The Oxford History of the Biblical World

by Coogan, Michael D.

  During this stage the Philistines have much the same material culture as other Sea Peoples. The process of acculturation has not yet begun, which will lead to regional differences among the various groups of Sea Peoples. In their new settlements along the eastern Mediterranean coast and along the coast of Cyprus, the new immigrants share a common pottery tradition, brought or borrowed from Aegean Late Bronze Age culture. It is a style of Mycenaean pottery, locally made, which is usually classified as Mycenaean IIIC:lb (hereafter Myc IIIC).

  Along with this shared potting tradition, the Philistines bring other new cultural traditions to Canaan: domestic and public architecture focusing on the hearth; weaving with unperforated loom weights; swine herding and culinary preference for pork; drinking preference for wine mixed with water; and religious rituals featuring female figurines of the mother-goddess type. Most of these cultural elements are found in the earlier Mycenaean civilization, which flourished during the Late Bronze Age on the Greek mainland, in the islands, especially Crete (Caphtor), and at some coastal enclaves of Anatolia. Around the Philistine heartland, Egypto-Canaanite cultural patterns persist well into the twelfth century as Egyptians garrisoned in predominately Canaanite population centers try to contain the Philistines.

  Stage 2 (ca. 1150-1050 BCE). With the breakdown of Egyptian hegemony in Canaan after the death of Rameses III (1153 BCE), the Philistines begin to expand in all directions beyond their original territory, north to the Tel Aviv area, east into the foothills (Shephelah), and southeast into the Wadi Gaza and Beer-sheba basin. Their characteristic pottery is known as Philistine bichrome ware, which, like other items, shows signs of contact and acculturation with Canaanite traditions.

  Early in this stage, the Israelite tribe of Dan seems to have been forced to migrate from the coastal plain and interior to the far north, though remnants of that tribal group remained in the foothills. The Samson saga (Judg. 13-16) illustrates limited Philistine and Israelite interaction along the boundaries shared by two distinctive cultures, Semitic and early Greek.

  Stage 3 (ca. 1050-950 BCE). Through acculturation, Philistine painted pottery loses more and more of its distinctive Aegean characteristics. The forms become debased, but they are still recognizable. The once-complex geometrical compositions and graceful motifs of water birds and fishes of stage 2 bichrome ware are reduced to simple spiral decorations (if any at all) painted over red slip, which is frequently burnished.

  This process of acculturation in the material repertoire does not, however, signal assimilation or loss of ethnic identity among the Philistines. As a polity they are never stronger. During the latter half of the eleventh century BCE their expansion into the highlands triggers numerous conflicts and outright war with the tribes of Israel. Philistine military advances into the Israelite highlands are so successful, and the crisis among the Israelites so great, that the latter demand the new institution of kingship.

  After the investiture of the successful warlord David as king over a fragile yet united kingdom, the tide of battle eventually turned against the Philistines. By 975 BCE David and his armies have pushed the Philistines back into the coastal territory controlled by the pentapolis, finally completing the Israelite “conquest” of Canaan.

  Philistine Pottery

  The most ubiquitous and most distinctive element of Philistine culture, and a key in delineating the stages summarized above, is their pottery. The Myc IIIB pottery of the Late Bronze Age was imported into the Levant, whereas all the Myc IIIC wares found in the pentapolis in the early Iron Age were made locally. When Myc IIIC (stage 1) pottery from Ashdod and Ekron in Philistia or from Kition, Enkomi, and Palaeopaphos in Cyprus is tested by neutron activation, the results are the same: it was made from the local clays. This locally manufactured pottery was not the product of a few Mycenaean potters or their workshops, brought from abroad to meet indigenous demands for Mycenaean domestic and decorated wares, as the large quantities found at coastal sites from Tarsus to Ashkelon demonstrate. At Ras Ibn Hani in Syria and at Ekron, locally made Mycenaean pottery constitutes at least half of the repertoire, at Ashdod about 30 percent. Local Canaanite pottery, principally in the forms of store jars, juglets, bowls, lamps, and cooking pots, makes up the rest of the assemblage in the pentapolis.

  The appearance in quantity of Myc IIIC in Cyprus and the Levant heralds the arrival of the Sea Peoples. At Ashdod, Ashkelon, and Ekron new settlements characterized by Myc IIIC pottery were built on the charred ruins of the previous Late Bronze Age II Canaanite, or Egypto-Canaanite, cities. These Philistine cities were much larger than those they replaced. This new urban concept and its impact on the landscape will be discussed further below.

  Stage 2 Philistine pottery is a distinctive bichrome ware, painted with red and black decoration, a regional style that developed after the Philistines had lived for a generation or two in Canaan. To the basic Mycenaean forms in their repertoire they added others from Canaan and Cyprus, and they adapted decorative motifs from Egypt and a centuries-old bichrome technique from Canaan.

  This bichrome ware was once thought the hallmark of the first Philistines to reach the Levant, early in the reign of Rameses III. An earlier contingent of Sea Peoples had fought with the Libyans against the Egyptian pharaoh Merneptah, but the Philistines were not among them. This pre-Philistine or first wave of Sea Peoples supposedly brought the Myc IIIC potting traditions to the shores of Canaan, where they founded the first cities on exactly the same sites later identified with the Philistine pentapolis.

  But the battle reliefs of Merneptah make it clear that Ashkelon, the seaport of the pentapolis, was inhabited by Canaanites, not Sea Peoples, during that pharaoh’s reign. The simplest explanation is that the confederation of Sea Peoples, including the Philistines, mentioned in texts and depicted in reliefs of Rameses III were the bearers of Myc IIIC pottery traditions, which they continued to make when they settled in Canaan. The stylistic development from simple monochrome to more elaborate bichrome was an indigenous change two or three generations after the Philistines’ arrival in southern Canaan. The eclectic style of bichrome pottery resulted not from a period of peregrinations around the Mediterranean during the decades between Merneptah and Rameses III, but from a process of Philistine acculturation, involving the adaptation and absorption of many traditions to be found among the various peoples living in Canaan. This acculturation process continued among the Philistines throughout their nearly six-hundred-year history in Palestine.

  As one moves from core to periphery in the decades following stage 1, the material culture of the Philistines shows evidence of spatial and temporal distancing from the original templates and concepts. Failure to understand the acculturation process has led to the inclusion of questionable items in the Philistine corpus of material culture remains, such as the anthropoid coffins (or worse, to a denial of a distinct core of Philistine cultural remains) just two or three generations after their arrival in Canaan at the beginning of stage 2 (ca. 1150 BCE).

  Shortly before the final destruction of Ugarit, a Syrian named Bay or Baya, “chief of the bodyguard of pharaoh of Egypt,” sent a letter in Akkadian to Ammurapi, the last king of Ugarit. Bay served under both Siptah (1194-1188) and Tewosret (1188-1186). His letter arrived at Ugarit while Myc IIIB pottery was still in use. At nearby Ibn Hani, however, the Sea Peoples built over the charred ruins of the king’s seaside palace, which contained Myc IIIB ware. More than half of the ceramic yield from their new settlement was Myc IIIC pottery, a proportion comparable to that of stage 1 settlements in Philistia. The final destruction of Ugarit, as well as of many other coastal cities in the eastern Mediterranean, occurred only a decade or so before the events recorded by Rameses III (1184-1153) in his eighth year:

  The foreign countries [Sea Peoples] made a conspiracy in their islands. All at once the lands were removed and scattered in the fray. No land could stand before their arms, from Hatti, Kode [Cilicia], Carchemish, Arzawa, and Alashiya [Cyprus] on, being cut off at [one time]. A cam
p [was set up] in one place in Amor [Amurru]. They desolated its people, and its land was like that which has never come into being. They were coming forward toward Egypt, while the flame was prepared before them. Their confederation [of Sea Peoples] was the Philistines, Tjeker [Sikils], Shekelesh, Denye(n) and Weshesh, lands united. (Trans. John Wilson; p. 262 in James B. Pritchard, ed., Ancient Near Eastern Texts Relating to the Old Testament, Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1969)

  Seaborne Migration

  The Sea Peoples established beachheads along the entire coast of the eastern Mediterranean. Their route can be traced by the synchronous destructions of Late Bronze Age coastal cities from Tarsus to Ashkelon. The same pattern of devastation is found in several cities of Cyprus, which the raiders could have reached only by ship.

  The renaming of whole territories after various groups of Sea Peoples provides another measure of their impact. After the Sea Peoples’ invasion of Cyprus, its name was changed from Alashiya to Yadanana, “the isle of the Danunians/Danaoi/Denyen. ” The Philistines bequeathed their own name to Philistia (and later to all of Palestine). The Sikils, who settled at Dor, also sailed west and gave their name to Sicily, and the Sherden, who probably established a beachhead in Acco, gave theirs to Sardinia.

  On Cyprus the sequence of beachheads followed by stage 1 settlements is remarkably similar to those in the Levant. New cities, with Myc IIIC pottery, were built over the ruins of Late Bronze Age cities, many of which had received the last of the Greek imported pottery known as Myc IIIB. On the coastal promentories the newcomers built fortified strongholds, such as Maa and Pyla. Farther inland, the Sea Peoples founded new settlements, such as Sinda and Athienou.

  Cypriot archaeologists invoke the Achaeans or Danaoi of Homeric epic as the agents of culture change in Cyprus; in the Levant, the same change is ascribed to the Sea Peoples. Both agents participated in the event recorded by Rameses III and should be related to the same confederacy of Sea Peoples, or Mycenaean Greeks, who invaded the coastlands and the island of Alashiya (Cyprus) around 1185-1175.

  Correspondence between the king of Cyprus and the king of Ugarit can be correlated with the archaeology of destruction to provide vivid details of the Sea Peoples’ onslaught. The capital of a Syrian coastal kingdom under the suzerainty of the Hittites, Ugarit had over 150 villages in its hinterland and a population of 25,000, nearly the same as that of Philistia during stage 1. Its king also controlled a nearby port and had a seaside palace at Ras Ibn Hani.

  During the final days of Ugarit, letters (in Akkadian cuneiform) exchanged between its king, Ammurapi, and the king of Cyprus show how desperate the situation was, as well as the source of the trouble. The Cypriot king writes to Ammurapi:

  What have you written to me “enemy shipping has been sighted at sea”? Well, now, even if it is true that enemy ships have been sighted, be firm. Indeed then, what of your troops, your chariots, where are they stationed? Are they stationed close at hand or are they not? Fortify your towns, bring the troops and the chariots into them, and wait for the enemy with firm feet. (Sandars, 142-43)

  Ammurapi replies:

  My father, the enemy ships are already here, they have set fire to my towns and have done very great damage in the country. My father, did you not know that all my troops were stationed in the Hittite country, and that all my ships are still stationed in Lycia and have not yet returned? So that the country is abandoned to itself…. Consider this my father, there are seven enemy ships that have come and done very great damage. (Sandars, 143)

  An earlier text explains to whom the marauding ships belong. The Hittite king writes (also in Akkadian) to a veteran official of Ammurapi about hostage taking:

  From the sun, the great king, to the prefect: Now, with you, the king, your master, is young. He does not know anything. I gave orders to him regarding Lanadusu, who was taken captive by the Shikalayu, who live on ships. Now, I have sent to you Nisahili, he is an administrative official with me, with instructions. Now, you (are to) send Lanadusu, whom the Shikalayu captured, here to me. I will ask him about the matter of the Shikila and, afterwards, he can return to Ugarit. (trans. Gregory Mobley)

  The Sikils, “who live on ships,” were sea traders who were terrorizing Ugarit before it fell to them about 1185 BCE, not long before events recorded by Rameses III, who also mentions the Sikils (Tjeker) as part of the Sea Peoples’ confederation.

  In the Egyptian reliefs of the naval battle, the Sea Peoples’ ships are oared galleys with single sails and with finials in the shape of water birds at prow and stern. These resemble the “bird-boat” painted on a krater from Tiryns, another clue to their Aegean origin.

  The Sikils then sailed down the coast and landed at Dor, identified as a city of the Sikils in the eleventh-century Egyptian tale of Wen-Amun. They destroyed the Late Bronze Age Canaanite city and constructed a much larger one over its ruins. During stage 1 the Sikils fortified Dor with ramparts and glacis, and created an excellent port facility for their ships.

  All of this evidence—their beachheads, the coastal pattern of destruction (followed in many cases by new cities with Myc IIIC pottery), references to living on ships, and illustrations of their craft—leave no doubt that the Sea Peoples, including the Philistines, had the necessary maritime technology and transport capacity to effect a major migration and invasion by sea.

  Philistines and Egyptians

  From Egyptian texts and wall reliefs at Medinet Habu, a reconstruction of the battle between Rameses III and the Sea Peoples and its aftermath has been developed that has attained nearly canonical status. According to this reconstruction, the Sea Peoples came to the Levant by land and by sea. The reliefs show whole families trekking overland in ox-drawn carts, and warriors in horse-drawn chariots fighting with the Egyptians in a land battle on the northern borders of Canaan. A flotilla of their ships even penetrated the Nile Delta before Rameses III repelled them. After his victory, Rameses III engaged troops of the defeated Sea Peoples as mercenaries for his garrisons in Canaan and Nubia, and reasserted Egyptian sovereignty over southern Canaan. Egypt once again controlled the vital military and commercial highway successively known as the Ways of Horus, the Way of the Land of the Philistines (Exod. 13.17), and the Way of the Sea (Isa. 9.1).

  Some Egyptologists have rightly challenged this reconstruction. The wall reliefs of Rameses III show only one scene of departure before the land battle and only one scene of victory celebration after the sea battle. The Sea Peoples threatened the Egyptians at the mouth of the Nile, not in far-off northern Canaan. If the Philistines had settled in southern Canaan before 1175 BCE, when the battle for the Nile Delta took place, both the chariotry and the oxcarts could have come from their settlements there; they would not need to be interpreted as transport for a long overland trek of Sea Peoples through Anatolia into the Levant. As we have seen, they migrated by sea.

  The hypothesis that Rameses III reestablished Egyptian control over Canaan and used Philistine mercenaries in his garrisons there was apparently bolstered by the evidence of the clay anthropoid coffins found at such Egyptian strongholds as Bethshan, Tell el-Farah (S), and Lachish. At Tell el-Farah (S), the discovery of large bench tombs with anthropoid clay sarcophagi, Egyptian artifacts, and Philistine bichrome pottery led the excavator, Sir Flinders Petrie, to conclude that these were the sepulchers of the “five lords of the Philistines.” Other scholars proposed Cypriot and Aegean prototypes for the style of the bench tombs themselves. One of the anthropoid clay coffins from Beth-shan had a feathered headdress, which was compared with the headgear of the Philistines, Denyen, and Sikils shown on the Medinet Habu reliefs. But in the 1970s excavations at the cemetery of Deir el-Balah, southwest of Gaza, uncovered dozens more of these clay coffins dating to the Late Bronze Age, a century or two before the Sea Peoples arrived in Canaan.

  The ideal for Egyptians living abroad was to be buried back in Egypt. However, with the expansion of the New Kingdom empire, more Egyptian troops were stationed abroad,
in both Canaan and Nubia, and it became impractical to return every Egyptian corpse to the homeland. But Egyptians who died outside Egypt could at least be buried abroad in suitable containers, such as anthropoid clay coffins.

  Further support for interpreting the anthropoid clay coffins as Egyptian comes from a sarcophagus excavated at Lachish, in a tomb dating to the time of Rameses III. On this coffin is a depiction of the Egyptian deities Isis and Nephthys, along with an inscription that some have labeled Egyptian pseudohieroglyphs or Philistine gibberish. But some Egyptologists have interpreted the text as a perfectly good Egyptian funerary inscription: “Thou givest water [a traditional mortuary offering] (of the) West [the region of the dead] to the majesty (of) thy […].”

  Thus the most parsimonious hypothesis is that the anthropoid sarcophagi found in Canaan in the Late Bronze and the Iron I periods belonged to Egyptians stationed there, and should not be connected with the Sea Peoples and their burial customs. When so interpreted, these coffins are important evidence for delineating cultural (and hence political) boundaries between Canaanite territory still under Egyptian control and Philistia.

  During stage 1 the Philistines occupied a large region in southern Canaan, taking it from the Canaanites and their overlords, the Egyptians. The boundaries of this territory can be plotted by using settlements whose ceramic repertoire has more than 25 percent Myc IIIC pottery. This rectangular coastal strip was about 20 kilometers (12 miles) wide and 50 kilometers (31 miles) long and had an area of 1,000 square kilometers (386 square miles), and the Philistines located their five major cities at key positions along its perimeter. Unlike the Egyptians, the Philistines did not govern their territory by installing military garrisons within Canaanite population centers. Rather, they completely destroyed those centers, and then built their own new cities on the ruins of the old. This wholesale takeover must have resulted in the death or displacement of much of the Late Bronze Age population.