“Hugo Jones writes that the Spartans held in the highest regard a certain ancient law-giver, much like Moses the law-giver of Israel. The Spartans celebrated
new moons (Rosh Chodesh), and unlike their Greek counterparts, even
a seventh day of rest! Of course, the Spartans themselves were very different from other Greeks, particularly those in Athens, whom Sparta often battled”.
According to King Arius of Sparta, his people shared a common ancestry with the Jews through Abraham. I Maccabees 12:19-23:
This is a copy of the letter that they sent to Onias: ‘King Arius of the Spartans, to the high priest Onias, greetings. It has been found in writing concerning the Spartans and the Jews that they are brothers and are of the family of Abraham. And now that we have learned this, please write us concerning your welfare; we on our part write to you that your livestock and your property belong to us, and ours belong to you. We therefore command that our envoys report to you accordingly’.
Given that Abraham was, as according to the meaning of his new name: “The Father of many nations” (Genesis 17:5): “Your name will no longer be Abram; your name will be Abraham, for I will make you the father of many nations”, then the task of identifying a more specific relationship between the Jews and the Spartans is not an easy one.
Legend tends to favour that the Spartans were descended from Abraham through his wife, Keturah.
A seemingly semi-mythological example of this tradition is given at:
Sometime in the 2nd century BCE lived a Greek historian and sage named Cleodemus, sometimes referred to as Cleodemus the Prophet. He also went by the name Malchus which, because of its Semitic origins, makes some scholars believe he could have been Jewish. Cleodemus wrote an entire history of the Jewish people in Greek. While this text appears to have been lost, it is cited by others, including Josephus (Antiquities, i. 15).
Cleodemus commented on Abraham’s marriage to Keturah (typically identified with Hagar), and their children. This is recorded in Genesis 25, which begins:
And Abraham took another wife, and her name was Keturah. And she bore him Zimran, and Yokshan, and Medan, and Midian, and Ishbak, and Shuach. And Yokshan begot Sheva and Dedan. And the sons of Dedan were Ashurim, and Letushim, and Leumim. And the sons of Midian were Ephah, and Epher, and Chanokh, and Avidah, and Elda’ah. All these were the children of Keturah. And Abraham gave all that he had to Isaac, while to the sons of the concubines that Abraham had, Abraham gave gifts, and he sent them away from Isaac, while he was still alive, to the east country.
Abraham had six children with Keturah, from which came at least seven grandchildren, and three great-grandchildren which the Torah names explicitly. The Torah then makes it clear that Abraham gave everything that he had to Isaac—including the Covenant with God and the land of Israel—while the others received gifts and were sent away from the Holy Land.
Cleodemus suggests that Epher (or another child named Yaphran), the great-grandson of Abraham, migrated to Africa—which is where the term “Africa” comes from! (This is particularly interesting because Epher was the son of Midian, and Tziporah the wife of Moses was a Midianite, and is described as a Cushite, or African/Ethiopian.) Cleodemus states that Epher, Yaphran, and Ashurim assisted the Greek hero Hercules in one of his battles. Following this, Hercules married one of their daughters—a great granddaughter of Abraham—and had a son with her. This son was Diodorus, one of the legendary founders of Sparta! ….
[End of quote]
Others, such as Steven M. Collins, narrow all of this down considerably more by identifying the Spartans as actual Jews (descendants of Abraham), even specifying that they were of the tribe of Simeon. And so we read at:
Many readers have, no doubt, seen the movie, 300, starring Gerard Butler which was released a number of years ago. It tells the inspiring story of King Leonidas of Sparta, who led 300 of his Spartan warriors to the pass at Thermopylae circa 480 BC to block the path of the immense Persian army under Xerxes that was descending upon Greece. Their noble sacrifice in the battle of Thermopylae inspired all of Greece and bought time for the various city-states to organize a resistance to the Persian invasion. The aforementioned movie is drenched in graphic and bloody combat scenes and is outlandish at times (especially in its portrayal of Xerxes), but the self-sacrifice of the martial Spartan detachment inspires people still today. That movie also is laughably inaccurate in its portrayal of the Spartan warriors, who are presented as soldiers who went to war with appropriate armaments but dressed only in capes and leather loincloths. There was an earlier movie, The 300 Spartans, released in 1961 starring Richard Egan, which told the same story but it showed the Spartans dressed and armored in a much more realistic manner. However, it dated to a time when Hollywood presented war movies in a very sanitized way where the battle scenes were acted out with very little blood being shown.
In both my books (available at the homepage of this website) and an article, I make the case that the Spartan warriors were Israelites from the Israelite tribe of Simeon, which, like the Spartans, was known for being warlike and ruthless. According to the book of First Maccabees, a Spartan king acknowledged in a letter to a Jewish High Priest that the Jews and Spartans were “kinsmen” and fellow descendants of Abraham. If so, where is the historic connection between the two groups of people? The Bible actually does offer us a solid historical context where the Spartans could have originated from a group of Israelites that branched off from the rest of the Israelite tribes. In the book of Numbers, there are two separate censuses taken of the Israelite tribes when they left Egypt. The first is in Numbers 1 and the second is in Numbers 26. The second census indicates that a majority of the tribe of Simeon left the Israelite encampment right after a chief Simeonite prince was executed by a Levite, Phineas, in Numbers 25. The context argues that Moses saw that so many people had left the Israelite encampment at that time that he decided to call for a second census to see how many had departed from the various tribes.
If they had struck out on their own, one would expect the Simeonites to found a martial city or nation of their own…in other words, a city-state just like Sparta. History records that the Spartans had a different origin than the rest of the Greeks. The fact that the Spartan letter cited in I Maccabees records that the Spartans regarded themselves as kinsmen of the Jews and jointly descended from the patriarch, Abraham, is strong evidence that the Spartans had to be from a fellow Israelite tribe, but where had they originated?
Since Numbers 25-26 confirms that most of the tribe of Simeon left the Israelite wilderness encampment circa 1410 BC, it makes sense that this warlike band of Simeonites would resurface later in history in a location other than the Promised Land. The origin of the city-state of Sparta is unknown, but it began to be noticed as an independent entity by at least the 11th or 10th century BC. Years ago, I wrote an article about the Spartan connection to the Israelite tribe of Simeon and I am including a link to that article. I urge all readers with an interest in history to read that article as it will enable you to see ancient Greek and Mediterranean history in an entirely new light.
As a side-bar, I’d like to note that there was an earlier “Brave Three Hundred” warrior group which was mentioned in the Bible. It is the group of 300 warriors that accompanied the hero, Gideon, when he, like Leonidas and his 300, fought against an immense army of invaders who came from the east (circa 1150 BC). The story of Gideon and his brave 300 warriors is told in Judges 6-7. Unlike Leonidas and his 300, Gideon and his 300 emerged victorious over the eastern host albeit with God’s intervention to grant the victory. Gideon and his 300 warriors were also Israelites. Leonidas and his 300 did not emerge victorious although their noble sacrifice has been honored throughout time. I cannot help but wonder how the story of Leonidas and his 300 holding the narrow pass at Thermopylae would have ended if they had not been sabotaged by a traitor who revealed a secret pass around the Spartan position to the Persians. Perhaps they might actually have won if it had not been for that betrayal. At the very least, they would have delayed the Persian host for a much longer period of time.
[End of quote]
I may be able to add another element that could bridge the long chronological gap for the Spartans, as descendants of Abraham, to a connection with Moses. The Spartans looked back to a great Lawgiver called Lycurgus (Lykourgos), generally considered to be semi-mythical. Lycurgus is commonly compared with the Lawgiver supreme, Moses.
Why?
Because, as I think, Lycurgus was actually based on Moses. See e.g. my article:
As we trace the ancient history of Sparta and Lycurgus, we learn he emerged during a deep crisis. According to Spartanophilic Xenophon, a disciple of Socrates and soldier who fought for Sparta against Athens, Lycurgus lived during the time of Heraclidae, around 1,000 B.C.
Herodotus informs that Lycurgus “had brought the Spartans out of an era of extreme political disorder (kakonomotatoi) and into one of good order (eunomie), which in turn led to the city’s increased power.
With the support of the Delphic oracle, Lycurgus changed “all the laws,” and created the gerousia, the ephorate, and the Spartan military organization (there is mention of the syssitia among the military institutions).” 3
Lycurgus “was able to persuade his fellow Spartans to introduce the comprehensive and compulsory educational cycle called the Agoge (agôgê, literally a ‘raising’, as of cattle). This system of education, training and socialisation turned boys into fighting men whose reputation for discipline, courage and skill was unsurpassed.” 4
Some scholars suggest the political reforms in Sparta introduced by Lycurgus were the earliest system of Greek citizen self-government.
Many aspects Lycurgus system were strange to foreigners, and the Spartan rules and customs were radically different from the rest of the Hellenes. Perhaps this was also the goal because the Lycurgus altered decisively the psychological make-up of the citizens. The Spartans’ “own belief in their ideology was absolute. Throughout Spartan history there were very few defectors – or whingers.” 4
How Lycurgus came up with the laws is a mystery. Herodotus provides two entirely different versions of the Spartan lawgiver. One story tells Lycurgus received the laws directly from God Apollo. In another text, Herodotus ascribes the origins of Lycurgus’s laws to the Cretan constitution.
Modern historians have long downplayed the role of Lycurgus in the history of Sparta. Still, in recent years scholars have argued the ancient lawgiver may have been of greater importance to the state than previously assumed. ….
[Ends of quote]
There is enough here to suggest, too, that the Spartans were foreigners in Greece.
The first step, then, is to re-set Sparta in an Israelite direction by re-identifying the Lawgiver Lycurgus (c. 820 BC) as Moses (c. 1450 BC).
The second step is to carry this re-orientation down into the Judges period, by seeing Leonidas and his 300 as a Greek appropriation of Gideon and his 300 (Judges 7).
We read that Steven M. Collins had not missed this similarity (without making my connection):
….
As a side-bar, I’d like to note that there was an earlier “Brave Three Hundred” warrior group which was mentioned in the Bible. It is the group of 300 warriors that accompanied the hero, Gideon, when he, like Leonidas and his 300, fought against an immense army of invaders who came from the east (circa 1150 BC). The story of Gideon and his brave 300 warriors is told in Judges 6-7. Unlike Leonidas and his 300, Gideon and his 300 emerged victorious over the eastern host albeit with God’s intervention to grant the victory. ….
The study of man’s most ancient past is more important to the success of his future, than most of us comprehend. Unfortunately, in recent centuries, this has been understood and acted upon, by the oligarchic forces in society who seek to reduce mankind to the condition of beasts, and have twisted the study of pre- and ancient history to prove their definition of man, the better to accomplish this end. Outside of the vast body of work by Lyndon LaRouche, which locates man as a creature of cognition who has understood and acted upon his world for hundreds of thousands of years, only a few determined individuals have succeeded in approaching any aspects of the study of ancient man and civilization from outside the dictates of that oligarchical elite.
One happy exception to that is the 1999 release of Homer’s Secret Iliad: The Epic of the Night Sky Decoded, by Florence and Kenneth Wood. Written by the daughter and son-in-law of Edna Johnston Leigh (1916-91), this book presents and develops Leigh’s hypothesis, that the Homeric epics fall within the oral tradition of other ancient epics which, through their sung recitation, transmitted to each succeeding generation profound scientific ideas concerning man’s relationship to his universe.
Mackey’s comment: Previously I had made brief mention of the Wood’s extraordinary book:
This book makes real sense of The Iliad
From the flyleaf of Homer’s Secret Iliad, by Florence and Kenneth Wood, which was deservingly awarded Book of the Year when first released in 1999.
During the 1930s the young daughter of a Kansas farmer spent night after night watching the stars and planets wheel across the vast prairie sky. Later, as a teacher in England, she combined her devotion to astronomy with a passion for Homer. This led her to a discovery which would lie buried until her daughter, Florence Wood, inherited her papers in 1991.
Her years of study, it became clear, had revealed Homer’s great epic to be also the world’s oldest book of astronomy.
[My comment: The dating of the Iliad, and whether it really belonged to the presumed time of Homer, is actually a challenging issue of its own; one with which I hope to come to grips elsewhere].
The changing configuration of the stars, so important for navigation and the measurement of time, had a fascination for the ancient world that it has lost today.
In the Iliad, battles between Greeks and Trojans mirror the movements of stars and constellations as they appear to fight for ascendancy in the sky. The timescale of Homeric astronomy is breathtaking; elements can be dated to the ninth millennium BC [sic], long before the recorded astronomy of Mesopotamia and Egypt. Geography is also represented, since the shapes of constellations were used as ‘skymaps’ to direct ancient travellers throughout Greece and Asia Minor.
Ever notice how hard it is to find a real nice cave man picture these days? Take it from me–it’s not as easy as it used to be. Those classic artist renderings from a single tooth, from small bone fragments or from skull pieces -and on occasion, entire skulls permitted artists to let their imaginations run wild and silmultaneously to support the idea that our ancestors were primitive.
Click and drag photo to resize.
This of course supported evolutionary theory and caused many who believed in the Biblical view of creation to perplexedly wonder where cave men fit in.
As time goes by, the truth of what our ancestors actually looked like became more and more evident–like us, pretty much. That’s why it’s becoming more difficult to find those old cave man characterizations, even most “knowledgeable” evolutionists have to admit that “Cro-Magnon” and “Neanderthal man” are fully human. (Photo:top left; recent computer and/or forensic recreations of “Neanderthal”, right and “Cro-Magnon”, left who is scowling, of course. Far right: Cro-Magnon steps out.)
So while, in the past evolutionists have been drawing them as ape-like and brutish to drive home the notion that we have “evolved”–we now both (Christians & evolutionists) know that they look like what a Christian or Bible believer would expect–us. Not only that, when ” “they” drew themselves from life, (15,000 years ago according to evolutionary time) they tended to look more like this (Photo: Below, left “caveman” self portrait) (more on these self portraits on page 2).
Obviously, this kind of look is more like what Christians might have expected. When’s the last time you saw a representation of our supposed evolutionary ancestors with a Supercuts like trim and hat at a jaunty angle?
In Genesis, Adam and Eve are created without dragging knuckles–they raise children and carry on conversations just like “normal” people. They tilled the soil. They spoke to God. Evolutionists, however are tied to the idea of very primitive beginnings–where for long periods, our ancestors were not even fully men.
We’ve even come to accept the idea that larger brows or thicker bodies necessarily suggests less sophistication–less advancement. I laughed when I read this morning that this particular evolutionist had to admit that “Neanderthal” looked a lot like us but–probably was short and had sloping shoulders.
(See Also the cosmetic surgery performed on Neanderthal, in Buried Alive, by Jack Cuozzo–See page 8 of this section)That’s still supposed to suggest that he was less advanced than modern man–but when you really think about it, –even if it were true about the shortness and sloping shoulders–all that would really mean is that there was little chance he could make it as a runway model.
Shortness and sloping shoulders–even a prominent brow have nothing whatsoever to do with intelligence, survival or level of “advancement”.
You yourself may be short, have sloping shoulders and/or a prominent forehead. Even so, the evidence is that our ancestors were smarter, faster, and larger–had better eyesight, better technology than we suppose and were as “handsome” as we are.
And by the way, a cave man is simply a man (or woman) who lives in a cave! If they stooped, it was because the roof was low. Why were they in there in the first place? Perhaps war, pestilence, Flood, tower of Babel or other hardships forced men into caves for protection in certain locales and from time to time.
One of the items we discuss here below is suppressed information (over 100 stone tablets) that “cave men” had an early written language–much, much earlier than science admits.
Such a concept of man and civilization, which could transmit science, through art, since no later than the end of the last Ice Age, flies directly in the face of modern archaeology, which has been dominated by the British establishment for two centuries. How that British oligarchy has sought to destroy mankind’s true history, is captured in another book published in 2000, Minotaur: Sir Arthur Evans and the Archaeology of the Minoan Myth, by J. Alexander MacGillivray.
This history is the first even remotely objective assessment of the career of Evans, the celebrated excavator of Knossos on the island Crete, and the “discoverer” of the glories of a Minoan civilization, which he supposed to have given birth alone to later classical, Greek civilization.
The Role of Crete
For the word “discoverer,” however, substitute, “fabricator.” Without drawing the obvious conclusion himself, MacGillivray provides overwhelming evidence that Evans was a degenerate racist, deployed by the British Foreign Office, Prime Minister Gladstone, and Oxford University, at a minimum, throughout his life. His assignment was to erase the real history of Bronze Age Crete. That MacGillivray tiptoes around these conclusions is the great flaw of his book.
Ironically, however, MacGillivray was much more forceful and conclusive in a short article in the November/December 2000 issue of Archeology magazine, where he wrote:
While he led the field in revealing Minoan art to the public, Evans allowed his literal reading of the Greek myths to distort his interpretation. … Though extremely well versed in ancient Egyptian ritual … Evans denied the influence of Egyptian religion on the Minoans. … More amazing is how Evans conceived of the well-known ancient Egyptian symbol for the horizon, the slope between two peaks, which adorns colonnades and buildings in Minoan art. He transformed the horizon symbol into what he called Horns of Consecration, ritual symbols that were shorthand for his supposed bull cult of Minos. … Once the trappings of his mythical agenda are removed, we will have to re-evaluate a large body of artifacts.” MacGillivray went on to propose that the famous “bull-jumping” fresco uncovered at Knossos, is not a depiction of an actual Cretan sport, but rather, is a metaphorical representation of the constellations: “Orion confronts Taurus, composed of the Hyades and Pleiades, while Perseus somersaults with both arms extended over the bull’s back to rescue Andromeda …”.
It was his reference to Egyptian astronomy in that article which caused this reviewer to pounce upon MacGillivray’s book, having long been convinced that the Cretan civilization of 2200-1500 b.c. was a critical link between the advanced astronomical knowledge which shaped ancient Egyptian civilization, and its influence on the development of Myceanean and classical Greece.
Unfortunately, the book is a disappointment in terms of stating those conclusions, or providing a fuller elaboration of Crete’s debt to Egypt.
But, whatever constraints caused MacGillivray to pull his punches here, Minotaur is, nonetheless, a useful, if academic, resource for documenting the extent to which the British establishment deployed to suppress a truthful history of the origins of Western civilization.
Evans’ fraudulent treatment of Minos parallels the much better-known fraud of British archaeology, that civilization was born in Mesopotamia, between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, around 2700 b.c. In manufacturing this “discovery,” the oligarchy certainly chose a civilization in its own image: Mesopotamia was a society dominated by an elite class of priests and administrators, who held their looted populations in cattle-like backwardness, subservient to an autocratic and irrational pantheon of gods, notably the mother-earth goddess Ishtar (or Isis, the “Whore of Babylon”). Central to their method of control, was the priesthood’s cloaking of its knowledge of the physical world in superstition, magic, and myth.
According to the oligarchy’s Disneyland of ancient history, such cult-ridden societies erupted, autochthonously, out of nowhere, ultimately leading to the development of modern civilization. ….
Returning to Minotaur and the life of Sir Arthur Evans, we can see how the British oligarchy will stop at nothing to enforce that latter conception. If one approaches MacGillivray’s thoroughness from such an overview of the intellectual battle afoot, then the book is a goldmine. Without that overview, the text becomes tediously academic.
Arthur Evans was born in 1851, to a middle-class businessman father who had been picked up by British Royal Society circles, and groomed as a promising lackey in the relatively new field of archaeology. The young Evans was raised on a diet of Darwin, Huxley, and Aryan racial superiority. As MacGillivray reports, “Evans came to Oxford just as the Aryans marched from myth into history, and he was as proud as any other to proclaim his connection to them.” Evans’ racism was unabashed; he wrote in 1875 that, “I believe in the existence of inferior races and would like to see them exterminated.”
He became the son-in-law of racist historian Edward Freeman, who once publicly expressed the wish that every Irishman would murder a Negro, and then be hanged, for the greater good of the Germanic race. (His marriage to Margaret Freeman, who shared the racist views of her father and new husband, was one of convenience, since Evans was a homosexual, whose sexual orientation became public toward the end of his life.)
Evans just barely graduated from Oxford, thanks to the intervention of his father and Freeman. His first assignment was as an intelligence agent deployed under the government of Prime Minister William Gladstone. Not yet 20 years old, Evans was arrested by the French as a spy in Paris in 1870, during the Franco-Prussian war; then arrested by the Austrians in 1875 in Zagreb, during an insurrection against the Ottoman rulers; and finally arrested again in the Balkans in 1882.
Deployed vs. Schliemann
It was time to redeploy Evans, and his new assignment was to destroy the work of Heinrich Schliemann, and “replace” him as the preeminent archaeologist of Bronze Age Mediterranean cultures. Schliemann, a German businessman, was a lifelong lover of Homer’s epics, who became convinced that Troy and Mycenae were not fictional locations, but grounded in history. He devoted his life to proving this–discovering, and excavating, first, Troy, and then, Mycenae.
Evans was introduced to Schleimann in 1883 in Athens.
In 1884, he was given the necessary credentials for his new career, and was appointed to head Oxford’s Ashmolean Museum. During this period, the British, through Oxford, were running an “inside/outside” operation against the influence of the Greek classics in education. Benjamin Jowett, representing the “pro-classical” side, was deployed to translate Plato’s dialogues, so as to beat the ideas out of them, and render Plato an ancient Newtonian. Jowett’s crime continues to this day, by the preponderance of his translations in modern editions.
Evans was groomed to cover the other side, attacking the “excess” reliance on the study of the Greek classics, and, then, sabotaging the study of the origin of Greek culture.
That Schliemann was diverted from travelling to Crete in 1883 and in 1885, in order to be honored by the British Royal Society and Queen Victoria herself, could not have been coincidental. Eventually travelling to Crete in 1886 and 1889, he was never able to obtain excavation rights, and died in Italy in 1890, on his way back to Greece and Crete. The possibility that his enemies orchestrated his demise should not be overlooked.
Evans arrived in Crete in 1893 and spent the next four decades creating a “Minoan” civilization in the image dictated by his, and his controllers’, perverted worldview. Evans’ assignment was to portray Crete as a mysterious, relatively advanced, autochthonous society, which gave rise to Mycenaean civilization, and from it, classical Greece. As MacGillivray demonstrated in the magazine article quoted above, Evans deliberately ignored, obscured, and even destroyed evidence that Crete and Mycenae were outposts of Egyptian colonization and science.
The ‘Minoan’ Myth
MacGillivray describes in detail how Evans simply rebuilt the palace at Knossos, and other structures, to conform to his preconceived fabrication of Minoan society. Even the term “Minoan” is Evans’ creation; there is no evidence that the people of Crete ever called themselves “Minoan.” (Prior to his trashing of Cretan history, Evans had performed a similar intellectual fraud on Stonehenge, describing it as a cult center of a prehistoric Aryan belief system, rather than the advanced astronomical observatory which it was in c.3000 b.c.[sic])
Along with this, MacGillivray provides extensive documentation of Evans’ appropriation and manipulation of the work of some of his colleagues, and his outright destruction of the careers of others. Not only did Evans cripple the archaeological investigation of Cretan civilization, but he delayed for over fifty years a crucial breakthrough in the study of the early Greek language. Evans had discovered hundreds of baked clay tablets with a hitherto undiscovered form of writing on them, known as Linear B. In order to enforce the idea that Crete was an isolated, unknown culture, Evans insisted that the language could not be an early form of Greek. He refused to make the inscriptions available to others during his lifetime. It wasn’t until the 1950’s, a decade after Evans’ death, that Michael Ventris, a young British architect and cryptographer, proved to the astonishment of the world’s experts, that the language of the Linear B script was, indeed, an early form of Greek.
Evans’ life and work exemplify the British oligarchy’s method of holding back scientific advance. Through suppression of evidence–and, more importantly, through brutal imposition of his ideological assumptions–Evans reigned as the High Priest of a scientific inquisition for more than [fifty] … years.
Over recent decades, the discrediting of Evans, and of other elements of British-controlled archaeology, have broken that inquisitional control, and scientists and amateurs, such as Edna Leigh, are now making valuable contributions to the discovery of mankind’s true pre-history. It is that history which the controllers of the Sir Arthur Evanses of this world fear the most.
[End of quote]
Arthur Evans’ ‘refusal to make the inscriptions available to others during his lifetime’ has its modern equivalent (one of many?) in the Syrian government’s censorship of the material contained in the Ebla tablets:
Bible-affirming Ebla hampered and censored by Syrian authorities
The evocative power of archeological sites stems at least in part from their promise to put us in touch with the reality of an ancient past. The ruined shell of the Roman amphitheater, the terracotta soldiers unearthed near Xi’an, the sandstone façade of Al Khazneh in Petra: all collapse centuries and millennia into a single moment of contact. In some cases, the ruins themselves are so familiar as to generate a sense not of authenticity but of déjà vu, as with Sigmund Freud’s famous “disturbance of memory” during his 1904 visit to the Acropolis in Athens.
But as many a visitor to the ruins of the bronze-age palace at Knossos has found to his or her surprise, some of the palace’s most iconic sights—the throne room complex, the squat red pillars, the frescoes of the priest-king and the “Ladies in Blue”—do not in fact represent the glories of a bygone Cretan civilization. Instead, they owe their appearance to the fervid imagination and wild reconstructive efforts of a single man, Knossos’s twentieth-century excavator—perhaps inventor is the better term—the British archeologist Sir Arthur Evans.
This disappoints terribly, of course: one wants the echt experience, notwithstanding the presence, especially in the United States, of any one of a number of faux Venices, Parises, and other reproductions of the “old country” that represent commercial pandering to the popular longing to come face to face with the past. And yet it turns out that even a garishly recreated Knossos can offer a rich history of its own, and it is the particular triumph of Cathy Gere’s book to have traced the powerful impact of Evans’s reconstruction of the site and his vision of a “Minoan” civilization upon the most fecund thinkers and artists of his day. In the pages of this fascinating book, Freud, de Chirico, Joyce, Picasso, Graves, and H.D. mark out labyrinthine paths as intricate as the mythical Minoan dancers of Evans’s imagination. Fueled by the idea of ancient Crete as Evans crafted it from the ruins, artifacts, and paint fragments of his excavation, and encouraged by Nietzsche’s notion that the modern era was actually repeating the history of antiquity in reverse movement, these figures went on to embed the myth of Evans’s peaceful and matriarchal Knossos into their own response to the twentieth century. For them, the preoccupations of modernism—the loss of faith in the Enlightenment’s legacy of rationalism, the search for an alternative to the malaise of the modern state, the theological angst accompanying the death of the Christian God—were anticipated, confronted, and resolved in the ruins of what Evans was convinced was the palace of the mythical King Minos.
Evans himself did not discover the site. It had already been identified as the location of bronze-age Knossos, and the preliminary excavations of a local antiquarian named Minos (yes, Minos) Kalokairinos had unearthed painted murals and terracotta jars. Kalokairinos was prevented from further digging by the local Cretan assembly, which feared that his finds might be appropriated by Crete’s Ottoman government.
Still, as Gere writes, “in the spring of 1894 the mound of Knossos finally met its destiny in the shape of the British petitioner for its favors, Arthur Evans.” Our petitioner was sniffing out the trail of an unknown script found on seal stones that he had encountered in Greece, and whose source he believed to be Cretan; it was a belief confirmed by the similar characters on some of the stones exposed by Kalokairinos. By 1900, Evans was able to buy the site outright, and what followed were forty years of self-financed digging and reconstruction—self-financed and also self-conceived, since (as Gere suggests in a section on Evans’s early loss of his mother) the archeologist was saddled with a goodly amount of psychic baggage from his own childhood, all of which found some expression on the interpretive playing-field of Knossos.
Of Evans, Gere remarks that “his methods were distinguished by a delirious interpretive incontinence.” And so they were. What Evans actually uncovered as he dug further into the mound was not insignificant: the oldest throne in Europe (a gypsum chair plastered to the wall behind it), goddess figurines, fragmentary frescoes. But upon these findings Evans brought to bear the volatile combination of his own imagination and a recent innovation in the construction industry: reinforced concrete. Where the rotted-out wooden pillars of the palace had once stood, Evans erected concrete pillars to take their place, and over them, originally to protect the finds, a concrete ceiling. In the course of the next decades, a three storey modernist structure over the throne would be erected under the supervision of the architect Piet de Jong, and the Swiss artists Guilliéron père et fils, also working for Evans, would generate frescoes from the most fragmentary remnants. A particularly egregious case of invention resulted in the “restoration” of the painting of a red-skinned Minoan captain leading a troop of black soldiers, the whole troop created almost ex nihilo from a few patches of black pigment. The second volume of Evans’s excavation report accordingly included a disquisition on Cretan relations with sub-Saharan Africa, an association that would be indirectly echoed in later scholarly attempts to link Cretan and Egyptian culture.
Interpretive incontinence, certainly. But there was a good precedent for such excess. Evans was following in the footsteps of Heinrich Schliemann, the wealthy German merchant-turned-archeologist who, having tunneled a destructive path through nine archeological strata at Hisarlik near the mouth of the Dardanelles, claimed in 1873 to have found the Troy of Homer’s Iliad at the penultimate level. (We now know that this was a Bronze Age settlement, and that Schliemann’s spade-wielding haste actually destroyed much evidence of the most likely Iliadic Troy.) The claim was based on the discovery of a trove of gold and copper artifacts that Schliemann promptly labeled ‘Priam’s treasure’ and which cemented his fame in the public eye. In his subsequent excavations at Mycenae in mainland Greece, Schliemann’s imagination again did not fail him: uncovering, in 1876, the figure of a corpse wearing a gold death-mask, he suggested he had unearthed Agamemnon himself, and in later accounts of his excavations he created a backstory in which it had always been his childhood dream to find and excavate Homer’s ill-fated city. By publishing this archeology of ambition, as it were, he was able to mythologize himself as well as the skeletons he had summoned to the light of day.
Where Schliemann had been merely destructive, Evans, we might say, was constructive. But a greater contrast between these series of excavations—Troy and Mycenae on the one hand, Knossos on the other—would eventually shape two different modern myths about the origins of European civilization. Schliemann’s work on Troy was a crucial step in the construction of a Greek proto-identity for the German race. His discovery of swastika figures scratched onto some Trojan loom-weights—together with a female figurine also found at Troy, onto whose pubic triangle Schliemann himself had helpfully carved a matching swastika—coincided with the development of the Teutonic scholarship that identified the ‘Aryas’ of the Sanskrit Rigveda with none other than the Germans themselves. The presence of similar swastikas on some ancient German pots meant that “the Iliad could now join the Rigveda as the historical record of the military prowess of a racially pure people, who left a trail of swastikas in the wake of their irresistible westward advance and whose true heirs were the Prussian army.” The hoisting of the swastika flag as the symbol of the Reich in 1933 was merely the final step in this “invention of archeology.” And in the same year, fittingly enough, Emil Ludwig’s biography of Schliemann was burned in Berlin: written by a Jew, it apparently lacked the wherewithal to recognize the particularly German nature of Schliemann’s heroic idealism.
If Schliemann’s Iliadic proto-Germans were the mythical forbearers of Nazi Germany’s own military ethos, Evans was sickened by the atrocities of the civil war during the Cretan fight for independence, and Gere suggests that his emphasis on the pacific and matriarchal aspects of his ‘Minoan’ civilization was at least in part a reaction to these horrors. When he announced that he had found the “throne of Ariadne” at Knossos, he was staking out an allegiance not to Homer’s warriors but to Johann Jakob Bachofen’s argument that a matriarchal culture had preceded patriarchy on Crete. Support was lent to the theory when in 1884 an Italian archeologist found near Gortyn the inscribed marble remains of a fifth-century B.C.E. law code with favorable legal provisions for women. Evans’s greatest invention, in fact, was this archetype of the Great Mother Goddess, whose religious sway over the early Cretans he derived from the discovery of female statuettes, seal stamps showing a “Mountain Goddess,” and the putative dancing floor of Ariadne, daughter of Minos.
But Evans went so far as to put aside evidence he himself had discovered pointing to a network of fortifications on the island in order to present the Cretans as wholly peace-loving: “His King Minos was a famous lawgiver rather than an infamous tyrant; his labyrinth was a dancing floor rather than a monster’s prison. So successful was he, that Mycenae and Knossos eventually came to be seen as opposite extremes, one militaristic and patriarchal, the other peaceful and feminine. Out of the violent hell of the struggle for Cretan independence was born the pacifist paradise of Minoan Crete.” In sum, Evans’s multi-volume work The Palace of Minos presented this civilization as taking place in a prelapsarian time, “a gilded infancy suckled by a benevolent mother goddess.” Although Evans shared the racist biases of his times, he had no use for Aryan theories: his peaceful and semitic Crete was a world influenced and improved by its neighbors to the south, Egypt and Libya.
Here, then, was the new childhood of Europe, a world cooked up by an archeologist eager to show that a pacific matriarchy lay at the origin of a people caught up in the increasingly violent twentieth century. It was a popular vision: as Gere demonstrates, Evans’s appealing articulation of bronze-age Cretan civilization was appropriated over and over again by its twentieth-century audiences, each adapting it to their own needs in the service of feminism, psychoanalysis, art, Afrocentrism, and the like. For Freud, archeology had already come to stand as the master-metaphor for the “talking cure”–perhaps not surprisingly, given the reverse chronology of both disciplines and the idea that the analyst, like the archeologist, was on a search for the buried sources of the present. “A neurosis or a hysterical symptom,” as Gere observes, “was like an archaeological tell—a mound of memories that had to be peeled away, layer by layer, starting from the present and working back to the past, in search of a primal scene.”
But more strikingly, Freud went so far as to identify Evans’s Knossos with a pre-Oedipal stage putatively experienced by the West in its Cretan infancy and to identify this historical moment in the development of civilization with a stage in the psychic development of the child: the presence of the Minoan mother goddess in pre-patriarchal Crete (as he argued in Moses and Monotheism) represented a parallel to a young girl’s primary attachment was to her mother. And into this pottage of correspondences between the dig at Knossos and the analyses in his Viennese study, Freud then added an odder still ingredient: “inherited memory.” According to this Lamarckian twist in his thought, the history of the human species had left traces in the brains of modern individuals, so that Minoan civilization, which was thought to have perished in a cataclysmic earthquake or eruption against which its Great Mother Goddess had offered no protection, “actually laid down the psychic structure of the pre-Oedipal stage and its termination” in the maturation process of every generation of children.
The unfortunate Mother Goddess thus went the way of all Freudian mothers: both Cretan civilization and the pre-Oedipal child realized that these feminine forces could not hold a candle to a paternal God and a pater. Not Freud’s brightest hour, perhaps; Gere amusingly quotes the complaint by Yosef Hayyim Yerushalmi, the great Jewish historian, that the theory of inherited memory relies on “structures of thought and modes of discourse as alien as those encountered by an anthropologist studying the Bororo or Nambikwara tribes in the Brazilian unknown.”
Freud, of course, was hardly the only appropriator of Cretan symbolism. Gere pays witty homage to many equally fascinating figures. Evans’s contemporary, the classicist Jane Ellen Harrison, was likewise convinced by the goddess seals and statuettes of Knossos that the island contained coded references to the transition from matriarchy to patriarchy. In a famous chapter entitled “The Making of a Goddess” from her Prolegomena to a Study of Greek Religion, Harrison presents the Olympian gods of the Greeks not as the rational deities of a civilized Hellenism, but as the patriarchal usurpers of female rule: as she wrote in some disgruntlement, “Woman who was the inspirer, becomes the temptress; she who made all things, gods and mortals alike, is become their plaything, their slave, dowered only with physical beauty, and with a slave’s tricks and blandishments.” Meanwhile, the painter Giorgio de Chirico was painting his own likenesses of Ariadne, the heroine isolated in an industrial modernist landscape that perhaps not coincidentally resembled Evans’s reconstruction of the throne room complex. In an odd twist of fate, De Chirico had earlier taken drawing lessons from none other than Émile Gilliéron pere. Among the other figures for whom Gere traces out Minoan connections and coincidences, the biographical material on Robert Graves is particularly striking. Graves, like Harrison, lamented the transition from matriarchy to patriarchy in his Minoan-themed best-seller of 1948, The White Goddess, but in this he was apparently influenced by the years he spent in erotic thrall to the unbalanced American poet Laura Riding, who magnificently declared herself a figure of destiny named “Finality.” Graves threw himself out a third-story window on Finality’s behalf but survived to write Goodbye to All That.
The final part of the story is dedicated to the role that Knossos played in the ongoing debate about north African civilization’s influence on the eventual cultural and intellectual hegemony of classical Athens. Starting in 1917 with an article by George Wells Parker on “The African Origin of Grecian Civilisation,” Gere traces the modulations of this argument in the work of the Senegalese polymath Cheikh Anta Diop and in the “Black Athena” hypothesis championed by Martin Bernal. Both Diop and Bernal have argued that the Egyptian pharaohs were black Africans, the former most notably in his book The African Origin of Civilization, the latter in the three volumes of Black Athena. Crete enters the picture already with Parker, who thought that the red-skinned figures of the frescoes had African facial features; Diop believed that Crete was a colony of Middle Kingdom Egypt, and that its inhabitants had fled to the Peloponnese after the volcanic eruption on Thera. Gere does not delve into the bitter controversy around the Black Athena thesis, but she does point out that Evans’s belief that Minoan civilization had political hegemony over Greek Mycenae lost steam after it became clear that the unfamiliar script on the tablets dug up at Knossos, Linear B, was in fact archaic Greek and not a Semitic language from north Africa. This cast doubt upon the straightforward narrative of cultural inheritance from Egypt to Crete, and Crete to the mainland.
Recently the fabled Minoans have fallen farther still, with the discovery of new archeological evidence that suggests the possibility that they carried out human sacrifice and even cannibalized children. It is interesting to speculate on what Evans would have done had he come face to face with this evidence: would it have gone the way of the other material that had no place in his Pax Minoica? It is surely difficult to find a spot for human flesh on the pacifist’s dining table. We cannot know, but what Gere’s stimulating study repeatedly reminds us is that archeology can be not only a recovery of the past, not only a reflection of the present, but also a projection about our own culture and its ideals. “There is no escaping the fact,” as she concludes, “that we read the human past to understand the present, and then interpret it in the light of the future that we fear or desire.”
Crete as the Egyptian ‘Isle of the Dead’
“Whereas there is a now a more common consensus that the initial conclusions reached by Evans about the Minoan civilisation are part modern invention, part based on archaeological discoveries, the framework of the “Minoan civilisation” has not been publicly criticised as much as it … should have been”.
The man who put Crete on the archaeological map was Arthur Evans, an English archaeologist who excavated Knossos from 1900 onwards, having purchased the site on which the ruins were located. As excavations progressed, the palace, located in the hills south of the capital Heraklion, was quickly identified with the legendary site of the “Palace of King Minos” – the “Minoan civilisation” was coined. Since Evans’ time, it is accepted that the palace culture of Crete was that of a trading empire, typified by lavish and large palaces, which can therefore often be found along the coastline, rather than in the heartland or mountainous regions.
But according to the German geologist Hans Wunderlich, Crete’s history has been harshly misinterpreted.
Whereas there is a now a more common consensus that the initial conclusions reached by Evans about the Minoan civilisation are part modern invention, part based on archaeological discoveries, the framework of the “Minoan civilisation” has not been publicly criticised as much as it perhaps should have been. Wunderlich, however, spoke up against that status quo in the 1970s, and rather than just argue against the conclusions, also put forward a theory of his own about what Crete might have been. Three decades later, Wunderlich’s interpretation has remained a hot topic of debate, though as it does not involve aliens or Atlantis, it has not captured the attention it should perhaps deserve.
The “Minoan legacy” is the presence of several immense and complex buildings – palaces – built over several floors. One problem is that there is more than one palace – it is unlikely that all of these were palaces for a central king. It has therefore been argued that these were “secondary” palaces that controlled “regions”.
All palaces all adhere to the same design: they are situated on lowlands, are close to the seashore, often aligned to important mountains, or more particularly: mountains with important caves, sometimes mythically connected with the birthplace or the place of burial of deities, Zeus in particular.
These observations allow for the argument that the “palaces” could more likely be “temples” – that their purpose is more religious than residential. For sure, archaeologists are quick to point out that certain parts of the palaces definitely had a religious function. But some go further. In fact, archaeologist Oswald Spengler stated in 1935 that these “palaces” were temples for the dead. The Minoan royal throne to him was not the seat from which the king held audiences, but instead the seat for a religious image or a priest’s mummy.
His opinion was not taken seriously, as it went against the – still – accepted belief and Spengler himself could not pursue his own line of thinking as he died the year following the publication of his thesis. Hans Georg Wunderlich continued where Spengler had left off. Both Wunderlich and Spengler noted that the state of the palaces was particularly bizarre. Thousands of people are believed to have roamed the corridors of the Palace of Knossos, but the staircases throughout the complex look as if they have never been used! Most sections of the complex reveal no sign of usage, or age. This in itself is bizarre.
It is all the stranger as the material used was gypsum, a very soft material. Why they used this inferior material to the widely available marble-like limestone, is a great mystery – if the palace was meant for the living.
Still, some argue whether the dead had any need for a sewage system, of such complexity that it would take until Roman times before a similar construction could be seen. There is apparently even a bathroom with a flushing toilet, though there is some discussion whether this is an original find, or an “addition” made by Evans. Evans did many reconstructions throughout the complex, and some of these have been labelled “unfortunate”, as they are felt to be more in line with the early 20th century culture than with that of the ancient Minoans. But the problem, once again, is that the so-called bathrooms are faced with gypsum too – and that substance and running water are mutually exclusive, as it is not resistant to it.
Most remarkable, however, is the fact that the ancient Minoans did not leave much behind – little waste, not many utensils, etc. have been found within the ruins… perhaps because no-one lived inside?
The Palace of Knossos is famous for its depictions of white women and red men. The scenes depict processions, the men dressed in skirts. But the most remarkable aspect of these scenes is that they are identical with scenes – and equally old – found in Egyptian temples. They speak of an island, identified in Egyptian sources as “Keftiu” – Crete.
For a very long period, it was felt that the Minoan and Egyptian civilisations evolved independent from one another, a thesis still adhered to by some historians. But these discoveries contradicted this assumption. It revealed that in the 18th Dynasty (ca. 1600-1500 BC) [sic], when Crete reached its apogee, there was an intense exchange between the two civilisations.
Some archaeologists have interpreted the processions as nothing more than “state visits” and exchange of gifts, i.e. forms of diplomacy, between Crete and Egypt, thus trying to keep the status of an independent Crete intact. But there is evidence that does not support this conclusion. The scenes were depicted in Egyptian graves and the processions were clearly linked with the dead. This makes Crete directly linked with the Egyptian dead.
It was such evidence that led Wunderlich to revisit Spengler’s opinion. He came to the conclusion that the palaces were not built for a living king … but for a dead one; that sections of the palace were clearly designed to allow for the storage of the remains of the dead. And Wunderlich argued that this was the main reason behind the close alliance between Crete and Egypt, going as far as to suggest that the practice of mummification in Egypt was performed by Cretans – and that the mummification itself might have occurred in Crete.
The bull was important both in Crete and Egypt. In Egypt, the animal is linked with the deceased king, whereas the bull is depicted on all Minoan monuments, though its specification function is unclear, because of the absence of any knowledge on the Minoan religion. The palaces depict lilies and lotus flowers, plants that had an important, religious function in Egypt.
The Minoan palaces have a depiction of what is known as “bull leaping”: people performing acrobatics on a leaping bull. Experts have identified that this form of acrobatics is physically impossible – humans and bulls cannot interact in such a manner. The question is therefore whether these scenes depict “imaginary” scenes, i.e. scenes that might occur in the Afterlife?
Wunderlich also noted that the name of king Minos is identical to the first king of the Egyptian First Dynasty, Menes. But in the Homeric legends, Minos is not so much king, as a judge, “wielding a golden sceptre while dispensing laws among the dead.” If Minos ruled Crete, Crete was therefore an island of the dead.
Hard archaeological evidence cementing a link between Crete and Egypt comes in the form of the Haga Triada sarcophagus – the perfect object in discussing funerary similarities. It depicts a griffin wagon and the sacrifice of a bull, but most importantly, offerings being made to the dead, shown in upright posture. The ceremony was performed in the open air, before the deceased was moved to an underground vault, where he received the horns and the blood of the bull. Likely not coincidentally, models of sacrificed animals have been found in great number in the Cretan palaces. Though the scene shows the mummy upright, later, the position seems to have been changed to sitting – the reason why Spengler speculated the “royal throne” might have accommodated a mummy.
Wunderlich asks – rightfully – why “the selfsame cult objects depicted on the sarcophagus should have been found in, of all places, the so-called domestic quarters of the king in the Palace of Knossos? If so, that the king was no longer among the living when he dwelt in these rooms! For the rooms identified by Sir Arthur Evans as living quarters evidently served for the performance of a ceremony such as is depicted on the Hagia Triada sarcophagus: the invocation and ritual veneration of a dead, not a living, person.” Indeed, Wunderlich argues that what Evans interpreted as a bathtub was actually an oval sarcophagus. The ventilation openings in the bottom, to help preserve the dried mummies, Evans took as drainage holes for the bathwater. Evans himself saw the strong Egyptian artistic influence: “This accumulating evidence of early intercourse with the Nile Valley cannot certainly surprise the traveler fresh from exploring site after site of primeval cities which once looked forth from the southern spurs of Dikta far across the Libyan Sea, and whose roadsteads, given a favourable wind, are within forty hours’ sail of the Delta.” Wunderlich went even further and suggested that Crete in essence was no civilisation, but a “vassal state” of Egypt.
Still, Evans was reluctant to endorse the Egyptian theme, even when in March 1904, a tomb was discovered that contained an Egyptian basalt bowl, many Egyptian alabaster bases, an Egyptian lapis lazuli necklace with pendant figures, with the tomb itself – known as the Royal Tomb of Isopata, destroyed in 1942 – resembling the rectangular layout of the tombs of Egyptian nobles at Thebes. Still, writing to his father, he did remark: “It is curious what an Egyptian element there is.” J. Alexander MacGillivray has commented how Evans “continued to maintain that Minoan culture was independent of Egypt, even as he personally continued to gather evidence to the contrary.” In 1991, in the Egyptian Nile Delta, a team of Austrian archaeologists led by Manfred Bietak discovered a palace complex in Tel ed-Daba (Avaris). An area on the western edge of the site, known as Ezbet Helmi, revealed a large palace-like structure dating to the Hyksos period (18th century BC). [sic] The ancient gardens revealed many fragments of Minoan wall-paintings, similar in style to those found in the palace at Knossos in Crete. It was not the first such discovery as German archaeologist Eduard Meyer had found Knossos-like paintings in the tombs of the necropolis of Thebes West.
It has been suggested that the Avaris paintings with a distinctive red-painted background may even pre-date those of Crete and Thera and possibly have influenced some of the 18th Dynasty tomb paintings that appear to include Minoan themes such as the “flying gallop” motif of horses and bulls. In the 18th Dynasty strata of Ezbet Helmi, Dr Bietak also discovered many lumps of pumice-stone, which could have come from the volcanic explosion on the island of Thera, occurring in the 15th century BC and identified as the cataclysmic event that ended the Minoan civilisation.
Mackey’s comment: But see my multi-part Theran series, beginning with:
Problematical Thera Dating. Part One: Introductory
“With an army of adoring international fans and close personal connections to Mubarak, the charges of having a poor scientific approach to archaeological work and being too concerned with endless self- promotion had little impact – Hawass was perceived as virtually unassailable.”.
Emma Watts-Plumpkin
It is quite a killer to healthy research when establishment tyrants such as Arthur Evans and Zawi Hawass become firmly set in place.
Emma Watts-Plumpkin writes of “Cairo: Egyptology in crisis” (September 5, 2011):
After the dramatic departure of President Hosni Mubarak, attention swiftly turned to one of his high-profile ministers, the world-famous archaeologist Dr Zahi Hawass.
No stranger to the glare of the media spotlight, Hawass quickly became tainted along with the crumbling regime and was engulfed by damaging charges of corruption and mismanagement.
On Sunday 17 July, Hawass was abruptly sacked as the Minister of State for Antiquities Affairs in an overhaul of the country’s cabinet, and his controversial reign as one of the most powerful men in the archaeological world finally came to an end.
Hawass rose to prominence in the late 1980s as the General Director of Antiquities for the Giza Pyramids and became familiar to worldwide television audiences through documentaries investigating the mysteries of the pyramids. Infamous for his trademark hat and self-styling as the ‘Indiana Jones of Egypt’, Western-educated Hawass was elevated to the position of Secretary General of the Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA) on 1 January 2002. As Egypt’s foremost archaeologist, he was responsible for a staff of 30,000, control of all ongoing archaeological work, and the maintenance of a vast array of cultural riches including the Pyramids at Giza, the Valley of the Kings, and the Temple of Karnak in modern-day Luxor.
Formidable in asserting his new position, Hawass unveiled a raft of new measures. These included an aggressive nationwide museum-building programme, promising to improve the working conditions for local archaeologists, and implementing new site-management policies. Egyptologist Dr Melinda Hartwig of Georgia State University observes that Hawass was ‘adamant about publishing the results of archaeological fieldwork, even going as far as to shut down digs that were behind on their reports’. Hawass masterminded the planning and initial construction of the $550 million Grand Egyptian Museum in Giza – once completed in 2015, it will be the largest archaeological museum in the world, housing more than 100,000 artefacts and expecting around 5 million visitors per year.
World stage
It was through Hawass’s vociferous demands for the return of stolen cultural artefacts to Egypt that he first hit global headlines. Throughout his tenure at the SCA, he attempted to stamp out the relentless and highly damaging illegal trade in Egyptian cultural artefacts with some degree of success, presiding over the return of nearly 5,000 objects.
Hawass used his position as head of the SCA to embark on a decade-long campaign to demand the return of Egypt’s most prized objects from leading museums around the world. These included the Rosetta Stone at the British Museum in London, the Zodiac of Dendera at the Musée du Louvre in Paris, and the bust of Queen Nefertiti at the Neues Museum in Berlin.
In the face of mounting media attention, Hawass applied increasing pressure for repatriation of key Egyptian objects from embattled world-renowned institutions, threatening embargoes on museum cooperation and excavation permits.
Dr Hartwig believes ‘Zahi Hawass was a force of nature and tireless in his pursuits. He spearheaded the return of the country’s patrimony and he clearly demonstrated a strong desire to study, protect and preserve the cultural heritage of Egypt’. The influence of the media has been crucial to Hawass’s enduring campaign, as he acknowledged when returning from a high-profile visit to London two years ago: ‘The English press was on my side in asking for the return of the stone’.
Last year Egypt, the largest country in the Arab world, received revenue of over $12 billion through tourism. Hawass has been the driving force behind the heavy promotion of two successful Tutankhamen exhibitions that continue to travel to major cities around the world, generating for Egypt an estimated final revenue of over $100 million.
Dr Peter Brand of the University of Memphis notes that Hawass’s crowning achievement was ‘to raise the profile of Egyptology around the world, especially in the participation of Egyptians in their own pharaonic heritage’. Hawass has been credited by government officials with boosting the number of visitors to the country through a relentless drive of self-promotion and headline-grabbing discoveries – he became he living embodiment of both Ancient Egypt and modern Egyptology.
Hawass always made sure he was the public face of Egyptology at every level – through the SCA he personally announced every new archaeological discovery, wrote countless bestselling books, and became ubiquitous on every history-themed cable channel in America.
Last year he took another step forward into show business by starring in his own exclusive warts-and-all reality series Chasing Mummies (tagline: ‘Pharaohs ruled then. He rules now’). With an army of adoring international fans and close personal connections to Mubarak, the charges of having a poor scientific approach to archaeological work and being too concerned with endless self- promotion had little impact – Hawass was perceived as virtually unassailable.
Winds of change
In one of Mubarak’s final official acts as president, Hawass was appointed as the Minister of State for Antiquities Affairs in a new department that absorbed the SCA. As such, he was charged with the care and protection of all Egyptian monuments and museums. Nearly two weeks later, at the height of the revolution, everything changed. Hundreds of archaeologists protested outside Hawass’s offices, furious at low wages, high levels of unemployment, and poor working conditions. It was also claimed that Hawass took all the credit for work by other archaeologists, causing further frustration. Egyptian archaeologist Nora Shalaby took part in the demonstration and witnessed the angry chants of ‘thief’ against Hawass: ‘He ran the antiquities sector exactly like Mubarak had run Egypt.
He did not allow for people to challenge or criticise him and he monopolised our heritage for his own self-promotion.’ The protestors submitted a list of demands including the immediate prosecution of Hawass on charges of corruption and accountability for the looting of artefacts from the Cairo Museum during the revolution. With the dramatic changes unfolding in Egypt’s political landscape, Hawass was an obvious target for a new generation of disgruntled archaeologists.
Amid rising animosity, criticism was heaped on the alleged $200,000 annual salary Hawass received from National Geographic, particularly as he personally controlled all access to the ancient sites featured in the high-profile magazine reports. His close links with American companies who represent the Tutankhamen exhibitions and associated Egyptian-themed merchandise were heavily scrutinised, further tarnishing his increasingly beleaguered reputation. The subsequent launch of a widely ridiculed Zahi Hawass clothing line (‘for the man who values self-discovery, historicism and adventure’) only succeeded in fanning the flames of resentment, despite claims by Hawass that all profits would be donated to a children’s charity in Cairo.
Following the fallout from protests in Tahrir Square, Hawass resigned his cabinet position – only to be reappointed a month later. After just weeks of being back in the job, he was sentenced to a year in prison in a dispute over the preferential award of a gift shop retail contract at the Egyptian Museum in Cairo. A criminal court recently acquitted Hawass of all charges against him. Despite attempts to distance himself from the political old-guard in Egypt, Hawass’s close links to the Mubarak regime continued to haunt him, and he was eventually sacked in July. Hawass does not plan to fade away quietly. He is already at work on his archaeological autobiography, and recently observed that he was ‘blessed to see first-hand how many Egyptians love and respect me’. ….
[End of quotes]
Matthias Schulz has written colourfully about “Zahi Hawass. Egypt’s Avenger of the Pharaohs”:
It is 5 a.m. and Zahi Hawass is sitting in his SUV, freshly showered, about to drive out to the Bahariya Oasis for a press appearance. The streets are still empty as Cairo shimmers in the rose-colored morning sun. Hawass must hurry to avoid the morning traffic.
He has already had a heart attack, and since then he only smokes water pipes. Referring to his driver, he says: “If he slows down I’ll fire him.” He likes to call his opponents “assholes.”
But no one here is troubled by his behavior. In fact, Hawass has a license to be loud and angry. He sets his own rules. As Secretary General of the Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA), he is the ultimate protector of all monuments in the country.
Some 30,000 people report to Hawass, whose organization is responsible for hundreds of dilapidated temples, gloomy tombs and treasure chambers fragrant with the scent of resin, once filled with gold jewelry and papyrus documents, stretching from the delta to the fourth Nile cataract.
Hawass can open them all.
Even looking like Indiana Jones in his jeans shirt and floppy, the master of the keys to Egypt’s antiquities has made umpteen TV appearances dangling from a rope in a grave shaft or bending over coffins, constantly repeating the same tried-and-true mantra: “mummy, sand, secret, miracle, exceptional.”
He is now “world-renowned,” at least in his own assessment of himself. The pyramid whisperer drinks $300 (€242) bottles of wine, and his best friend is actor Omar Sharif. Sometimes he puts on an expensive tuxedo and drives to a party at the villa of President Hosni Mubarak.
He even met with US President Barack Obama in June, and the two men stood at the base of the Pyramid of Cheops with their hands in their pockets, looking cool as could be.
“We were friends right off the bat,” says Hawass. “I told him that George Lucas came here to find out why my hat became more famous than Harrison Ford’s.”
When he was shown the layout for his latest book, he had only one comment: “OK, but you have to print my name in bigger letters.”
“I’m not just famous in the United States, but also in Japan and, in fact, everywhere,” the narcissistic Egyptian explains without hesitation.
But Hawass is probably best known in his native Egypt, where he writes a column in the government daily al-Ahram. He often appears on television, chatting with official guests and ambassadors, or opening dance competitions in front of the Sphinx.
People like Hawass’ approach and his ability to converse on equal terms with the West. He has liberated Egypt from a posture of humility.
‘The Fighting Elephant of Egyptology’
He also happens to be a gifted speaker. He loves anecdotes, which usually revolve around him and contain minor untruths.
But this outgoing man isn’t overly interested in details. “Jalla, let’s go,” he calls out testily when his Jeep gets stuck in heavy traffic in Cairo’s urban canyons. His chauffeur has already run over several chickens.
But Hawass, who the German newspaper Hamburger Abendblatt dubbed the “fighting elephant of Egyptology,” has no patience for delays. He is a restless and driven man.
He says he would need thousands of arms and legs to wipe out all the disgrace that have been inflicted on his country. He is vexed by the daily grind of his fellow Egyptians, the filth, the poverty, the lack of organization and his agency’s poor technical facilities.
“We were once at the very top,” he says, referring to the time of the pharaohs. “Be proud of this heritage,” he tells young people.
Hawass often speaks of dignity, respect and honor. He believes that his nation was cheated, and that it is his mission to exact revenge for this treatment.
“Our heritage was stolen,” he says. “People raped the realm of the Nile in past centuries.” This makes him all the more determined to pursue one goal above all else: the return of cultural artifacts.
It is true that foreign rulers ransacked the region along the Nile for thousands of years. The Romans, for example, made off with entire obelisks.
Then came Napoleon. “Soldiers, 40 centuries look down upon you,” the Corsican called out to his men when they invaded the country in 1798. Entire ships filled with cultural artifacts were later shipped to the West, where they served as the basis for large, new museums.
Many of these treasures were purchased legally and for large sums of money.
But Egypt was also filled with smugglers and tomb raiders who broke the law and stole the country’s golden heritage.
Hawass is outraged over this bloodletting, and he doesn’t draw any distinctions. The antiquities director makes a general accusation that is inconvenient for the West. He resembles the Sphinx, except that instead of causing the plague, he gives people a guilty conscience.
The man has already brought home 31,000 smuggled objects in past years. They are primarily pieces taken in illicit excavations, which have been sold over the last 50 years, through auction houses like Sotheby’s and Christie’s, to museums in the United States.
He is celebrated at home for his achievements, and justifiably so. He even tracked down the embalmed body of Ramses I — in faraway Atlanta. Hawass bent over the papery face and sniffed it. Then he said: “I can smell it — this is Ramses.” The analysis proved him right.
His successes have earned him various descriptions at home, including the mummy magician, the hero from the desert, and the showman of shards who has turned the pyramids into a circus tent.
He has a good sense of humor, but can also be moody. Recently in New York, he upbraided several museum curators from Boston before the assembled world press. They own a statue that he believes belongs to his people. As he was speaking, he rolled his eyes and made a fist.
The Louvre also got a taste of his fury. Hawass wanted the French museum to return five magnificent frescoes it had acquired from a seller who had obtained them illegally. When it refused, he ejected French archeologists from Egypt and terminated all collaboration with the treasure trove on the Seine.
Finally, last October, French President Nicolas Sarkozy put in a sheepish call to Mubarak, promising that everything that had been requested would be turned over. Hawass was triumphant: “It was a victory for us.”
The antiquities director has stirred up a difficult fight, for which he will need staying power, strong nerves and robust good health.
To keep up his health, he begins normal workdays with gymnastics, on the advice of his wife, a gynecologist.
By 7 a.m., he is sitting in his office in the exclusive Zamalek neighborhood, drinking herbal tea and lemonade. He only goes out to eat in the evening. After 10 p.m., he relaxes over a game of backgammon in a café near his apartment.
But there are often times when Hawass has to get up very early, skip his morning routine, brush his teeth and quickly eat a falafel before heading out into the countryside in his Jeep.
An Enigmatic Character
The reason he is so busy is that he has monopolized all PR activities relating to archaeology. Some 225 foreign archeological teams are working along the Nile, and all are kept muzzled. None of the professors working with the teams is permitted to report important finds without official approval. “It used to be a self-service operation here,” says the boss, “but those days are gone.”
Hawass reserves the right to announce all discoveries himself. Not everyone likes this. Some people feel that he is about as interested in serious research as Rapunzel was in having her hair cut.
He boasted that there were “10,000 golden mummies” at the cemetery in Bahariya, but only 200 were found. And he mistakenly declared a shabby find in the Valley of Kings to be the gravesite of a female pharaoh.
His own excavation efforts also appear to be somewhat bizarre. For some time, the master has been searching for the body of Cleopatra in a temple near Alexandria — based on an idea suggested to him by a lawyer from the Dominican Republic.
“Are you sure about this?” a journalist wanted to know. Hawass replied:
“Completely, otherwise I wouldn’t have even mentioned it. After all, I don’t want to embarrass myself.”
When nothing was found, despite feverish excavation efforts, Hawass took a granite bust of Cleopatra’s lover, Mark Antony, from a museum last year and pretended that he had just pulled it out of the ground.
Duncan Lees, a computer specialist who occasionally creates 3-D animations of grave shafts — in other words, a relatively minor player — calls him a “greedy guy” and a tyrant, who prefers to surround himself with “bootlickers.”
The major Egyptologists, on the other hand, are more reserved, and tend to whisper their criticism. They are anxious not to lose their licenses.
Many in the field had been secretly looking forward to May 28, the day the narcissistic archeologist turns 63, which would normally be his retirement age.
But instead of being feted with a farewell dinner, Hawass has just received a new position. President Mubarak has appointed him Deputy Minister of Culture, which means that he can continue working until the end of his life.
Nevertheless, this enigmatic figure is by no means the sum of his negative traits.
He has really achieved something.
With his frenetic public relations activities and his boundless vanity, Hawass has sparked a change in awareness among the 80 million Egyptians and sparked a new sense of pride.
Zahi Hawass stormed out of debate
“Unfortunately it appeared that Zahi was completely ignorant of the existence
or implications of Gobekli Tepe, arguably the most important archaeological site in the world, so he was unable to answer the question which he passed on to
the moderator …”.
Graham Hancock
Graham Hancock writes of the infamous incident in “Zahi Hawass vs Graham Hancock — the April 2015 “debate” debacle”: https://grahamhancock.com/hancockg15/
Egyptologists frequently pour scorn on alternative researchers calling them “pseudoscientists” and “pyramidiots” and other such insulting epithets. But look what happened when a leading Egyptologist was put to the test…
Dr Zahi Hawass, frequently promoted by his colleagues — for whom he is an icon of the mainstream point of view — as “the most famous archaeologist in the world”, had agreed to participate with me on 22 April 2015 in what was billed and advertised as “the first open debate between the representatives of two completely different versions of history.” Each of us was to give a one-hour presentation, followed by a debate in which the audience would join in with questions. In the event the debate never happened. Zahi refused to accept a coin-toss to decide the speaking order and insisted that I speak first.
I agreed to this, despite the fact that the first speaker is at a slight disadvantage in any debate since he does not have the opportunity to hear the other speaker’s presentation before giving his own.
Before most of the audience had arrived, I was checking the focus on the slides in my PowerPoint presentation prior to giving my talk and I put up on the screen an image which shows the Orion/Pyramids correlation and the Sphinx/Leo correlation at Giza in the epoch of 10,500 BC. Rightly and properly since the Orion correlation is Robert Bauval’s discovery I included a portrait of Robert Bauval in the slide. As soon as Zahi saw Robert’s image he became furiously angry, shouted at me, made insulting and demeaning comments about Robert, and told me that if I dared to mention a single word about Robert in my talk he would walk out and refuse to debate me. I explained that the alternative view of history that I was on stage to represent could not exclude the Orion correlation and therefore could not exclude Robert Bauval. At that, again shouting, Zahi marched out of the debating room. Frantic negotiations then took place off stage between the conference organisers and Zahi. Finally Zahi agreed to return and give his talk and answer questions from the audience, but he refused absolutely to hear or see my talk, or to engage in any debate with me. I therefore gave my talk to the audience without Zahi present (he sat in a room outside the conference hall while I spoke). When I had finished I answered questions from the audience. Then Zahi entered, gave his talk, answered questions from the audience and left.
….
One of the few members of the audience who had arrived early did manage to record part of the scene of Zahi storming out of the conference room — see here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Ziu2ygE_Wc
Likewise during Zahi’s Q&A he was asked a question about the 11,600-year-old [sic] megalithic site of Gobekli Tepe in Turkey and whether it had any impact on his assessment of the disputed age of the megalithic Great Sphinx of Giza (which I and my colleagues have long argued might be of similar antiquity).
Unfortunately it appeared that Zahi was completely ignorant of the existence or implications of Gobekli Tepe, arguably the most important archaeological site in the world, so he was unable to answer the question which he passed on to the moderator, Dr Miroslav Barta, Head of the Czech Archaeological Institute in Cairo (who was by prior agreement not supposed to intervene or take sides in the debate at all) and whose knowledge of Gobekli Tepe was also clearly incomplete (for example Dr Barta stated that Gobekli Tepe dates from the “late eleventh millennium BC through the tenth millennium BC” whereas in fact the dates presently established for Gobekli Tepe are from 9600 BC — tenth millennium BC — through 8200 BC — ninth millennium BC — i.e. from 11,600 years ago to 10,200 years ago). Dr Barta also used circular logic, arguing that Egyptian civilisation is thousands of years younger than Gobekli Tepe and that therefore there could be no connection, whereas this is exactly the matter in debate, and the point of the question asked, namely whether the findings at Gobekli Tepe require open-minded consideration of the possibility that the Great Sphinx and other megalithic structures at Giza, and with them the origins of Egyptian civilisation, might in fact be much older than Egyptologists presently maintain. I did at that point have a brief opportunity to stand up and give my own point of view on Gobekli Tepe and on its implications for the age of the Sphinx — see here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q4NnCAZcxHg
I had high hopes for this debate — that it might bring about some sort of civil dialogue between alternative and mainstream views of history but I was sadly disappointed. ….
Mackey’s comment: The BC dates proposed here for both the Sphinx and Göbekli Tepe would be far too early according to my own opinion:
Those whom Sir Arthur Evans fancifully named ‘the Minoans’,
based on the popular legend of King Minos, son of Zeus,
are biblically and historically attested as the Philistines.
Gavin Menzies had followed Arthur Evans in labelling as “Minoans” the great sea-faring and trading nation that is the very focal point of his fascinating book, The Lost Empire of Atlantis: History’s Greatest Mystery Revealed (HarperCollins, 2011). Though the ex-submariner, Menzies, could sometimes ‘go a bit overboard’ – or, should I say, he can become a bit ‘airborne’ (and don’t we all?) – he is often highly informative and is always eminently readable.
… the Minoans. It’s long been known that this extraordinary civilisation, with its great palaces and sea ports based in Crete and nearby Thera (now called Santorini), had a level of sophistication that belied its place in the Bronze Age world but never before has the extent of its reach been uncovered.
Through painstaking research, including recent DNA evidence, Menzies has pieced together an incredible picture of a cultured people who traded with India and Mesopotamia, Africa and Western Europe, including Britain and Ireland, and even sailed to North America.
Menzies reveals that copper found at Minoan sites can only have come from Lake Superior, and that it was copper, combined with tin from Cornwall and elsewhere, to make bronze, that gave the Minoans their wealth. He uses knowledge gleaned as a naval captain to explore ancient shipbuilding and navigation techniques and explain how the Minoans were able to travel so far. He looks at why the Minoan empire, which was 1500 years ahead of China and Greece in terms of science, architecture, art and language, disappeared so abruptly and what led to her destruction. …
[End of quote]
The Philistines
Thanks to Dr. Donovan Courville (The Exodus Problem and its Ramifications, Loma Linda CA, 1971), we can trace the Philistines – through their distinctive pottery – all the way back to Neolithic Knossos (Crete). And this, despite J. C. Greenfield’s assertion: “There is no evidence for a Philistine occupation of Crete, nor do the facts about the Philistines, known from archaeological and literary sources, betray any relationship between them and Crete” (IDB, 1962, vol. 1, p. 534). The distinctive type of pottery that Courville has identified as belonging to the biblical Philistines is well described in this quote that he has taken from Kathleen Kenyon:
The pottery does in fact provide very useful evidence about culture. The first interesting point is the wealth of a particular class of painted pottery …. The decoration is bichrome, nearly always red and black, and the most typical vessels have a combination of metopes enclosing a bird or a fish with geometric decoration such as a “Union Jack” pattern or a Catherine wheel. At Megiddo the first bichrome pottery is attributed to Stratum X, but all the published material comes from tombs intrusive into this level. It is in fact characteristic of Stratum IX. Similar pottery is found in great profusion in southern Palestine … Very similar vessels are also found on the east coast of Cyprus and on the coastal Syrian sites as far north as Ras Shamra. [Emphasis Courville’s]
By contrast, the pottery of the ‘Sea Peoples’ – a maritime confederation confusingly identified sometimes as the early biblical Philistines, their pottery like, but not identical to, the distinctive Philistine pottery as described above – was Aegean (Late Helladic), not Cretan.
The indispensable “Table of Nations” (Genesis 10), informs us that the Philistines were a Hamitic people, descendants of Ham’s “son”, Mizraim (or Egypt) (v. 6).
Genesis 10:13: “Mizraim was the father of the Ludites, Anamites, Lehabites, Naphtuhites, Pathrusites, Kasluhites (from whom the Philistines came) and Caphtorites”.
These earliest Philistines would be represented by the users of this distinctive pottery at Neolithic I level Knossos (Dr. Courville):
With the evidences thus far noted before us, we are now in a position to examine the archaeological reports from Crete for evidences of the early occupation of this site by the Caphtorim (who are either identical to the Philistines of later Scripture or are closely related to them culturally). We now have at least an approximate idea of the nature of the culture for which we are looking ….
… we can hardly be wrong in recognizing the earliest occupants of Crete as the people who represented the beginnings of the people later known in Scripture as the Philistines, by virtue of the stated origin of the Philistines in Crete. This concept holds regardless of the name that may be applied to this early era by scholars.
The only site at which Cretan archaeology has been examined for its earliest occupants is at the site of the palace at Knossos. At this site deep test pits were dug into the earlier occupation levels. If there is any archaeological evidence available from Crete for its earliest period, it should then be found from the archaeology of these test pits. The pottery found there is described by Dr. Furness, who is cited by Hutchinson.
“Dr. Furness divides the early Neolithic I fabrics into (a) coarse unburnished ware and (b) fine burnished ware, only differing from the former in that the pot walls are thinner, the clay better mixed, and the burnish more carefully executed. The surface colour is usually black, but examples also occur of red, buff or yellow, sometimes brilliant red or orange, and sometimes highly variegated sherds”.
A relation was observed between the decoration of some of this pottery from early Neolithic I in Crete with that at the site of Alalakh ….
Continuing to cite Dr. Furness, Hutchinson commented:
Dr. Furness justly observes that “as the pottery of the late Neolithic phases seems to have developed at Knossos without a break, it is to the earliest that one must look for evidence of origin of foreign connections”, and she therefore stresses the importance of a small group with plastic decoration that seems mainly confined to the Early Neolithic I levels, consisting of rows of pellets immediately under the rim (paralleled on burnished pottery of Chalcolithic [predynastic] date from Gullucek in the Alaca [Alalakh] district of Asia Minor). [Emphasis Courville’s]
While the Archaeological Ages of early Crete cannot with certainty be correlated with the corresponding eras on the mainland, it would seem that Chalcolithic on the mainland is later than Early Neolithic in Crete; hence any influence of one culture on the other is more probably an influence of early Cretan culture on that of the mainland. This is in agreement with Scripture to the effect that the Philistines migrated from Crete to what is now the mainland at some point prior to the time of Abraham.[[1]]
[End of quotes]
Late Chalcolithic, we have already learned, pertains to the era of Abram (Abraham), when the Philistines were apparently in southern Canaan:
We next find the Philistines in the land of Palestine (the Gaza region) at the time of Joshua.
Was there a Philistine migration out of Crete (“Caphtor”) at the time of the Exodus migration out of Egypt? (Amos 9:7): “Did I not bring Israel up from Egypt, the Philistines from Caphtor and the Arameans from Kir?”
Dr. John Bimson becomes interesting at this point, as previously I have written:
Here I take up Bimson’s account of this biblical tradition:[2]
There is a tradition preserved in Joshua 13:2-3 and Judges 3:3 that the Philistines were established in Canaan by the end of the Conquest, and that the Israelites had been unable to oust them from the coastal plain …. There is also an indication that the main Philistine influx had not occurred very much prior to the Conquest. As we shall see below, the Philistines are the people referred to as “the Caphtorim, who came from Caphtor” in Deuteronomy 2:23 … where it is said that a people called the Avvim originally occupied the region around Gaza, and that the Caphtorim “destroyed them and settled in their stead”. Josh. 13:2-3 mentions Philistines and Avvim together as peoples whom the Israelites had failed to dislodge from southern Canaan.
This suggests that the Philistines had not completely replaced the Avvim by the end of Joshua’s life. I would suggest, in fact, that the war referred to in Ex. 13:17, which was apparently taking place in “the land of the Philistines” at the time of the Exodus, was the war of the Avvim against the newly arrived Philistines.
As conventionally viewed, the end of MB II C coincides with the expulsion of the Hyksos from Egypt. Bimson however, in his efforts to provide a revised stratigraphy for the revision of history, has synchronised MB II C instead with the start of Hyksos rule. He will argue here in some detail that the building and refortifying of cities at this time was the work of the Avvim against the invading Philistines, with some of the new settlements, however, likely having been built by the Philistines themselves.
[End of quote]
I have further written on Dr. Bimson’s laudable effort to bring some archaeological sanity to this era:
Bimson has grappled with trying to distinguish between what might have been archaeological evidence for the Philistines and evidence for the Hyksos, though in actual fact it may be fruitless to try to discern a clear distinction in this case. Thus he writes:[3]
Finds at Tell el-Ajjul, in the Philistine plain, about 5 miles SW of Gaza, present a particularly interesting situation. As I have shown elsewhere, the “Palace I” city (City III) at Tell el-Ajjul was destroyed at the end of the MBA, the following phase of occupation (City II) belonging to LB I …. There is some uncertainty as to exactly when bichrome ware first appeared at Tell el-Ajjul.
Fragments have been found in the courtyard area of Palace I, but some writers suggest that this area remained in use into the period of Palace II, and that the bichrome ware should therefore be regarded as intrusive in the Palace I level ….
It seems feasible to suggest that the invading Philistines were responsible for the destruction of City III, though it is also possible that its destruction was the work of Amalekites occupying the Negeb (where we find them settled a short while after the Exodus; cf. Num. 13:29); in view of Velikovsky’s identification of the biblical Amalekites with the Hyksos … the Amalekite occupation of the Negeb could plausibly be dated, like the Hyksos invasion of Egypt, to roughly the time of the Exodus …. But if our arguments have been correct thus far, the evidence of the bichrome ware favours the Philistines as the newcomers to the site, and as the builders of City II.
[End of quotes]
Next we come to the Philistines in the era of King Saul, for a proper appreciation of which I return to Dr. Courville’s thesis. He, initially contrasting the Aegean ware with that of the distinctive Philistine type, has written:
The new pottery found at Askelon [Ashkelon] at the opening of Iron I, and correlated with the invasion of the Sea Peoples, was identified as of Aegean origin. A similar, but not identical, pottery has been found in the territory north of Palestine belonging to the much earlier era of late Middle Bronze. By popular views, this is prior to the Israelite occupation of Palestine. By the altered chronology, this is the period of the late judges and the era of Saul.
…
That the similar pottery of late Middle Bronze, occurring both in the north and in the south, is related to the culture found only in the south at the later date is apparent from the descriptions of the two cultures. Of this earlier culture, which should be dated to the time of Saul, Miss Kenyon commented:
The pottery does in fact provide very useful evidence about culture. The first interesting point is the wealth of a particular class of painted pottery …. The decoration is bichrome, nearly always red and black, and the most typical vessels have a combination of metopes enclosing a bird or a fish with geometric decoration such as a “Union Jack” pattern or a Catherine wheel. At Megiddo the first bichrome pottery is attributed to Stratum X, but all the published material comes from tombs intrusive into this level. It is in fact characteristic of Stratum IX. Similar pottery is found in great profusion in southern Palestine … Very similar vessels are also found on the east coast of Cyprus and on the coastal Syrian sites as far north as Ras Shamra. [Emphasis Courville’s]
Drawings of typical examples of this pottery show the same stylized bird with back-turned head that characterized the pottery centuries later at Askelon.
… The anachronisms and anomalies in the current views on the interpretation of this invasion and its effects on Palestine are replaced by a consistent picture, and one that is in agreement with the background provided by Scripture for the later era in the very late [sic] 8th century B.C.
[End of quotes]
Dr. Bryant G. Wood’s View
“Dr. Wood’s article [“The Genesis Philistines”, 2006] provides the evidence
that supports Crete as the ancient home of the Philistines”.
It occurred to me during a recent re-reading of Gavin Menzies’ book, The Lost Empire of Atlantis, that those peoples he – following Sir Arthur Evans – termed ‘the Minoans’, must really have been the Philistines.
Previously, I had devoted Chapter 2 (of Volume One) of my university thesis:
A Revised History of the Era of King Hezekiah of Judah
and its Background
AMAIC_Final_Thesis_2009.pdf
to a consideration of “The Philistines and their Allies”, the Philistines being relevant to any serious study of King Hezekiah of Judah. This chapter was heavily reliant upon the fine research into the subject by Dr. Donovan Courville (The Exodus Problem and its Ramifications, 1971).
If the Philistines came most immediately from Cyprus, and Cyprus was within the Minoan sphere of influence, is it possible to place Philistines on Crete itself? Amazingly, the answer seems to be yes. The evidence for this has recently been advanced by Bryan[t] G. Wood in “The Genesis Philistines” …. According to Wood, the famous Phaistos Disk, a 6.5 inch diameter, half-inch think baked clay disk with undecipherable inscriptions on both sides, makes possible a Cretan-Philistine connection. This artifact dates from about 1700 BC in conventional chronology. Among its many symbols, the disk has a depiction of a warrior in a feathered headdress, which Wood claims is very similar to the depiction of the later Philistines in reliefs on the walls of Rameses III’s mortuary temple in Medinet Habu, Egypt (T. Dothan 1982: 22; T.and M. Dothan 1992: 35-36). This is not an isolated find, as identical signs, including frontal views of the feathered warrior, have been found inscribed on an axe found in a cave in Crete (Robinson 2002: 306-307).
To the presence of this seemingly Philistine figure on Crete, Wood adds evidence of an early Cretan presence at Gerar (identified as Tell Haror, 17 miles east of Gaza). He states,
Of particular interest is a Minoan graffito found in the sacred precinct dating to ca. 1600 BC. Analyses of the sherd determined that it originated in Crete, most likely the south coast. There are four Minoan signs on the graffito, inscribed prior to firing, which represent a bull’s head, cloth, branch and figs. In addition to the graffito, an unusual chalice of Canaanite shape and fabric was found in a room on the east side of the sacred area. What makes the chalice unusual is its high arching handles, a well-known feature of Minoan chalices, but not of Canaanite.
This find suggests that the Minoans were living in Gerar‚ the city in which Abraham and Isaac encountered Philistines in Genesis 21 and 26‚ and had possibly been for a significant time prior to 1600 BC. Painting Minoan-style reliefs would hardly be among the first tasks undertaken by settlers. It would probably only be done after the city had been firmly established. (I should note here that I favor a lower chronology for the ancient world which would place the Tell Haror graffito at several centuries greater distance from Abraham. I’ll address the issues of chronology and possible anachronisms in the next installment.)
Finally, although the language of Linear A has yet to be deciphered, the phonetic values of many of the signs can be determined by comparison with later Linear B.
Interpreted in these terms, there are a couple of well-attested Philistine names (Padi, Ikausu) found in Linear A inscriptions from Crete.
Crete: An African Connection?
Is it possible to link Cretan culture with Egypt? If the Philistines are to be associated with Minoan culture and if Genesis 10 is taken to be in any sense an accurate representation of the ethnography of the ancient world, this question must be addressed.
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Very little is known of Cretan history before the beginning of the Early Minoan period, conventionally dated to ca. 2600 BC, although several reputable scholars hazard a guess that there were early migrations from North Africa. Crete has been inhabited as far back as the Neolithic period, ca. 6000 BC. Apparently, most of the early settlement was from Anatolia, but there is also evidence that Crete had a racially diverse population. Differing skull-types discovered at Cretan excavations suggest that such diversity existed. From a later period, Homer (Odyssey 17:175-177) noted at least five different tribes or ethnic groups on the island with each of them speaking a different language. It is possible that Crete was made up of many or at least several separate states at an early stage in its history. In Homer’s day, Crete was a fair, rich land, begirt with water, and therein are many men, past counting, and ninety cities. They have not all the same speech, but their tongues are mixed. There dwell Achaeans, there great-hearted native Cretans, there Kydonians, and Dorians of waving plumes, and goodly Pelasgians.
Of the five tribes Homer mentions two are late Greek-speaking arrivals: the Achaeans and the Dorians. Native Cretans (or “Eteocretans”), Kydonians, and Pelasgians were likely all present on Crete before the arrival of the Greeks in the Late Helladic period. Eteocretans and Kydonians may have been related groups (in mythology, Kydon was the son of Minos, Crete’s founder and first king). The Pelasgians were also to be found throughout the Aegean and on the Greek mainland. They apparently originated in Anatolia and may have been Crete’s original Anatolian ethnic stock. Known in later Greek literature as Pelasgoi, they were originally called Pelastoi (Iliad 16:233; the earliest attested form of the word has “t,” not “g”)‚ a likely origin for the Egyptian term Peleset and the Hebrew Pelishtim. Since many believe that the indigenous population of Crete had both Anatolian and North African roots, this leaves Eteocretans and Kydonians as possible candidates for descendancy from Mizraim (Ge 10:13-14).
What else can be known?
There are Greek traditions that the Libyans originally came from Crete and/or settled in Crete, although I must hasten to state that the historicity of these traditions is strenuously contested by some, who see them as resulting from a linguistic confusion between Mat Libu, the Assyrian name for the Lycians of Asia Minor, and Libya. At any rate, one of these Libyan groups was the Garamantes, whom Robert Graves (The Greek Myths, vol. 1, pp. 33-35) states originally lived in the Fezzan region of Libya, south of Cyrene. In other words, the Garamantes lived just south of the region of Africa associated with the Casluchim, the ancestors of the Philistines according to the Genesis Table of Nations.
All of this, it must be emphasized, is purely speculation. No one can say for sure that the Eteocretans came from North Africa or were somehow culturally connected with Egypt. There is, however, an abundance of circumstantial evidence for a Cretan-Egyptian connection that has been noted since Sir Arthur Evans first excavated Knossos. Redmond notes several symbols shared by the two cultures:
The ankh.
Hathor-like images such as cows suckling calves.
The resemblance between the Minoan “Snake Goddess” figures and Wadjet, the Egyptian Nile goddess represented as a snake. (For a fuller explanation, see Christopher L. C. E. Witcombe, Minoan Snake Goddess. Witcombe states, “It is clear that the Minoans borrowed much their culture and various cult practices from Egypt. Numerous Egyptian objects of one kind or another were found by Evans at Knossos. The most spectacular discovery was the lower part of a diorite statue of a seated Egyptian figure identified from the hieroglyphic inscriptions as a priest of Wadjyt.”)
The orientation of the palaces on Crete was determined in relation to Sirius, as was the position of Hathor’s temple on the Nile.
Both cultures celebrated the New Year at the early rising of Sirius in July.
Sir Arthur Evans believed that Cretan Linear A script was similar to Egyptian hieroglyphics.
Evidence from Cretan murals indicates that the costumes the Minoans wore were similar to those of the Egyptians.
These connections led Evans to speculate that during the unsettling time of the military unification of Upper and Lower Egypt, refugees from Lower Egypt may have immigrated to Crete. ….
Neolithic Cretan Origins in Anatolia
“… genetic researchers connected the source population of ancient Crete
to the well-known Neolitihic sites in Anatolia …”.
Gavin Menzies and Ian Hudson
Gavin Menzies and Ian Hudson, in The Lost Empire of Atlantis: History’s Greatest Mystery Revealed, introduce us to professor Constantinos Triantafyllidis of Thessaloniki’s Aristotle University and his important DNA studies of the Cretan so-called ‘Minoans’ (ch. 7):
Now that scientists are ableto test genetic theories with rigour, I was here because of the new study reported by The Times. New work by an international groupof geneticists showed that a section of Crete’s Neolithic population (i.e. pre-Bronze Age) did indeed go there by seafrom Anatolia – modern-day Turkey. Professor Constantinos Triantafyllidis of Thessaloniki’s Aristotle University had published the findings of a research group led by geneticists from Greece, the United States, Canada, Russia and Turkey. Professor Triantafyllidis states that their analysis indicated that the arrival of these new people on Crete had coincided witha social and cultural upsurge that had led to the birthof the Minoan civilisation around 7000 BC. Specifically, genetic researchers connected the source population of ancient Crete to the well-known Neolitihic sites in Anatolia:
The earliest Neolithic sites of Europe are located in Crete and mainland Greece.
A debate persists concerning whether these farmersoriginated in neighbouring Anatolia and over the role of maritime colonisation.
To address171 samples were collected from areas near three known early Neolithic settlement areas in Greece together with 193 samples from Crete. An analysis of Y–chromosome hectographs determined that the samples from the Greek sites showed strong affinity to Balkan data, while Crete shows affinity with central/ Mediterranean Anatolia.Haplogroup J2b–M12 was frequent in Thessaly and Greek Macedonia while haplogroup J2a–M410 was scarce. Alternatively, Crete, like Anatolia showed a high frequency of J2a-M410 and a low frequency of J2b-M12. This dichotomy parallels archaeobotanical evidence, specifically that white bread wheat (Triticum aestivum) is knownfrom Neolithic Anatolia, Crete and southern Italy; [yet] it is absent from earliest Neolithic Greece ….
[End of quote]
From a biblical point of view, I think, the estimated date for “the birthof the Minoan civilisation around 7000 BC” would be very roughly 5000 years too early.
But the origin of the Neolithic ‘Minoans’ in Anatolia would be perfectly in order, considering that post-Flood man must have spread out from the regions of:
Starting with the breaking DNA news, and this rather sinks the ‘Black Athena’ theory from Bernal…
….
Crete’s fabled Minoan civilization was built by people from Anatolia, according to a new study by Greek and foreign scientists that disputes an earlier theory that said the Minoans’ forefathers had come from Africa.
The new study – a collaboration by experts in Greece, the USA, Canada, Russia and Turkey – drew its conclusions from the DNA analysis of 193 men from Crete and another 171 from former neolithic colonies in central and northern Greece.
The results show that the country’s neolithic population came to Greece by sea from Anatolia – modern-day Iran, Iraq and Syria – and not from Africa as maintained by US scholar Martin Bernal.
The DNA analysis indicates that the arrival of neolithic man in Greece from Anatolia coincided with the social and cultural upsurge that led to the birth of the Minoan civilization, Constantinos Triantafyllidis of Thessaloniki’s Aristotle University told Kathimerini.
“Until now we only had the archaeological evidence – now we have genetic data too and we can date the DNA,” he said.
Archeological dates for the colonisation of Crete are about 7,000 BC.
In more detail
The most frequent haplogroups among the current population on Crete were: R1b3-M269 (17%), G2-P15 (11%), J2a1-DYS413 (9.0%), and J2a1h-M319 (9.0%). They identified J2a parent haplogroup J2a-M410 (Crete: 25.9%) with the first ancient residents of Crete during the Neolithic (8500 BCE – 4300 BCE) suggesting Crete was founded by a Neolithic population expansion from ancient Turkey/Anatolia. Specifically, the researchers connected the source population of ancient Crete to well known Neolithic sites of ancient Anatolia: Asıklı Höyük, Çatalhöyük, Hacılar, Mersin/Yumuktepe, and Tarsus. Haplogroup J2b-M12 (Crete: 3.1%; Greece: 5.9%) was associated with Neolithic Greece. Haplogroups J2a1h-M319 (8.8%) and J2a1b1-M92 (2.6%) were associated with the Minoan culture linked to a late Neolithic/ Early Bronze Age migration to Crete ca. 3100 BCE from North-Western/Western Anatolia and Syro-Palestine (ancient Canaan, Levant, and pre-Akkadian Anatolia); Aegean prehistorians link the date 3100 BCE to the origins of the Minoan culture on Crete. Haplogroup E3b1a2-V13 (Crete: 6.7%; Greece: 28%) was suggested to reflect a migration to Crete from the mainland Greece Mycenaean population during the late Bronze Age (1600 BCE – 1100 BCE). Haplogroup J1 was also reported to be found in both Crete and Greece (Crete: 8.3%; Greece: 5.2%), as well as haplogroups E3b3, I1, I2, I2a, I21b, K2, L, and R1a1. No ancient DNA was included in this study of YDNA from the Mediterranean region. ….
[1] It is interesting in light of this that Dr. J. Osgood has synchronized Chalcolithic En-geddi with the era of Abraham. ‘Times of Abraham’, p. 181.
Joshua and Israel's Colourful Judges 