CANAAN
Canaan was the inheritance which the Israelites won for themselves by
the sword. Their ancestors had already settled in it in patriarchal
days. Abraham "the Hebrew" from Babylonia had bought in it a
burying-place near Hebron; Jacob had purchased a field near Shechem,
where he could water his flocks from his own spring. It was the
"Promised Land" to which the serfs of the Pharaoh in Goshen looked
forward when they should again become free men and find a new home for
themselves.
Canaan had ever been the refuge of the Asiatic population of Egypt, the
goal at which they aimed when driven out of the land of the Nile. The
Hyksos conquerors from Asia had retreated to Jerusalem when the native
Egyptians recovered their independence and had expelled them from their
seats in the Delta. Though Moses had assured the Pharaoh that all the
Israelites needed was to go a short journey of three days into the
wilderness, and there sacrifice to their God, it was well understood
that the desert was not to be the end of their pilgrimage. Canaan, and
Canaan only, was the destined country they had in view.
In the early inscriptions of Babylonia, Canaan is included in the rest
of Syria under the general title of "the land of the Amorites." The
Amorites were at the time the dominant population on the Mediterranean
coast of western Asia, and after them accordingly the whole country
received its name. The "land of the Amorites" had been overrun by the
armies of Babylonia at a very remote period, and had thus come under the
influence of Babylonian culture. As far back as the reigns of Sargon of
Akkad and his son Naram-Sin (B.C. 3800), three campaigns had laid it at
the feet of the Chaldæan monarch, and Palestine and Syria became a
province of the Babylonian empire. Sargon erected an image of himself by
the shore of the sea, and seems even to have received tribute from
Cyprus. Colonies of "Amorite" or Canaanitish merchants settled in
Babylonia for the purposes of trade, and there obtained various rights
and privileges; and a cadastral survey of southern Babylonia made at the
time mentions "the governor of the land of the Amorites."
The Amorites, however, though they were the dominant people of Syria,
were not its original inhabitants; nor, it is probable, did they even
form the largest part of its population. They were essentially the
inhabitants of the mountains, as we are told in the Book of Numbers
(xiii. 29), and appear to have come from the west. We have learnt a good
deal about them from the Egyptian monuments, where the "Amurru" or
Amorites are depicted with that fidelity to nature which characterised
the art of ancient Egypt. They belonged to the white race, and, like
other members of the white race, were tall in stature and impatient of
the damp heat of the plains. Their beard and eye-brows are painted red,
their hair a light red-brown, while their eyes are blue. The skin is a
sunburnt white, the nose straight and regular, the forehead high, and
the lips thin. They wore whiskers and a pointed beard, and dressed in
long robes furnished with a sort of cape. Their physical characteristics
are those of the Libyan neighbours of the Egyptians on the west, the
forefathers of the fair-skinned and blue-eyed Kabyles or Berbers who
inhabit the mountains of northern Africa to-day. Anthropologists connect
these Libyans with the Kelts of our own islands. At one time, it would
seem, a Kelto-Libyan race existed, which spread along the northern coast
of Africa to western Europe and the British Isles. The Amorites would
appear to have been an eastern offshoot of the same race.
Wherever they went, the members of the race buried their dead in rude
stone cairns or cromlechs, the dolmens of the French antiquarians. We
find them in Britain and France, in the Spanish peninsula, and the north
of Africa. They are also found in Palestine, more especially in that
portion of it which was the home of the Amorites. The skulls found in
the cairns are for the most part of the dolichocephalic or long-headed
type; this too is the shape of skull characteristic of the modern
Kabyle, and it has been portrayed for us by the Egyptian artists in the
pictures of their Amorite foes.
In the days of the Egyptian artists--the age of the Eighteenth and two
following dynasties (B.C. 1600-1200)--the special seat of the Amorites
was the mountainous district immediately to the north of Palestine. But
Amorite kingdoms were established elsewhere on both sides of the Jordan.
Not long before the Israelitish invasion, the Amorite king Sihon had
robbed Moab of its territory and founded his power on the ruins of that
of the Egyptian empire. Farther north, in the plateau of Bashan, another
Amorite king, Og, had his capital, while Amorite tribes were settled on
the western side of the Jordan, in the mountains of southern Canaan,
where the tribe of Judah subsequently established itself. We even hear
of Amorites in the mountain-block of Kadesh-barnea, in the desert south
of Canaan; and the Amorite type of face, as it has been depicted for us
on the monuments of Egypt, may still be often observed among the Arab
tribes of the district between Egypt and Palestine.
Jerusalem, Ezekiel tells us, had an Amorite as well as a Hittite
parentage, and Jacob declares that he had taken his heritage at Shechem
out of the hand of the Amorite with his sword and bow. It must be
remembered, however, that the term "Amorite" is sometimes used in the
Old Testament in its Babylonian sense, as denoting an inhabitant of
Canaan, whatever might be the race to which he belonged; we cannot
always infer from it the nationality or race of those to whom it is
applied. Moreover, individual branches of the Amorite stock had names of
their own. In the north they were known as Hivites, at Hebron they were
called Anakim, at Jerusalem they were Jebusites. The Amorite kings of
Bashan are described as Rephaim, a word which the Authorised Version
translates "giants." It was only on the northern frontier of Palestine
and in the kingdom of Sihon that the name of "Amorite" alone was used.
The Babylonian conquests introduced into Canaan the government and law,
the writing and literature, of Babylonian civilisation. The Babylonian
language even made its way to the west, and was taught, along with the
script, in the schools which were established in imitation of those of
Chaldæa. Babylonian generals and officials lived in Palestine and
administered its affairs, and an active trade was carried on between the
Euphrates and the Mediterranean coast. The trade-road ran through
Mesopotamia past the city of Harran, and formed a link between the
Mediterranean and the Persian Gulf.
From an early date libraries had existed in Babylonia stored with the
literature of the country. Similarly, libraries now grew up in "the land
of the Amorites," and the clay tablets with which they were filled made
known to the west the legends and records of Chaldæa. Amorite culture
was modelled on that of Babylonia.
Babylonian influence lasted for centuries in western Asia. In the age of
Abraham the Amorites still obeyed the suzerainty of the Babylonian
kings. Khammurabi, the Amraphel of the Book of Genesis, calls himself
king of the country of the Amorites as well as of Babylon, and his
great-grandson does the same. At a later date Babylonia itself was
conquered by a foreign line of kings, and Canaan recovered its
independence. But this was of no long duration. Thothmes III., of the
Eighteenth Egyptian dynasty (B.C. 1503-1449), made it a province of
Egypt, and the Amorites were governed by Egyptian prefects and
commissioners. The cuneiform tablets found at Tel el-Amarna in Upper
Egypt give us a vivid picture of its condition at the close of the
Eighteenth dynasty. The Egyptian power was falling to pieces, and
Palestine was threatened by Hittite invaders from the north. The native
governors were fighting with one another or intriguing with the enemies
of Egypt, while all the time protesting their loyalty to the Pharaoh.
Ebed-Asherah and his son Aziru governed the Amorites in the north, and
the prefect of Phoenicia sends bitter complaints to the Egyptian court
of their hostility to himself and their royal master. Aziru, however,
was an able ruler. He succeeded in clearing himself from the charge of
complicity with the Hittites against whom he had been sent, as well as
in getting the better of his Phoenician rival. The latter disappears
from history, while the Amorites are allowed to settle undisturbed in
Zemar and other cities of inland Phoenicia.
Under Ramses II. of the Nineteenth dynasty, Canaan still yielded a
reluctant obedience to Egypt. In the troubles which had followed the
fall of the Eighteenth dynasty, it had shaken itself free from foreign
authority, but had been reconquered by Seti I., the father of Ramses.
Egyptian authority was re-established even on the eastern side of the
Jordan; but it did not continue for long. Ramses was hardly dead before
Egypt was invaded by Libyans from the west and robber hordes from the
Greek seas, and though the invasion was ultimately beaten back, its
strength had been exhausted in the struggle. The Egyptian empire in
Canaan passed away for ever, and the Canaanites were left free to govern
themselves.
The kingdom of Sihon was one of the results of this ending of Egyptian
rule. The Amorites became a power once more. A few years later Egypt was
again attacked by armed invaders from the north. The assailants poured
into it both by sea and land. Fleets of ships filled with Philistines
and Achæans and other northern tribes entered the mouths of the Nile,
while a vast army simultaneously attacked it by land. The army, we are
told, had encamped in "the land of the Amorites," and they carried with
them on their farther march recruits from the countries through which
they passed. The Amorite "chief" himself was among those who followed
the barbarians to Egypt, eager for the spoils of the wealthiest country
in the ancient world.
Ramses III. of the Twentieth dynasty was now on the throne. He succeeded
in rolling back the wave of invasion, in gaining a decisive victory over
the combined military and naval forces of the enemy, and in pursuing
them to the frontiers of Asia itself. Gaza, the key to the military road
which ran along the sea-board of Palestine, fell once more into Egyptian
hands; and the Egyptian troops overran the future Judah, occupying the
districts of Jerusalem and Hebron, and even crossing the Jordan. But no
permanent conquest was effected; Ramses retired again to Egypt, and for
more than two centuries no more Egyptian armies found their way into
Canaan. Gaza and the neighbouring cities became the strongholds of the
Philistine pirates, and effectually barred the road to Asia.
The campaign of Ramses III. in southern Palestine must have taken place
when the Israelites were still in the desert. Between the two invasions
of Egypt by the barbarians of the north, there was no great interval of
time. The Exodus, which had been due in part to the pressure of the
first of them in the reign of Meneptah, was separated by only a few
years from the capture of Hebron by Caleb, which must have occurred
after its evacuation by the Egyptian troops. The great movement which
brought the populations of Asia Minor and the Greek islands upon Canaan
and the Nile, and which began in the age of the Exodus, was over before
the children of Israel had emerged from the wilds of the desert.
In the Old Testament the Amorites are constantly associated with another
people, the Hittites. When Ezekiel ascribes an Amorite parentage to
Jerusalem, he ascribes to it at the same time a Hittite parentage as
well. The same interlocking of Amorite and Hittite that meets us in the
Bible, meets us also on the monuments of Egypt. Here, too, we are told
that Kadesh on the Orontes, the Hittite capital, was "in the land of the
Amorites." It was, in fact, on the shores of the Lake of Homs, in the
midst of the district over which the Amorites claimed rule.
The Hittites were intruders from the north. The Egyptian monuments have
shown us what they were like. Their skin was yellow, their eyes and hair
were black, their faces were beardless. Square and prominent cheeks, a
protrusive nose, with retreating chin and forehead and lozenge-shaped
eyes, gave them a Mongoloid appearance. They were not handsome to look
upon, but the accuracy of their portraiture by the artists of Egypt is
confirmed by their own monuments. The heads represented on the Egyptian
monuments are repeated, feature by feature, in the Hittite sculptures.
Ugly as they were, they were not the caricatures of an enemy, but the
truthful portraits of a people whose physical characteristics are still
found, according to Sir Charles Wilson, in the modern population of
Cappadocia.
The Hittites wore their hair in three plaits, which fell over the back
like the pigtail of a Chinaman. They dressed in short tunics over which
a long robe was worn, which in walking left one leg bare. Their feet
were shod with boots with turned-up ends, a sure indication of their
northern origin. Such boots, in fact, are snow-shoes, admirably adapted
to the inhabitants of the mountain-ranges of Asia Minor, but wholly
unsuited for the hot plains of Syria. When, therefore, on the walls of
the Ramesseum we find the Theban artists depicting the defenders of
Kadesh on the Orontes with them, we may conclude that the latter had
come from the colder north just as certainly as we may conclude, from
the use of similar shoes among the Turks, that they also have come from
a northern home. In the Hittite system of hieroglyphic writing, the boot
with upturned end occupies a prominent place.
When the Tel el-Amarna tablets were written (B.C. 1400), the Hittites
were advancing on the Egyptian province of Syria. Tunip, or Tennib, near
Aleppo, had fallen, and both Amorites and Canaanites were intriguing
with the invader. The highlands of Cappadocia and the ranges of the
Taurus seem to have been the cradle of the Hittite race. Here they first
came into contact with Babylonian culture, which they adopted and
modified, and from hence they poured down upon the Aramæan cities of the
south. Carche-mish, now Jerablûs, which commanded the chief ford across
the Euphrates, fell into their hands, and for many centuries remained
one of their capitals. But it was not until the stormy period which
signalised the overthrow of the Eighteenth Egyptian dynasty, that the
Hittites succeeded in establishing themselves as far south as Kadesh on
the Orontes. The long war, however, waged with them by Ramses II.
prevented them from advancing farther; when peace was made at last
between them and the Egyptians, both sides had been exhausted by the
struggle, and the southern limit of Hittite power had been fixed.
The kings of Kadesh had, however, been at the head of a veritable
empire; they were able to summon allies and vassals from Asia Minor, and
it is probable that their rule extended to the banks of the Halys in
Cappadocia, where Hittite remains have been found. Military roads
connected the Hittite cities of Cappadocia with the rest of Asia Minor,
and monuments of Hittite conquest or invasion have been met with as far
west as the neighbourhood of Smyrna. These monuments are all alike
distinguished by the same peculiar style of art, and by the same system
of pictorial writing. The writing, unfortunately, has not yet been
deciphered, but as the same groups of characters occur wherever an
inscription in it is found, we may infer that the language concealed
beneath it is everywhere one and the same.
When the Assyrians first became acquainted with the West, the Hittites
were the ruling people in Syria. As, therefore, the Babylonians had
included all the inhabitants of Syria and Palestine, whatever might be
their origin, under the general name of Amorites, the Assyrians included
them under the name of Hittites. Even the Israelites and Ammonites are
called "Hittites" by an Assyrian king. It is possible that traces of
this vague and comprehensive use of the name are to be met with in the
Old Testament; indeed, it has been suggested that the Hittites, or "sons
of Heth," from whom Abraham bought the cave of Machpelah, owed their
name to this cause. In the later books of the Hebrew Scriptures the
Hittites are described as a northern population, in conformity with the
Egyptian and Assyrian accounts.
The Hittites of Hebron, however, may really have been an offshoot of the
Hittite nations of the north. The "king of the Hittites" accompanied the
northern barbarians when they invaded Egypt in the reign of Ramses III.,
and Hittite bands may similarly have followed the Hyksos conquerors of
Egypt several centuries before. One of these bands may easily have
settled on its way at Hebron, which, as we are told, was built seven
years before Zoan, the Hyksos capital. At Karnak, moreover, an Egyptian
artist has represented the people of Ashkelon with faces of a Hittite
type, while Ezekiel bears witness to the presence of a Hittite element
in the founders of Jerusalem. But the fact that Thothmes III. in the
century before Moses calls the Hittite land of the north "the Greater,"
is the best proof we can have that there was a Hittite colony elsewhere,
which was well known to the Egyptian scribes. The "Greater" implies the
Less, and the only Lesser Hittite land with which we are acquainted is
that of which the Book of Genesis speaks.
So far as we can judge from the evidence of proper names, the Hittites
belonged to a race which was spread from the Halys in Asia Minor to the
shores of Lake Urumiyeh. The early inhabitants of Armenia, who have left
us inscriptions in the cuneiform character, also belonged to it. So also
did the people of Comagênê, and it seems probable that the ruling class
in northern Mesopotamia did the same. Here there existed a kingdom which
at one time exercised a considerable amount of power, and whose
princesses were married to the Pharaohs of the Eighteenth dynasty. This
was the kingdom of Aram Naharaim, called Naharina in the Egyptian texts,
Mitanni by its own inhabitants. The language of Mitanni was of a very
peculiar type, as we learn from the tablets of Tel el-Amarna, one or two
of which are written in it. Like the Hittites in Syria, the Mitannians
appear to have descended from the north upon the cities of the Semites,
and to have established themselves in them. Mitanni was at the height of
its influence in the sixteenth and fifteenth centuries before our era;
its armies made their way even into Canaan, and the Canaanite princes
intrigued from time to time against their Egyptian masters, not only
with the Babylonians and Hittites, but also with the kings of Mitanni.
Before the time of David the power and almost the name of Mitanni had
passed away. The Hittite empire also had been broken up, and henceforth
we hear only of "the kings of the Hittites" who ruled over a number of
small states. The Semites of Syria had succeeded in rolling back the
wave of Hittite conquest, and in absorbing their Hittite conquerors. The
capture of Carchemish by Sargon of Assyria in B.C. 717 marks the end of
Hittite dominion south of the Taurus.
But the Hittite invasion had produced lasting results. It had severed
the Semites of Assyria and Babylonia from those of the West, and planted
the barrier of a foreign population on the highroad that ran from
Nineveh to the Mediterranean. The tradition of Babylonian culture in
western Asia was broken; new influences began to work there, and the
cuneiform system of writing to be disused. Room was given for the
introduction of a new form of script, and the Phoenician alphabet, in
which the books of the Old Testament were written, made its way into
Canaan. When Joshua crosses the Jordan there is no longer any trace in
Palestine of either Babylonian or Egyptian domination.
Like the Amorites and the Amorite tribe of Jebusites at Jerusalem, the
Hittites were mountaineers.[2] The hot river-valleys and the sea-coast
were inhabited by Canaanites. Canaan is supposed to mean "the lowlands"
of the Mediterranean shore; here the Canaanites had built their cities,
and ventured in trading ships on the sea. But they had also settled in
the inland plains, and more especially in the valley of the Jordan. The
plain of Jezreel formed, as it were, the centre of the Canaanitish
kingdoms.
The Canaanites were Semites in speech, if not in blood. The language of
Canaan is what we term Hebrew, and must have been adopted either by the
Israelites or by the patriarchs their forefathers. Between the dialect
of the Phoenician inscriptions and that of the Old Testament the
difference is but slight, and the tablets of Tel el-Amarna carry back
the record of this Canaanitish speech to the century before the Exodus.
In person, as we learn from the Egyptian monuments, the Canaanites
resembled their descendants, the modern inhabitants of Palestine. They
belonged to the white race, but had black hair and eyes. They dressed in
brilliantly-coloured garments, stained with that purple or scarlet dye
in search of which they explored the coasts of the Greek seas, and which
was extracted from the shell of the murex. On their feet they wore
high-laced sandals; their hair was bound with a fillet. Their skill as
sailors was famous throughout the Oriental world; the cities of the
Phoenician coast already possessed fleets of ships in the age of the
Eighteenth Egyptian dynasty, and their merchants carried on a maritime
trade with the islands of the Ægean and the coast of Africa. Before the
time of Solomon their vessels had found their way to Tartessus in Spain,
perhaps even to Cadiz, and the alliance between Hiram and the
Israelitish king enabled the Tyrians to import gold and other precious
things from Africa and Arabia through the ports of southern Edom. The
Tel el-Amarna letters refer to the riches of Tyre, and excavations on
the site of Lachish have brought to light amber beads ef the same age,
which indicate intercourse with the Baltic. It is possible that the tin
which was needed in such large quantities for the bronze tools and
weapons of the ancient East was derived from Cornwall; if so, it would
have been brought, like the amber, across Europe along the road which
ended at the extremity of the Adriatic Gulf.
The wealth of the Canaanitish merchants was great. The spoils carried
away to Egypt by Thothmes III. after his conquest of Palestine are truly
astonishing. Beautiful vases of gold and silver, artistically moulded
bronzes, furniture carved out of ebony and cedar and inlaid with ivory
and precious stones, were among the booty. Iron, which was found in the
hills, was freely used, and made into armour, weapons, and chariots. It
was "the chariots of iron" which prevented the Israelites from capturing
and sacking the cities of the plains. Wealth brought with it a
corresponding amount of luxury, which to the simpler Hebrews of the
desert seemed extravagant and sinful. It was associated with a
licentiousness which Canaanitish religion encouraged rather than
repressed.
The religion was a nature-worship. The supreme deity was addressed as
Baal or "Lord," and was adored in the form of the Sun. And as the Sun
can be baleful as well as beneficent, parching up the soil and blasting
the seed as well as warming it into life, so too Baal was regarded
sometimes as the friend and helper of man, sometimes as a fierce and
vengeful deity who could be appeased only by blood. In times of national
or individual distress his worshippers were called upon to sacrifice to
him their firstborn; nothing less costly could turn away from them the
anger of their god. By the side of Baal was his colourless wife, a mere
reflection of the male divinity, standing in the same state of
dependence towards him as the woman stood to the man. It was only the
unmarried goddess, Ashêrah as she was called by the Canaanites, who had
a personality of her own. And since Ashêrah came in time to be
superseded by Ashtoreth, who was herself of Babylonian origin, it is
probable that the idea of separate individuality connected with Ashêrah.
was due to the influence of Babylonian culture. Ashêrah was the goddess
of fertility, and though the fertility of the earth depends upon the
Sun, it was easy to conceive of it as an independent principle.
The name Baal was merely a title. It was applied to the supreme deity of
each city or tribe, by whatever special name he might otherwise be
known. There were as many Baals or Baalim as there were states or cults.
Wherever a high-place was erected, a Baal was worshipped. His power did
not extend beyond the district in which he was adored and to which he
was territorially attached. The Baal of Lebanon was distinct from the
Baal of Tyre or Sidon, though in every case the general conception that
was formed of him was the same. It was the attributes of particular
Baalim which differed; Baal was everywhere the Sun-god, but in one place
he showed himself under one shape, in another place under another. The
goddesses followed the analogy of the gods. Over against the Baalim or
Baals stood the Ashtaroth or Ashtoreths. The Canaanitish goddess
manifested herself in a multitude of forms.
As the firstborn was sacrificed to the god, so chastity was sacrificed
to the goddess. The temples of Ashtoreth were crowded with religious
prostitutes, and the great festivals of Canaan were orgies of licentious
sin. It was a combination of nature-worship with the luxury that was
born of wealth.
The Canaanites of Phoenicia believed that they had originally migrated
from the Persian Gulf. In Canaan, at all events, according to the Book
of Genesis, the "Fishers" city of Sidon was the first that was built.
But Tyre also, a few miles to the north of it, claimed considerable
antiquity. The temple of Melkarth or Melek-Kiryath, "the King of the
City," the name under which the Baal of Tyre was worshipped, had been
built on the island-rock twenty-three centuries before the time of
Herodotus, or B.C. 2700. Gebal or Byblos, still farther to the north,
had been renowned for its sanctity from immemorial times. Here stood the
sanctuary of Baalith, the "lady" of Gebal, of whom we hear in the
tablets of Tel el-Amarna. Still farther north were other cities, of
which the most famous was Arvad, with its harbour and fleet. Southward
were Dor and Joppa, the modern Jaffa, while inland were Zemar and Arqa,
mentioned in the Book of Genesis and the Tel el-Amarna correspondence,
but which ceased to be remembered after the age of the Exodus. Before
the Israelites entered Canaan they had been captured by the Amorites,
and had passed into insignificance.
Between the Canaanites of the coast and the Canaanites of the interior a
difference grew up in the course of centuries. This was caused by the
sea-trade in which the cities on the coast engaged. The "Phoenicians,"
as they were termed, on the coast became sailors and merchants, while
their brethren farther inland were content to live on the products of
agriculture and import from abroad the luxuries they required. While
Tyre and Sidon were centres of manufacture and maritime trade, Megiddo
and Hazor remained agricultural. After the Hebrew invasion the
difference between them became greater: Phoenicia continued independent;
the Canaanites of the interior were extirpated by the Israelites or paid
tribute to their conquerors. Little by little the latter amalgamated
with the conquered race; towns like Shechem contained a mixed
population, partly Hebrew and partly native; and the Israelites adopted
the manners and religion of the Canaanites, worshipping at the old
high-places of the country, and adoring the Baalim and Ashtaroth. The
Amorite heads depicted at Karnak above the names of the places captured
by Shishak in Judah show how little the population of southern Palestine
had changed up to the time of Solomon's death.
Canaan was ruined by its want of union. The Canaanitish cities were
perpetually fighting with one another; even the strong hand of the
Pharaoh in the days of Egyptian supremacy could not keep them at peace.
Now and again, indeed, they united, generally under a foreign leader,
but the union was brought about by the pressure of foreign attack, and
was never more than temporary. There was no lack of patriotism among
them, it is true; but the patriotism was confined to the particular city
or state to which those who were inspired by it belonged. The political
condition of Canaan resembled its religious condition; as each district
had its separate Baal, so too it had its separate political existence.
If there were many Baals, there were also many kinglets.
The fourteenth century B.C. was a turning-point in the history of
Canaan. It witnessed the fall of the Egyptian supremacy which had
succeeded the supremacy of Babylonia; it also witnessed the severance of
western Asia from the kingdoms on the Euphrates and Tigris, and the
consequent end of the direct influence of Babylonian culture. The
Hittites established themselves in Syria "in the land of the Amorites,"
while at the same time other invaders threatened Canaan itself. The
Israelites made their way across the Jordan; the Philistines seized the
southern portion of the coast.
The Philistine invasion preceded that of the Israelites by a few years.
The Philistines were sea-robbers, probably from the island of Krete.
Zephaniah calls them "the nation of the Cherethites" or Kretans, and
their features, as represented on the Egyptian monuments, are of a Greek
or Aryan type. They have the straight nose, high forehead, and thin lips
of the European. On their heads they wear a curious kind of pleated cap,
fastened round the chin by a strap. They are clad in a pair of drawers
and a cuirass of leather, while their arms consist of a small round
shield with two handles, a spear, and a short but broad sword of bronze.
Greaves of bronze, like those of the Homeric heroes, protected their
legs in battle.
The Philistines formed part of the host which invaded Egypt in the reign
of Ramses III. Along with their kinsfolk, the Zakkal, they had already
made themselves formidable to the coast of the Delta and of southern
Canaan. The sea had long been infested by their ships, bent on plunder
and piracy; the Zakkal had attacked Egypt in the time of Meneptah, and
the road from Egypt to Asia which skirted the sea had long been known as
"the way of the Philistines." When Ramses III. overran southern Canaan,
Gaza still belonged to Egypt, as it had done for the three preceding
centuries; but it is probable that the Philistines were already settled
in its neighbourhood. At all events, it was not long before they made
themselves masters of Gaza, and thus closed for Egypt the way to Asia.
Henceforward Gaza and its four companion cities became the strongholds
of the Philistines (B.C. 1200). The southern coast as far north as Mount
Carmel fell into their hands: the Zakkal established themselves at Dor,
and the port of Joppa was lost to the Phoenicians.
Hardly were the Israelites planted in the Promised Land before they were
confronted by the Philistines. Shamgar, we are told, one of the earliest
of the Judges, slew six hundred of them "with an ox-goad." But it was
not until the close of the period of the Judges that they became really
formidable to Israel. Judah had become a distinct and powerful tribe,
formed out of Hebrew, Kenite, and Edomite elements, and its frontier
adjoined Philistia. At first there was desultory warfare; the
Philistines made raids into Judæan territory, and the Jews retaliated
whenever the opportunity occurred. But the Philistines were a nation of
warriors, and their forces were recruited from time to time by fresh
arrivals from Krete or other parts of the eastern Mediterranean. Year by
year, therefore, the Philistine attack became more formidable; the raids
of the enemy were no longer confined to Judah, but extended into
Benjamin and Mount Ephraim. The Philistines began to dream of conquering
the whole of Canaan, which was henceforth to bear the name of Palestine,
"the land of the Philistines."
The Israelitish army was shattered in a decisive battle, the ark of the
covenant between Israel and its national God was taken by the heathen,
and the priests of Shiloh, the central sanctuary, were slain. The
victors marched unresisted through the country, burning and spoiling,
and securing the passes by means of permanent garrisons. Shiloh and its
temple were destroyed, and its priesthood scattered abroad.
The Philistine supremacy lasted for several years. A few outlaws
maintained a guerilla warfare in the mountains of Benjamin, and the
prophet Samuel, the representative of Shiloh, was allowed to declare the
oracles of Yahveh to his countrymen. But the vanquished population was
deprived of the means for revolt. The Israelites were forbidden the use
of arms, and no itinerant smith was permitted to enter their territory.
The Hebrew who wished to sharpen his ploughshare or axe was forced to go
to a Philistine city.
The condition of Israel became intolerable. There was but one remedy:
the people needed a leader who should organise them into an army and a
nation, and lead them forth against their foes. Saul was elected king,
and the choice was soon justified by the results. The Philistines were
driven out of the country, and Saul set up his court in the very spot
where a Philistine garrison had stood.
But the Philistines were not yet subdued. Civil war broke out in Israel
between Saul and his son-in-law David; the troops which should have been
employed in resisting the common enemy were used in pursuing David, and
David himself took service as a mercenary under Achish, King of Gath.
Saul and his sons fell in battle on Mount Gilboa; the relics of the
Israelitish army fled across the Jordan, and the Philistine again ruled
supreme on the western side of the Jordan. David was allowed to govern
Judah as a tributary vassal of the Philistine "lords."
The murder of the feeble scion of Saul's house who had the name of king
on the eastern side of the Jordan put an end to all this. David threw
off his allegiance to the Philistines, and was crowned King of Israel.
This act of open defiance was speedily followed by the invasion of
Judah. At first the war went against the Israelitish king; he was forced
to fly from his capital, Hebron, and take refuge in an inaccessible
cavern. Here he organised his forces, and at last ventured into the
field. The Philistine forces were defeated in battle after battle; the
war was carried into their own territory, and their cities were
compelled to surrender. Philistia thus became a part of the Israelitish
kingdom, and never again made any serious attempt to recover its
independence. At the division of the Israelitish kingdom it fell to
Judah, and its vassal princes duly paid their tribute to the Jewish
kings. It would seem from the Assyrian inscriptions that they were
played off one against the other, and that signs of disaffection in any
one of them were speedily followed by his imprisonment in Jerusalem. At
all events, the Philistine cities remained in the possession of Judah
down to the time of the overthrow of the monarchy, and the most devoted
of David's body-guard were the Philistines of Gath.
It has been said above that Judah was a mixture of Hebrew, Kenite, and
Edomite elements. Kenite means "smith," and the tribe furnished those
itinerant smiths who provided Canaan with its tools and arms. Reference
is made to one of them in the _Travels of a Mohar_, a sarcastic
description of a tourist's misadventures in Palestine which was written
by an Egyptian author in the reign of Ramses II., and of which a copy on
papyrus has been preserved to us. The horses of the hero of the story,
we are told, ran away and broke his carriage to pieces; he had
accordingly to betake himself to "the iron-workers" and have it
repaired. Similar itinerant ironsmiths wandered through Europe in the
Middle Ages, handing down from father to son the secrets of their craft.
The Kenites came from the desert, and were apparently of Midianitish
descent. Balaam had looked down upon their rocky strongholds from the
heights of Moab; and they had accompanied their Hebrew comrades of Judah
from their first camping-ground near Jericho to the wilderness south of
Arad. Here they lived among the Amalekite Bedâwin down to the days of
Saul. To the last they maintained their nomadic habits, and the Kenite
family of Rechab still dwelt in tents and avoided wine in that later age
when the kingdom of Judah was about to fall.[3]
The Edomite element in Judah was stronger than the Kenite. It consisted
of the two clans of Jerahmeel and Kenaz, or the house of Caleb as it was
called in the time of David.[4] Kenaz was a grandson of Esau, and the
fact that the Kenizzites shared with the Israelitish tribes in the
conquest of Canaan throws light on the law of Deuteronomy[5] which gave
the Edomite of "the third generation" all the rights and privileges of a
Jew. Caleb, the conqueror of Hebron, was a Kenizzite; so also was
Othniel, the first of the Judges of Israel. Edomites, rather than
Hebrews, were the founders of the future Judah.
This accounts for the comparatively late appearance of Judah as a
separate tribe in the history of Israel, as well as for the antagonism
which existed between it and the more pure-blooded tribes of the north.
In the Song of Deborah and Barak, Judah is not mentioned; Ephraim and
Benjamin, and not Judah, are still regarded as forming the bulwark of
Israel against the Amalekite marauders of the southern wilderness. It
was the Philistine wars which first created the Judah of later days.
They forced Hebrews, Edomites, and Kenites to unite against the common
enemy, and welded them into a single whole. Though the three peoples
still continued to be spoken of separately, this was but a survival of
ancient modes of speech, and after the accession of David all
distinction between them disappears. From this time forward the kingdom
of Judah is one undivided community.
But the Amalekites were ever on its borders. The Amalekite of the Old
Testament is the Bedâwi of to-day. Now, as ever, he is the scourge of
his more settled neighbours, whose fields he harries and whose families
he murders. He lives by robbery and theft; too idle to work himself, he
plunders those who do. A strong government forces him to hide himself in
the depth of the wilderness; when the countries that skirt the desert
fall into decay he emerges from his retreat like a swarm of flies. The
ancient Oriental world saw in Amalek "the firstborn of nations;" he was
for them the representative of the primitive savage who had survived in
the wilds of the desert. Untamed and untamable, his hand was against
every man, and every man's hand against him.
Before Babylonian culture had been brought to the West, Amalek already
existed. He was older than the oldest of the civilised kingdoms of the
earth. But civilisation had raised a barrier against him which he was
ever on the watch to break through. He never lost the opportunity of
raiding the inhabitants of the cultivated lands, and escaping again into
the desert with his booty before he could be overtaken and punished. The
desert between Palestine and Egypt was his chief camping-ground. He had
occupied the wadis of Mount Seir before the Edomites had entered them,
and a part of the later population of the country traced its descent
from a mixture of the Bedâwi with the Edomite. The Egyptians had many
names for the Bedâwin hordes. Sometimes they were the Herusha or "Lords
of the Sands," sometimes the Shasu or "Plunderers," sometimes again the
Sutê or "Archers." The third name was borrowed from the Babylonians; in
return, as we learn from the tablets of Tel el-Amarna, the Babylonians
adopted the second.
Hardly had the Israelites escaped from Egypt when they were called upon
to dispute with the Amalekites the possession of the desert. At Rephidim
the Bedâwin robbers fell upon the Israelitish camp. But they were beaten
off with slaughter, and never again ventured to molest the people of
Yahveh during their wanderings in the wilderness. The attack, however,
was never forgotten, and vengeance was exacted for it in the reign of
Saul. Then the Amalekites were pursued into their desert domain and
mercilessly slaughtered. They had their home, it is said, in the desert
which extended from Shur to Havilah. Shur was the line of fortification
which defended the eastern frontier of Egypt, and ran pretty much where
the Suez Canal has been dug to-day; Havilah was the "sandy" desert of
northern Arabia. Here was the "city" of tents of which Agag was shêkh,
and which the troops of the Israelitish king burnt and spoiled.
But the remembrance of the expedition did not last long. When civil war
had weakened the power of Saul, and the march of the Philistine army to
the north had left the south of Canaan without defenders, an Amalekite
tribe again poured into Judah and sacked the Philistine town of Ziklag.
The wives and property of David and his followers were carried off into
the wilderness. But the marauders were overtaken by the Israelites they
had robbed, and summary vengeance taken upon them. Men, women, and
children were alike put to the sword; four hundred only escaped through
the fleetness of their camels.
In the Tel el-Amarna tablets we find the Bedâwin and their shêkhs
playing a part in the politics of Canaan. Their services were hired by
the rival princes of Palestine, and from time to time we hear of their
seizing or plundering its cities on their own account. They have never
ceased indeed to infest the land. Amalekite bands joined with the
Midianites in devastating the villages of central Israel in the days of
Gideon, and the Amalekite who brought to David the news of Saul's death
was one of those who had hovered on the skirts of the contending armies,
eager when the fight was over to murder the wounded and strip the slain.
In a later age the "Arabs" who, according to the inscriptions of
Sennacherib, formed the body-guard of Hezekiah were probably Bedâwin,
and Geshem the Arabian in the time of Nehemiah seems to have represented
the Amalekite chieftain of an earlier epoch. The Bedâwin still haunt the
plains and unfrequented paths of Palestine, waylaying the traveller and
robbing the peasant of his flocks.
The peasantry or fellahin are the Perizzites of the Hebrew Scriptures.
"Perizzite," in fact, means "villager," and the word is a descriptive
title rather than the name of a people or a race. It denotes the
agricultural population, whatever their origin may have been. Another
word of similar signification is Hivite. If any distinction is to be
drawn between them, it is that the term Perizzite was specially applied
to the fellahin of southern Canaan, while the term Hivite was restricted
to the inhabitants of the north. In two passages, it is true, "Hivite"
seems to be used with an ethnic meaning. Esau is said in one of them to
have married the granddaughter of "Zibeon the Hivite," while in the
other we read of "the Hivite" who dwelt under Mount Hermon. But a
comparison of the first passage with the later verses of the same
chapter shows that "Hivite" must be corrected into "Horite," and in the
second passage it is probable that "Hittite" instead of "Hivite" should
be read.
Amorite and Hittite, Canaanite and Philistine, were all alike emigrants
from other lands. The Hittites had come from the mountains of Asia
Minor, the Amorites had probably wandered from the northern coast of
Africa, the Canaanites traced their ancestry to the Persian Gulf, the
Philistines had sailed from the harbours of the Greek seas. Canaan had
been inhabited, however, before any of them had found their way to it,
and this prehistoric population of the country was known to the Hebrews
by the name of Rephaim. In the English translation of the Bible the word
is usually rendered "giants;" it seems, however, to have been a proper
name, which survived in the name of one of the cities of Bashan.
Doubtless it often included other elements besides that to which it was
properly applied. At times it was extended to the Amorites, whose
occupation of Palestine went back to a remote past, just as in the
Babylonian inscriptions the name of Amorite itself was extended to the
aboriginal population. Among the Philistines this older population was
called Avvim, the people of "the ruins."
Such then were the races who lived in Canaan, and with whom the invading
Israelites had to contend. There was firstly the primitive population of
the country, whose rude rock-sculptures may still be seen in the Wadi
el-Qana near Tyre. Then there were the intrusive Amorites and
Canaanites, the Amorites with their fair skins and blue eyes who made
themselves a home in the mountains, and the Semitic Canaanites who
settled on the coast and in the plains. The Amorite migration went back
to an epoch long before that of the first Babylonian conquests in the
West; the Canaanitish migration may have been coeval with the latter
event. Next came the Hittites, to whom the Jebusites of Jerusalem may
have belonged; then the Philistines, who seized the southern coast but a
few years previously to the Israelitish invasion. Canaan was a land of
many races and many peoples, who had taken shelter in its highlands, or
had found their further progress barred by the sea. Small as it was, it
was the link between Asia and Africa, the battle-ground of the great
kingdoms which arose on the Euphrates and the Nile. It formed, in fact,
the centre of the ancient civilised world, and the mixture of races
within it was due in great measure to its central position. The culture
of Babylonia and Egypt met there and coalesced.
[Footnote 2: Numb. xiii. 29.]
[Footnote 3: 1 Chr. ii. 55; Jer. xxxv. 3-10.]
[Footnote 4: 1 Sam. xxx. 14.]
[Footnote 5: Deut. xxiii 8.]