Philistine (Man living at the time of the Patriarchs)

The Philistines were a seafaring people who settled the coastal plain between Gezer and Gaza, most likely arriving from Caphtor, which the Old Testament elsewhere identifies as Crete. Unlike Israel's other neighbors, they never had a single king; five cities, Gaza, Ashkelon, Ashdod, Gath, and Ekron, each answered to its own lord, and together those cities gave Israel its most persistent military rival from the judges through the united monarchy. Excavations at Gezer, Lachish, and Ashkelon, along with the Amarna Letters, confirm a settled population in this same region going back to the time of Moses and Joshua, and Egyptian temple reliefs from a century later show the Philistines arriving as part of the larger wave the Egyptians called the Sea Peoples.