Denyen

A new landscape has emerged at the end of the Bronze Age Collapse.

The northern Canaanite cities, which remain largely intact, comprise Phoenicia.

The highlands behind the coastal plains, previously largely uninhabited, are rapidly filling with villages, largely Canaanite in their basic culture but without the Bronze Age city-state structure.

Along the southern coastal plain, there are clear signs that a non-Canaanite people have taken over the former Canaanite cities, while adopting almost all aspects of Canaanite culture.

Though the Philistines adopt local Canaanite culture and language before leaving any written texts (and will later adopt the Aramaic language), an Indo-European origin has been suggested for a handful of known Philistine words that survived as loanwords in Hebrew.

The Philistines eventually occupy Gaza, which had remained in Egyptian hands for three hundred and fifty years; it becomes Philistia’s fifth principal city.

The Harris papyrus can be interpreted in two ways.

Either Ramesses settled the captives in Egypt and the rest of the Philistines/Sea Peoples carved out a territory in Canaan, or Ramesses settled the Sea Peoples (mainly Philistines) in military camps in southern coastal Canaan as mercenaries in an area where attacks by nomads threatened the overland trade route to Syria.

Archaeological evidence indicates that the Philistines originally settled in a few sites in the south, such as Ashkelon, …

…Ashdod and …

…Ekron, three of the Five Cities of the coastal plain.

The connection between Mycenaean culture and Philistine culture was made clearer by finds at the excavation of Ashkelon, Ashdod, Ekron, and more recently Gath (the fifth city).

Especially notable is the early Philistine pottery, a locally made version of the Aegean Mycenaean Late Helladic IIIC pottery, which is decorated in shades of brown and black.

This will later develop into the distinctive Philistine pottery of the Iron Age I, with black and red decorations on white slip known as Philistine Bichrome ware.

Of particular interest is a large, well-constructed building covering two hundred and forty square meters (twenty-six hundred square feet), discovered at Ekron.

Its walls are broad, designed to support a second story, and its wide, elaborate entrance leads to a large hall, partly covered with a roof supported on a row of columns.

In the floor of the hall is a circular hearth paved with pebbles, as is typical in Mycenaean megaron hall buildings; other unusual architectural features are paved benches and podiums.

Among the finds are three small bronze wheels with eight spokes.

Such wheels were used for portable cultic stands in the Aegean region during this period, and it is therefore assumed that this building served cultic functions.

Further evidence concerns an inscription in Ekron to PYGN or PYTN, which some have suggested refers to "Potnia,” the title given to an ancient Mycenaean goddess.

Egypt is threatened with a massive land and sea invasion in about 1178 BCE by the "Sea Peoples," a coalition of foreign enemies that includes the Tjeker, the Shekelesh, the Denyen, the Weshesh, the Teresh, the Sherden and the Peleset; the last group are commonly regarded as identical with the Philistines.

They are comprehensively defeated by Ramesses III, who in his eighth regnal year fights them in "Djahi" (the eastern Mediterranean coast) and at "the mouths of the rivers" (the Nile delta), recording his victories in a series of inscriptions in his mortuary temple at Medinet Habu.

An additional Egyptian source, Papyrus Harris I, records how the defeated foe were brought in captivity to Egypt and settled in fortresses, although there is evidence that they forced their way into Canaan, where their presence may have contributed, after the collapse of the Egyptian Empire, to the formation of new states, such as Philistia.

Excavations in Ashkelon, Ekron, and Gath reveal dog and pig bones which show signs of having been butchered, implying that these animals were part of the residents' diet.

Among other findings, there are wineries where fermented wine was produced, as well as loom weights resembling those of Mycenaean sites in Greece.

The Philistines expand, several decades settling in Canaan and after the collapse of Egyptian authority here, into surrounding areas such as the Yarkon region to the north (the area of modern Jaffa, where there are Philistine farmsteads at Tel Gerisa and Aphek, and a larger settlement at Tel Qasile).

The Denyen may have split up after the retreat from Egypt, some entering the Jordan valley, then settling on the coast around Jaffa.

Some scholars argue for a connection with the Greek Danaoi—alternate names for the Achaeans familiar from Homer.

Greek myth refers to Danaos who with his daughters came from Egypt and settled in Argos.

Through Danaë's son, Perseus, the Danaans are said to have built Mycenae.

A minority view first suggested by Yigael Yadin attempted to connect the Denyen with the Tribe of Dan, described as remaining on their ships in the early Song of Deborah, contrary to the mainstream view of Israelite history.

It was speculated that the Denyen had been taken to Egypt, and subsequently settled between the Caphtorite Philistines and the Tjekker, along the Mediterranean coast with the tribe of Dan subsequently deriving from them.