Did the Philistines Prepare the Way for Israel to Enter the Promised Land?

It's a story that is well known in the Western world: taught in Christian Sunday schools, the Bible, and brought to life in a major motion picture in 1956 called The Ten Commandments. It tells about how the ancient Hebrews left their life of bondage in Egypt and made the long pilgrimage across the Sinai Wilderness to the Promised Land, a place called Canaan. The problem is that until around 1200 B.C., that area was a place of fierce contestation between Egyptian imperial rule and the Hittite Empire. One especially noteworthy encounter was called the Battle of Kadesh: It was one clash in the war between Pharaoh Ramses II of Egypt and Muwatalli II of the Hittites in 1274 B.C. that was considered the largest chariot battle, involving up to 6,000 chariots and 75,000 foot soldiers. But the ancient Hebrews never had to face this kind of fight in their conquest for Canaan. An event called the fall of the Bronze Age occurred somewhere after 1225 B.C. and a strange group of marauding warriors called the Sea Peoples completely changed the political landscape of Palestine.

The story goes back to another popular staple of Western Civilization: The Trojan War. One theory of the Sea Peoples describes their origins with the epics of the Iliad and the Odyssey. Another major Bronze Age superpower called the Mycenaean Empire, whom Homer would have referred to in the Iliad as the Achaeans, may have ruled a people called the Dorians. When the Mycenaean's returned from the Trojan War, as the theory goes, they faced a brutal Dorian uprising that wiped out the Mycenaean Empire. Archaeologists have found a majority of the palaces and cities of the Mycenaeans burned or otherwise violently destroyed. The Odyssey and other Greek stories portray how the Achaeans had great difficulty in returning home from the Trojan War. This is thought to be a memory of the devastation of the Mycenaean Empire, and that those who fought in the Trojan War would no longer have had a home of which to return.

The Sea Peoples completely destroyed the capital of the Hittite Empire, Hattusha, shortly after 1200 B.C., and it was left abandoned for many centuries. But they didn't stop there: The majority of the Hittite Empire was toppled and their subjects headed for the hills. Pharaoh Ramses III, who ruled from about 1186 to 1156 B.C., had to spend most of his energy defending Egypt against their attacks. Even still, Egypt experienced an unraveling that was unprecedented in its 3000 year history, and entered what would be known to modern scholars as the Third Intermediate Period. It was soon to fall into disunity and rule under the foreign power of the Nubian kingdom of Kush.

Shortly after 1200 B.C. all three of the major powers of the Late Bronze Age, the Mycenaeans, the Hittites, and the Egyptians, fell into what is often called the Collapse of the Bronze Age. This is a time of political and cultural upheaval that is often compared to the Dark Ages after the fall of the Western Roman Empire in the 5th century A.D. It was also about the same time that the ancient Hebrews had left Egypt and would be making their way through the Sinai Wilderness into the land of Canaan. If they had been earlier, they may have faced those 6000 chariots and 75000 foot soldiers of Egyptian Imperial rule, or perhaps the fierce armies of the Hittite Empire. If they had been later, they might have faced the Assyrians, the Babylonians, or perhaps the Persians. Instead, they faced a mottled group of disorganized Canaanites. And, of course, like everyone else, they faced the Sea Peoples, known in the Bible as the Philistines. But when archaeologists dig to the earliest layers of the Philistine settlements, the pottery they find is Mycenaean. It's interesting to reflect that the arch enemies of the ancient Hebrews may have also been God's instrument to bring them into the Promised Land.

Sources:

1. The Origins of Great Ancient Civilizations, Kenneth W. Harl, The Teaching Company, 2005.

2. Ancient Greek Civilization, Jeremy McInerney, The Teaching Company, 1998.

3. Ancient Egypt, David P. Silverman, General Editor, Oxford University Press, New York, 1997.