Some Early Philistine History by G. A. Wainwright

SOME EARLY PHILISTINE HISTORY BY G. A. WAINWRIGHT Bournemouth In an article entitled Caphtor-Cappadocia published in VT vi (1956), pp. 199-210 the present writer brought together a quantity of information to show that Caphtor, the well-known homeland of the Philistines, was in Cilicia Tracheia. It was of course from there that these people poured out over the Levant to be repulsed by Ra- messes III about the year 1162 B.C., and finally to settle in Pliilistia on the coast of Palestine. In the present article other evidence is brought to show that the Pliilistines were not aborigines in Caphtor but had entered the coun- try from elsewhere and at a much earlier date. It is also evident that they were Illyrians, and of the Illyrian tribes they prove to have been Dardanians. Their relatives, the Dardanians themselves, appeared on the Egyptian scene, as did their close associates the Zakkal-Zakkar- Teukroi. Further than that PHYTHIAN-ADAMS has shown that a third of the confederacy that Ramsesses II encountered at the Battle of Kadesh, c. 1285 B.C., bore names that can be matched by those of the allies of the Trojans 1). Among them were the Drdny-Dardanians who only appear this once 2). We have further evidence that even the later attacks of the Peoples of the Sea 3) originated in the repercussions of the Trojan War, for 74 Herodotus (iv, 191) gives us what is practically a definite statement to that effect. He says that the Maxyes, a tribe of Libya, claimed descent from men from Troy. These Maxyes cannot be other than the Meshwesh who joined the Libyans in their attack on Merneptah in his fifth year, c. 1219 B.C., and again on Ramessess III in his fifth and eleventh years, c. 1165 and 1159 B.C.. This is of interest to our argument, for it was in Ramesses III's eighth year, c. 1162 B.C., that the Philistines and Zakkal appeared on his northern border. The two attacks were, thus, contemporary. Hence, as the one migration was induced by the Trojan War and its long continued repercussions, the other would have been also. Cer- tainly the Philistines and the Zakkal-Zakkar had, or rather had had, connections with the Troad. Moreover, the Dardanians, relatives o; the Philistines, had left the Troad and had already reached Kadesh in Syria a hundred years earlier, in Ramesses II's fifth year, c. 1285 B.C. They, therefore, reached Kadesh very shortly after the Trojan War. Now a word about the dates used here. The Fall of Troy must now be dated to the years immediately after 1300 B.C. 1). This is some hundred years or so earlier than that of 1183 B.C. which has been accepted until recently. Again, among Egyptologists opinion had settled down to the years around 1200 B.C. for the accession of Ramesses III, but now RowTON's elaborate study of Manetho's chronology shows excellent reasons for putting it at c. 1170 B.C. 2). Ramesses II's accession is less in dispute, ROWTON only bringing it down from 1298 to 1290 B.C. 3). Enough is now known about the Philistines to ensure that originally they had evidently passed through the Troad like others of those whom the Egyptians called 'The Peoples of the Sea'. They were late .

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