* There are two views as to the nature of the sacrifice of
Jephthah’s daughter. Some think she was vowed to perpetual
virginity, while others consider that she was actually
sacrificed.
By a decree of Pharaoh, a new country had been assigned to the remnants of each of the maritime peoples: the towns nearest to Egypt, lying between Raphia and Joppa, were given over to the Philistines, and the forest region and the coast to the north of the Philistines, as far as the Phoenician stations of Dor and Carmel,* were appropriated to the Zakkala. The latter was a military colony, and was chiefly distributed among the five fortresses which commanded the Shephelah.
* We are indebted to the Papyrus Golenischeff for the
mention of the position of the Zakkala at the beginning of
the XXIst dynasty.
Drawn by Faucher-Gudin,
from a “squeeze.”
Gaza and Ashdod were separated from the Mediterranean by a line of sand-dunes, and had nothing in the nature of a sheltered port—nothing, in fact, but a “maiuma,” or open roadstead, with a few dwellings and storehouses arranged along the beach on which their boats were drawn up. Ascalon was built on the sea, and its harbour, although well enough suited for the small craft of the ancients, could not have been entered by the most insignificant of our modern ships. The Philistines had here their naval arsenal, where their fleets were fitted out for scouring the Egyptian waters as a marine police, or for piratical expeditions on their own account, when the occasion served, along the coasts of Phoenicia. Ekron and Gath kept watch over the eastern side of the plain at the points where it was most exposed to the attacks of the people of the hills—the Canaanites in the first instance, and afterwards the Hebrews. These foreign warriors soon changed their mode of life in contact with the indigenous inhabitants; daily intercourse, followed up by marriages with the daughters of the land, led to the substitution of the language, manners, and religion of the environing race for those of their mother country. The Zakkala, who were not numerous, it is true, lost everything, even to their name, and it was all that the Philistines could do to preserve their own. At the end of one or two generations, the “colts” of Palestine could only speak the Canaanite tongue, in which a few words of the old Hellenic patois still continued to survive. Their gods were henceforward those of the towns in which they resided, such as Marna and Dagon and Gaza,* Dagon at Ashdod,** Baalzebub at Ekron,*** and Derketô in Ascalon;**** and their mode of worship, with its mingled bloody and obscene rites, followed that of the country.
* Marna, “our lord,” is mentioned alongside Baalzephon in a
list of strange gods worshipped at Memphis in the XIXth
dynasty. The worship of Dagon at Gaza is mentioned in the
story of Samson (Judges xvi. 21-30).
** The temple and statue of Dagon are mentioned in the
account of the events following the taking of the ark in 1
Sam. v. 1-7. It is, perhaps, to him that 1 Chron. x. 10
refers, in relating how the Philistines hung up Saul’s arms
in the house of their gods, although 1 Sam. xxxi. 10 calls
the place the “house of the Ashtoreth.”
*** Baalzebub was the god of Ekron (2 Kings i. 2-6), and his
name was doubtfully translated “Lord of Flies.” The
discovery of the name of the town Zebub on the Tell el-
Amarna tablets shows that it means the “Baal of Zebub.”
Zebub was situated in the Philistine plains, not far from
Ekron. Halévy thinks it may have been a suburb of that town.
**** The worship of Derketô or Atergatis at Ascalon is
witnessed to by the classical writers.
