Philistine language

The Philistine language (/ˈfɪləstiːn, ˈfɪləstaɪn, fəˈlɪstən, fəˈlɪstiːn/)^[3] is the extinct language of the Philistines. Very little is known about the language, of which a handful of words survived as cultural loanwords in Biblical Hebrew, describing specifically Philistine institutions, like the seranim, the "lords" of the Philistine five cities ("pentapolis"),^[4] or the 'argáz receptacle, which occurs in 1 Samuel 6 and nowhere else,^[5] or the title padî.^[6]

Philistine Canaanite
Native to	Philistia
Ethnicity	Philistines
Extinct	c. 7th century BC
Language family	Afroasiatic Semitic West Semitic Central Semitic Northwest Semitic Canaanite North[1][2] Philistine Canaanite
Language codes
ISO 639-3	None (mis)
Glottolog	None

Philistine Indo-European
Native to	Philistia
Ethnicity	Philistines
Extinct	c. 9th century BC
Language family	unclassified, probably Indo-European Philistine Indo-European
Language codes
ISO 639-3	None (mis)
Glottolog	None

Classification

To judge from inscriptions alone, it could appear that the Philistine language is simply part of the local Canaanite dialect continuum which includes Hebrew, Edomite, Moabite, and Phoenician.^[7][8] For instance, the Ekron inscription, identifying the archaeological site securely as the Biblical Ekron, is the first connected body of text to be identified as Philistine, on the basis of its location. However, it is written in a Canaanite dialect similar to Phoenician and Hebrew.^[9][2]

There is not enough information about the language of the Philistines to relate it confidently to any other languages. Possible relations to Indo-European languages, even Mycenaean Greek, support the theory that immigrant Philistines originated among "sea peoples". There are hints of non-Semitic vocabulary and onomastics, but the inscriptions are enigmatic:^[10] a number of inscribed miniature "anchor seals" have been found at various Philistine sites.^[11] On the other hand, evidence from the slender corpus of brief inscriptions from Iron Age IIA-IIB Tell es-Safi (Tell es-Safi inscription)^[12] demonstrates that at some stage during the local Iron Age, the Philistines started using one of the dialects of the local Canaanite language and script,^[13] which in time masked and replaced the earlier, non-local linguistic traditions, which doubtless became reduced to a linguistic substratum, for it ceased to be recorded in inscriptions. Towards the end of the Philistine settlement in the area, in the 8th and the 7th centuries BC before their destruction by Assyria, the primary written language in Philistia was a Canaanite dialect that was written in a version of the West Semitic alphabet so distinctive that Frank Moore Cross termed it the "Neo-Philistine script".^[14] The Assyrian and Babylonian conquests destroyed the Philistine presence on the coast. When documentation resumes, under the Achaemenid Empire (Persian Empire), it is in the Aramaic language, the lingua franca of the Assyrian, Babylonian and Achaemenid empires.

Philistine as an Indo-European language

Philistine bichrome pottery

There is some evidence in favour of the suggestion^[15] that the Philistines did originally speak some Indo-European language, which would help explain the markedly Aegean Greek origin of Philistine pottery styles and decorative motifs, particularly Philistine Bichrome ware, which differ markedly from the local Semitic artistic styles. A number of Philistine-related words found in the Hebrew Bible are not local Semitic, and can in some cases, with reservations, be traced back to Proto-Indo-European roots. R.D. Barnett^[16] related the Philistine word for captain, seren,^[17] to the Greek word tyrannos (which may be related to the Neo-Hittite sarawanas/tarawanas^[18])^{[19][20][21][22][23][24][25]} and Edward Sapir^[26] made a case for relating kōbá`/qōbá` ("helmet", used of Goliath's copper helmet in 1 Samuel 17:5) to Hittite kupahis.^[27] Both these words have been adopted into Hebrew. Sapir also described the Philistine title padî as "common IE property" to be compared with Greek πόσις, Lithuanian –pati-s, –pats, and Tocharian A pats.^[28] Some Philistine names, such as Goliath, Achish,^[29] and Phicol, appear to be non-Semitic in origin, and Indo-European etymologies have been suggested.^[30] In 2005, an inscription dating to the 10th century BC with two names, very similar to one of the suggested etymologies of the popular Philistine name Goliath (compare Lydian Alyattes,^[31] Greek Kalliades, Carian Wljat) was found in the excavations at Tell es-Safi/Gath.

Notes

1. Gitin, Dothan, and Naveh, 1997, p. 15, quote: "If so, one may ask why should a seventh century BCE inscription be written at Ekron in a language close to Phoenician and reminiscent of Old Byblian. Phoenician was the prestige language in the tenth and ninth century BCE. To find an inscription, however, in seventh century BCE Philistia, where a script from the Hebrew tradition was used, is something of an enigma."
2. Jaacob Callev, "The Canaanite Dialect of the Dedicatory Royal Inscription from Ekron".
3. "Definition of Philistines | Dictionary.com". www.dictionary.com.
4. The term is used as a military rank in contemporary Israel, equivalent to captain.
5. E. Sapir, "Hebrew 'argáz, a Philistine Word," Journal of the American Oriental Society (1936:272–281), found it to signify the box of a cart "a presumably non-Semitic word" (p. 274).
6. Sapir 1936:279 note 23
7. Doak, Brian R. (26 August 2019). The Oxford Handbook of the Phoenician and Punic Mediterranean. Oxford University Press. p. 227. ISBN 978-0-19-049934-1. A number of Phoenician inscriptions from the southern Levant have been published since the corpus of Bernard Delavault and André Lemaire (1979), as the recent summary of Paolo Xella (2017) demonstrates. Many such inscriptions are difficult to differentiate paleographically and linguistically from a putative "Philistian" language (Maier et al. 2016), from Hebrew, and even from Aramaic.
8. ""Philister-Projekt: ""The Cultural Dynamics of the Philistine Culture: A Case Study in the Transformation of an Immigrant Culture"".
9. Seymour Gitin, Trude Dothan and Joseph Naveh. "A Royal Dedicatory Inscription from Ekron." Israel Exploration Journal 48 (1997:1–18).
10. I. Singer, "Egyptians, Canaanites and Philistines in the Period of the Emergence of Israel", in Finkelstein and Na’aman (eds.), From Nomadism to Monarchy, 1994:282–338.
11. Simcha Shalom Brooks, Saul and the Monarchy: A New Look (Ashgate) 2005:29, noting O. Keel, "Studien zu den Stempelsiegeln aus Palestina/ Israel IV." Orbis Biblicus et Orientalis 135 (Freiburg: Universitätsverlag) 1994:21–34.
12. Maeir, A., Wimmer, S., Zukerman, A., and Demsky, A. 2008. A Late Iron Age I/early Iron Age IIA Old Canaanite Inscription from Tell es-Sâfi/Gath, Israel: Palaeography, Dating, and Historical-Cultural Significance. Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research 351: 39–71.
13. In the late 9th century BC in Tell es-Safi, the West Semitic alphabet script was in use.
14. Frank Moore Cross, "A Philistine Ostracon From Ashkelon", BAR 22 (January–February 1996:64–65).
15. First made by Arie Noordtzij, De Filistijnen (1905), noted by G. Bonfante, "Who Were the Philistines" American Journal of Archaeology 50.2 (April – June 1946:251–262) p. 252 note 4. Bonfante argued for an Illyrian origin for the Palaistinoi, in Palaeste, an Illyrian toponym in Epirus, supplied with the Illyrian -ino suffix for ethnic groups; the suggested connection was introduced by de:Hermann Jacobsohn, in Berliner Philologische Wochenschrift 34 (1914:483).
16. Barnett, "The Sea Peoples" Sect. IV "The Philistines", New Cambridge Ancient History p. 17, critically remarked upon in Michael C. Astour's review article in Journal of the American Oriental Society, 92.3 (July – September 1972:457f.
17. Only used in Hebrew in connection with Philistine princes; the Philistine etymology of seren, sranim was admitted by W.F. Albright in the New Cambridge Ancient History, vol. I, part I, p. 25, note 3.
18. Sandars, Nancy K., The Sea Peoples: Warriors of the Ancient Mediterranean, 1250–1150 BC, Thames and Hudson, 1978
19. "Tyrannos is not a Greek word. It comes from one of the languages of Asia Minor and may have affinities with Lydian words and names," Robert Drews suggested, "The First Tyrants in Greece" Historia: Zeitschrift für Alte Geschichte, 212 (2nd Quarter 1972:129–144) p. 138. Greek tradition recorded Gyges as the first ruler to whom tyrannos was applied (ibid.).
20. Helck W., Ein sprachliches Indiz für die Herkunft der Philister, in: Beiträge zur Namenforschung 21, 1983, p. 31.
21. Meriggi, P. "Schizzo della delineazione nominale dell'eteo geroglifico (Continuazione e fine)", in: Archivio Glottologico Italiano, 38, 1953. pp. 36-57.
22. Chantraine, P. Dictionnaire étymologique de la langue grecque. Histoire des mots, vol. 4.1, 1968, p. 1146.
23. Gusmani 1969: R. Gusmani, Isoglossi lessicali Greco-Ittite, in: Studi linguistici in onore di Vittore Pisani, Brescia 1969, Vol. 1, p. 511-12.
24. Cornil, P. "Une étymologie étrusco-hittite", Atti del II Congresso Internazionale de Hittitologia, Pavía, 1995, p. 84-85.
25. Rabin, C. "Hittite Words in Hebrew", Or NS 32, 1963, pp. 113-39.
26. Sapir, "Hebrew 'helmet,' a loanword, and its bearing on Indo-European phonology" Journal of the American Oriental Society 57.1 (March 1937:73–77).
27. Sapir, Edward. “Hebrew ‘Helmet," a Loanword, and Its Bearing on Indo-European Phonology.” Journal of the American Oriental Society, vol. 57, no. 1, 1937, pp. 73–77. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/594782. Accessed 16 Aug. 2021.
28. Sapir (1936:279 note 23)
29. Achish has been connected to Greek (Ἀγχίσης) and Hurrian.
30. "Little is known of Philistine personal names, but the little we know seems to confirm Jacobsohn's Illyrian hypothesis", observes G. Bonfante (1946:254), who adduces Jacobsohn 1914 and Greek usages of Ἀγχίσης, the Greek rendering of Goliath.
31. This connection was made by Georg Hüsing, according to Ferdinand Bork in AfO 13 (1939–1941:227), noted by G. A. Wainwright, "Some Early Philistine History" Vetus Testamentum 9.1 (January 1959:73–84) p. 79 note 3.

External links

• The Canaanite Dialect of the Dedicatory Royal Inscription from Ekron, 2004 – A summary of articles about the Ekron inscription.