The Philistines: Their History and Civilization

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him in Palestine. This would give a date for the break with the tradition of the old building. The sacred marbles might well have been some stones preserved from the old structure, and on that account of peculiar sanctity.

The rest of the acts of Porphyrius do not concern us, though we may note that there was a well in the courtyard of the Marneion,

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as we learn from the account of a miracle performed by him soon after the **** of the church.

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Jerome, in his Life of Hilarion, 1 narrates sundry miraculous events, especially a remarkable victory in the circus by a Christian combatant, in which even the pagans were compelled to acknowledge Marnas victus a Christo. Epiphanius of Constantia in his Ancoratus, p. 109, 2 enumerating a number of persons who have been deified, speaks of Marnas the slave of Asterios of Crete as having so been honoured in Gaza. Here again the persistent Cretan tradition appears, but what the value or even the meaning of this particular form of it may be we cannot say. Mr. Alton has ingeniously suggested to me that Epiphanios saw and misunderstood a dedicatory inscription from the old sanctuary inscribed ΜΑΡΝΑι ΑCΤΕΡΙωι ΚΡΗΤΑΓΕΝΗι.

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Outside Gaza there is scarcely any hint of Marna-worship. The name is used as an expletive in Lampridius's Life of Alexander Severus: and Waddington 3 reports an inscription from Kanata (Kerak), built into a modern wall, and reading ΑΝΝΗΛ[Ο]C ΚΑΜΑCΑΝΟΥ ΕΠΟΗCΕ ΔΙΙ ΜΑΡΝΑι Τωι ΚΥΡΙωι. But Annēlos very likely was a native of Gaza. A well-known statue found many years ago near Gaza, and now in the Imperial Ottoman Museum at Constantinople, has been supposed to represent Marna; but there is no evidence of this. The eccentric Lady Hester Stanhope found a similar statue at Ashkelon, but destroyed it.

Certain heathenized Jews of Constantia adored as deities Marthus (or Marthys) and Marthana, the daughters of a certain false prophet of the time of Trajan, by name Elzai 4: but this is hardly more than a coincidence.

In Ashkelon, also, there was a special deity in late Pagan times. This was Ἀσκληπιὸς λεοντοῦχος, once referred to by Marinus, writing in the fifth century A. D. 5 It may be that this is the deity spoken of in the Talmud, which mentions a temple of Ṣaripa (‏צריפא‎) at Ashkelon, evidently a form of Serapis. 6 But we know nothing of 'Asclepius the lion-holder' but his name. Probably the name of the town suggested a dedication to the similarly sounding Asclepius, just as it suggested the word ΑCΦΑΛΗC on the coins of the city. Asclepius does not appear, so far as I can find, on any coins of Ashkelon. Mars, Neptune,

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the genius of the city, and Aphrodite Urania, are the deities generally found on the coins: once or twice the latter is represented standing on lions. 1 On other coins an **** is represented which may be the λίμν or fish-pond for which the sanctuary was famous (see fig. 5, p. 112).

Footnotes

92:1 Neither will he feel any necessity to picture John the Baptist feeding on locust-pods instead of locusts, which the fellahin still eat with apparent relish.

92:2 For Babylonian omens derived from various insects see Hunger, Babylonische Tieromina in Mitt. vorderas. Gesell. (1909), 3.

94:1 i. 105.

94:2 Some have compared with this the outbreak of disease consequent on the capture of the Ark. But the two are entirely independent. The Scythian disease, whatever it may have been, was not bubonic plague, and the Philistine disease was not a hereditary curse. (The Scythian disease is much more like the cess noinden or 'childbirth pangs' with which the men of Ulster were periodically afflicted in consequence of the curse of Macha, according to the Irish legend of the Tain Bó Cuailnge. This is supposed to be a distorted tradition of the custom of the couvade, a theory which only adds difficulties to the original obscurity of the myth.)

94:3 Clermont-Ganneau, discussing this inscription (Acad. des Inscriptions, 1909), acutely points out that αἴγειον, ὑικόν are neuter adjectives, depending on some such word as ζῷον, so that all animals of these species are forbidden: whereas female animals of the cow kind alone are forbidden, so that bulls are lawful. Such limitations of the admissible sacrificial animals are well known in analogous inscriptions: p. 95 the triple prohibition in this case probably corresponds to the triple dedication, the purpose being to secure that none of the three deities in joint ownership of the altar shall be offended by a sacrifice unlawful in his or her worship. Other inscriptions are quoted in the same article showing a considerable intercourse between the Ashkelonites and the island of Delos.

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95:1 De Dea Syria, 14.

95:2 See a careful discussion in Baethgen, Beitr. 71 ff.

96:1 'Cretes Dianam religiosissime venerantur, βριθομάρτην gentiliter nominantes quod sermone nostro sonat uirginem dulcem.'—Solinus, Polyhistor. ch. xvi.

98:1 'Iope Phoenicum, antiquior terrarum inundatione, ut ferunt. Insidet collem praeiacente saxo, in quo uinculorum Andromedae uestigia ostendunt; colitur illic fabulosa <Der>ceto.'—Hist. Nat. v. xiii. 69.

99:1 Possibly some apparently irrational prohibition of a palatable species is at the base of the half-humorous stories of the greedy queen.

99:2 Assuming the trophy to have been exposed in the same town as the body—which is nowhere stated—then even if it were actually hung in the temple of 'Ashtaroth' (i.e. Atargatis-Britomartis), there was probably a temple of Dagon also in the town, to give rise to the parallel tradition.

99:3 'Nabo autem et ipsum idolum est quod interpretatur prophetia et divinatio, quam post Euangelii ueritatem in toto orbe conticuisse significat. Siue, iuxta LXX, Dagon, qui tamen in Hebraico non habetur. Et est idolum Ascalonis, Gazae, et reliquarum urbium Philisthiim.'

100:1 … (Vatican Onomasticon, ed. Lagarde, p. 215): 'Dagon piscis tristitiae' (Jerome, Liber interpret. hebraic. nominum, ed. Lagarde, p. 62). The analysis suggested is ‏דג-און‎. It reminds one of Stephanus of Byzantium's story about Ashdod: ….

101:1 Probably two adjacent lines ended thus:

‏דגון ושתי‎

‏המפתן ושתי‎

and the homoeoteleuton caused the scribe's eye to wander.

102:1 On the whole subject see H. C. Trumbull, The Threshold Covenant, or the Beginning of Religious Rites (Edinburgh, 1896).

103:1 ….—Frag. Philo Byblios 13, Müller, Fragmm. iii, p. 567.

103:2 ….—ib. p. 569.

103:3 Winckler, 215, 216; Knudtzon, 317, 318.

103:4 See Max Müller, Egyptian Researches, i. 49, plate 68.

103:5 De situ et nominibus locorum, ed. Lagarde, p. 138.

104:1 See Jensen, Kosmologie der Babylonier, pp. 449–456, and Paton's article 'Dagan' in Hastings's Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics.

104:2 Ed. Neubauer, p. 20, xlvii.

104:3 Sumerisch-babylonische Mythen von dem Gotte Ninrag (Mitth. der vorderas. Gesell. (1903), 5).

105:1 ….

105:2 Cf. the sudden appearances of Britomartis in Aegina, Pausanias, II. xxx. 3.

105:3 See Cic. de Divinatione, ii. 23.

107:1 Aldemios was probably another name of Marna. The Etymologicon Magnum gives us ….—Etym. Magn. ed: Gaisford, col. 58. 20.

107:2 Neubauer, Geog. d. Talmud. With Yerīd compare ‘Ain Yerdeh, the name of a spring outside the important city of Gezer.

107:3 It is probably a mere coincidence that there was a river-god of the same name at Ephesus, mentioned on coins of that city of the time of Domitian (ΜΑΡΝΑC or ΕΦΕCΙΩΝ ΜΑΡΝΑC), as well as in an inscription from an aqueduct at Ephesus, now in the British Museum. See Roscher, Lexicon, s.v.

107:4 The word Mar, 'Lord,' is used in the modern Syrian church as a title of respect for saints and bishops. A pagan name ‏מריחב‎ (= ‏מרי יחב‎, 'Mar has given') illustrates its application to divinity.

108:1 The fish-tail has now disappeared.

111:1 ….

112:1 ….—Damascius.

113:1 Ed. Migne, xxiii. 27.

113:2 Ed. Migne, xliii. 209: ….

113:3 Inscriptions, in Le Bas, Voyage archéologique en Grèce . . .

113:4 Epiphanius, Contra Haeres. I. xix.

113:5 ….—Marinus, Vita Procli, ch. 19.

113:6 Hildesheimer, Beiträge zur Geog. Palästinas, p. 3.

114:1 See De Saulcy, Numismatique de la Terre Sainte.

http://sacred-texts.com/ane/phc/phc10.htm

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IV. Their Place in History and Civilization

A people, or rather a group of peoples, the remnant—the degenerate remnant if you will—of a great civilization, settled on the Palestine coast. They found before them a servile aboriginal population ready to their use, who could relieve them of the necessary but unaccustomed labour of extracting life and wealth from the prolific soil. They were thus free to cultivate the commercial facilities which were already established in the land they made their own. Gaza, Ashkelon, and Ashdod had harbours which opened the way to trade by sea. The great land route from Egypt to Babylon passed right through the heart of the country from end to end—Gaza was from the beginning the principal mart for northern Arabia: in the expressive words of Principal G. A. Smith, we hear the jingling of shekels in the very name of Ashkelon. Corn and wine were produced abundantly within their favoured territory, even in years when the rest of the country suffered famine; an active slave-trade (one of the most lucrative sources of wealth) centred in Philistia, as we learn from the bitter denunciation of Amos. Small wonder then that the lords of the Philistines could offer an enormous bribe to a wretched woman to betray her husband. Small wonder that the Philistines were the carriers and controllers of the arts of civilization in Palestine.

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The settlement of the Philistines in Palestine falls in that period of fog, as we may call it, when the iron culture succeeds the bronze in the Eastern Mediterranean. Recent excavations have given us a clear-cut picture of the development of civilization during the bronze age; that wonderful history which was sketched in its barest outline in the course of Chapter I. Then a cloud seems to settle down on the world, through which we can dimly perceive scenes of turmoil, and the shifting of nations. When the mist rolls away it is as though a new world is before us. We see new powers on earth, new gods in heaven: new styles of architecture, new methods of warfare: the alphabet has been invented, and above all, iron has become the metal of which the chief implements are made. Crete and the great days of Egypt belong to the past: the glorious days of classical Greece are the goal before us.

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The chief interest of the Philistines lies in this, that their history falls almost entirely within this period of obscurity, when the iron age of Europe was in its birth-throes. They and their kin, the Zakkala in the east and Turisha in the west, bridge the gap between the old world and the new. It is owing to them that the reminiscences of the days of Crete were handed across a couple of troubled centuries, to form the basis of new civilizations in Greece, in Italy, and in the East.

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Our materials for estimating the culture of the Philistines and their place in civilization are the following: (1) The Phaestos Disk; (2) The Medinet Habu sculptures; (3) The results of excavation in Philistia; (4) Scattered Biblical references.

 

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(1) On the Phaestos Disk are forty-five characters. Of some of these it is not very easy to determine the signification, but others have some value as indicating the nature of the civilization of those who invented its script, and its analogues.

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The writing, running from right to left, is in the same direction as the Carian inscriptions, but not as the Minoan linear tablets.

The plumed head-dress of the sign here called M has been referred to as being the link which connects this disk with Caria on the one hand and with the Philistines on the other. A. J. Reinach (Revue archéologique, Sér. V, vol. xv, pp. 26, 27) publishes Sardinian statuettes showing the same form of head-dress. The Sardinians being probably a later stage in the history of one branch of the sea-peoples, it is natural that they should show an analogous equipment.

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The sign a, a man running, shows the simple waist-band which forms the sole body-covering of the Keftian envoys.

The sign b, a captive with arms bound behind, has no more covering than a girdle. The symbol z appears to represent a handcuff or fetter. Perhaps Samson was secured with some such fastening.

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The sign c from its small size appears to represent a child. He is clad in a tunic fitting closely to the body and reaching barely to the hips. No doubt, as often in Egypt ancient and modern, in some of the remoter parts of Palestine and among the Bedawin, young children went naked.

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Fig. d represents a woman. She has long flowing hair, and seems to be wearing a single garment not unlike the fustān of the modern Palestinian peasant, the upper part of which, however, has been dropped down over the lower so as to expose the body from the girdle upwards. Hall, in a recent article in the Journal of Hellenic Studies, shows that the figure has Mycenaean analogies.

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Fig. e, with the shaved head, perhaps represents a slave. A figure-of-eight (an ownership mark in tatu) is represented on the cheek. 1

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