Philistines Getting a Bum Rap, Archeologists Contend

JERUSALEM —  Philistines are depicted in the Bible as an uncouth people who used the treachery of Delilah and the brute force of Goliath against the ancient Israelites.

Even today, the term philistine means someone who lacks culture and refinement.

But archeologists who have been exploring 3,000-year-old ruins in southern Israel say the Philistines may have gotten a bum rap. They say the Philistines were actually the creators of a sophisticated society that endured for six centuries.

‘Lasted Through the Ages’

“The perspective of the Bible is very negative, and this impression has lasted through the ages,” said Seymour Gittin, director of the W. F. Albright Institute of Archaelogical Research in Jerusalem.

He said some biblical authors despised the Philistines because they had slain King Saul and stolen the Ark of the Covenant, which contained the two stone tablets on which the Ten Commandments were written.

Ancient Israelite feelings about the Philistines were contained in such stories as Samson and Delilah, in which a Philistine woman robbed an Israelite champion of his strength, and David and Goliath, in which an unassuming and youthful shepherd defeats the giant, heavily armed Philistine brute.

“Let’s get rid of the idea they were uncultured, uneducated. It’s the reverse of what they were,” Gittin said.

He said although no Philistine literature has yet been found, “they were great builders, great industrialists and very adaptable people.”

Gittin is co-director, with Trude Dothan, a Hebrew University archeology professor, of a five-year excavation at Tel Miqne, which they believe to be the ancient Philistine city of Ekron.

The 50-acre site, the largest biblical-era dig in Israel, is about six miles inland from the modern port of Ashdod. The Philistines lived in Philistia, which stretched along the Mediterranean Sea from modern-day Tel Aviv to the Gaza Strip.

May Have Come From Crete

Dothan said the early Philistines, a seafaring people who may have come from the Greek island of Crete, were highly organized, built their cities on the basis of an urban plan and ran an artistic ceramic-making industry.

“It is clear from what we have found that they wanted to live in their own milieu, and they reconstructed the background of things they were used to, ranging from beer jugs to tableware,” Dothan said. She said the style was distinctively Aegean.

The Philistines’ red-and-black pottery jars were the most advanced in Iron Age Israel, and their vases are decorated with Aegean-style fish and birds.

Gittin said the Philistines dominated the Holy Land militarily by having a monopoly on iron-making and then commercially by controlling olive oil production.

Despite a history of warfare, the Israelites and Philistines cooperated because the Assyrians had threatened both sides with deportation unless peace prevailed, Gittin said.

The excavators of Ekron have found 204 olive presses, far more than in any other city of the period. There likely are more since less than 3% of the site has been excavated, Gittin said.

According to rough estimates, the Ekron olive oil industry sold at least three tons a year, a huge production at the time.

“For the 7th Century, the Philistines were high-tech. Their presses produced 13 to 26 gallons compared to other presses which had a 7 1/2-to-10 1/2-gallon capacity,” Gittin said.

The oil boom and Philistine society came to an end in 603 BC when the Babylonians conquered ancient Israel and Philistia, burning Ekron and other Philistine cities to the ground.