--- In
AncientBibleHistory@yahoogroups.com, "Michael Smith"
<mytoyneighborhood@...> wrote:
Hi, this is the second e-mail of Manuel Roberts quotes
continuing from the last one:
"In the tomb of Amenuser, the usual lines of gift bearers is shown.
Based on the wavy locks down the back of one individual, the open
kilt, bare chest, the bull head objectwhich he offers, he could be a
Cretan. All that is said of his origin is "spoils which the might
of
His Majesty brought back from the lands in the north of Asia and the
Islands in the Midst of the Sea." The term Keftiu is not used.
There
is no testimony here that this man, who has the appearance of a
Cretan, is from Keftiu.
In the tomb of Senenmut, some figures are shown who resemble
Cretans. One carries a near exact replica of the wonderfully
wrought
Vapheio Cup with its depiction of the faces of bulls. The cup was
found in Greece, but might have been made in Crete. These men are
not said to be from Keftiu. In neither of these two cases, in which
the men resembled Cretans, did the tomb designers call them Keftiu.
Several other tombs show foreign visitors of a somewhat Cretan
look.
Perhaps the most interesting is the tomb of Rekhmire. Little more
than an adit in the hillside, open and affording little protection
against the elements or nearby villagers, the illustrations in tomb
remain intact. In the antechamber, five rows of tribute bearers are
shown, a variety of ethnic types, and they bear a marvelous variety
of gifts. Of these, the men in the second row are
significant. 'Coming in peace by the chiefs of Keftiu and the
islands
in the midst of the sea' says the caption. Each man wears a kilt
and
sandals but is bare from the waist up. These kilts are not those
well known from Crete and are closer to Syrian kilts. Their hair is
formed in long locks down the back, such as seen in some
illustrations of Cretans, but long locks are shown in illustrations
of some Hittites and Syrians. Note the god from Ugarit in Syria,
Figure 16-3. These visitors bring an interesting variety of goods
most of which are not particularly Cretan: a tusk of ivory, large
necklaces, elaborate vases of various designs, copper ox-hide
ingots,
cone-shaped rhytons, a dirk sword. Tusks suggest Syria where
elephants still lived, copper ox-hide ingots suggest the copper
centers of Cyprus, and a faience rhyton from Cyprus has been
mentioned in Chapter 11. Design elements from the vases are known
from Syria. As for the caption, 'Coming in peace by the chiefs of
Keftiu and the islands in the midst of the sea,' as the expression
stands grammatically 'Keftiu' and 'islands' are parallel and are
therefore different from one another, so that this seems to deny
that
Keftiu is an island. Thus, the people and the goods shown are not
clearly Cretan nor necessarily from Keftiu.
There is no doubt that at the time these tombs were built, largely
between 1500 and 1450 BC, a major trade contact had been established
between Egypt and the North, quite possibly including Crete, and
gifts were probably exchanged. Also, a land named Keftiu was known
to the Egyptians. Yet in those tombs that clearly claim to show a
man of Keftiu, it is not a Cretan who is illustrated. And when
those
who may be Cretans are illustrated, they are not called people of
Keftiu. Thus, the tomb paintings fail to show that Keftiu was Crete.
In the south of Egypt, at Kom el Hatan, Amenhotep III had a temple
constructed. Some statue bases survive, and sculpted in a
horizontal
row on them are a series of place-names. On one base, a vertical
dividing line is engraved. Written to the left of that divider are
twelve place names. On one base, a vertical dividing line is
engraved. These are locatedin Crete and Greece and include the
names
Amnisos, Knossos, Mycenae...To the right of the divider, only two
names appear, Keftiu and Tinay. For those who insist that Keftiu is
Crete, these names to the right of the divider are "headings" for
all
the list of names to the left. That would seem to place Keftiu with
Greece or Crete. And What of Tinay? A somewhat forced explanation
is that it might stand for the Freek Danaoi, the Danaans. More
reasonably, however, is that the short list to the right of the
divider has nothing to do with that on the left. Keftiu would not
relate to Greece or Crete. Tinay could as easily refer to Danuna of
Adana as Danaans of Greece. That might place Keftiu somewhere in
the
vicinity of Adana, in eastern Anatolia.
A final note on Keftiu deals with a student's writing board found in
Egypt. It contains a scribal exercise titled 'To make names in
Keftiu.' The exercise required that several Keftiu names be written
in hieroglyphics. The renowned American scholar William Albright
(Albright, 1934) determined the sounds to be assigned to certain
hieroglyphs representing foreign names, and another American
scholar,
Michael Astour, studied the origin of the names on the writing board
(Astour, 1964). He found that six names were Hurrian, six more were
Semitic, and two may have been Hurrian or Semitic. While the
language of Crete before the arrival of the Greeks is not known,
there is not the slightest evidence to show that Crete had a
substantial Hurrian or Semitic population. This would seem to place
Keftiu where there were population elements of Hurrian and Semitic
descent- Cyprus, Syria or eastern Anatolia.
That covers substantially the arguments that Caphtor was Keftiu or
that either was Crete. There seems to be little or nothing to
support such conclusions. In ancient times when there were no
printed maps which might help to stabilize place names, a name
applied to a remote locality might over centuries drift and be
applied
later to a different locality. It is reasonable to say that the
locations of Keftiu, and Caphtor of the Bible, remain a mystery."
I'd love to know anyone's thoughts,
Michael
________________________________________________________________
Sign Up for Juno Platinum Internet Access Today
Only $9.95 per month!
Visit www.juno.com
--- End forwarded message ---
--- End forwarded message ---