Who Were the Danites? The Mycenaean Danoi ... That's Who

Just watched episode 23 of The Naked Archaeologist, Who Were the Danites?

This is the second smoking gun that my larger thesis is correct. This show discusses rather impressive archaeological evidence that connects the Mycenaean Danoi to the tribe of Dan in northern Israel. It is also heavily bolstered by chapter 5 of Judges, the Song of Deborah, which mentions the tribe of Dan failing to leave their 'ships' to aid their neighbor tribes.

Gilead abode beyond Jordan: and why did Dan remain in ships? Asher continued on the sea shore, and abode in his breaches. Judges 5:17 KJV​

The Dan remained in their ships because they were primarily a seafaring people, as Jacobovici wordsmithed, not a seafearing people. The difference between seafaring and seafearing is deeply embedded one's respective Culture.

Here we must also remember the legend about the schism between the Danaan and Egyptus that caused the former to depart from Egypt with his 50 daughters. And, as I have mentioned recently, about the uniquely recorded state visit of Amenhotep III (Akehenaten's father) to Mycenae.

In the city at so-called Tel Dan, there is a temple, which has suggestions of being of a nascent monotheistic nature, albeit that the Mycenaeans in Greece seem to have adopted a polytheist nature. This is not a big problem to me, as more importantly there are other linking cultural artifacts which speak louder to me. Jacobovici discusses all this in relation to the Sea Peoples, of which Cline also discusses in his 1177 BC, Collapse of the Late Bronze Age book.

Upon the collapse of the Late Bronze Age, Mycenae disappeared from that land, not arise again centuries later with the Classical Greeks. As Cline related, this happened all around the Mediterranean, with the likes of the more advanced Peleset immigrating peacefully into Palestine, intermarrying with the Canaanites. With this collapse, violence is very selective, in many cities, it is limited to just the royal palaces, the common people disappear, and some show up peacefully as in Palestine, to become the Philistines. All these 'exodi' occurring downstream, timewise, from Amenhotep III's visit to Mycenae and the Exodus from Amarna / Akhet-aten. Once this process is over, only Egypt is left standing in the Eastern Mediterranean.

Jacobovici did not mention that this was the location of the Tel Dan Stele, the only object that records the name of a character named David. It is apparent that the temple here would have been perceived in later times as a rival temple to the claimed Jerusalem temple as was the Samaritan one. Was this name David later fictively adopted in the narrative redactions to help pacify the northerner remnants left after the Assyrian and Babylonian forced migrations?

Now, as we have discussed in the OT series about the False Dialectic of Western Civilization, it must be remembered that it is Helen of Troy, who originates from Mycenae -- not Troy.

Season 1 has two back to back shows about the two sacred colors, Royal Blue and Purple, the former being tekhelot in Hebrew. Hmmm. Here we have the iconic name of Greece, Helen, found in the name of this color, albeit that the group name helot were the famous Messenian slaves of the Spartans. The Hebrew pronunciation was even more evocative. And we know that the iconic colors of Greece, even today are blue on white. Tenuous perhaps, but interesting.

 

...
Tell el-Qadi had been identified previously as the biblical city of Dan. Now recent excavations have uncovered a large neighborhood from the 12-11th century B.C.E. that shows compelling Aegean influences.

The discoveries have rekindled a longstanding academic brawl over the origin of the Danites. Were they really just a tribe of Israel that was left in the cold, found a conveniently isolated city and conquered it? Do they have anything to do with a mysterious kingdom called Danuna mentioned in ancient writing found in Turkey? Or maybe with the Denyen – a faction of invading Sea Peoples, according to ancient Egyptian sources? Or with the Danaoi, one of the Greek tribes? Or are these all one and the same? The findings at Tell el-Qadi (now Tel Dan) suggest they could well be.

The city of Dan was built on a mound near the southern foot of Mount Hermon, the tallest mountain in the Golan Heights. Certainly by the standards of the arid Middle East, the area is lush and fertile, well-watered by natural springs. The city's position was also strategic, smack on a key trading route between Tyre and Damascus. ...
http://www.haaretz.com/jewish/archaeology/1.756385​