THE PHILISTINE AGE Archaeologists are reconsidering the origins and history of a much-maligned ancient people By Ilan Ben Zion I 50 n the heat of the day, a glint off the Mediterranean is just visible from the top of a mound known as Tell esSafi that rises some 300 feet above Israel's coastal plain. For generations, scholars believed that the stretch of Mediterranean coast west of Tell es-Safi was once the landing point of multiple invasions by the Israelites' dreaded nemeses, the Philistines. First emerging in the southern Levant around 3,200 years ago, the Philistines were long thought to have been descendants of invading groups that scholars refer to as the " Sea Peoples. " In the twilight of the Late Bronze Age (ca. 1550-1200 b.c.), these groups raided Egypt and conquered the cities of the Semitic Canaanite people who lived on the coast of what is now Israel and the Palestinian territories. A final wave of Philistine invasions was thought to have reached the coast of Canaan early in the reign of the Egyptian pharaoh Ramesses III (r. ca. 1184-1153 b.c.), around ARCHAEOLOGY * July/August 2022