{"id":93,"date":"2005-07-31T22:05:00","date_gmt":"2005-08-01T05:05:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/toddbolen.com\/?p=93"},"modified":"2005-07-31T22:05:00","modified_gmt":"2005-08-01T05:05:00","slug":"the-earliest-palestinian-ever","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/toddbolen.com\/blog\/2005\/07\/31\/the-earliest-palestinian-ever\/","title":{"rendered":"The Earliest Palestinian Ever?"},"content":{"rendered":"

The museum at the Oriental Institute was completely renovated over the last half-dozen(?) years and is now nearly finished. The museum is superb in terms of layout, lighting, and especially written explanations. These are an education in themselves (contrast, for example, the archaeology wing of the Israel Museum).<\/p>\n

But there is a glaring error in the new Egypt wing:
\n\"\"<\/a>
\nThis faience object depicts a Philistine, and the explanation to the right describes the individual as one of the foreign enemies of Egypt living in the eastern Mediterranean. It is dated to the time of Ramses III, which is the well-known date of the invasion of the Sea Peoples, which includes the Philistines. How then did this Philistine get labeled as a “Palestinian”?<\/p>\n

A Palestinian, as the term is employed today, is an Arab who lives (or whose ancestors lived) in what is today the country of Israel (including the West Bank and Gaza Strip). In the first half of the 20th century, Palestinian meant *any* resident of that same piece of land, Arab or Jew. The earliest designation of the land of Israel as Palestine was in the 2nd century A.D., by the Roman emperor Hadrian, as part of his efforts to erase the memory of Jewish presence in the land (he also renamed Jerusalem and other places). But there was no “Palestine” or “Palestinians” in the 12th century B.C. Everyone would agree to that, even the Arabs who have created the myth that the Palestinians are descendants of the Philistines.<\/p>\n

This museum error could be harmless, except for the radical ideas floating around that there really is some connection between the Philistines and the Palestinians, or between the Canaanites and the Palestinians. Let the Palestinians argue for their right to the land, even the whole of it, but please don’t base it on this nonsense.<\/p>\n

It could well be that the museum made an honest mistake, but it is a university museum that specializes in the Orient. They must fix this immediately.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The museum at the Oriental Institute was completely renovated over the last half-dozen(?) years and is now nearly finished. The museum is superb in terms of layout, lighting, and especially written explanations. These are an education in themselves (contrast, for example, the archaeology wing of the Israel Museum). But there is a glaring error in\u2026 Read More »<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-93","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/toddbolen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/toddbolen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/toddbolen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/toddbolen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/toddbolen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=93"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/toddbolen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/toddbolen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=93"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/toddbolen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=93"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/toddbolen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=93"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}