(5) Merneptah.—After the accession of Merneptah, the successor of Ramses II, a rebellion broke out. This was about 1223 B. C. Merneptah put down the rebellion, but in the struggle caused by it, he was compelled to reduce Gezer by siege. It was on this campaign that he came into contact with Israel and defeated her.[116] Some think the Israelites whom he mentioned were those who more than a century and a quarter before had been battling against Jerusalem; others, that they were those who had just escaped from Egypt.
The reign of Merneptah was followed by some years of unstable government in Egypt, but this does not appear to have been a sufficiently long period for great changes to occur in Palestine. Order was restored in Egypt by Setnakht about 1200 B. C., and his son and successor, Ramses III, 1198-1167 B. C., reasserted his sovereignty over Palestine and Phœnicia.
(6) Ramses III.—Ramses III found himself confronted with a peculiar situation. The Egyptian Delta and the coasts of Palestine were invaded by hordes of people from over the sea. As early as the reign of Ramses II the Egyptians had employed men from the island of Sardinia as mercenaries; there must then have been intercourse with distant islands across the sea.
6. The Philistines.—Now, however, hordes of Sicilians, Danaoi, Peleset (Philistines), Thekel, and many other tribes came from over the sea. These tribes came in part from islands, such as Sicily and Crete, and in part from the coasts of Asia Minor. Ramses III was compelled to fight with them, both in the Delta and in Phœnicia. On the walls of his temple at Medinet Habu he has left us pictures of the Philistines. A remarkable inscribed disc was found a few years since at Phæstos in Crete. It is printed with a sort of movable type, and each character is a pictograph or hieroglyph. Prof. Macalister has shown that it is, in all probability, a contract tablet.[117] When the tablet was first published Eduard Meyer pointed out[118] that a frequently recurring sign, which is apparently the determinative for “man” or “person,” has the same sort of upstanding hair as the Philistines pictured by Ramses III on the walls of Medinet Habu. This tablet, accordingly, was written by Philistines or their near kindred. In this view there is general agreement among scholars. Amos declared that the Lord brought the Philistines from Caphtor (Amos 9:7). If this disc was written in Crete, it would follow that Caphtor was Crete. It is thought possible by some that the disc was written in Asia Minor, whence it was carried to Crete; in that case Caphtor would be a name for Asia Minor.[119] At all events, this inscription makes it clear that the Philistines came from over the sea, and that their point of departure was either Crete or Asia Minor. Ramses III reveals to us through his inscriptions the Philistines in the act of migrating into Palestine. With them were the Thekel, who afterward were absorbed by the Philistines; (see Figs. [36] and [38]).
In his struggle with these tribes Ramses III was compelled to carry the war into Asia, where he overcame and defeated them. In commemoration of this event he has left a list of places which he conquered in Asia. Most of them, so far as they can be identified, were further north than Palestine, but the following are names of places mentioned in the Bible:[120] Seir (Gen. 14:6, etc.), Caineh (Amos 6:2), or Calno (Isa. 10:9), Tyre, Carchemish, Beth-Dagon (Josh. 15:41), Kir-Bezek, probably the same as Bezek (Judges 1:5), Hadashah (Josh. 15:37), Ardon (1 Chron. 2:18), Beer (cf. Num. 21:16), Senir (Deut. 3:9), Zobebah (1 Chron. 4:8), Gether (Gen. 10:23), and Ar (Num. 21:15; Isa. 15:1, etc.).
After Ramses III the Egyptian empire became too weak to interfere in Palestinian affairs. In the chronology followed by many scholars today it was about this time that the Hebrews completed their conquest of the country and the age of the Judges began.
7. The Hebrews.—On their way into Palestine the Hebrews, as already noted, invaded and conquered a kingdom of the Amorites which lay to the east of the Jordan and had its capital at Heshbon. (See Num. 21:21 and Deut. 1:4, etc.). This kingdom was a survival of the ancient Amorite occupation of the land. The Amorites composing it had not been absorbed or displaced by more recent pre-Hebrew invaders.
It is stated in Judges 1:27-36 that there were a number of cities from which the Israelites did not, at the time of their conquest, drive out the inhabitants. The principal excavations in Palestine have had to do with cities which were not conquered by Hebrews at this time—Taanach, Megiddo, and Gezer. We are told in Josh. 10:33 that when Horam, King of Gezer, came to the aid of the king of Lachish, Joshua “smote him and his people till he left none remaining.” As nothing is said of the capture of Gezer, this must refer only to the force which went to the aid of Lachish. This view is confirmed by the fact that in the time of David, Gezer was in the hands of the Philistines. (See 1 Chron. 20:4.) Gezer did not come into the hands of the Hebrews until the time of Solomon, when Solomon’s Egyptian father-in-law conquered it and gave it to him. Mr. Macalister found evidence that at about this time there was a considerable increase of the population of Gezer, which seems to confirm the statement of Judges 1:29 that Canaanites and Israelites dwelt together there. This evidence consisted in the crowding together of houses, so that, as many new ones were built, they became smaller. New houses also encroached upon the land of the “high place.”[121] There was evidently an increase of the population such as an influx of Hebrews would account for. Evidence of Hebrew conquest seems also to have come to light in the capture and burning of Jericho[122] and Bethshemesh,[123] which the excavations have revealed.
8. Philistine Civilization.—The next source of information which archæology furnishes us concerning Palestine is the report of Wenamon, translated in Part II, [p. 352], ff. Wenamon visited Dor and Gebal about 1100 B. C. He found a king of the Thekel established in Dor, so that the Philistines were probably by this time established in the whole maritime plain.
With the coming of the Philistines into Palestine, new influences were introduced into the country. These are most apparent in the pottery that has come down to us. (See [Chapter VIII].) The Philistines, whether they came from Crete or from the coasts of the Ægean Sea, had been influenced by those higher forms of art which were in later times developed into the superb Greek forms. Just at the time when history tells us the Philistines came into Palestine, we begin to find in its mounds the remains of a more ornate pottery.