Caphtor

Caphtor ( _he. כפתור) is a locality mentioned in the Book of Amos, 9.7: "Have not I brought up Israel out of the land of Egypt? and the Philistines from Caphtor, and the Syrians from Kir?" It is named as the place of origin of the Caphtorites, said in Genesis 10:13-14 to descend from Ham's son Mizraim (Egypt). [ [http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/view.jsp?artid=126&letter=C "Jewish Encyclopedia", "s.v." "Caphtor"] ]

The Septuagint translates the name as "Kappadokias" and the Vulgate similarly renders it as "Cappadocia". The seventeenth-century scholar Samuel Bochart ["Geographia Sacra seu Phaleg et Canaan" (Caen 1646) l. 4. c. 32. [http://www.godrules.net/library/gill/28gillamo9.htm] .] understood this as a reference to Cappadocia in Anatolia but this was not the understanding of the Jewish targumists who rendered this name in Aramaic as "Caphutkia" meaning the town of Pelusium at the eastern edge of the Nile delta. This identification is also made by Benjamin of Tudela, the twelfth-century Jewish traveller from Navarre, who wrote that "Damiata" (the name for Pelusium in his day) was the biblical Caphtor. [ [http://www.searchgodsword.org/com/geb/view.cgi?book=am&chapter=9&verse=7 The New John Gill Exposition of the Entire Bible, Amos 9:7] ] .

Modern commentators and translators commonly identify Caphtor with Crete (Hertz 1936) although it has also been linked to Cyprus, and the nearby coasts of Anatolia. Cyprus and Crete together are by some accountsFact|date=September 2008 identified as "the island of the Caphtorim". [Jeremiah xlvii. 4, refers to "the remnant of the country [in Hebrew, "island"] of Caphtor" ("Jewish Encyclopedia", "s.v." "Caphtor").]

The name has been compared to Egyptian Keftiu and Akkadian Kaptara (a term found in the Mari Tablets, dated to c. 1780 BC). The name "keftiu" is found written in hieroglyphics in the temple of Kom Ombo in Upper Egypt and possibly in the Egyptian tomb of Rekhmire.

The Caphtorites (or Caphtorim) were a people first mentioned in Genesis 10:13-14 in the Table of Nations which lists them as a descendant of Mizraim thereby making them an Egyptian people.

Deuteronomy 2:23 records that the Caphtorites came from Caphtor, destroyed the Avvites and usurped their land. The Talmud ("Chullin 60b") notes that the Avvites were the original Philistine people in the days of Abraham while the Philistines of later times were descended from the conquering Caphtorites. This accords with Genesis 10:13 which lists the Philistines as a distinct people to the Caphtorites while Jeremiah 47:4 and Amos 9:7, set in a much later period, speak instead of Philistines having come from Caphtor.

The name "Caphtor" is identical to the Biblical Hebrew word for a knob-like structure [Exodus 37:17] .

"Keftiu" and its location

The Egyptian cognate Keftiu is attested in numerous inscriptions. [J. Strange, "Caphtor/Keftiu: A New Investigation" (Leiden: Brill) 1980, has brought together all the attestations for "Caphtor" and "Keftiu".] The identity of Semitic "Caphtor" and Egyptian "Keftiu" is of long standing. The original thesis, that Keftiu corresponded to Caphtor, and that Caphtor was to be identified with Cyprus or Syria, [Steindorf 1893; W. Max Müller 1893; the history of the locating of Keftiu is set out briefly in Wainwright 1952:206f.] shifted to an association with Crete under the influence of Sir Arthur Evans. It was effectively criticised in 1931 by G. A. Wainwright, who located "Keftiu" in Cilicia, on the Mediterranean shore of Asia Minor, [Wainwight, "Keftiu: Crete or Cilicia?" "The Journal of Hellenic Studies" 51 (1931); in response to critics who shifted the locale to the mainland of Greece, Wainwright assembled his various interlocking published arguments and summarised them in "Asiatic Keftiu" "American Journal of Archaeology" 56.4 (October 1952), pp. 196-212.] and drew together evidence from a wide variety of sources: in geographical lists and the inscription of Tutmose III's "Hymn of Victory", [Text in Breasted, "Ancient Records of Egypt" II, 659-60.] where the place of "Keftiu" in lists is among recognizable regions in the northwesternmost corner of the Mediterranean, in the text of the "Keftiuan spell" "śntkppwymntrkkr" , of ca 1200 BC, [The spell is a rosary of divine names according to Gordon ("JEA" 18 (1932) pp 67f.)] in which Cilician and Syrian deities Sanda [A deity that occurs in Luwian contexts, in theophoric names in Hittite texts and at Ugarit and Alalakh, and later in Greek "Sandos", in Lycian and Cilician contexts, according to Albrecht Goetze, "The Linguistic continuity of Anatolia as shown by its proper names" "Journal of Cuneiform Studies" 8.2 (1954, pp. 74-81) p. 78.] Tarku and Kubaba have been detected, [Wainwight 1952:199.] in personal names associated in texts with "Keftiu" and in Tutmose's "silver shawabty vessel of the work of Keftiu" and vessels of iron, which were received as gifts from Tinay in northern Syria. In 1980 J. Strange drew together the most complete collection of documents that mention "Caphtor" or "Keftiu". His examination showed conclusively that "Keftiu" could not be identified with Crete, for crucial texts dissociate "Keftiu" from "the Islands in the Middle of the Sea", by which Egyptian scribes denoted Crete. Strange made a painstaking argument that "Keftiu" correspondes geographically with Cyprus.

Notes

References

* Hertz J.H. (1936) The Pentateuch and Haftoras. Deuteronomy. Oxford University Press, London.
*Strange, J. "Caphtor/Keftiu: A New Investigation" (Leiden: Brill) 1980. Reviewed by J.T. Hooker, "The Journal of Hellenic Studies" 103 (1983), p. 216.

* Deuteronomy 2:23
* Book of Jeremiah 47:4
* Book of Amos 9:7

External links

* [http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Aegean/7551/keftiu.html Who Were the Keftiu?]

ee also

*Philistines
*Avvites