However, there are certain
indicators that people from the Aegean were present in Early Iron Age I in
Canaan. These include terracotta figurines of ritual function and Mycenaean
tradition (Dothan 1995: 48, 50, fig. 3:12), hearths that were not common before
in Canaan but in the Mycenaean palaces and shrines (Dothan 1992: 96; 1995:
42-45; 1998: 155- 58), kitchen ware of Mycenaean types (Dothan 1995: 46-47,
fig. 3.7:10, 15-17; 1998: 154, fig. 5: 15-17; Killebrew 1998: 397, figs. 7,
10:13-14, 12: 14-15), the introduction of pork and beef into the diet (Hesse
1986: 17-27; Dothan 1998: 154; Kille- brew 1998: 397), and Mycenaean-type
loomweights (Dothan 1995: 46-47). Vanschoonwinkel (1999), who argues that the
Philistines were not of Aegean origin but Canaanite people, ignores important
evidence such as the Mycenaean-type kitchen ware and loomweights and changes in
the diet in the first phase of Philistine settlement. Ventris's decipherment of
the Mycenaean Linear B script used for administrative purposes in the Late
Bronze Age Aegean demonstrated that it had been used to write an early form of
the Greek language (Ventris and Chadwick 1956; Chadwick 1958). Thus we may term
the Philistines "Greeks,"7 although non-Greek- speaking groups, such
as "Minoans" from Crete, may have been among them.8 After becoming
firmly established in their Pentapolis, the Philistines began first to compete
with the Israelite tribes and later with the kingdoms of Saul, David, and
Solomon for political and cultural hegemony over the region. From the middle of
the 12th century B.C. on, their pottery and other items of their material
culture show signs of acculturation. Around the mid-tenth century, Philistia
deteriorated into a minor political entity and rapidly lost its distinct
cultural character, although the Philistines' sense of ethnic identity remained
secure for several more centuries; in the Bible Philistia was defined through
the Iron Age by geopolitical and cultural boundaries and was viewed by the
Israelites as a separate region (Dothan 1982: 13-16, 160-91, 251; B. Mazar
1992: 34-41; Gitin 1998a). Although the royal dedicatory inscription from the
seventh century B.C. Temple Complex 650 at Tel Miqne-Ekron is written in a
language close to Phoenician, the name of the dedicating king, Ahish, is
non-West Semitic and Perhaps Greek in origin (Gitin, Dothan, and Naveh 1997;
Gitin 1998a: 173-74). (Wolf-Dietrich Niemeier, “Archaic
Greeks in the Orient: Textual and Archaeological Evidence,” Bulletin of
the American Schools of Oriental Research 322 [May 2001]: 12)