Philistines. The Philistines were an ancient people who lived on the south coast of Canaan from the 12th century BC until 604 BC, when their polity, after having already been subjugated for centuries by the Neo-Assyrian Empire, was finally destroyed by King Nebuchadnezzar II of the Neo-Babylonian Empire. After becoming part of his empire and its successor, the Persian Empire, they lost their distinct ethnic identity and disappeared from the historical and archaeological record by the late 5th century BC. The Philistines are known for their biblical conflict with the Israelites. Though the primary source of information about the Philistines is the Hebrew Bible, they are first attested to in reliefs at the Temple of Ramses III at Medinet Habu, in which they are called; the parallel Assyrian term is, or. The English term Philistine comes from Old French; from Classical Latin; from Late Greek; ultimately from Hebrew PÉ™liÅ¡tî, meaning 'people of P'lesheth '; and there are cognates in Akkadian and Egyptian; the term Palestine has the same derivation. The native Philistine endonym, assuming they had one, is unknown. The Hebrew term occurs 286 times in the Masoretic Text of the Hebrew Bible. It also appears in the Samaritan Pentateuch. In the Greek version of the Bible, called Septuagint, the equivalent term Phulistieím occurs 12 times, again in the Pentateuch. In secondary literature, Philistia is further mentioned in the Aramaic Visions of Amram, which is dated prior to Antiochus IV and the Hasmonean revolt, possibly to the time of High Priest of Israel Onias II; Jubilees 46:1-47:1 might have used Amram as a source. Outside of pre-Maccabean Israelite religious literature, evidence for the name and the origins of the Philistines is less abundant and less consistent. In the remainder of the Hebrew Bible, is attested at Qumran for 2 Samuel 5:17. In the Septuagint, however, 269 references instead use the term. Several theories are given about the origins of the Philistines. The Hebrew Bible mentions in two places that they originate from a geographical region known as Caphtor, although the Hebrew chronicles also state that the Philistines were descended from Casluhim, one of the 7 sons of Ham's second son. The Septuagint connects the Philistines to other biblical groups such as Caphtorim and the Cherethites and Pelethites, which have been identified with the island of Crete. This, among other things, has led to the modern theory of Philistines having an Aegean origin. In 2016, a large Philistine cemetery was discovered near Ashkelon, containing more than 150 dead buried in oval-shaped graves. A 2019 genetic study found that, while all three Ashkelon populations derive most of their ancestry from the local Semitic-speaking Levantine gene pool, the early Iron Age population was genetically distinct due to a European-related admixture; this genetic signal is no longer detectable in the later Iron Age population. According to the authors, the admixture was likely due to a gene flow from a European-related gene pool during the Bronze to Iron Age transition, which supports the theory that a migration event occurred. Most scholars agree that the Philistines were of Greek origin, and that they came from Crete and the rest of the Aegean Islands or, more generally, Greece. This view is based largely upon the fact that archaeologists, when digging up strata dated to the Philistine time-period in the coastal plains and in adjacent areas, have found similarities in material culture between Aegean-Greek culture and that of Philistine culture, suggesting that they were originally one and the same people. Others, dissenting, claim that the similarities in material culture is only the result of acculturation, during their entire 575 years of existence among Canaanite, Israelite, and perhaps other sea-faring peoples. During the Late Bronze Age collapse, an apparent confederation of seafarers known as the Sea Peoples are recorded as attacking ancient Egypt and other Eastern Mediterranean civilizations. While their exact origins are a mystery, and probably diverse, it is generally agreed that the Sea Peoples had origins in the greater Southern European area, including western Asia Minor, the Aegean, and the islands of the Mediterranean.
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