against Egypt as allies of the Hittites. We find among them the Luka or
Lycians, the Dardenui (Dardanians, who may possibly have been at that
time in the Troad, or elsewhere, for all these tribes were certainly
migratory), and the Masa (perhaps the Mysians). With the Cretans of
Ramses Ill's time must be reckoned the Pulesta, who are certainly the
Philistines, then most probably in course of their traditional migration
from Crete to Palestine. In Philistia recent excavations by Mr. Welch
have disclosed the unmistakable presence of a late Mycenæan culture,
and we can only ascribe this to the Philistines, who were of Cretan
origin.

Thus we see that all these Northern tribal names hold together with
remarkable persistence, and in fact refuse to be identified with any
tribes but those of Asia Minor and the Ægean. In them we see the broken
remnants of the old Minoan (Keftian) power, driven hither and thither
across the seas by intestinal feuds, and "winding the skein of grievous
wars till every man of them perished," as Homer says of the heroes after
the siege of Troy. These were in fact the wanderings of the heroes, the
period of _Sturm und Drang_ which succeeded the great civilized epoch of
Minos and his thalassocracy, of Knossos, Phaistos, and the Keftius.
On the walls of the temple of Medînet Habû, Ramses III depicted the
portraits of the conquered heroes who had fallen before the Egyptian
onslaught, and he called them heroes, _tuher_ in Egyptian, fully
recognizing their Berserker gallantry. Above all in interest are the
portraits of the Philistines, those Greeks who at this very time seized
part of Palestine (which takes its name from them), and continued to
exist there as a separate people (like the Normans in France) for at
least two centuries. Goliath the giant was, then, a Greek; certainly he
was of Cretan descent, and so a Pelasgian.