The Ancients - The Philistines

Episode Date: March 16, 2023

Perhaps best known from the Biblical tale of David and Goliath, the Philistines were an ancient civilisation who lived on the south coast of Canaan. Despite living over a millennia ago, their name has been rebranded as a description of someone who disregards intellectual pursuits - but how, and why, was this connection made? Just who were the philistines, and what do we know about them?In today's episode, Tristan is joined by archaeologist, and leading Philistine expert, Dr Aren Maeir, leader of excavations for several years at Gath, the ancient Philistine city. Looking at the archaeology, Aren is able to build a picture of how Philistine civilisation functioned, and what they were really like. So is it fair to use their culture as an insult, or have we been wrong this entire time?

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they've got everything you need to keep knocking down your goals. No pressure to be who you're not, just workouts and classes to strengthen who you are. So no matter your era, make it your best with Peloton. Find your push. Find your power. Peloton. Visit Peloton at onepeloton.ca. it's the ancients on history hit i'm tristan hughes your host and in today's episode well i'm super hyped for this one because we're talking about another of these mysterious ancient civilizations that you probably have heard the name of but might not know too much about who they actually were we're talking about a group of people who are mentioned in the Old Testament several times, often infamously.

Do you remember the story of David versus Goliath? Well, Goliath was a member of these people. Goliath was a Philistine. And today, we're talking about the Philistines. What has the archaeology revealed about who these people were, how they lived, when they lived, how much of the Old Testament portrayal of the Philistines can we really believe? To explain all of this I was delighted to interview only a few days back an Israeli archaeologist who has been leading excavations at one of the most important

Philistine sites in the Near East. His name is Dr Aaron Meyer and he has been excavating at the site of Telesafi, the site that was the ancient biblical Philistine city of Gath. This was such an incredible interview. Aaron explains all, he gives a lovely introduction and overview into who the Philistines were, what we think are their origins, it's still quite murky water, where they came from, how they ended up in this eastern part of the Mediterranean, how much of the biblical accounts we can believe and of, what the archaeology at Telesafi, at Gath, has revealed about the Philistines. So without further ado, to talk all about the Philistines, here's Aaron.

Aaron, it is wonderful to have you on the podcast today. Oh, it's great to be here. And for a topic like this, the Philistines, the name Philistine, I think it's fair to say we throw around quite a bit, especially in the Western world today. But there is so much more to these people in ancient history, in prehistory, than just Bible stories, isn't there? Absolutely. I mean, I think the Western world became aware of the Philistines through the Bible way before we had other sources. But in the last, let's say, century and a half, once they started excavations in the ancient Near East, and then more texts started coming up through the excavations, a whole

world was discovered, which on the one hand is connected to what the Bible tells us about the Philistines, but on the other hand, fills in a lot of empty spaces and also changes our views about the Philistines quite substantially. So we say it's a very interesting exercise in using, comparing, and modifying our understandings that we had from the biblical text only. I love these examples from ancient prehistory when you are comparing the archaeology with the literature. And this is one very awesome example of that, as you've highlighted there, Aaron. But before we delve into these sources, set the scene for us. When talking about the

historical Philistines, when in ancient, are we going? How far back? Okay, so we're talking about something that starts during what we would call the late Bronze-Iron Age transition in the Eastern Mediterranean, which, grosso modo, is 1200 BCE is the date. But in fact, it's something that it's a long process which starts within the 13th century BCE and goes on well beyond the 1200 into the 12th and even 11th century BCE. And during this process, we see a transition in which the, let's call it the world order of the late Bronze Age of the Eastern Mediterranean, where there were empires and city-states and international trade and diplomatic relations. And this is very well seen both in the archaeological remains and in the extensive documentary material that we have. For example, the letters from El Amarna in Egypt from the mid-14th century. We have written material from the Hittite Empire, from the Babylonians, from the

Assyrians. We have some written material from within the Levant, both in the northern Levant, such as at Ugarit, but also from the southern Levant at sites within modern-day Israel, Palestine, Jordan, etc. So there's a very nice picture of what's going on. And in the 13th century, this starts coming apart. Now, it doesn't happen overnight. And I like to say that archaeologists were time travelers. But let's say we really were time travelers and we could go into a time tunnel and come out something, let's say 1250 BCE and see what's going on, and then go on to 1200, and then go on to 1150, and go on to, let's say, 1100, we would see that it's not an overnight change, but there's all kinds of

gradual processes that are going on. And it's not only gradual, it's multi-causal. That means there's all kinds of factors going on at the time. For example, now we know based on a lot of paleoenvironmental proxies that there was a substantial lowering in the quantity of rainfall in the late 13th and early 12th century BCE. And that might have been a very important factor, but it's not the only factor. There's all kinds of other things happening. And we could see things changing in Europe, northern Europe, southern Europe. We can see things changing in the eastern Mediterranean and farther afield as well. So there's a lot going on during this period.

Now, the Philistines are one of those groups that are involved in all these big transitional processes. Now, usually the Philistines are considered one of the so-called sea peoples and by the way the term sea peoples is a modern term it's not an ancient term and it's because the egyptians described the groups we call the sea peoples as coming from the sea they have been called sea peoples and it was very often assumed that the sea peoples and the ph Philistines were groups who came from the West, whether from the Aegean, whether from Sardinia, Sicily, etc., and landed and conquered parts of the Levant, mainly the southern but also the central and northern Levant, into different

groups coming to different places. The Philistines coming to the southern portion of the Levant, that means more or less in modern day terms between Tel Aviv and the Gaza Strip, you know, the southern coast of modern day Israel. And very often in the past, it was sort of like, if you want a colorful analogy, sort of like a D-Day invasion, you know, that you had the various armies landing at different beaches. So you had the various armies landing at different beaches. So you had the Philistines, the Chardonnay, et cetera, landing on all the different beaches. And according, and this is basically what I was taught as a student 30 years ago, a long time ago, even more, that the Philistines were basically a group who came from somewhere in the Aegean and brought with them an Aegean

Mycenaean-like culture, landed on the coast, took over the Canaanite cities of the coast, and brought with them a Mycenaean-like culture, which slowly became more and more Levantinized during the Iron Age in the centuries following this. Now, all this is connected to these processes going on, because we do know that in the Aegean, the palace structures, you know, the political structures centered around palaces that we had in the Mycenaean world, go through either complete collapse or very substantial change at this time. This is more or less the time of big changes in Anatolia. For example, if we want to place the Trojan War in some historical context, it's probably around this time, whatever this Trojan War was,

but there's some people going over there. Slightly after that, the Hittite Empire basically implodes. And in Canaan, we see, for example, the large city of Ugarit is destroyed somewhere around 1180 something. Various cities in the region are abandoned or destroyed. But a very important thing is, for example, when you go to the Canaanite cities in the Levant, in the southern Levant, So some, like Hazor, which was the biggest city in the southern Levant, is destroyed around 1250, and there's a big debate who did it, while the latest city of the Canaanite world that's destroyed is Megiddo, and this is already

somewhere in the 11th century. So this process of destruction, it's not one military campaign of, let's say, as in the biblical text, we would have Joshua and his army coming into the land and conquering left and right. There's a much longer process going on. And the same thing goes for the Philistines and other sea peoples. So first of all, truthfully, the only group of so-called sea peoples where we have clear evidence of a new culture appearing sometime around 1200 is the Philistines. When you start going north to other regions, we have very, very little evidence of a clear appearance of a new culture. Perhaps except maybe all the way beyond the Syrian border in the Amuk Valley in modern-day Turkey, there may be a group that appears there also, and some have suggested connecting to the Philistines. I don't accept that,

but we'll get to that in a moment. But even among the Philistines, our images change. Why? Because it turns out that the Philistines didn't capture and destroy the Canaanite cities, but rather, apparently, in almost all of them, if not all of them, the Philistines settled there. The people coming from afar settled there alongside the Canaanites and formed what I've been using a term in recent years, an entangled culture. It's a culture which is comprised of various peoples from abroad, and not one group coming from abroad, but coming from various areas, along with locals. And all that together formed this entangled, mixed, I like calling it, it's not a Greek

salad, it's a Mediterranean salad. Now, this in itself is a very big change, because it means the process, A, it's a Mediterranean salad. Now, this in itself is a very big change because it means the process, A, wasn't a process of capture, conquest, destruction, colonization, etc., as it's often been projected, but rather a more complex, diverse thing. And all that's connected to the changes that are going on in the Eastern Mediterranean at the time. So, for example, peoples are moving. Some of the Philistines may be pirate-like, but I don't think they're all pirates. But there are locals who are coming on.

And, for example, for many, many years, it was projected in a very, very linear way that you had the late Bronze Age international world. Then after 1200, 1180 or something like that, the whole thing comes apart. And then we go into this dark ages. There's no international trade. Nothing's going on, et cetera. And it turns out that although the volume of the trade and the intensity of the interrelations has gone down, people still have

connections. And we have evidence of things still going on at a much lower volume than in the past, but nevertheless. So the complexity of this, what's going on is much more, I would say, interesting. And I would suppose anybody who delves into anything, the neat black and white, Anybody who delves into anything, the neat black and white, nicely boxed explanations that are so easy to use when you're teaching the public really don't fit in when you start looking at the nitty-gritty details. I love the idea, as you say, this conglomerate city, Philistine settlement, when they arrive in the Near East, there being perhaps nuragic sardinians cretans mycenaeans and you mentioned pirates from other nations too all combined together in this

very mixed entangled new culture that when it settles in canaan it not, as you say, the old idea of massive conquest and destruction. There's coexistence. There's settlement. I mean, does the archaeology reveal more about their actual settlements too? Well, of course. So first of all, the biblical text talks about five major Philistine cities. That's on the coast, Ashdod, Ashkelon, and Gaza, and inland Ekron and Gat. I've been excavating at the site Telesafi, which is identified as Gat. Excavations have been conducted at Ekron, Ashkelon, and Ashdod. Unfortunately, save for very, very minimal excavations that were conducted during the 1920s during the British mandate in Palestine, Gaza has not been archaeologically excavated. I mean, the Hamas is excavating tunnels there, but they're not excavating archaeology. So hopefully one day in the future when peace reigns, we'll be able to see the archaeology there.

But we know that there are large, let's call them urban centers. Defining what urbanism in the antiquity is a separate podcast discussion. But there are large sites and smaller sites from the entire urban rule continuum. You have sites which are only farmsteads. You have sites which are smaller, but they have temples. You have sites which are large and fortified. And it seems that there's a very broad choice of different types of sites that belong into the Philistine culture. And so just to be focused in, therefore, on your work at Gath, at Hellasafi, if we just take a step back from that very quickly and kind of go back to the

sources. And I want to mention the Bible, because you did mention the Bible there and how the Bible highlights those five Philistine settlements. Overall, for you as an archaeologist, when you're looking at Philistine archaeology, when you're trying to understand the story of the real Philistines, how important to Saul still is the Bible? Well, I think the Bible, as any ancient source, has to be used, but used, you know, as a historian uses it. A historian will not go to any source or should not go to any source and say, because this source writes this, you know, A, I believe in A, but rather you check it against other sources and you assume that almost any writing always has

subjective aspects to it. And of course, when you're dealing with a text such as the Bible, which is first and foremost an ideological text of multi-layered, you know, I like comparing the Bible to a certain extent is like a multi-period site. You have many, many layers, and sometimes objects from one layer can go up or go down between the layers because things are re-edited and added on and changed, etc. So we have to relate to the biblical text as a multi-period text, that's first of all. And second of all, that was written with an agenda. The main agenda of the Hebrew Bible, Old Testament, is telling the story of the Davidic dynasty in Jerusalem, what happened to it through the eyes of very specific people. So a very nice example of this is around 830 BCE, Hazael, the king of Aram, Damascus,

comes, besieges Gath, and destroys it. And we found evidence of the siege, which is a monumental siege system, unparalleled anywhere in the ancient Near East until the Roman period, and the destruction of the site. And when he destroys the site, he takes theical matrix in the region. But this entire event is half a passage in the biblical text, and then it goes on to tell what happened with Hazael in Jerusalem. And Hazael comes to Jerusalem, besieges the city, they give him the temple treasure, he leaves Jerusalem, etc., etc. So one of the most important geopolitical events in the Southern Levant in the 9th century is described sort of like, you know, in passing because it wasn't the main story. The main story is what

the Bible wants to tell us about Jerusalem and the Davidic dynasty. So I think this goes for anything. And I think, for example, and I've written about this a couple of times, is that, for example, the entire biblical portrayal of the Philistines is one of a bunch of barbarians, two extremely scary ones, you know, like these giants and all kinds of things like that, and that only with the help of God were the poor Israelites able to, you know, vanquish them. But when you look at the archaeological remains, first of all, the Philistines were much more sophisticated than the Israelites. They had an urban system, they had more sophisticated technology, their art and ceramics, etc., was much more impressive.

That's one thing. And the other thing, they don't seem so big and frightening. You know, they weren't whale-loving tree-huggers, but they weren't, you know, these horrendous, horrible people. And for example, we have this image of Goliath, who according to the most versions of the biblical texts would be taller than an NBA center. We have absolutely no evidence of anybody so far in Philistia from the skeletal remains that we have found of anybody above average size, you know, for antiquity, not even for today. And it could be that maybe there was a family of people who were slightly larger, but I mean, there's no evidence that this was a race of giants who, you know, terrorized the Israelites as the biblical text tries to tell us. So going back to your question, you have to use the biblical text because it is a source that some of it may reflect early parts of the Iron Age, some of it may be

later, some of it may be post-Iron Age, but nevertheless, it retains cultural memories about the Philistines. And if we can, just like as we excavate in archaeological sites, try to excavate the biblical text and compare it to the archaeological remains, I think it can give us important insights. But you always have to remember that you're dealing with a subjective text. That's important. It's so, so interesting what you highlighted there because you can see the parallels in so many other pieces of ancient literature, whether the Romans viewed their German barbarians as six-foot mega warriors or the Greeks and Macedonians looking at the Thracians as people with hearts of Ares and being incredibly frightening. It's the same of

the Israelites and the Philistines, isn't it? It's absolutely extraordinary. But let's delve into that archaeology at Gath because something you also highlighted there that you mentioned that I didn't know, and I'm sure many people didn't know, that it's not Jerusalem during the Iron Age. It's Gath. This is the biggest city-state of the time. Oh, listen. Our assessment of the size of the city up until the destruction by Hazael is somewhere between 45 to 50 hectares.

Jerusalem at the time was maybe 6 to 10 hectares in size. It's much larger. It's the powerhouse of, let's say, the southern part of the southern Levant. And that's probably why Hazahel, the king of Aram Damascus, conquers it, because he wanted to be the neighborhood bully, and Gat was in the way. So I think that's a very important thing. And I think also that until Gat was, let's say, the first Gulf War with the New York Times, or there's no Baghdad Times, but let's call it the Baghdad Times, you would get a very, very different picture of what's going on. So I think that same thing goes in any period in any culture. I'm Professor Susanna Lipscomb, and on my podcast, Not Just the Tudors from History Hit,

I try to make sense of everything that baffled our early modern ancestors. Like, what do you do with your waist? If you put your dunghill up against your neighbour's wall, you're going to cause rising damp. Would Henry VIII ever consider executing his wife, the Queen of England? Anne Boleyn? I'm not even sure if the Boleyns took it seriously because why would they have any reason to suspect Henry VIII would really get rid of his queen? And why do men grow beards? During puberty, the male body heats up and a smoke rises in the body, pushes out the hair in the face. So the beard is actually a form of excrement.

In other words, not just the Tudors, but most definitely also the Tudors. Twice a week, every week. Listen and follow on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. so let's focus on your archaeological work at gaff at telesafi give us an overview of what the site looks like what is your many many years of archaeological research there with you and your team what is it revealed about the urban layout of this philistine city state at its height okay i started the project in 1996. And it was an interesting aspect is that the site had been excavated by a British expedition in 1899 by Bliss and McAllister. Actually, Bliss was American, McAllister was, I think he was Scottish, if I'm not mistaken. And their excavation, which was very fortunately only for three weeks because they were horrible excavators

and they were horrible publishers. And they didn't get along with the locals, so they left. So they didn't destroy the site completely. And after their excavation for close to 100 years, nobody touched the site. And the reason being is that archaeologists, including my teachers in the university, were convinced that the site was completely covered over by a modern and medieval remains. And so, you know, and it would was covered over by the modern and medieval remains, or were there places where the bronze, iron and bronze age was accessible. And one of the things that came down immediately is that, first of all, on the, let's call it the upper city, the tell itself, you know, the mound, there were portions that were covered over by the modern and medieval material, but there were big portions of the site that were covered over by the modern medieval material, but there were big portions of the site

that were not. And that on surface, the predominant finds were Iron Age and Bronze Age. That was one thing. And the other thing that was a surprise is that once we went down to the north of the upper city of the mound itself, there was an extensive lower city in which when we surveyed it, we found a lot of Iron Age pottery. And also there were a lot of signs of walls on the surface. We could see remains of foundations and even brick. And that, by the way, turned out to be very, very important because it turns out that during most of its history, the site was settled only on the mound, both from the early Bronze Age until modern times. But during the Iron Age, during the time of the Philistine city, the Philistines expanded northwards to build this lower city. And after the destruction by Hazael in 830,

the lower city was abandoned. So in fact, when you excavate in the lower city, city was abandoned. So in fact, when you excavate in the lower city, immediately on or immediately below surface, you have the Iron IIa, you know, around 830 BCE destruction level right there. And which is astounding because in addition to all the great finds that you have, it gives us this extensive exposure of a large portion of the Iron Age city. And so on the one hand, we've excavated portions of the city, and you can't excavate at all. So we've done a lot of remote sensing to connect the dots between the excavated areas. And you can see the fortifications, the city planning, and all kinds of things like that. So you have this during the Iron Age, got as consists of an upper city and a lower city. Right now, we know, unfortunately, not that much about the upper city because the actual top of the tell is covered by a crusader fort and above that, a modern Arab cemetery.

So we can excavate there. And even if we excavated there, probably the remains would be very, very poorly preserved. But slightly further down on the upper tail, we have nice evidence of the stratigraphy of the site from the Bronze Age through the Iron Age. And wherever we excavate, the most predominant find is this massive destruction by Hazael. And the site was completely destroyed, burnt down. People were killed. And it was sort of like a pompeii like event you know houses collapsed with everything inside them you know and complete vessels and all the finds of a of a destruction where people didn't have the opportunity to

empty the houses etc and in addition to that we have the lower city so it's a a very large city have the lower city. So it's a very large city, probably with different types of elite and non-elite zones and production areas. We've excavated one, two, two or three temples in the city, one outside the city. We've excavated production zones. We've excavated domestic quarters, olive oil production areas. There's all kinds of different areas on the site. And I suppose it was a very complex city, both from a social and an economic point of view. We have a similar example, although it's nowhere near as glamorous, I'm sorry to say, in the UK. It's still extraordinary. Forgive me, the people who live in the city now, when I say in Colchester, where you have a massive burnt layer in the stratigraphy which seems to show

Boudicca's raising to the ground complete destruction of this settlement in 60 AD and thanks to that heat of that fire within that destruction layer has been preserved and a wealth of artifacts and organic rare artifacts too. I mean, have you found rare artefacts therefore in this destruction layer of Guth too? Like think artefacts that normally you wouldn't expect to survive. First of all, the answer is yes. Very often I would say organic remains, they don't survive that often. If they do, they're charcoal. So we do have a nice collection of archaeobotanical finds from the destruction that have given us some very, very cool insights on what the people were eating,

what their connections were. I can't talk about it very much, but we have an article soon to come out in which we deal with the very specific types of plants that come from one of the temples, which give us very interesting insights. That's all I can say at this point. But I would say one of the things that we see is that, unfortunately, the skeletons in the destruction were so highly burnt that, for example, the DNA preservation is very poor. So, you know, high temperature has its advantages and disadvantages always. But I would say, in general, due to the fact that these were many, many houses which were destroyed in such total destruction, we find a very broad selection of

both ceramic vessels, but all kinds of other types of things, which give us a very nice idea of what they did in the various parts of the house, what was used for storage, where were the people living, where were they conducting their household cult, and all kinds of other aspects. So what did a typical Philistine house look like then, Aaron? We have several examples. For all the excavation we've done, it's very interesting that we haven't excavated too many absolutely complete houses. We have sections of different and a couple that are on their own. And I would say some of them are similar to the type of house that we see in other parts of the Levant at the time. For example, there's the famous four-room house, which is

very often identified as an Israelite or Judahite type of house. I don't think that's correct. I don't think it's typical. You don't have to be an Israelite to have a house like that. You can be someone else. So I think that's also one of the type they have. And then there's also a type of house, and we found them less. They've been found in Ashkelon, a type of house which is built in a plan which may be similar to plans of houses that you have in the Aegean in the late Helladic period. You know, you have different influences coming in. And one of the things that's very clear with the Philistines is that you have many cultural influences integrated in the Philistine culture. It goes in architecture, it goes in pottery, it goes in food habits, cult, and many other things. And that's one of the reasons why we say it's an entangled culture,

and it's not a Mycenaean culture affected by the Levant, but it's a mixed bag of foreigners bringing in various influences together, influenced by the Levant, both influencing the Levant and being influenced by the Levant. And one of the things you can see, there's a bi-directional influence. If you look at Judah or Israel or the Phoenicians and the Philistines, you see it's not only them taking in things from the locals, it's the locals also taking in things from the foreign aspects of the Philistines. So do we therefore, amidst the archaeology, do we find very clear examples of this intermingled civilization, this culture, this society? Do we see aspects of, let's say,

as I mentioned earlier, Nuragic Sardinian culture or Mycenaean or Cypriot all meshed together? Okay. First of all, from the material culture, we can see on the one hand, there are Mycenaean aspects, no question about it, but we don't have the complete Mycenaean culture set up in Philistia. So, for example, we see types of cooking pots, cooking vessels, which we know from the Mycenaean culture, but we don't have all of the cooking vessels that are known from the Mycenaean culture. We see Cypriot things. We see Aegean things.

We see here and there some Egyptian things. There's all kinds of hints of peoples coming from various places. We see this, for example, in the food. You look at the botanical remains. So there are a few new types of plants which first appear in Levant in the early Iron Age with the Philistines. And you also have another thing is you have types of plants which are local, which in the past were not utilized for agricultural purposes and are utilized by the Philistines. And you have another thing, which apparently we can see evidence of

agronomic change. That means the weeds that come up in the archaeobotanical remains indicate that they're plowing deeper than they did in the past. So there's all kinds of aspects. And then the same thing goes, there's for liminary, there's already one DNA study out about Ashkelon and there, and we have another one in the pipeline. And from these things, you can see that from a genetic point of view, while there is evidence that the Philistines are coming from, some of them are coming from abroad, there's a lot of evidence of local intermarriage going on as well. So it's a very complex society. When I want to go back to this overarching portrayal, we sometimes get to the Philistines as a warrior culture, warrior society, figures such as Goliath. Now, of course, that is from

the Bible, and you've highlighted the limits of the Bible as a source for the Philistines. But from the archaeological work that you and your colleagues have done, could there have been like an actual warrior chief, almost a Bronze Age hero-like figure that ruled, that reigned amongst the Philistines? I would assume that if the Philistines had some sort of a political structure. It was probably led by a charismatic chiefdom king or whatever the sword is, like we have in other ancient societies. So I don't think that would be surprising. I don't think it would be surprising if this leader was also a very powerful warrior, you know, and we know that from ancient societies, sometimes the king reaches this role due to his prowess in battle.

And so, for example, if you look at the biblical depiction of the first king of Israel, Saul, he is also depicted as someone who was tall, was a very brave warrior, etc. So I think that's a very, very common aspect of this thing. So even if there wasn't a guy named Goliath, there may have been people like Goliath. And again, of course, based on the fact, you know, listen, biblical scholars, when they look at the story of Goliath, they think that the name Goliath was added in to the story afterwards. At once, you know, before he was called like the big guy or something like the sword, and only later on was the name Goliath put in. So these things could have existed. I don't think it makes any big surprise that it could be that the Philistines, if they did fight the Israelites, were led by a charismatic, very,

very powerful warrior king or warrior chieftain or something of the sort. Well, thank you for explaining that quickly. I could go down now either religion or language, but I'm going to go down the language route because I think that's really interesting because we've already stressed this hybrid nature of Philistine society. Do we know if they try to unite under one particular language? The language is also connected to the aspect of writing. So for example, when it was assumed that the Philistines were these Mycenaean Greeks who came to the region. So it was assumed they brought with them Mycenaean Greek, and they brought with them the late Helladic Aegean scripts, you know, let's say Linear B or Cypro-Minoan or something of the

sort. And when I started excavating at Gat, one of my dreams at night, you know, not the only one, but one of my dreams at night was to discover a archive of Philistine documents, particularly bilingual, that would be great. And, you know, we would know everything. Now, after 150 years of excavation in Philistia, there are very few inscriptions that come from the early Iron Age. And there are few, if any, that can be shown to have anything connected to Aegean scripts. I think they're not, but maybe there's one or two that might have some connection. And I think what's happening is,

first of all, writing in the Aegean was directly connected to the palace structures, and the scribes worked for the palaces. And once the palace structures disappeared, the whole need for scribes went out the window. So even if the people are coming from, some of them are coming from the Mycenaean world, a scribe is an unnecessary skill at this time. That's one thing. Another thing is, we do have, both in the Bible and in some texts, evidence of non-Semitic words used in relationship to the Philistines.

And very often we said, oh, here's the proof that they were Greeks. Why? Because you have Achish, Achish, which is like the Achaean or something like that, you know, Greek, and you have a word, the title for the Philistine kings is Seren, and it was connected to Tyrannos, the tyrant, a Greek word. The only problem is Tyrannos comes into Greek later, and it was connected to tyrannos, the tyrant, a Greek word. The only problem is tyrannos comes into Greek later, and it apparently originates in Anatolian languages of the early Iron Age. So even with these foreign words that we do have in the biblical text and in other places connected to the Philistines, it also implies that it wasn't one foreign language that came,

but rather a complex language community that was comprised of various languages, both foreign and local, which came together. And when we do have decipherable writing in Philistia, first of all, it's done in the local alphabetic script. Two, when we start having actual sentences, it's using something, a version of the Northwest-Semitic origins of some of the people, or the name of a goddess that is connected to the Aegean. But it's a mixed bag already. And they're already, at least in their languages, in their language they're speaking or they're writing a Semitic language. They're not writing Greek.

Well, there we go. And no doubt you'll be uncovering more in the many years ahead aaron on that topic it's so so fascinating i could ask questions about this for hours but i've got to wrap up now we'll have to get you back on to talk about more of this stuff and the ultimate fall of the philistines i guess because it sounds as if although we now know so much more than we did some 30 40 years ago about these actual people that as more archaeology is unearthed, you've already hinted at that paper coming out soon, there is still so much more to learn about the actual Philistines, for instance, what ultimately happened to them.

Okay, well, Gath was destroyed in around 830, and the rest of the Philistine cities were destroyed completely in the late 7th century by Nebuchadnezzar, the Babylonian king, around 603, 604. He destroyed the sites and basically destroyed them completely. Anybody who was there was either killed or exiled to Babylon. And what we have is after this destruction, there are Mesopotamian sources which talk about people of Ashkelon, people of Gaza, or something of the sort, in exile in Mesopotamia. But there is no evidence of any, let's say, group identity which is sustained.

And this is very interesting because we have also documents from Mesopotamia. Some of them have been coming out in the last decade or two of Israelites and Judahites who were exiled to Mesopotamia, either by them have been coming out in the last decade or two, of Israelites and Judahites who were exiled to Mesopotamia, either by the Assyrians or the Babylonians, who did retain some sort of a group identity, even after the Iron Age. And this probably, you know, was the setting for the Judahites who returned to Judah in the Persian period, along with some locals who were still there. But this doesn't happen to the Philistines. And in fact, when we look in Phil Persian period, along with some locals who were still there. But this doesn't happen to the Philistines. And in fact, when we look in Philistia after the Iron Age, in the period what we would call the post-Iron Age Babylonian period and the beginning of the Persian period,

these cities are not settled. The Philistine cities are not settled. And when they are settled, the population and the culture looks Phoenician. It seems someone else. Now, I don't think Nebuchadnezzar went with a vacuum cleaner and cleaned out all the Philistines, you know, and there was nobody left at all. But overall, the Philistines as a cultural group, a clear identity, basically disappeared. And then, of course, the question is, how was this name retained? So what happened apparently is that yet during the Iron Age, when the Philistines were living in what's called Philistia, in the southern coastal plain of Israel-Palestine, Greek mercenaries and traders

reached this area, and this area was remembered as Philistia by the Greeks. So even after the Philistines didn't live there anymore, it was still called Philistia. the Greeks. So even after the Philistines didn't live there anymore, it was still called Philistia. And that's why in the Roman period, for example, the land is called Philistia. And anybody who lived in the land is an inhabitant of Philistia. And that's why people who lived in this land also in the medieval and modern period were Palestinians. That's the development of that name. The Palestinian people or the Palestinians, you know, before the state of Israel, before 1948, you had Jewish Palestinians and Christian Palestinians and Muslim Palestinians, because anybody living in Palestine

was a Palestinian. So I think that's, it's a very interesting aspect of the continuity, a geographical continuity, and not a genetic or cultural continuity. Well, there you go. The Legacy of the Philistines there, a podcast episode in its own right. Aaron, I'm going to wrap it up there, but it just goes for me to say thank you so much for taking the time to come on the podcast today. My pleasure. Well, how about that? There was Dr. Aaron Amaya talking all about the Philistines, what the archaeology is revealing about these people who dwelled in the ancient Near East in Canaan. I hope you enjoyed the episode. Now, last things for me,

you know what I'm going to say. If you enjoyed the episode, if you're enjoying the ancients and you want to help us out, well, you know what you can do. You can leave us a lovely rating on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify, wherever you get your podcasts from. It greatly helps us as we continue to share these amazing stories from our distant past with you and with as many people as possible. But that's enough from me, and I'll see you in the next episode.