Philistine language 

Philistine
Spoken in: Formerly spoken in southwestern Palestine
Language extinction: 5th century BC
Language family: Afro-Asiatic
 Semitic
  West Semitic
   Central Semitic
    Northwest Semitic
     Canaanite
      Philistine
Language codes
ISO 639-1: none
ISO 639-2: sem
ISO 639-3: –
Note: This page may contain IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode.

The Philistine language is the extinct language of the Philistines, spoken— and rarely inscribed— along the coastal strip of southwestern Canaan. Very little is known about the language, of which a handful of words survive as cultural loan-words in Hebrew, describing specifically Philistine institutions, like the seranim, the "lords" of the Philistine Pentapolis, or the ’argáz receptacle in 1 Samuel 6 and nowhere else,1 or the title padî2

There is not enough information of the language of the Philistines to relate it securely to any other languages: possible relations to Indo-European languages, even Mycenaean Greek, support the independently-held theory that immigrant Philistines originated among "sea peoples". There are hints of non-Semitic vocabulary and onomastics, but the inscriptions, not clarified by some modern forgeries,3 are enigmatic:4 a number of miniature "anchor seals" have been found at various Philistine sites.5 On the other hand, evidence from the slender corpus of brief inscriptions from Iron Age IIA-IIB Tell es-Safi demonstrate that at some stage during the local Iron Age, the Philistines started using one of the branches (either Phoenician or Hebrew) of the local Canaanite language and script,6 which in time masked and replaced the earlier, non-local linguistic traditions, reduced to a linguistic substratum. Towards the end of the local Iron Age, in the eighth to seventh centuries BCE, the primary written language in Philistia was a Canaanite dialect that was written in a version of the the West Semitic alphabet so distinctive that Frank Moore Cross termed it the Neo-Philistine script. 7 Thus, to judge from the more numerous later inscriptions alone, it could appear that the language is simply part of the local Canaanite dialect continuum.8

The Ekron inscription, identifying the archaeological site securely as the Biblical Ekron, is the first connected body of text to be identified as Philistine text. However, it is written in a Canaanite dialect similar to Phœnician. 9 10

Philistine as an Indo-European language

There is some limited evidence in favor of the suggestion11 that the Philistines did originally speak some Indo-European language. A number of Philistine-related words found in the Hebrew Bible are not Semitic, and can in some cases, with reservations, be traced back to Proto-Indo-European roots. For example, R.D. Barnett12 traced the Philistine word for captain, seren,13 may be related to the Greek word tyrannos, borrowed from one of the languages of western Asia Minor.14 Some Philistine names, such as Goliath, Achish, and Phicol, appear to be non-Semitic in origin, and Indo-European etymologies have been suggested.who? Recently, an inscription dating to the late 10th/early 9th centuries BC with two names, very similar to one of the suggested etymologies of the popular Philistine name Goliath (compare Lydian Alyattes15, Greek Kalliades) was found in the excavations at Tell es-Safi/Gath. The appearance of additional non-Semitic names in Philistine inscriptionswhich? from later stages of the Iron Age is an additional indication of the non-Semitic origins of this group.

Notes

  1. ^ 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).
  2. ^ "common IE property" asserts (Sapir 1936:279 note 23) noting Greek πόσις, Lithuanian –pati-s, –pats, and Tocharian A pats.
  3. ^ Joseph Naveh, "Some Recently Forged Inscriptions," Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research" (Summer 1982:53-58).
  4. ^ 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.
  5. ^ 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.
  6. ^ At late 9th cenury. BCE Tell es-Safi the West Semitic alphabet script was in use.
  7. ^ Frank Moore Cross, "A Philistine Ostracon From Ashkelon", BAR 22 (January-February 1996:64-65.
  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. ^ The Canaanite Dialect of the Dedicatory Royal Inscription from Ekron - Jaacob Callev
  11. ^ 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, with the Illyrian -ino suffix for ethnic groups.
  12. ^ 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.
  13. ^ 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.
  14. ^ "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.).
  15. ^ This connection was made by Georg Hüsing, according to Ferdinand Bork in AfO 13 (1939-41:227), noted by G. A. Wainwright, "Some Early Philistine History" Vetus Testamentum 9.1 (January 1959:73-84) p. 79 note 3.

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