March 14 ,2007

Perhaps the Philistines weren’t such boors after all. Excavations in Israel have established that the Philistines had fine pottery, handsome architecture and cosmopolitan tastes — and were probably more refined than the Israelite shepherds and farmers in the nearby hills.  Archaeologists have now found that not only were Philistines cultured, they were also literate when they arrived, presumably from the region of the Aegean Sea, and settled the coast of ancient Palestine around 1200 B. C. The discovery is reported in the current issue of The Israel Exploration Journal by two Harvard professors, Frank Moore Cross Jr. and Lawrence E. Stager.
In the report, the two researchers said the inscriptions “reveal, for the first time, convincing evidence that the early Philistines of Ashkelon were able to read and write in a non-Semitic language, as yet undeciphered.”