Editing Philistia (section)

==History==
[[Ancient Egypt]]ian [[hieroglyph]]ic records from the [[New Kingdom of Egypt|New Kingdom]] period record a group of the [[Sea Peoples]] called the ''[[:wikt:pwrꜣsꜣtj|pwrꜣsꜣtj]]'', generally transliterated as either ''[[Peleset]]'' or ''Pulasti'', as invading Egypt in the mid-[[13th century BC]]. About a century later, [[pharaoh]] [[Ramesses III]] boasted of having defeated the ''Peleset'', and allegedly relocated them to the southern abandoned coast of Canaan,<ref>Carl S. Ehrlich, ''The Philistines in Transition: A History of the Philistines from Ca. 1000-730 B. C. E.'', Brill 1996, p.7</ref> recording this victory on a [[Medinet Habu]] temple inscription dated to c. 1150 BC. The ''pwrꜣsꜣtj'' are generally identified as the Philistines.{{sfn|Masalha|2018|p=56|ps=: The 3200‑year‑old documents from Ramesses III, including an inscription dated c. 1150 BC, at the Mortuary Temple of Ramesses III at the Medinat Habu Temple in Luxor – one of the best‑preserved temples of Egypt – refers to the Peleset among those who fought against Ramesses III (Breasted 2001: 24; also Bruyère 1929‒1930), who reigned from 1186 to 1155 BC.}}{{sfn|Killebrew|2005|p=202}} The [[Papyrus Harris I|Great Harris Papyrus]], a chronicle of Ramesses' reign written no later than 1149 BC, also records this Egyptian defeat of the Philistines.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.specialtyinterests.net/harris.html |title=Text of the Papyrus Harris |publisher=Specialtyinterests.net |access-date=2011-12-11|url-status=usurped |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130201044012/http://www.specialtyinterests.net/harris.html|archive-date=2013-02-01}}</ref>{{sfn|Killebrew|2005|p=204}}

Despite Ramesses III's claim, archaeology has not been able to corroborate the existence of any such (re)settlement, and the lack of sense in granting an apparently barbarous invading people an expansive and richly fertile swath of land already under Egyptian control is noted by scholars.<ref>{{cite book |first=Israel |last=Finkelstein |author-link=Israel Finkelstein |url=https://www.academia.edu/1070463 |chapter=Is The Philistine Paradigm Still Viable? |editor-last=Bietak |editor-first=M. |title=The Synchronisation of Civilisations in the Eastern Mediterranean in the Second Millennium B. C. III. Proceedings of the SCIEM 2000 – 2nd Euro- Conference, Vienna, 28th of May–1st of June 2003, Denkschriften der Ge- samtakademie 37, Contributions to the Chronology of the Eastern Mediterranean 9, Vienna 2007 |date=January 2007 |pages=517–524 |quote="SUMMARY Was there a Sea Peoples migration to the coast of the Levant? Yes. Was it a maritime migration? Possibly. Was there a massive maritime Sea Peoples invasion? Probably not. Did the Philistines settle en-masse in Philistia in the days of Ramesses III? No. Were the Iron I Philistine cities fortified? No. Were the Iron I Philistines organized in a peer-polity system? Probably not. Was there a Philistine Pentapolis system in the Iron I? No. Are the Iron I Philistines the Philistines described in the Bible? No."}}</ref>{{sfn|Drews|1995|p=69|ps=: "For the modern myth that has replaced it, however, there is [no basis]. Instead of questioning the story of the Philistines Cretan origins, in an attempt to locate a core of historical probability, [[Gaston Maspero|Maspero]] took the story at face value and proceeded to inflate it to fantastic dimensions. Believing that the [[Medinet Habu (temple)|Medinet Habu]] reliefs, with their ox carts, depict the Philistine nation on the eve of its settlement in Canaan, Maspero imagined a great overland migration. The Philistines moved first from [[Crete]] to [[Caria]], he proposed, and then from Caria to Canaan in the time of Ramesses III. Whereas Amos and Jeremiah derived the Philistines directly from Crete, a five-day sail away, Maspero's myth credited them with an itinerary that, while reflecting badly on their intelligence, testified to prodigious physical stamina: the Philistines sail from Crete to Caria, where they abandon their ships and their maritime tradition; the nation then travels in ox carts through seven hundred miles of rough and hostile terrain until it reaches southern Canaan; at that point, far from being debilitated by their trek, the Philistines not only conquer the land and give it their name but come within a hair's breadth of defeating the Egyptian pharaoh himself. Not surprisingly, for the migration from Caria to Canaan imagined by Maspero there is no evidence at all, whether literary, archaeological, or documentary.<br />Since none of Maspero's national migrations is demonstrable in the Egyptian inscriptions, or in the archaeological or linguistic record, the argument that these migrations did indeed occur has traditionally relied on place-names. These place-names are presented as the source from which were derived the ethnica in Merneptahs and Ramesses inscriptions."}}{{sfn|Ussishkin|2008|p=207|ps=: "Reconstruction of the Philistine migration and settlement on the basis of the above model is hard to accept. First, it is not supported by any factual evidence. Second, it assumes that the Philistines had at their disposal a large and strong naval force of a kind unknown in this period. Third, in the period immediately following their settlement in Philistia there is hardly any archaeological evidence connecting the Philistine culture and settlement with sea and navigation. Had the Philistines really possessed such a strong naval force and tradition, as suggested by Stager, we would expect to observe these associations in their material culture in later times."}}

During [[Iron Age I]], the Philistines seem to have had a presence far outside of what was traditionally considered Philistia, as 23 of the 26 Iron Age I sites in the [[Jezreel Valley]], including [[Tel Megiddo]], [[Tel Yokneam]], [[Tel Qiri]], [[Afula]], [[Tel Qashish]], Be'er Tiveon, Hurvat Hazin, Tel Risim, Tel Re'ala, Hurvat Tzror, Tel Sham, [[Midrakh Oz]] and Tel Zariq, yielded typical Philistine pottery dating from the 12th-to-10th century BC. However, given the minuscule quantity of said pottery finds, it is likely that even if the Philistines had by-and-large settled in the area, they remained a minority which had assimilated into the native Canaanite population by the 10th century BC.<ref>Avner Raban, "The Philistines in the Western Jezreel Valley", Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research, No. 284 (November 1991), pp. 17–27, The University of Chicago Press on behalf of The American Schools of Oriental Research.</ref>
 
In its historical form, Philistia's northern boundary was the [[Yarkon River]], with the [[Mediterranean Sea]] on the west, the [[Kingdom of Judah]] at [[Ziklag]] to the east, and the [[Arish]] to the south.<ref name="Ehrlich">{{cite book |last1=Ehrlich |first1=Carl S. |title=The Philistines in Transition: A History from Ca. 1000-730 B.C.E. |date=1996 |publisher=BRILL |isbn=978-90-04-10426-6 |page=3 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=B2eNV68WU3YC&q=Philistia++&pg=PA52 |access-date=18 February 2019 |language=en}}</ref><ref name="Ben-Shlomo">{{cite book |last1=Ben-Shlomo |first1=David |title=Philistine Iconography: A Wealth of Style and Symbolism |date=2010 |publisher=Saint-Paul |isbn=978-3-525-54360-3 |page=14 |url=https://www.zora.uzh.ch/id/eprint/143027/1/Ben-Shlomo_2010_Philistine_Iconography.pdf |archive-url=https://ghostarchive.org/archive/20221009/https://www.zora.uzh.ch/id/eprint/143027/1/Ben-Shlomo_2010_Philistine_Iconography.pdf |archive-date=2022-10-09 |url-status=live |access-date=18 February 2019 |language=en}}</ref> Philistia consisted of the five [[city-state]]s of the Philistines, known as the Philistine [[pentapolis]], described in the [[Book of Joshua]] ({{bibleverse||Joshua|13:3|HE}}) and the [[Books of Samuel]] ({{bibleverse|1|Samuel|6:17|HE}}), comprising [[Ascalon|Ashkelon]], [[Ashdod (ancient city)|Ashdod]], [[Ekron]], [[Gath (city)|Gath]], and [[Gaza City|Gaza]], in the south-western [[Levant]]. [[Tell Qasile]] and Aphek (see [[Battle of Aphek]]) likely marked the nation's frontiers, as evidence from Tell Qasile especially indicates that non-Philistines constituted an otherwise unusually large portion of their respective populations.<ref name="Ahlström1993">{{cite book|author=Gösta Werner Ahlström|title=The History of Ancient Palestine|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=5cSAlLBZKaAC&pg=PA311|year=1993|publisher=Fortress Press|isbn=978-0-8006-2770-6|page=311}}</ref> The identity of the aforementioned [[Ziklag]], a city which according to the Bible marked the border between the Philistine and Israelite territory, remains uncertain.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.studylight.org/dictionaries/hbd/z/ziklag.html |editor=Butler, Trent C. |publisher=Holman Bible Dictionary |title=Ziklag |date=1991}}</ref>

Philistia included Jaffa (in today's Tel Aviv), but it was lost to the Hebrews during Solomon's time. Nonetheless, the Philistine king of Ashkelon conquered Jaffa again circa 730 BC. Following [[Sennacherib]]'s third campaign in the Levant, the Assyrians reassigned Jaffa to the [[Phoenicia]]n [[city-state]] of [[Sidon]], and Philistia never got it back.<ref name="auto"/>

The Five Lords<ref>Note - the "Lords" is a translation of ''seren'' or ''ceren'' (סַרְנֵ֣י) in Hebrew, or [[satrap]] ({{lang|el|σατραπείαις}}) in the Greek of the [[Septuagint]]</ref> of the Philistines are described in the [[Hebrew Bible]] as being in constant struggle and interaction with the neighbouring [[Israelites]], [[Canaanites]] and [[Egyptians]], being gradually absorbed into the Canaanite culture.<ref>Library, National Public. "Philistia | National Public Library - eBooks | Read eBooks online". nationalpubliclibrary.info. Retrieved 2016-11-01.</ref>

Philistia was occupied by [[Tiglath-Pileser III]] of the [[Neo-Assyrian Empire]] in the 8th century BC. Throughout the century, often at the incitement of neighboring Egypt, Philistia revolted against Assyrian rule, but each time they were defeated and forced to pay tribute. Gath disappears from history after [[Sargon II]] records its capture in 711 BC, which may indicate he destroyed the city rather than conquered it. The term "Philistia" is not used in Assyrian records describing their campaigns, only the names of individual cities, which may indicate that at this stage the Philistines had become increasingly divided, and that the confederation of the pentapolis which constituted Philistia had fractured into separate city-states. [[Sennacherib]] further reported that he had sacked (and possibly burned) a "royal city of the land Philistia that [[Hezekiah|[Hezek]iah]] had taken away (and) fortified,"<ref>{{cite web |url=http://oracc.museum.upenn.edu/riao/qpn-x-ethnic#Q004071.8 |title=Sennacherib 1015; line 11 |publisher=ORACC}}</ref> but the city's name has not survived. The texts also mention that Ashkelon was also sacked due to its refusal to acknowledge Assyrian authority. Despite this Philistine sedition, Sennacherib records that he divided up the lands he had plundered from Judah amongst the kings of Ashdod, Gaza, and Ekron, even going as far as freeing Padi, the king of Ekron, from Judahite captivity and returning him to the throne.

The Philistines disappear from written records following the conquest of the [[Levant]] by the [[Neo-Babylonian Empire|Neo-Babylonian]] emperor [[Nebuchadnezzar II]] during the 6th century BC, when Ashkelon and many other cities from the region were destroyed.<ref name=Jarus>{{cite web |last= Jarus |first= Owen |title= Who Were the Philistines? |publisher= Live Science |date= 16 July 2016 |url= https://www.livescience.com/55429-philistines.html |access-date=9 December 2020}}</ref>