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The Philistines Their History and Civilization

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The Philistines Their History and Civilization THE BRITISH ACADEMY The Philistines Their History and Civilization By R. A. Stewt;irt Macalister, M.A., F.S.A. (Professor of Celtic Archaeology, University College, Dublin) The Schweich Lectures 1911 Welche Ironie der Weltgeschichte, dass die so wenig •philisterhafte' Nation in mehreren Sprachen Europas jetzt ihren Namen zur Bezeichnung des feigen und langweiligen Spiessbilrgers hergeben muss ! w. MAX MULLER •Philistinism', after all, stands for two great habits, decency and order. The Quarlerly .Review, 1899 London Published for the British Academy By Humphrey Milford, Oxford University Press Amen Corner, E.C. 1914 OXFORD: HORACE HART PRlNTER TO TliE UNlVERSITY PREFACE AMONG the Nations that came within the purview of the Old Testament Writers-nations seldom mentioned without stricture, whether for idolatry, immorality, or cruelty-perhaps none were the object of so concentrated an aversion as were the Philistines. The licentiousness of the Amorites, the hard-heartedness of the Egyptian taskmasters, the fiendish savagery of the Assyrian warriors, each of these in turn receives its due share of condemnation. But the scornful judgement passed by the Hebrews on the Philistines has made a much deeper impression on the Bible-reading West than have their fulminations against other races and communities with which they had to do. In English, from at least the time of Dekker, 1 the word ' Philistine ' has been used in one or other of the senses of the modern colloquialism 'outsider' ; and, especially since the publication of the essays of Mr. Matthew Arnold, it has become almost a technical term for a person boorish or bucolic of mind, impervious to the higher influences of art or of civilization. In French and German­ probably, indeed, in most of the languages of Europe-the word is used in familiar speech with a greater or less approximation to the same meamng. The following little book is an attempt to collect in a convenient form the information so far available about the Philistine people. It is an expansion of a course of three lectures, delivered in 1911 before the British Academy under the Schweich Fund. In preparing it for publication, the matter ha& been revised and re-written throughout; and the division into lectures-primarily imposed by the exigencies of time-allowance-has been abandoned for a more systematic and con­ venient division into chapters and sections. It is hoped that the perusal of these pages will at least suggest 1 The New English Dictionary quotes, inte1· alia, 'Silke and satten, you mad Philistines, silke and satten '(Dekker, 1600) : 'They say, you went to Court last Night very drunk; nay, I'm told for certain you had been among Philistines' (Swift, 1738): • The obtuseness of a mere English Philistine we trust is pardonable' (The Ewa-miner, 1827), •Philistinism! we have not the expression in English. Perhaps we have not the word because we have so much of the thing' (M. Arnold, 1863) , and the quotation from the Quarterly Review, which is printed on the tiUe-page. iv PREFACE a doubt as to the justice of the colloquial use of the name of this ancient people. As it may be well to preserve a record of the syllabus of the original lectures, a copy of it is subjoined. Lecture I (15 December, 1911). The evil reputation of the Philistines. Recent researches and discoveries. A sketch of the development of Cretan civilization. The Keftiu in the Egyptian records. The sack of Cnossos and subsequent developments. The ' Peoples of the Sea'. Their raid on Egypt. Its repulse. Recovery of the • Peoples of the Sea ' from their reverse. The adventures of Wen-Amon. The earliest reference to the Philistines in the Old Testament. The Abraham and Isaac stories. The references in the history of the Exodus. Shamgar. Samson. Lecture II (18 December, 1911). The domination of the Philistines. The capture of the Ark and the outbreak of plag11e. Samuel and Saul Relative culture of Philistines and Hebrews during the reign of Saul. The incidents of David's out­ lawry. Achish, king of Gath. Gilboa. The Philistine domination broken by David. The various versions of the story of Goliath. The Philistines under the later monarchy. The Philistines in the Assyrian records. Nehemiah. The Maccabees. Traditions of the Philistines among the modern peasants of Palestine. Theories of the origin of the Philistines. Caphtor and the Cherethites. Lecture III (22 December, 1911). The Organization of the Philistines. Their country and cities. The problem of the site of Ekron. The language of the Philistines. Alleged traces of it in Hebrew. Their religion and deities. Their art. Recent discoveries. The place of the Philistines in History and Civilization. I have to express my acknowledgements to my friends and col­ leagues, the Rev. P. Boylan, Maynooth, and the Rev. Prof. Henry Browne, S. J.; also to the Very Rev. Principal G. A. Smith, Aberdeen, and Mr. E. H. Alton, of Dublin University, for allowing me to consult them on various points that arose in the course of this work. The first and last named have most kindly read through proof-sheets of the work and have made many valuable suggestions, but they have no responsibility for any errors that the discerning critic may detect. The figures on pp. 118, 119 are inserted by permission of the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge. R. A. S. M. DuBuN, New Year, 1913. CONTENTS CHAPTER I PAGK THE ORIGIN OF THE PHILISTINES • 1 CHAPTER II THE HISTORY OF THE PHILISTINES • ~ 1. The Adventures of Wen-Amon among them 29 2. Their Struggle with the Hebrews 38 S. Their Decline and Disappearance 62 CHAP'l'ER III THE LAND OF THE PHILISTINES 68 CHAPTER IV Tm,: CuLTURE oF THE PmusTINES • 79 1. Their Language . 79 2. Their Organization: (A) Political, (B) Military, (C) Domestic • 87 S. Their Religion . 90 4. Their Place in History and Civilization • 114, LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS FlG, PAGE 1. A Keftian from the Tomb of Rekhmara and a Cretan from Knossos 9 2. Sketch-map to illustrate the Battle of Geba 59 3. Sketch-map of Philistia 77 4. The Phaestos Disk 84, 85 5. Coins of Gaza and Ashkelon 112 6. The Characters on the Phaestos Disk . 116 7. \Vagons of the Pulasati 118 8. The Head-dress of the Pulasati 118 9. The Sea-fight between Ramessu III and the Allies 119 10. A Bird, as painted on an Amorite and a Philistine Vase respectively 121 11. Sketch-plans and Elevations of the Marneion at Gaza and of Solomon's Temple 124 THE PHILISTINES THEIR HISTORY AND CIVILIZATION CHAPTER I THE ORIGIN OF THE PHILISTINES THE Old Testament history is almost. exclusively occupied with Semitic tribes. Babylonians, Assyrian~ Canaanites, Hebrews, Ara­ maeans-all these, however much they might war among themselves, were bound by close linguistic and other ties, bespeaking a common origin in the dim, remote recesses of the past. Even the Egyptians show evident signs of having been at least crossed with a Semitic strain at some period early in their long and wonderful history. One people alone, among those brought conspicuously to our notice in the Hebrew Scriptures, impresses the reader as offering indications of alien origin. This is the people whom we call ' Philistines'. If we had any clear idea of what the word ' Philistine' meant, or to what language it originally belonged, it might throw such definite light upon the beginnings of the Philistine people that further investigation would be unnecessary. The answer to this question is, however, a mere matter of guess-work. In the Old Testament the word is regularly written P•listi: m (tl~r:,~>~), singular P•list1 {ll:1~>~), twice 1 P•listiyim (c~~r:,rf~~). The territory which they inhabited during the time of their struggles with the Hebrews is known as 'ere~ P 0 listim (tl'f:l~>~ f1t:5) • the Land of Philistines ', or in poetical p~ssages, simply Peleseth (n~~,) 'Philistia '. Josephus regularly calls them Ilai\aurrwo{, except once, in his version of the Table of Nations in Genesis x (Ant. I. vi. 2) wh~re we have the genitive si:qgular <l>v,\urrlvov. 1 In Amos ix. 7 and in the Kethibh of 1 Chron. xiv. 10. The almost uniform rendering of the Greek version (q,vJ<HTT«iµ) seems rather to favour this orthography. The spelling of the first syllable, <Pv, shows, however, that the modern punctuation with the shva is of later growth, and that in the time of the Greek translation the pronunciation still approximated rather to the form of the name as it appears in Egyptian monuments (P u r as at i ). II THE SCHWEICH LECTURES, 1911 Various conjectures as to the etymology of this name have been put forward from time to time. One of the oldest, that apparently due to Fourmont,1 connects it with the traditional Greek name ITe.\a11yo{; an equation which, however, does no more than move the problem of origin one step further back. This theory was adopted by Hitzig, the author of the first book in modern times on the Philistines, 2 who connected the word with Sanskrit valak~a 'white', and made other similar comparisons, as for instance between the name of the deity of Gaza, Marna, and the Indian Varuna. On the other hand a Semitic etymology was sought by Gesenius, 8 Movers, 4 and others, who quoted an Ethiopic verb falasa, ' to wander, roam,' whence comes the substantivefallasi, 'a stranger.' In this etymology they were anticipated by the translators of the Greek Version, who habitually render the name of the Philistines by the Greek word a.\.\6q,v.\oi, 5 even when it is put into the mouths of Goliath or Achish, when speaking of themselves.
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