INV. 003 · Artwork
Philistine pottery bowl
Aegean-derived pottery, a variant of Mycenaean/Greek ware, that marks the Philistines as outsiders on Canaan's coast (fig. 1.3).
Editorial note: Image metadata was checked against the Wikimedia Commons record; the object's historical identification should also be verified in the institution's catalogue.
- Type
- Artwork
- Nature
- Ancient objectThe object itself dates from the period indicated.
- Date of the object
- 1200–1000 BCEBroad dating for early Iron Age Philistine pottery, pending catalogue confirmation.
- Institution
- Museu de Israel, Jerusalém
- Image
- Daderot
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 3.0 ↗
- Retrieved
- Commons API, 2026-10-15
Sourced historical context
The Philistines reached Canaan's coast in the early twelfth century BCE, part of a larger migration of 'Sea Peoples' from the Mycenaean Aegean world. Philistine pottery is a variant of Mycenaean; their urban design, craftsmanship, dress and habits (they ate pork and drank wine mixed with water) point to the Aegean, and even the word seren, 'ruler', is probably related to Greek tyrannos. Many sources attest that Sea Peoples reached the southeastern Mediterranean shore around 1180 BCE. Among them were Philistines, who settled along southern coastal Canaan and left a clear archaeological signature. They moved farther into Canaan after Ramesses III died and Egyptian control ended in 1153 BCE, presumably bringing them into contact with Israelites.