by
Damien F. Mackey
Those whom Sir Arthur Evans fancifully named ‘the Minoans’,
based on the popular legend of King Minos, son of Zeus,
are biblically and historically attested as the Philistines.
Gavin Menzies has followed Arthur Evans in
labelling as “Minoans” the great sea-faring and trading nation that is the very
focal point of his fascinating book, The Lost Empire of Atlantis: History's Greatest
Mystery Revealed (HarperCollins, 2011). Though the ex-submariner, Menzies, can sometimes
‘go a bit overboard’ - or, should I say, he can become a bit ‘airborne’ (and don’t
we all?) - he is often highly informative and is always eminently readable.
According to the brief summary of the book that we
find at Menzies’ own site: http://www.gavinmenzies.net/lost-empire-atlantis/the-book/
... the Minoans. It’s
long been known that this extraordinary civilisation, with its great palaces
and sea ports based in Crete and nearby Thera (now called Santorini), had a
level of sophistication that belied its place in the Bronze Age world but never
before has the extent of its reach been uncovered.
Through painstaking research, including recent DNA evidence,
Menzies has pieced together an incredible picture of a cultured people who
traded with India and Mesopotamia, Africa and Western Europe, including Britain
and Ireland, and even sailed to North America.
Menzies reveals that copper found at Minoan sites can only
have come from Lake Superior, and that it was copper, combined with tin from
Cornwall and elsewhere, to make bronze, that gave the Minoans their
wealth. He uses knowledge gleaned as a naval captain to explore ancient
shipbuilding and navigation techniques and explain how the Minoans were able to
travel so far. He looks at why the Minoan empire, which was 1500 years
ahead of China and Greece in terms of science, architecture, art and language,
disappeared so abruptly and what led to her destruction. ...
[End of quote]
The Philistines
Thanks to Dr. Donovan Courville (The Exodus Problem and its Ramifications, Loma
Linda CA, 1971), we can trace the Philistines - through their distinctive pottery
- all the way back to Neolithic Knossos (Crete). And this, despite J. C.
Greenfield’s assertion: “There is no evidence for a
Philistine occupation of Crete, nor do the facts about the Philistines, known
from archaeological and literary sources, betray any relationship between them
and Crete” (IDB, 1962, vol. 1, p. 534).
The distinctive type of pottery
that Courville has identified as belonging to the biblical Philistines is well described
in this quote that he has taken from Kathleen Kenyon:
The pottery does in fact provide very
useful evidence about culture. The first interesting point is the wealth of a
particular class of painted pottery …. The decoration is bichrome, nearly
always red and black, and the most typical vessels have a combination of
metopes enclosing a bird or a fish with geometric
decoration such as a “Union Jack” pattern or a Catherine wheel. At Megiddo
the first bichrome pottery is attributed to Stratum X, but all the published
material comes from tombs intrusive into this level. It is in fact
characteristic of Stratum IX. Similar
pottery is found in great profusion in southern Palestine … Very similar
vessels are also found on the east coast
of Cyprus and on the coastal Syrian sites as far north as Ras Shamra.
[Emphasis Courville’s]
By contrast, the pottery of the ‘Sea Peoples’ - a maritime
confederation confusingly identified sometimes as the early biblical Philistines,
their pottery like, but not identical to the distinctive Philistine pottery as
described above - was Aegean (Late Helladic), not Cretan.
The indispensable “Table of Nations” (Genesis 10),
informs us that the Philistines were a Hamitic people, descendants of Ham’s “son”,
Mizraim (or Egypt) (v. 6).
Genesis 10:13: “Mizraim was the father of the Ludites, Anamites, Lehabites,
Naphtuhites, Pathrusites, Kasluhites (from whom the Philistines came) and
Caphtorites”.
These earliest Philistines would be represented by
the users of this distinctive pottery at Neolithic I level Knossos (Dr. Courville):
With the evidences thus far noted before
us, we are now in a position to examine the archaeological reports from Crete
for evidences of the early occupation of this site by the Caphtorim (who are
either identical to the Philistines of later Scripture or are closely related
to them culturally). We now have at least an approximate idea of the nature of
the culture for which we are looking ….
… we can hardly be wrong in recognizing
the earliest occupants of Crete as
the people who represented the beginnings of the people later known in
Scripture as the Philistines, by virtue of the stated origin of the Philistines
in Crete. This concept holds regardless of the name that may be applied to this
early era by scholars.
The only site at which Cretan
archaeology has been examined for its earliest occupants is at the site of the
palace at Knossos. At this site deep test pits were dug into the earlier
occupation levels. If there is any archaeological evidence available from Crete
for its earliest period, it should then be found from the archaeology of these
test pits. The pottery found there is described by Dr. Furness, who is cited by
Hutchinson.
“Dr. Furness divides the early Neolithic
I fabrics into (a) coarse unburnished ware and (b) fine burnished ware, only
differing from the former in that the pot walls are thinner, the clay better
mixed, and the burnish more carefully executed. The surface colour is usually
black, but examples also occur of red, buff or yellow, sometimes brilliant red
or orange, and sometimes highly variegated sherds”.
A relation was observed between the
decoration of some of this pottery from early Neolithic I in Crete with that at
the site of Alalakh ….
Continuing to cite Dr. Furness,
Hutchinson commented:
Dr. Furness justly observes that “as the
pottery of the late Neolithic phases seems to have developed at Knossos without
a break, it is to the earliest that one must look for evidence of origin of
foreign connections”, and she therefore stresses the importance of a small
group with plastic decoration that seems mainly confined to the Early Neolithic I levels, consisting of
rows of pellets immediately under the rim (paralleled on burnished pottery of Chalcolithic [predynastic] date from Gullucek in the Alaca [Alalakh]
district of Asia Minor). [Emphasis
Courville’s]
While the Archaeological Ages of early
Crete cannot with certainty be correlated with the corresponding eras on the
mainland, it would seem that Chalcolithic on the mainland is later than Early
Neolithic in Crete; hence any influence of one culture on the other is more
probably an influence of early Cretan culture on that of the mainland. This is
in agreement with Scripture to the effect that the Philistines migrated from
Crete to what is now the mainland at some point prior to the time of Abraham.[[1]]
[End of quotes]
Late Chalcolithic,
we have already learned, pertains to the era of Abram (Abraham), when the Philistines
were apparently in southern Canaan:
Better archaeological model for Abraham
We next find the Philistines in the land of Palestine
(the Gaza region) at the time of Joshua. Was there a Philistine migration out
of Crete (“Caphtor”) at the time of the Exodus migration out of Egypt? (Amos
9:7): “Did I not bring Israel up from Egypt, the
Philistines from Caphtor and the Arameans from Kir?”
Dr. John Bimson becomes interesting at this point,
as previously I have written:
Here I take up Bimson’s account of this
biblical tradition:[2]
There is a tradition preserved in Joshua
13:2-3 and Judges 3:3 that the Philistines were established in Canaan by the
end of the Conquest, and that the Israelites had been unable to oust them from
the coastal plain …. There is also an indication that the main Philistine
influx had not occurred very much prior to the Conquest. As we shall see below,
the Philistines are the people referred to as “the Caphtorim, who came from
Caphtor” in Deuteronomy 2:23 … where it is said that a people called the Avvim
originally occupied the region around Gaza, and that the Caphtorim “destroyed
them and settled in their stead”. Josh. 13:2-3 mentions Philistines and Avvim
together as peoples whom the Israelites had failed to dislodge from southern
Canaan. This suggests that the Philistines had not completely replaced the
Avvim by the end of Joshua’s life. I would suggest, in fact, that the war
referred to in Ex. 13:17, which was apparently taking place in “the land of the
Philistines” at the time of the Exodus, was the war of the Avvim against the
newly arrived Philistines.
As conventionally viewed, the end of MB
II C coincides with the expulsion of the Hyksos from Egypt. Bimson however, in
his efforts to provide a revised stratigraphy for the revision of history, has
synchronised MB II C instead with the start
of Hyksos rule. He will argue here in some detail that the building and
refortifying of cities at this time was the work of the Avvim against the
invading Philistines, with some of the new settlements, however, likely having
been built by the Philistines themselves.
[End of quote]
I have further written on Dr. Bimson’s laudable
effort to bring some archaeological sanity to this era:
Bimson has grappled with trying to
distinguish between what might have been archaeological evidence for the
Philistines and evidence for the Hyksos, though in actual fact it may be
fruitless to try to discern a clear distinction in this case. Thus he writes:[3]
Finds at Tell el-Ajjul, in the
Philistine plain, about 5 miles SW of Gaza, present a particularly interesting
situation. As I have shown elsewhere, the “Palace I” city (City III) at Tell
el-Ajjul was destroyed at the end of the MBA, the following phase of occupation
(City II) belonging to LB I …. There is some uncertainty as to exactly when
bichrome ware first appeared at Tell el-Ajjul.
Fragments have been found in the
courtyard area of Palace I, but some writers suggest that this area remained in
use into the period of Palace II, and that the bichrome ware should therefore
be regarded as intrusive in the Palace I level ….
It seems feasible to suggest that the
invading Philistines were responsible for the destruction of City III, though
it is also possible that its destruction was the work of Amalekites occupying
the Negeb (where we find them settled a short while after the Exodus; cf. Num.
13:29); in view of Velikovsky’s identification of the biblical Amalekites with
the Hyksos … the Amalekite occupation of the Negeb could plausibly be dated,
like the Hyksos invasion of Egypt, to roughly the time of the Exodus …. But if
our arguments have been correct thus far, the evidence of the bichrome ware
favours the Philistines as the newcomers to the site, and as the builders of
City II.
[End of quotes]
Next we come to the Philistines in the era of King
Saul, for a proper appreciation of which I return to Dr. Courville’s thesis. He,
initially contrasting the Aegean ware with that of the distinctive Philistine
type, has written:
The new pottery found at Askelon
[Ashkelon] at the opening of Iron I, and correlated with the invasion of the
Sea Peoples, was identified as of Aegean origin. A similar, but not identical,
pottery has been found in the territory north of Palestine belonging to the
much earlier era of late Middle Bronze. By popular views, this is prior to the
Israelite occupation of Palestine. By the altered chronology, this is the
period of the late judges and the era of Saul.
… That the similar pottery of late
Middle Bronze, occurring both in the north and in the south, is related to the
culture found only in the south at the later date is apparent from the
descriptions of the two cultures. Of this earlier culture, which should be
dated to the time of Saul, Miss Kenyon commented:
The pottery does in fact provide very
useful evidence about culture. The first interesting point is the wealth of a
particular class of painted pottery …. The decoration is bichrome, nearly
always red and black, and the most typical vessels have a combination of
metopes enclosing a bird or a fish with geometric
decoration such as a “Union Jack” pattern or a Catherine wheel. At Megiddo
the first bichrome pottery is attributed to Stratum X, but all the published
material comes from tombs intrusive into this level. It is in fact
characteristic of Stratum IX. Similar
pottery is found in great profusion in southern Palestine … Very similar
vessels are also found on the east coast
of Cyprus and on the coastal Syrian sites as far north as Ras Shamra.
[Emphasis Courville’s]
Drawings of typical examples of this
pottery show the same stylized bird with back-turned head that characterized
the pottery centuries later at Askelon.
… The anachronisms and anomalies in the
current views on the interpretation of this invasion and its effects on Palestine
are replaced by a consistent picture, and one that is in agreement with the
background provided by Scripture for the later era in the very late [sic] 8th
century B.C.
[End
of quotes]
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