Caphtor

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Caphtor

Caphtor is a locality mentioned in the Book of Amos

Book of Amos

The Book of Amos is one of the books of the Nevi'im and of the Christian Old Testament. Amos is one of the minor prophets.Amos was the first biblical prophet whose words were recorded in a book, an older contemporary of Hosea and Isaiah....
, 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

Mizraim

Mizraim is the Hebrew language name for the land of Egypt, with the dual suffix -ayim, perhaps referring to the "two Egypts": Upper Egypt and Lower Egypt....
(Egypt).

The Septuagint

Septuagint

The Septuagint , or simply "LXX", is the Koine Greek version of the Hebrew Bible, translated in stages between the 3rd century BC and 1st century BC in Alexandria....
translates the name as "Kappadokias" and the Vulgate

Vulgate

The Vulgate is an early Fifth Century version of the Bible in Latin, and largely the result of the labors of Jerome, who was commissioned by Pope Damasus I in 382 to make a revision of Vetus Latina....
similarly renders it as "Cappadocia".

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Caphtor is a locality mentioned in the Book of Amos

Book of Amos

Mizraim

Mizraim is the Hebrew language name for the land of Egypt, with the dual suffix -ayim, perhaps referring to the "two Egypts": Upper Egypt and Lower Egypt....
(Egypt).

The Septuagint

Septuagint

Vulgate

Samuel Bochart

Samuel Bochart was a French Protestant biblical scholar, a student of Thomas van Erpe and the teacher of Pierre Daniel Huet. His two-volume Geographia Sacra seu Phaleg et Canaan exerted a profound influence on seventeenth-century Biblical exegesis....
understood this as a reference to Cappadocia

Cappadocia

Cappadocia, Wikipedia:IPA for English /k?p?'do???/ , was an extensive inland district of Asia Minor . The name continued to be used in western sources and in the Christianity tradition throughout history and is still widely used as an international Tourism in Turkey concept to define a region of exceptional natural wonders characterized by...
in Anatolia but this was not the understanding of the Jewish targum

Targum

A targum is an Aramaic language translation of the Hebrew Bible written or compiled from the Second Temple period until the early Middle Ages ....
ists who rendered this name in Aramaic as "Caphutkia" meaning the town of Pelusium

Pelusium

Pelusium was a city in the eastern extremes of Egypt's Nile Delta, 30 km to the southeast of the modern Port Said. Alternative names include Sena and Per -Amun , Pelousion , Sin , Sey?n , and Tell el-Farama ....
at the eastern edge of the Nile delta

Nile Delta

The Nile Delta is the River delta formed in Northern Egypt where the Nile River spreads out and drains into the Mediterranean Sea. It is one of the world's largest river deltas?from Alexandria in the west to Port Said in the east, it covers some 240 km of Mediterranean coastline?and is a rich agricultural region....
. This identification is also made by Benjamin of Tudela

Benjamin of Tudela

Benjamin of Tudela was a medieval Kingdom of Navarre, sometimes called "Rabbi", was a medieval explorer from Spain who traveled through Europe, Asia, and Africa in the 12th century....
, the twelfth-century Jewish traveller from Navarre, who wrote that "Damiata

Damietta

Damietta, Damiata, or Domyat is a harbor and the capital of the governorate of Domyat Governorate, Egypt. It is located at the intersection between the Mediterranean Sea and the Nile, about north of Cairo....
" (the name for Pelusium in his day) was the biblical Caphtor. .

Modern commentators and translators commonly identify Caphtor with Crete

Crete

Crete is the largest of the Greek islands and the List of islands in the Mediterranean largest island in the Mediterranean Sea at 8,336 km? ....
(Hertz 1936) although it has also been linked to Cyprus

Cyprus

Cyprus , officially the Republic of Cyprus , is an island country situated in the eastern Mediterranean Sea, east of Greece, west of Lebanon, Syria, and Israel, south of Turkey and north of Egypt....
, and the nearby coasts of Anatolia

Anatolia

Anatolia or Asia Minor is a region of Western Asia, comprising most of the modern Republic of Turkey. It is a geographic region bounded by the Black Sea to the north, the Caucasus to the northeast, the Aegean Sea to the west, the Mediterranean Sea to the south, and the Iranian plateau to the east and southeast....
. Cyprus and Crete together are by some accounts identified as "the island of the Caphtorim".

The name has been compared to Egyptian

Egyptian language

Akkadian language

Akkadian or Assyrian-Babylonian is a Semitic language that was spoken in ancient Mesopotamia. The earliest attested Semitic language, it used the cuneiform writing system derived ultimately from ancient Sumerian language, an unrelated language isolate....
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

Temple of Kom Ombo

The Temple of Kom Ombo is an unusual double temple built during the rule Ptolemaic dynasty in the Egyptian town of Kom Ombo. Some additions to it were later made during the Roman period....
in Upper Egypt

Upper Egypt

File:Ancient Egypt map-en.svgUpper Egypt is a narrow strip of land that extends from the Cataracts of the Nile section of Upper Egypt, between El-Ayait and Asyut is sometimes known as Middle Egypt....
and possibly in the Egyptian tomb of Rekhmire

Rekhmire

The Ancient Egyptian noble Rekhmire was an Eighteenth dynasty of Egypt official, serving as Governor of the Town and Vizier during the reigns of Tuthmosis III and Amenhotep II....
.

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

Mizraim

Mizraim is the Hebrew language name for the land of Egypt, with the dual suffix -ayim, perhaps referring to the "two Egypts": Upper Egypt and Lower Egypt....
thereby making them an Egyptian people.

Deuteronomy 2:23 records that the Caphtorites came from Caphtor, destroyed the Avvites

Avvites

Avvites is the English name of two different ethnic groups mentioned in the Bible.*The Avvites of Philistia mentioned in Deuteronomy 2:23 and Joshua 13:3....
and usurped their land. The Talmud

Talmud

The Talmud is a record of rabbinic discussions pertaining to Halakha, Jewish ethics, customs, and history. It is a central text of mainstream Judaism....
(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 .

Keftiu and its location

The Egyptian

Egyptian language

Egyptian is a branch of the Afro-Asiatic languages language family along with the Chadic languages, Berber languages, Semitic languages, Cushitic languages and possibly Omotic languages languages....
cognate Keftiu is attested in numerous inscriptions. 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, 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

Cilicia

In antiquity, Cilicia now known as ?ukurova, was a commonly used name of the south coastal region of the Anatolian peninsula, and a political entity in Roman times....
, on the Mediterranean shore of Asia Minor, and drew together evidence from a wide variety of sources: in geographical lists and the inscription of Tutmose III's "Hymn of Victory", 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" sntkppwymntrkkr, of ca 1200 BC, in which Cilician and Syrian deities Sanda Tarku

Tarku

Tarku is a small town in the South Sikkim district of the Indian state of Sikkim....
and Kubaba

Kubaba

Kubaba is the only queen on the Sumerian king list. She was monarch in the 3rd Dynasty of Kish , reigned in the "Early Dynastic III" period of History of Sumer and is listed to have reigned for 100 years....
have been detected, 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.

Caphtor

Keftiu and its location

External links

See also