid waste, its seed is not", which is also the earliest known reference to a land or people called Yisra-El.
Ramessu III came to the throne about 1200 BCE, the period of the Book of Judges according to the chronology of the Tanach. Another Libyan invasion menaced the land in his fifth year, but he was successful in beating that back too. War-galleys from the northern countries, especially the Purasati and the Zakkala, accompanied the invading Libyans - we need to question, as above, whether Purasati was yet one more variant on Pelishtim - but this latter element in the assault was only a foretaste of the yet more formidable attack which they were destined to make on Egypt three years later - which is to say in (probably) 1192 BCE.
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| to enlarge the map, click here |
The inscription describing this war is engraved on the second pylon of the temple of Medinet Habu. It begins with a rather dreary encomium of the Pharaoh, and ends with a long hymn of triumph, the historical events being recorded in the intervening hieroglyphs, and pictured in the representations of the battles that accompany them. The inscription records how the Northerners were disturbed, and proceeded to move eastward and southward, swamping in turn the land of the Hittites, Carchemish, Arvad, Cyprus, Ashur, and other places in the same region - the description places these Northerners somewhere between the Adriatic and the Black Sea, possibly in what is now the Balkans, more likely in what is now Romania or Bulgaria.
We can thus picture a great southward march through Urartu (Anatolia), Ashur and Kena'an. Or, better still, we should imagine a two-flanked advance, a land-based march, which included two-wheeled ox-carts for the women and children, and a sea expedition, in which no doubt the spare stores would be carried more easily than on the rough Syrian roads. Because this was a Mosaic exodus, not Alexandrian empire-building; this was Schengen in the 13th century BCE, the movement of peoples in search of jobs, not kingdoms. And it may well have been the same mass-migration which brought the Celtic peoples into north Africa, and thence into Spain, France and Britain!
"With hearts confident and full of plans", as the inscription says, they advanced by land and by sea to Egypt. But Ramessu was ready to "trap them like wild-fowl". He strengthened his Syrian frontier, and at the same time fortified the harbours or river mouths "with warships, galleys, and barges". The actual battles are not described, though they are pictured in the accompanying cartoons: but the successful issue of these military preparations is graphically recorded.
"Those who reached my boundary," says the king, "their seed is not: their heart and their soul are finished for ever and ever. As for those who had assembled before them on the sea . . . they were dragged, overturned, and laid low upon the beach: slain and made heaps from end to end of their galleys, while all their possessions were cast upon the water."
Many are they, in contemporary Europe, who would like to respond in similar fashion to the boat-loads now coming back from those north African "sea-coasts".
The scenes in which the land and naval engagements are represented are of great importance, in that they are contemporary records of the general appearance of the invaders and of their equipment. The naval battle, the earliest of which any pictorial record remains, is graphically portrayed. We see the Egyptian archers sweeping the crews of the invading vessels almost out of existence, and then closing in and finishing the work with their swords; one of the northerners' vessels is capsized, and those of its crew who swim to land are taken captive by the Egyptians waiting on the shore. In later scenes we see the prisoners paraded before the king, and the tale of the victims counted by enumerating the hands chopped off the bodies.
There is a passage in the "Great Harris Papyrus", which also contains a record of the reign of Ramessu III; it adds very little to the information afforded us by the Medinet Habu inscription, but it does remention the Danuna, who we encountered a few paragraphs back, this time naming them the "Danaiuna", and describing them as "islanders". Are these an Egyptian form of Danaans? The text in about two book-pages time will confirm that it is; and if so, is this also an account of the arrival of the same people in Kena'an, where they are named the tribe of Dan? Given the dates, this cannot be the Av-Ramic arrival from Padan Aram, nor the return of Ya'akov with his supposedly Danite son - too late for either of them.
In the Medinet Habu inscription we are told that the Purasati and the Zakkala were "made ashes", while the Shekelesh (called in the Harris Papyrus Shardani, who thus once more appear against Egypt; but probably they were from the town known to the Romans as Sagalassus) and the Washasha were settled in strongholds and bound. From all these people the king claims to have levied taxes in clothing and in grain.
As we have seen, the march of the coalition had been successful until their arrival in Egypt. The Hittites and North Syrians were so crippled by them that Ramessu took the opportunity to extend the frontier of Egyptian territory northward. We need not follow this campaign, which does not directly concern us: but it has this indirect bearing on the subject, that the twofold ravaging of Ashur, before and after the great victory of Ramessu, left it weakened and opened the door for the colonisation of its coast-lands by the beaten remnant of the invading army. The final ending of the Hittite epoch which had dominated this world for centuries, brought about, ironically, by the destruction of Knossos, the highest point of culture achieved by Hittite peoples.
Once again I am grateful to the author of the ROAC for freely supplying so much detailed research.
Once again I am grateful to the author of the ROAC for freely supplying so much detailed research.
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Of all the names that have come up in our survey of the Egyptian inscriptions, five have been left standing outside the deputyhead's office like naughty schoolboys waiting to be dealt with later (they are to be punished for simply lifting most of their essays from the Internet and presenting it in their own words, which is fine, but you have to argue and confirm, boys, even disagree, and not just take it as gospel and recite it as catechism): the Danunu, the Ekwesh, the Pulasati, the Zakkala, and the Washasha. The first two of these, it is generally agreed, are Egyptian pronunciations of those Greeks whom Homer and Vergil called the Danaoi (Danaans) and the Achaeans, and like "Yisra-El" in the Merneptah stele, these are the first known appearances in historic record of any of these names. The Pulasati are unquestionably to be equated to the future Pelishtim, north of whom, on the Palestinian coast, Macalister, the author of the ROAC document, insists that the Zakkala will be found - though I can find no Biblical evidence to this effect. The Washasha remain obscure, both in origin and fate; but a suggestion will be made presently regarding them.
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A further chapter, currently in progress, on the relationship between the Pelishtim and the Beney Yisra-El as depicted through the Tanach, will be added at some later date.
Copyright © 2020 David Prashker
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