In the year 1300 BC, the great clash took place at Qadesh in Syria between the young Ramesses II and Muwatallish, the Great King of the Hittites. It is now accepted that Mukshush, the companion of Madduwattash, is identical in name with Mopsus, a strange figure of Greek legend, a seer and prince of Colophon. The razzia of Mopsus may be reasonably regarded as part of the downward thrust of the horde of assailants whom the Egyptians called collectively the Peoples of the Sea. There are some archaeological reasons to think that some settlement by Philistines or other closely related Sea Peoples in Palestine may start in this period before 1200 BC. In 1194 BC, Ramesses III clashed with the Libyans. The clash took the form of two battles: the first in Syria against the Land Raiders; the second real fight, against the Sea Raiders, taking place in the Delta at the entrance to Egypt itself.

The sea peoples

The final disintegration of Mycenaean civilization, marked in certain areas by the survival of Mycenaean settlements until their total or partial desertion, and in central mainland Greece by the introduction of new factors which, even though in some aspects based on the old, maybe said to constitute the beginning of the Dark Age. The period from about the middle of the eleventh century to the end of the tenth is marked by a time of settling down and resumption of peaceful communication. The period is named Protogeometric because much of Greece and the Aegean is dominated by pottery of this style. The island of Crete, in spite of its very close connexions with the Mycenaean world, exhibits individual characteristics which place it, in other ways, outside the Mycenaean koine. The Cretans enjoyed an advantage apparently denied to the rest of the Greek world, except the Dodecanese, until the final years of the tenth century: their contacts with Cyprus.

The archaeological background

Since the inscriptions of Ramesses III repeatedly speak of using captives as troops in his own army and since some of the Sea Peoples (especially the Sherden) had been used as mercenaries or as slave troops during the reign of Ramesses II, many scholars now agree that the Philistines were first settled in Palestine as garrison troops. Between the late thirteenth and the end of the twelfth century BC, the territory occupied by the Canaanites was vastly reduced due to occupation by Israelites, the sea peoples, and the Aramaeans. However, there were compensations for these losses. The coast of Phoenicia proper was ideally prepared by nature to become the home of a maritime people. The Hittites had established several vassal states in northern Syria during the initial period of their occupation in the fourteenth century BC. At least two of them, Carchemish and Aleppo, were ruled by princes of the imperial Hittite dynasty.

Syria, the philistines, and phoenicia

This chapter presents the history of the following countries and regions in the Western Mediterranean during the period 1380-1000 BC: Italy, Sicily, Malta, Sardinia, Corsica, Southern France, Spain, Portugal, and North Africa. The first Neolithic societies with a mixed farming economy have so far been found in quantity only in the south-east and in Liguria, though traces are beginning to turn up in Calabria also. At the end of the fifths millennium BC, South France was occupied by small semi-nomadic groups of hunters and fishers and collectors technically known as Mesolithic people. The cardial wares are restricted in distribution in South France to the littoral and extend a short way up the Rhone valley. In the North African region, we find no great flourishing of Late Neolithic and Bronze Age cultures, nothing to compare with Los Millares and El Argar, with the Nuraghic civilization of Sardinia and the Torrean civilization of Corsica.

The western Mediterranean

The Phrygians crossed the straits into Anatolia from Macedonia and Thrace. In Greek times, the Phrygians' most north-westerly settlement, was Keramon Agora, where a branch of the Royal Road left Lydia to strike northwards. Phrygian architecture was well developed. Vitruvius describes their houses as built of wooden logs laid in a trench excavated in a mound and then covered with reeds, brushwood and earth. Phrygians had reached considerable mastery in several crafts, whether as bronze-workers accomplished in both casting and raising, or as expert cabinetmakers and weavers, as workers in ivory, as makers of woollen felt or as weavers of linen, hemp, mohair, and perhaps also tapestry. Survivals of the Phrygian language linger into Roman times, occurring in bilingual form with Greek translations on tombstone inscriptions. The Phrygians' religion clearly consisted of at least two strata: primitive Anatolian and Indo-European. In the Early Iron Age, the mineral deposits of Anatolia had already been famous for one thousand years.

Phrygia and the peoples of Anatolia in the Iron Age

Wer sich auch nur eine Seite weit in Prov hineingelesen hat, dem wird schon eindrücklich geworden sein, daß hier mit großer Emphase für eine ganz charakteristisch geprägte Form einer Gesamtlebenshaltung (der Weise) geworben und von ihr behauptet wird, daß sie die richtige Lösung der Lebensfrage sei. Neben der richtigen ist die falsche Lösung (die Haltung des Toren) scharf gezeichnet. Nun ist bei jeder Antwort auf eine Frage nicht nur die Antwort wichtig, sondern schon die Art der Fragestellung. Denn in jeder Fragestellung liegt eine Vorentscheidung, — von besonderer Bedeutsamkeit natürlich, wo sie wie hier die Totalität einer Lebenshaltung betrifft und darum ein Vorverständnis des gesamten Lebens in sich birgt. — Aufgabe der folgenden Ausführungen ist es daher, hinter der emphatisch vorgetragenen Lösung diese Frage zu sehen, die ihr voransteht, und die Art der Vorentscheidung, die sie über das Leben fällt, zu erkennen. Für die Prov mag es schwierig erscheinen, diese Frage noch zu hören, da hier aus der vollen, optimistischen Überzeugung heraus, die Lösung zu kennen, alle Kraft auf den Ausbau der Antwort verwendet ist Wesentlich leichter wird dagegen die Wahrnehmung bei Eccl. Hier schaut durch die resignierte Lösung, die gefunden wird, von allen Seiten noch die ungelöste Frage hindurch. Eccl hat eine gewisse Antwort, eine gewisse Lebenshaltung als Antwort, aber ihm fehlt die zuversichtliche Emphase. Das Problem ist nicht gelöst; was er vertritt, ist eine nicht voll befriedigende Notlösung. (Daß die Fragestellung in ihren Strukturlinien in Prov und Eccl die gleiche ist, wie im Folgenden ohne näheren Beweis vorausgesetzt ist, dürfte der Gang der Untersuchung augenscheinlich machen.)

Walther Zimmerli

Papers

Zur Struktur der alttestamentlichen Weisheit.