Re: Just Joined, got lots of questions -help?

Sabine wrote

>on the subject of the Philistines:
>the Bible says they had come from Crete (Kaphtor) to the Levantine

coast.

>The end of the thirteenth century saw a lot of moving peoples in the

eastern

>Mediterranean, but only the Egyptians, seeing themselves threatened by

those

>sea-farers from the North, wrote down their names. The Philistines are
>usually seen as the people called 'Peleset', one of those trying to

invade

>Egypt from the East at around 1190 BC (during the reign of Ramses III).
>The one strange thing that might at some time in the future prove to

be a

>linguistic link is the way the Peleset - warriors are painted in the

temple

>of Ramses III at Medinet Habu. Their headgear looks like upright

feathers

>slightly spread in the form of a fan and has for this reason be

paralleled

>with the sign no. 2 of the famous Cretan Phaistos Disc depicting a man

with

>exactly that kind of thing on his head. Well, may be we'll live to

see...

>The languages found in the region of Palestine (name deriving from
>Philistines) are, as far as I know, all of the Western-Semitic kind.

But

>actual connections between Western Galilee and the Minoan world before

the

>end of the 17th cent. BC have been proven in excavations at Tel Kabri.
>Archaeologists found a painted floor with a typically Aegean

decoration.

>(cf. W-D. Niemeier, New Archaeological Evidence for a 17th Century

Date of

>the 'Minoan Eruption from Israel (Tel Kabri, Western Galilee), in:

Thera and

>the Aegean World III/3, Lond. 1990. There is also another article by
>Niemeier you might want to have a look at on this subject, Brent: The
>Mycenaeans in Western Anatolia and the Problem of the origins of the

Sea

>Peoples, in: Mediterranean Peoples in Transition, eds.

Gitin/Mazar/Stern,

>Jerusalem 1998. This article contains a beautiful summary of all the
>theories made for the sea peoples since the beginning of the centuries

and

>give you an idea of how much the early Greeks (Mycenaeans, i.e.

Achaians,

>not Dorians etc.) had to do in the region at that time.

There is also the evidence of the appearance of Late Helladic IIIC
pottery finds associated with the Philistine/Peleset in Palestine,
which again points to an Aegean Mycenaean origin. Sabine is correct in
saying that from fairly early on the Philistines spoke a West Semetic
Caananite language, but there are elements which suggest an origin
elsewhere. The title used for Philistine monarchs, for instance,
Seren, has been linked to the Greek word ,Tyrant.

There is also the early story of Mopsus of Colophon, a city of the Asia
Minor coast, who seems to have been associated with the movement of the
Peoples of the Sea. Cilician geneaologies for instance speak of Moxus
amongst their ancestors. Robert Graves in his Greek myths tells of the
death of Mopsus in Askelon (the Philistine city), after a sojourn in
Egypt, where he died after being bitten by a viper for throwing a
statue of the Goddess into a lake.

Intriguingly Moxus/Mopsus in Egyptian would have been given the name
Moses, but that is another story entirely!

Hope this helps

John