02x23 - Who Were the Danites

[bunniefuu]

What does it all mean?

This is where the archeology has been found.

Oh, hi how are you?

Look at that.

I need a planter.

A shrine to a bellybutton.

Is this a rock of salt?

Look at that!

No one gets into this place?

Whoa, don't take me too far!

Now that's naked archeology.

[theme music]

Biblical archaeology doesn't get better than this.

I'm in the Galilee, northern Israel.

I'm at Tel Dan.

The Bible tells us that a tribe named Dan

conquered this place.

They dig, and what did they find?

The city of Dan. And as I stand here,

I'm not thinking, wow, what a synchronicity

between the Bible and archaeology.

But instead I'm thinking about a babe,

a legendary babe, Helen of Troy.

That legendary beauty that launched

a thousand ships and caused this big w*r.

Troy ended up b*rned to the ground.

Why am I thinking about that legendary,

historical beauty talked about by Homer?

Because the people who chased her down

and brought her back to Greece,

we call Mycenaeans or Greeks,

but they called themselves, according to Homer, Danoi.

And I'm wondering: are the Homeric Danoi,

the people of Helen of Troy, and biblical Danites,

who built this place, are they one and the same people?

[SIMCHA] Could the Danites, who lived in Canaan,

modern day Israel, really be related to the Danoi

who lived in Mycenae, modern day Greece?

Let's see what we know about these two peoples

from the ancient texts.

In Homer's Odyssey, we discover

that the Danoi are migrant people.

Even the word "Odyssey" is literally associated

with these migrants.

Second, we learn that they are mighty warriors

that chase Helen by ship to Troy.

Even the great Achilles fights in their ranks.

Third, they are expert craftsmen

who build the famous wooden horse that fools the Trojans.

And finally, the Danoi are pagans who worship many gods.

[SIMCHA] In the Bible, we find a similar profile

for the Danites.

We first hear about them in the story of Moses

when he leaves Egypt with his twelve tribes

heading to the holy land.

Moses partitions Canaa

and gives a portion to each tribe.

Judah and his people, the Judahites, get Judea.

This tribe later becomes the Jews.

The mysterious Danites

decide not to take their share,

and instead are the only tribe to migrate.

They head north with skilled warriors

to a town called Laish which they conquer

and rename Dan, modern day Tel Dan.

The most famous of the Danites is Samson,

a mighty warrior more similar to the Greek Hercules

than other Hebrew prophets.

We also learn that the Danites are expert craftsmen,

chosen to build the sacred gold-laden

Ark of the Covenant.

The Bible then shuns the Danites

for building a temple in direct competition

to Solomon's temple where they worshipped false gods.

So in the ancient texts, the Danites and the Danoi

sound quite similar.

But many would find it foolish

to connect these two groups

who seemingly live far away from each other.

In our search for the tribe of Dan,

'we have to establish something.

Some people might think it's crazy

to connect Danites to the Aegean,

what is considered Greece, modern Greece.

But is it so crazy? I'm standing at Ashkelon,

a city with years of history.

There's Canaanite layers here,

and there's Philistine layers here.

And everybody agrees, they were Aegean.

They came across the Mediterranean

and they settled here.

If the Philistines could do it, why not Dan?

[SIMCHA] To get a better understanding

of ancient migrations,

I'm off to see archaeologist Aren Maeir,

who's studied how the Philistines went

from eating souvlaki to gefilte fish.

A lot of people think that the Israelites

are over here in the Middle East,

Greek people are, you know, in Greece,

the two don't connect. Is there a connection

between the Aegeans and the Israelites?

There's an ongoing multifaceted connection

between the two regions.

This was, this is pottery that's made in Greece.

All this reaches Canaan through trade.

Now, what about the Philistines?

When they first come, they are very strongly Aegean.

Very soon they take in a lot of the influence

from the surroundings.

The Danite territory, biblically speaking,

is close to the Philistine territory, no?

There may be some sort of connection

between the Danites and the Philistines.

Perhaps the Danites should be connected to the Danoi,

who are one of the ancient peoples in Greece.

Here you have, maybe a connection.

And then it says that you have Dan,

Danites, and Dananoi, very similar,

so maybe it's a connection.

What do you think?

I definitely think that there are elements

in the biblical story about the Danites,

'which tells us something of a connection

with the Aegean. I'm still waiting for the...

The smoking g*n.

[SIMCHA] So they could be the same people.

But there's one problem.

Homer writes that the Danoi are seafaring people.

The Danites on the other hand,

wander the desert for years

and then settle in Tel Dan, an inland site.

They sound more like sea-fearing people.

And yet, there's a cryptic passage in the Bible

that may be trying to tell us something.

[SIMCHA] We've been searching for evidence

that the biblical Danites, who lived in Israel,

and the Greek Danoi, written about by Homer,

were one and the same people.

These two groups are strikingly similar

in ancient texts.

But there's one element that has kept us at bay.

The Danoi are clearly seafarers.

But living at Tel Dan, an in-land site,

the Danites sound more like land-dwellers.

And yet, the Bible does give us a cryptic passage

called the Song of Deborah,

which would seem to state the Danites ARE seafarers.

The passage describes a famous battle

between the tribes of Israel and their oppressors,

the Canaanites, lead by their General, Sisera.

In the passage, the Israelite leader, Deborah,

leads the Israelites to battle,

but one of those tribes, the Danites,

does not join them. They stay in their ships.

This passage has confounded biblical scholars.

If they lived inland, why were they on ships?

Could the Bible be telling us that the Danites,

like the Danoi, are really seafarers?

I've discovered that there was a coalition of seafarers

at the time appropriately called the Sea Peoples.

The word on the docks is that they are

kind of ancient pirates scavenging the seas

for treasure to loot.

Can we connect the Danites to these Sea Peoples?

I've come to Tel Dor, located on the northern coast of Israel.

This archaeological site was at one time

inhabited by the Tjekker, a Sea Peoples

with connections to the Aegean.

Their association with this place was written about

on a famous Egyptian papyrus

called "The Story of Wenamun".

I'm here to meet with archaeologist Ilan Sharon

to find out who the Sea Peoples were.

Who were the Sea People?

The Egyptians fought against a coalition of Sea Peoples,

who are mentioned in about half a dozen

Egyptian documents.

The most famous document is the relief

from the mortuary temple of Ramses III.

On this relief, he shows two battles.

One is a sea battle on the one side of the temple,

and on the other side of the temple,

you see a land battle.

[SIMCHA] Ramses the Third's mortuary temple,

Medinet Habu, shows these battles in amazing detail.

The relief even distinguishes

between each group of Sea Peoples.

There were the Peleset, associated with the Philistines,

and their fellow Aegeans, the Tjekker,

who we now know migrated to Tel Dor,

and then there's a mysterious group

known either as the Denyen or the Danu.

Sound Familiar? Could these be the biblical Danites?

But wait! The relief shows yet another group

of Sea Peoples, the Shardana.

Scholars generally agree they probably came from Sardinia.

And there's an archaeologist who believes

he's found them in Israel! His name is Adam Zertal.

What Zertal has uncovered'

may also connect the Shardana to the Danites

'through that mysterious passage in the Bible,

the Song of Deborah.

Although it's raining buckets,

Zertal is anxious to show me this unique site

that he and his team have uncovered.

This is a huge place.

This is the city wall, the inner face of the city wall.

And what period is this?

This is exactly BC.

So about , years ago.

Yes.

[SIMCHA] Which is exactly the time of the battle

between the Israelites and the Canaanites.

But Zertal has discovered something

even more astonishing.

The bases of former massive dome-like structures.

It's a round hut built up of stones

with a corbal dome as covering.

This seems to be very typical of Sardinia.

[SIMCHA] And like the domes in Sardinia,

the function of these mysterious structures

has confounded archaeologists.

This is the most bizarre and mysterious civilization

that I've ever seen.

I thought it belonged to the early Israelites.

But more and more it became clear

that there's nothing to be between

the Israelite early culture and these things.

You don't have any other parallels

until you come to about kilometres to Sardinia.

[SIMCHA] Amazing, unique dome-like structures

whose only equivalent is found in Sardinia.

And not only does this correspond with the time

of the battle between Deborah & Sisera,

but Sisera is not a Canaanite name...

it's a Sardinian name!

So the archaeology matches the biblical story!

Now that we can connect three groups of migrating Sea Peoples,

the Shardana, the Tjekker and the Philistines,

with the land of Israel, it's not so crazy

to connect the biblical Danites with the Danu in Egypt

and the Danoi in Greece.

But why would we find the Danites all the way in Greece?

Maybe during the exodus from Egypt,

some Danites traveled by land to Canaan

while others migrated north by ship to the Aegean.

In order to prove that the fighters at Troy

who built the wooden horse were actually Danites,

we need to find this Israelite tribe in Greece.

When the prophetess Deborah

criticizes the tribe of Dan

for not joining the battle, not fighting against Sisera,

she says something that is historically very important.

She's telling us A, they didn't join,

they're a marginal tribe, sometimes in the confederation,

sometimes out, and secondly they stayed in their ships.

There's the Mediterranean, there are ships.

What's she telling us?

[SIMCHA] That the Danites were seafarers.

After leaving Egypt with Moses,

some of the Danites may have migrated north by sea

and ended up in an area of the Aegean

called Mycenae to become the Danoi written about

in Homer's Iliad. But can we find

archaeological evidence of this migration?

Amazingly enough, right after the Jews leave Egypt,

vast quantities of gold mysteriously appear in Mycenaea,

in what are called shaft tombs.

To add to this striking discovery,

archaeologists believe this gold came from Egypt.

But do we have a reason to think

the gold came via the Danites?

When the Danites help build the Ark of the Covenant,

they cover it in gold, so we know

that they are expert goldsmiths.

It would make sense that they would have

brought their craft and their precious metal to the Aegean.

If the Danoi are really Danites,

who went north to Greece after the Exodus,

they would most likely have stayed in contact

with their fellow relatives in Israel.

If they did, we need to find a site in Israel

that speaks to an Aegean connection.

So I've come to Tel Dan,

the most impressive Danite site of all.

I'm here with archaeologist David Ilan

who has been digging here at Tel Dan

for over two decades.

The first piece of evidence I'm hoping to find

to connect the Danites to the Danoi

is examples of worshiping many Gods, as the Bible claims.

Do we find examples of whoring after false gods

that we hear about in the Bible here?

We have a whole series of standing stones at Tel Dan.

See that next to the wall over there?

There's five stones placed up against the wall

that have no function.

So you're telling me that this is not reinforcing the wall.

No.

We could be touching the transition

between paganism and monotheism,

because it's not statues, it's stones.

The question is what are these stones?

Now, there are five here. Why five? Five gods?

We don't know of any group of five gods.

I have my own pet theory- they're feet,

with five toes.

And I think these are the feet of God,

of Yahweh, as you enter into his home,

which is located at the very top of the toe.

God is with us as we enter the site on pilgrimage.

[SIMCHA] So these feet, which lead us

to the temple at the top of the hill,

show us that the Danites ultimately worshiped one God,

like their fellow Jews in Jerusalem,

albeit in a slightly unkosher way.

Have we found a departure from the Danoi?

Surprisingly, although both worship standing stones,

we find no examples of idol worshiping

among the Danoi at Mycenae.

So the Danites were kind of pagans among Israelites,

while the Danoi were kind of Israelites among pagans.

Once again, a perfect match!

So why would the Bible say

that the Danites worshiped false gods?

Is this a holy site?

This is a holy site.

This is the home of God in the north.

And this is the competition to Jerusalem.

This is the competition to Jerusalem.

That's why the writer of the book of Kings

and of Judges and Joshua

is so down on all of these places

the writer does not view these places

as the legitimate places of worship.

The Danites are bad boys of the Bible.

That's right. The cult in the north

was a competitor to the cult in Jerusalem

and the biblical writers writing from a Jerusalem viewpoint.

So we are touching what the Bible

considers the Danites' sin.

And you tell me it's the toes of God.

[SIMCHA] If David is right, these standing stones,

representing God's feet, tell us of a people

who worshiped a supreme god,

similar to their fellow Jews in Jerusalem

but also like the Danoi in Greece.

Maybe these feet can lead us to the temple

the Bible states the Danites built as an answer

to Solomon's temple in Jerusalem

So here we are in a high place.

This is the competitor to Solomon's temple.

Exactly. That's the beauty

and that's the difficulty for the biblical writer.

If you want to see an Israelite national, cult place,

the only place you can now see that is here.

From the time that the temple stood in Jerusalem.

Exactly.

That's a big wow.

And many of the elements here

replicate those that are described in the Book of Kings:

the platform, which could be

where the temple was located;

the fact that there are chambers all around it

that contain smaller, fresh fruits, offering alter:

the alter with the horns.

The alter would have been that big?

This one is so big that you could actually

take an ox up there and slaughter it.

So over here we've got the alter,

but that's all leading up to the holy of holies.

It would have been up there.

I don't know.

Should we go up to the holy of holies?

We are not really allowed to do that.

Well, I wouldn't do that in Jerusalem.

This is the illegitimate cult. It's okay.

This is the main structure of the temple.

This is where the deity would have resided.

You have ceremonial behaviour all around.

Symbols, drums, chanting.

There were thousands of people looking

and seeing what the priests are doing.

From the priest's point of view this was the real thing,

and that might have been what

got the people in Jerusalem so angry.

[SIMCHA] Incredible, a year old place of worship

built in direct competition to Solomon's temple

in Jerusalem, and the only Israelite holy place

archaeologists have ever found from that time.

But we still haven't found the smoking g*n...

physical proof connecting the Danites here

with the Danoi in Greece.

David Ilan has one more site to show me,

an extraordinary tomb unlike other tombs in Israel.

Could this resting place

hold the link we've been searching for?

[SIMCHA] I've been on a quest

to find out if the Biblical Danites

might be related to the Mycenean Danoi.

We've found plenty of parallels in the ancient texts

that would corroborate this idea.

The Bible tells us that the Danites

were great goldsmiths who helped build

the golden Ark of the Covenant.

And in Mycenae, we've discovered unique shaft tombs

filled with beautiful gold objects

that we believe connect them to the Danites.

But we haven't found smoking g*n archaeology in Israel,

which explicitly connects the Danites

to the Danoi at Mycenae.

I'm in Tel Dan with archaeologist David Ilan,

who has one more site to show me a unique tomb

unlike other tombs found in Israel.

Does this burial place hold the answer

to our archaeological prayers?

I've waited so long to see this tomb.

I've read about it, heard about it.

They call it the Mycenaean Tomb.

It's off the beaten track.

Tourists don't come here. I'm very excited.

I've read so much about what was found in here

and so on.

What makes this tomb special

or Mycenaean or anything like that?

It is a local variant of a chamber tomb.

Most of the tombs in this area are cave tombs,

carved out of the bedrock.

This kind of massive,

large constructed chamber tomb is very unusual.

There's a lot of Mycenaean pottery

that came from this tomb.

There were gold buttons, and earrings,

and bracelets, lots of bronze weapons and tools,

many Mycenaean vessels, some Cypriate vessels.

Is it locally made?

The clay that the Mycenaean vessels

are made of come from the region of Mycenae.

So the stuff you found here in Tel Dan,

you know for a fact came from the Mycenae region.

Right. There is an Aegean element to it.

At the same time, there are

southern Israelite material cultural elements here as well.

There's an amalgamation here of the two,

which in a way really is what the Bible tells us

the Danites are...

people that stayed by their boats by the sea.

They're a different group.

There's something strange about them.

They don't quite belong.

And that may be because they're

somewhat Aegean in background and in behaviour.

[SIMCHA] So here we are at the end of our quest,

at the site that directly connects the biblical Danites

with the Homeric Danoi. In our search,

we've found textual and archaeological evidence

corroborating the Danites biblical journey,

and we've discovered both the Danites

and the Danoi were skilled sailors,

expert goldsmiths and had similar religious beliefs.

Most Importantly, we've found the definitive link

that bonds these two migrant cultures,

a shaft tomb in which gold

and other Mycenaean treasures

were discovered that speak of a direct connection

between Israel and far away Greece.

So it seems Helen of Troy was rescued

by one of the tribes of Moses.