What´s in a Name? (2024) - a photo on Flickriver

What´s in a Name? (2024)

Kamera: BelOMO Agat 18K
Linse: Industar-104 - f2.8 / 28mm
Film: Cinestill BWXX (Kodak 5222) @ ISO 800
Kjemi: Xtol (stock / 16 min. @ 22°C)

- What’s in a name?
- The name is PALESTINE

During the years when I had UN-affiliated assignments in the occupied West Bank, I often came across Israelis' bizarre and rather hateful relationship with the name ‘Palestine’. Always when I was entering or leaving an area, both inside the occupied territories and within Israel itself, I had to state to an official or a soldier of some sort where I came from and where I was going to. The conversation invariably was as follows:

«I’m going to Hebron.»
«Hevrrooon?» [Disdainful]
«Yes, Hebron, Al-Khalil. Palestine.»
«Judea and Samaria. There is no Palestine.»

«No Palestine.» Kind of strange that Israelis constantly insist that there is no Palestine, when everyone in the whole world knows that Palestine is an actual place. I also saw this among the illegal settlers and in Israeli newspapers and media; whenever Palestine was mentioned invariably people would comment, shout, even spit: «There is no Palestine! Only Judea and Samaria!» Judea and Samaria? Two rather short-lived ancient biblical kingdoms from 2,500 years ago? I had to look a little closer at this.

So, the Kingdom of Samaria - also called the Kingdom of Israel - existed for about 200 years ca. 930 BCE - ca. 720 BCE. The Kingdom of Judah existed for about 350 years ca. 930 BCE - ca. 587 BCE. Based on the fairy tales in the Torah, Israelis like to claim that there was a United Kingdom of Israel for about 100 years even before that; ca. 1047 BCE - 930 BCE. This is the time of King David and King Solomon; a time of legends and mythology that has nothing to do with any real historicity. Just like Moses and Abraham, for that matter.

In any case. Judea and Samaria. This makes no sense. I could clearly remember I had read about Palestine in the Histories by Herodotus (ca. 484 BCE - ca. 425 BCE); widely acknowledged as the Father of History. Granted, there is also a mythical and legendary aspect to parts of his work as well, but nonetheless. Herodotus is certainly a 1000 times more reliable than the Torah.

I picked up my copy of the Histories and searched for the entries on Palestine. Plenty of references. The Kingdom of Judah ceased to exist only 100 years before Herodotus was born. Surely he would have written about this legendary kingdom? Not a word. Judah is not mentioned, Samaria is not mentioned, Israel is not mentioned, hebrews or jews are not mentioned, Yahweh and judaism is not mentioned at all. Not a word. Nothing. Not very noteworthy, in other words.

Ever since the time of Herodotus the land has certainly and without any doubt always been known as Palestine. «There is no Palestine» is purely Zionist propaganda and an attempt at falsifying history.

So, let’s see what Herodotus actually writes about Palestine:

«From Lake Maeetis [Sea of Azov] to the River Phasis [Rioni river in present-day Georgia] and Colchis [present-day Georgia] is a thirty-day journey for a man travelling light, and then it does not take long to cross over from Colchis to Median territory [region surrounding present-day Teheran]. There is only one race in between, the Saspeires, and Median territory begins immediately after theirs. However, this was not the path of the Scythian invasion; they turned aside and took the much longer upper route, with the Caucasian mountains on their right. Then the Medes and the Scythians clashed; the Medes lost the battle, their Empire crumbled and the Scythians occupied the whole of Asia.
From there they marched on Egypt. When they reached Syrian Palestine, the Egyptian king Psammetichus came to meet them. With a combination of bribery and entreaty he persuaded them not to go any further and they turned back. On their way back they came to the town of Ascalon in Syria [south-west of modern-day Ashkelon in Israel]. Most of the Scythians bypassed the town without doing it any harm, but a few of them, who had fallen behind the main body, plundered the sanctuary of Heavenly Aphrodite [Aphrodite Urania]. As I learnt by enquiry, this sanctuary is the oldest of all the sanctuaries of Heavenly Aphrodite. Even the temple on Cyprus was founded from this one, as the Cyprians themselves acknowledge, and the one on Cythera [Kythira in Greece] was founded by Phoenicians [from more or less present-day Lebanon and parts of Syria] who came from this part of the world - that is, from Syria. The goddess afflicted the Scythians who plundered her temple in Ascalon and all their descendants for ever with hermaphroditism. And so, as well as admitting that this is why they suffer from this disease, the Scythians also tell visitors to their country that they can see the condition of these people, whom the Scythians call enareis.
- Histories, Book I, 104-105.

«For the fact is, as I first came to realize myself, and then heard from others later, that the Colchians are obviously Egyptian. When the notion occurred to me, I asked both the Colchians and the Egyptians about it, and found that the Colchians had better recall of the Egyptians than the Egyptians did of them. Some Egyptians said that they thought the Colchians originated with Sesostris’ army, but I myself had guessed their Egyptian origin not only because the Colchians are dark-skinned and curly-haired (which does not count for much by itself, because these features are common to others too), but more importantly because Colchians, Egyptians, and Ethiopians are the only peoples in the world who practise circumcision and have always done so. The Phoenicians and Palestinian Syrians are the first to admit that they learnt the practise from Egypt, and the Syrians who live in the land between the Thermodon [Terme river in northern Turkey] and Parthenius [Bartın river, also in northern Turkey to the west of Thermodon], and their neighbours the Macrones [Colchian tribe living in northern Turkey bordering present-day Georgia], say that in their case it is a recent import from Colchis. These are the only places in the world where circumcision is practised, and it is clear that the others do it in the same way it is done in Egypt. The obvious antiquity of the custom in Egypt and Ethiopia prevents me from saying whether the Egyptians learnt it from the Ethiopians or vice versa, but what convinces me that the other peoples learnt it as a result of their contact with Egypt is that any Phoenicians [Lebanese] who have come into contact with Greece have stopped copying the Egyptians with respect to their genitalia, and do not cut off their children’s foreskins.
[In my Oxford edition it is noted here: "On the Colchians (104), Lloyd thinks a dark skinned Khazar people might well have lived east of the Caucasus, practised circumcision, and been close enough in appearance for H to have drawn the conclusion that they were Egyptian in origin."]
And let me mention one more way in which the Colchians resemble the Egyptians: these two peoples alone work linen, and they do so in the same way. In fact, their lifestyles in general and their languages are similar. The Greeks call Colchian linen Sardonian, while the linen which comes from Egypt is called Egyptian.
Most of the pillars which King Sesostris of Egypt erected in these places no longer appear to be there, but I myself have seen some of them in Palestinian Syria with the inscriptions I mentioned and the female genitalia. In Ionia [region in present-day western Turkey], there are also two figures of Sesostris carved on the rock, one on the route from Ephesus to Phocaea and the other between Sardis and Smyrna. In both places a man is carved, four cubits and a span high, with a spear in his right hand, a bow in his left, and the rest of his equipment to match - in fact, it is partly Egyptian and partly Ethiopian. From one shoulder right across his chest to the other shoulder runs a carved inscription in Egyptian hieroglyphs, saying: ‘I took this land with the power of my shoulders.’ He does not indicate in this inscription who he is and what country he is from, but it is clear from elsewhere. Some people who have seen these carvings guess that the figure is Memnon [Ethiopian king in greek mythology], but that does not really correspond to the facts.
[The rock carving mentioned here is in fact the hittite Karabel relief]
- Histories, Book II, 104-106.

«The desert affords the only clear way into Egypt. The land from Phoenicia [Lebanon] to the borders of the territory of Cadytis [Gaza city today] belongs to the ’Palestinian’ Syrians, as they are called; the trading-centres along the coast from Cadytis (which is not much smaller, I should say, than Sardis [ancient greek city in Lydia, present-day Turkey]) to the town of Ienysus [most likely Khan Younis in the Gaza strip] are subject to the king of Arabia; the land from Ienysus to Lake Serbonis [Lake Bardawil on the north coast of the Sinai peninsula], which is flanked by the spur of Mount Casius [Ras Kouroun] which goes down to the sea, belongs to the Syrians again; and then the land onwards from Lake Serbonis (where the story goes that Typhon [a monster serpentine giant in greek mythology] was buried) is Egyptian. The tract of land from Ienysus to Mount Casius and Lake Serbonis, which is large enough to take three days to cross, is utterly without water.»
- Histories, Book III, 5.

«The whole region stretching from the town of Posideium [Ras al-Bassit in present-day Syria] (which was founded by Amphilochus the son of Amphiaraus on the border between Cilicia [region in southern Turkey bordering present-day Syria] and Syria) to Egypt, excluding Arabian territory (which was exempt) had to pay a tribute of 350 talents; this region, which constituted the fifth province, encompasses the whole of Phoenicia [Lebanon], Palestinian Syria, and Cyprus. The sixth province consisted mainly of Egypt, but the Libyans adjacent to Egypt, and Cyrene [Kyrene near present-day Shahhat in Libya] and Barca [also in present-day Libya] were also assessed as part of the province of Egypt. The province contributed 700 talents, not counting the revenue of silver from the fish of the lake of Moeris [Lake Moeris] and also a fixed amount of grain - 120,000 sacks - which was issued to the Persians and their auxiliaries who were based in White Wall [a fortress] in Memphis. The seventh province consisted of the Sattagydae, Gandarians, Dadicae, and Aparytae [these are lands in present-day Pakistan and India], who between them contributed 170 talents. The eighth province, consisting of Susa [ancient Iranian city bordering present-day Iraq] and the rest of the land of the Cissians, contributed 300 talents.»
- Histories, Book III, 91.

«Persians live all the way south as far as the sea which is called the Red Sea. Their northern neighbours are the Medes [ancient Iranians in the region surrounding present-day Teheran], then come the Saspeires, and then the Colchians [present-day Georgia], all the way to the northern sea [Black Sea], into which the River Phasis [Rioni river in present-day Georgia] flows. The whole of the land from one sea to the other is occupied by these four peoples.
West of this tract of land come two peninsulas which project out from it into the sea. Here is a description of these two peninsulas. One of them starts in the north at the River Phasis, runs past the Euxine Sea [Black Sea] and the Hellespont [Dardanelles], and reaches the sea at the Cape of Triopium. This peninsula [more or less present-day Turkey] is inhabited by thirty different peoples.
So that is one of the two peninsulas, and the other one starts in Persia and goes down to the Red Sea [today known as the Arabian Sea], taking in Persia, then Assyria, and then Arabia. This peninsula ends, but only by convention, at the Arabian Gulf [today known as the Red Sea], into which the canal flows which Darius dug from the Nile [Canal of the Pharaohs]. From Persia to Phoenicia [Lebanon] the land is broad and wide, but after Phoenicia this peninsula breaks into our sea and reaches Egypt (where it ends) via Palestinian Syria. This peninsula is home to only three peoples.»
- Histories, Book IV, 39.

«The total number of triremes was 1,207, supplied by various nations as follows. The Phoenicians [Lebanese] and the Palestinian Syrians supplied three hundred triremes; their equipment consisted of helmets very similar in style to Greek ones, linen breastplates, rimless shields, and javelins. According to their own tradition, these Phoenicians used to live a long time ago on the Red Sea [today known as the Arabian Sea], but then they moved to the coastal region of Syria of which they currently occupy. This part of Syria, all the way to the border with Egypt, is known as Palestine.
The Egyptians supplied two hundred ships. They wore plaited helmets on their heads and carried curved shields with wide rims, naval spears, and large battleaxes. Most of them also wore breastplates and carried long knives.»
- Histories, Book VII, 89.

Taken in: Norway / Trøndelag / New Harbour (show map)

Taken on: February 1, 2024

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