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The discovery of an ancient shipwreck adds to archaeological evidence suggesting the Philistines were a worldly trading people

ASHKELON, ISRAEL-The discovery of two 8th century B.C. Phoenician ships loaded with wine amphoras off the southern part of Israel's coast, announced last week, was much more than a triumph for high-tech deep-sea archaeology (Science, 12 February, p. 929). It may also burnish the image of the Philistines, a people who occupied the territory of the Levant nearest to where the ships were found. Frequently portrayed as villains in the Bible-the giant Goliath slain by David was a Philistine, as were those who blinded Samson after he was betrayed by Delilah-the Philistines and how they came to the shores of the Middle East more than 3000 years ago are largely mysteries. Now the underwater discovery, together with years of painstaking excavations of Philistine cities on land, are beginning to reveal a picture of a cosmopolitan people who traded widely across the eastern Mediterranean.

"The Philistines have been defined mostly by their enemies," says Harvard University archaeologist Lawrence Stager, co-leader of the group that found the ships, which apparently sank en route to Egypt or Carthage. "We haven't really allowed them to speak for themselves." Adds Seymour Gitin, director of the W F. Albright Institute of Archaeological Research in Jerusalem, "There is a great body of evidence now to show that the Philistines were not philistines in the sense we define the word today."

At the height of their nearly 600-year-long civilization, Philistia consisted of five major cities: Ashkelon, Ekron, Gaza, Ashdod, and Gath, strung out along a swath of coastal plain that encompasses the sites of present-day Gaza and Tel Aviv. But although the Biblical accounts suggest frequent skirmishing with the Israelites inland to the east, there is little real evidence that the Philistines ever tried to conquer their Biblical foe. Indeed, according to non-Biblical texts, they seem to have been more concerned with steering...

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