Philistine Religion
PHILISTINE RELIGION. The original arrival of the Philistines to the Near East seems to have occurred during the end of the thirteenth century BCE as the waves of the "Sea Peoples"—so called in Egyptian texts—appeared in the eastern Mediterranean and spread throughout the whole area. For instance, the inscriptions accompanying the battle reliefs of the great mortuary temple of Medinet Habu at Thebes mention six different foreign peoples that tried to invade Egypt during the eighth year of the reign of Ramses III (twelfth century BCE): the Peleset (prst or plst); the Tjeker (tkr); the Shekelesh (škrš or šklš); the Danuna (dnjn); the Sherden (šrdn); and the Weshesh (wšš). Some of these ethnonyms, along with a few additional ones (e.g., Lukka or Rwkw, probably connected to Lycia), occur in other Egyptian documents, such as the Great Papyrus Harris (from the reign of Ramses III), and earlier, at the end of the Late Bronze Age, in the Merneptah inscription at Karnak (late thirteenth century). Many of these peoples are mentioned also in Hittite and Ugaritic texts and Akkadian letters found in Amarna, all from the end of the Late Bronze Age. All these peoples seem to have had their roots in Anatolia and the Aegean.
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