Sunday so why not something sort of religious…..the Bible goes on and on about those darn pesky Philistines….Goliath and the boys…..the problem is that there has been little evidence that they actually existed…..some even thought they may be figment of someone’s imagination…..
When I was in college and studying Middle East I was fascinated by the early history of the region….and consumed all I could on the subject (I shall write about this a little later).
In the past there have been a few pieces of pottery but no actual physical evidence……well that has been put to bed…..
Harvard University archaeologist Lawrence Stager has led the Leon Levy Expedition to Ashkelon since 1985, clocking more than 30 years of excavations in a 150-acre site in the ancient seaport 35 miles south of Tel Aviv, reports the Harvard Gazette. Now, a major find related to the little-known Philistines, some of the Hebrew Bible’s “most notorious villains,” as National Geographic puts it, with Goliath and Delilah (of David and Samson infamy, respectively) among their ranks. To unlock the mysteries of the Philistines, archaeologists needed to find bodies, not just artifacts, but until now human remains have been elusive. “Archaeologists who study the Philistines began to joke that they were buried at sea like the Vikings—that’s why you couldn’t find them,” one archaeologist tells National Geographic. Sunday brought the news that the expedition has for three years been excavating the first Philistine cemetery to be found.
From the time the Ashkelon expedition team first discovered a human tooth in 2013 until this week, when the year’s final expedition came to a close, archaeologists have counted at least 145 sets of human remains in several burial rooms, reports the BBC. Most are buried without any objects or ornamentation, though some perfume, food, jewelry, and weapons were unearthed, and the small number of children and infants buried were found covered in a “blanket” of broken pottery. DNA analysis and carbon dating will hopefully shed light on some long-running mysteries about the Philistines’ origins and whether they have a connection to the mysterious Sea Peoples who tore across the Mediterranean in the 13th and 12th centuries BC; the remains date to the 11th to 8th centuries. “So much of what we know about the Philistines is told by their enemies,” says the expedition’s co-director. “We’ll really be able to tell their story by the things they left behind for us.” (Check out where these Philistine pottery shards were discovered.)
I have been doing research on the Hanging Gardens Of Babylon and the event we call the Exodus…..all of which I shall share as soon as the research is done and I compile my findings…..
Have a great day….I shall return to normal tomorrow….peace out…..
I wish I could be here to see the day when the History Diggers (I can’t spell archaeology) in the year 4077 are sorting through the rubble that was once us and find an old commode in the ruins of a wrecked bathroom somewhere. I am sure they will classify it as “Pottery” and will imagine how it was used to plant flowers, to store grain, to entomb aborted foetuses … I wonder how much of that Phillistine pottery being discovered were actually “Slop Jars” used to receive Human waste material? Yuk!
Actually they make great flower pots….probably none….they would just pick a tree and let it fly…..
Hmm… Well, then.
When I compare all I’ve read in the Bible with what seems to have been found, I can only think the Philistines, rather than being ‘bad folks’ as portrayed in the Old Testament, etc., and, concomitantly, by association, into our very language, where a philistine is ‘a dishonest, untrustworthy’ sort of person, were more of an irritant to the other peoples of the time for their sophistication, and resistance to the Tribe’s religious pressure. They also lived in what was most likely a strategically advantageous spot on the coast, which the Tribe had a habit, as written in the Old Testament, of just taking over such places, or any such as were favored by the chosen people, by killing all its current inhabitants, or making them slaves…. Nice folks, those old Jews…. not. Not too pleasant in today’s world either, having had more than seven thousand years to practice their vicious bigotry, all based on a chosen, commonly held delusion as the chosen people of a divine creature…. silly damn asses. Unfortunately, asses in the guise of well-funded, culturally paranoid predator apes, too cunning for their, or anyone else’s good.. thus making them our species version of created life, as a virus… a lethal one, I’m afraid, for all of us, if things continue on any path based on a delusion.
gigoid, the dubious
Exactly….I am working on a piece about the Exodus…..it never happened…they were never in Egypt….chuq
Saw an article about this find too chuq and meant to send you a reference but forgot. Of course you got around to it eventually; I think it took you all of a week.
Actually as Ancient Astronauts Theorists believe; I think they just found a small landing party cemetery needed only because the virus of humanity killed the van guard of the Alien Philistine Hoard. ~~dru~~
You see…great minds think alike….LOl chuq
Interesting!