How Did the Philistines Enter Canaan? A Rejoinder

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The following rejoinder does not make easy reading; but a careful study of it will be well repaid. Both the original article by Bryant Wood and this rejoinder by Itamar Singer attempt to assess a large mass of archaeological and textual evidence to determine a major historical event–the Philistine entry and occupation of Canaan. Scholars are clearly divided between two contesting historical reconstructions. Which is correct is perhaps not as important as how they reason, how they attempt to develop arguments from a large number of archaeological excavations and several obscure textual references. If nothing else, the reader will gain an appreciation of just how difficult the ancient historian’s task is.—Ed.

In his article “The Philistines Enter Canaan—Were They Egyptian Lackeys or Invading Conquerors?” BAR 17:06, Bryant G. Wood revives an old debate without really adding new arguments¹. The issue, briefly, is this: According to the traditional view (Albrecht Alt), which I follow, Pharaoh Ramesses III tightened his control over Palestine, settling Philistines and other Sea Peoples captives in Egyptian strongholds along the coast after having defeated them in northern Phoenicia (in 1175 B.C.). The opposing view (Manfred Bietak), followed by Wood, maintains that by this time the Egyptians bad already lost control over coastal Palestine, which had been devastated and then settled by the Philistine invaders. Theoretically, both scenarios are possible, but the weight of evidence, both textual and archaeological, clearly favors the traditional view.

The Egyptian evidence, although not as unequivocal as one would wish, contains several clues as to the venue of the confrontation between Ramesses III and the Sea Peoples, a crucial starting point for the entire discussion. Wood refers both to the primary sources and to their evaluation by various scholars, but in a rather selective manner. The sea battle occurred in the “river mouths,” which, according to Wood, “can only refer to the estuaries of the Nile in the Egyptian Delta.” For this categorical statement he refers the reader, to inter alia, a footnote by John Wilson in his translation of the Meditiet Hahn account of the battles.² What Wilson actually says of these “river mouths” is: “Normally used for the mouths of the branches of the Nile in the Delta, Hence probably the line of defense in Egypt. just possibly, the word might have been extended to harborages on the Asiatic coast.” Actually, a location at the northern confines of the Egyptian empire is clearly supported by the description of the land battle that took place in the Land of Amurru (northern Lebanon). It would be extremely difficult to support a northern location for the land battle and a southern location for the sea battle, with a distance of about 300 miles separating the two.³ A northern location for both battles is most compatible with the Egyptian evidence, and this bears crucial consequences for the reconstruction of the Philistine settlement in Canaan, which could not have preceded Ramesses III’s wars in 1175 B.C.

Another much-discussed point of contention is how to interpret the passage in Papyrus Harris I dealing with the treatment given to various captive Sea Peoples. Here 045Wood puts unwarranted weight on varied descriptive expressions used in the text, maintaining that only the Sherden (or Shardana) and the Weshesh were taken captive, but not the Philistines or the Tjeker! No one familiar with Egyptian texts of this kind would attribute real significance to such rhetorical hyperbole used to vary the description.^a That the Philistines and the Tjeker were taken captive as well is clearly indicated by the inscriptions and by the reliefs at Medinet Habu (one of which is illustrated just overleaf of Wood’s statement).

A more substantial problem emanating from Papyrus Harris I is the question of where the Sea Peoples captives were taken. The text states that they were brought to Egypt (Kmt) and were settled in strongholds provisioned yearly from treasuries and granaries. As to the location of such strongholds, Wood argues that Kmt could only refer to Egypt proper. I have followed the traditional view, assuming that at least some of the recruits were stationed in Canaan where they served Egyptian interests. Although the text does not specify locations, I would take “Egypt” in this context to refer generally to anything occupied by Egypt, i.e. the Egyptian empire—just as the “Land of Misri” in cuneiform texts refers not only to Egypt itself but to all her domains.⁴ When, in the very same passage, Ramesses says that he “extended all the frontiers of Egypt [Kmt],” he must be referring to Egypt’s borders in Asia rather than to just the land of the Nile in the restricted sense.

The main argument in Alt’s theory is the fact that the Philistine settlement took place exactly in the most Egyptianized territory of Canaan, the southern coastal plain, including the very capital of Egyptian Canaan, Gaza. This means that the Philistine settlement must have been accomplished through the initiative of the Egyptians, or at least with their tacit consent. After consolidating their position, the Philistines expelled the Egyptians and extended their rule over most of the land. Conceivably, these events were accompanied by violent clashes that must have left their mark in the archaeological record.

Wood makes three basic arguments based on the archaeological evidence. First, one would not expect Philistine captives serving as garrison troops to produce their own pottery, since, according to Papyrus Harris I, they were supplied with provisions from government depots. Wood draws a clear distinction between the treatment given to mercenaries (such as the Shardana and the Kehek) and that given to captives (Philistines). But the whole gist of this procedure is that yesterday’s captives are turned into tomorrow’s mercenaries! Clearly, the Philistines arrived in Canaan with families, as portrayed in the Medinet Habu reliefs, and there is no reason why they could not have produced their own pottery in the ceramic tradition brought from their homeland. Surely, the Egyptians did not have to provide them with the luxuriously decorated small vessels that form the bulk of Philistine pottery.

Wood’s second claim is that the locally made Mycenaean pottery comes always in a new phase of occupation, usually following the destruction of an Egyptian center or a Canaanite city. This suggests that the newcomers were not peacefully settled in Egyptian garrisons, but rather gained entry to this region by force. Having failed to invade Egypt, the Philistines retraced their steps to Philistia and settled on the ruins of the sites they had previously devastated.

Wood’s assessment of the archaeological evidence is somewhat simplistic and, in some cases, rather selective. The picture gradually unfolding from recent excavations in and around Philistia is far more complex and varied, and the traditional view portraying the Philistine hoards sweeping down the coast of Canaan, leaving behind them destruction and havoc, must be modified (in much the same way as the traditional view of the Israelite conquest has been). Although Wood admits that the archaeological record is not consistent, and that some of the important sites show no evidence of destruction, he still speaks in terms of a “pattern of destruction followed in many cases by squatter occupation.” It would be too extensive to deal in this response with every single site. Suffice it to say that Wood puts much weight on old and peripheral excavations, rather than using fresh evidence from the major centers of the Philistine Pentapolis, such as Ekron (Tel Miqne), Ashdod and Ashkelon. It now seems that the evidence is not as clear-cut as had previously been thought.^b I am not at all convinced that a fixed pattern can be discerned and historically evaluated. Besides, not all destructions must necessarily be attributed to the Philistines,⁵ and even more important, some of the destructions may have happened during upheavals that occurred after the Philistines had already settled, at a time when they had managed to expel their previous masters.

Wood’s showpiece is the evidence from Tell el-Farah (south), which allegedly shows a clear stratigraphic picture of an Egyptian residency destroyed sometime after 1200 B.C., followed by a squatter phase with Aegean-type pottery. Other scholars have assessed the evidence from this difficult site quite differently, and one authority simply concluded that “the finds on the mound itself are stratigraphically very difficult to understand and do not contribute to our discussion.”⁶ Another site enlisted by Wood as proof for the “pattern of destruction followed by squatter occupation” theory is the Egyptian fortress at Haruba in northern Sinai (site A-289). Wood’s assessment of the preliminary report is inaccurate, indeed misleading. True, the Egyptian fortress was destroyed and there followed a squatter occupation, but what Wood fails to mention is that this squatter settlement (Phase I), which contained sherds of “very late Philistine ware,” is dated by the excavator to “the 046eleventh, or possibly the early tenth century B.C.E.”⁷ The single bell-shaped bowl of Mycenaean IIIC ware was not found in this squatter phase, as the reader is led to believe, but rather in the destruction debris of building 500 (Phase II), which still represents a debased stage of the Egyptian fortress.⁸ The preliminary data hardly justify Wood’s hasty conclusion that “site A-289 was another victim of the Sea Peoples as they made their way along the Ways of Horus toward Egypt.” The same holds true for the far larger Egyptian center at Deir el-Balah (south of Gaza), which may have shared a similar history. It is noteworthy that, in this case, Wood ignores the excavator’s tentative conclusion, which does not support his theory.⁹

Wood’s third argument largely hinges on the second. He claims that with one exception (Tel Mor), there is no evidence of an Egyptian presence in Philistia after the entry of the Philistines. It is necessary, however, first to establish stratigraphically the disappearance of the Egyptians and the initial appearance of the Philistines at a certain site before one can decide that “the two material culture assemblages are mutually exclusive.” Again this is not as easy as Wood maintains. We have several examples of Egyptian finds in a Philistine context¹⁰ and it may perhaps be better to await the results of the large-scale excavations at Ekron and Ashkelon before we define the exact nature of Egyptian-Philistine contacts.

All in all, it seems to me that it is still premature to rely conclusively on the archaeological record for a definite historical reconstruction of the Philistine takeover of Philistia. Different sites along the coastal plain may have had different histories and a uniform picture should not be reconstructed at any price. But even at this stage it is quite difficult to accept the proposals of Bietak and Wood that the Egyptians lost control over the coastal plain while they maintained their authority farther inland (Beth-Shean, Megiddo, Gezer, Lachish, Tell esh-Sharia). This rather extraordinary reconstruction draws two longitudinal strips, with north-south connections, in which the Egyptians functioned behind the backs of the Sea Peoples for more than three decades. Though such a possibility cannot be entirely ruled out, I still think that the evidence from both the Egyptian texts and the archaeological data is far more compatible with the traditional historical reconstruction.

The author wishes to emphasize that the captions have been written by BAR’s editorial staff.

The following rejoinder does not make easy reading; but a careful study of it will be well repaid. Both the original article by Bryant Wood and this rejoinder by Itamar Singer attempt to assess a large mass of archaeological and textual evidence to determine a major historical event–the Philistine entry and occupation of Canaan. Scholars are clearly divided between two contesting historical reconstructions. Which is correct is perhaps not as important as how they reason, how they attempt to develop arguments from a large number of archaeological excavations and several obscure textual references. If nothing else, the reader will […]