THE DANAANS
The Danites were  a band of rovers, they were  not satisfied with the size of the allotment which the official coalition of the Jacobites  had afforded  them, around Zorah and  Eshtaol,  so they defied  the priesthood of Phinehas, appointed a Levitical priesthood of their own, (directly descended from Moses, not Aaron) and set out to found new lands. First they went up north, and, with the apparent approval, or at least the acquiescence of the Sidonians and the Upper Manassites, they took the city of Laish, (this city was very close  to the Sidonian capital at the time, a place called Hazor) killed all the Laishites, moved in, and called the place Dan, after their own tribal patriarch. They also held the seaport of Joppa, and it must have been  their friendly relations with the seafaring Sidonians that allowed them to build a fleet of ships there. Then, in the days of Deborah, war broke out between the sons of Jacob,  and the Sidonians. Treaty obligations, agreed to by the Danites, called for a mutual non aggression pact, with the Sidonians. (the Sidonians had already upheld their end of the bargain when they withheld retaliation against the Danites at the taking of Laish.) When the sons of Jacob threatened the Danites for their neutrality in the war, in accordance with the “Song of Deborah,” (at Judges 5:17) the Danites, “lived in ships.” These then, were the Danaans, who “fled” in their keeled  ships, from their brothers, the sons of “Aegyptus,” (the Jacobite) to live with the lnachids  at Argos, in the land of, what  would  come  to be called, “like Canaan” (Mica+Cana, Mycenae).
The Greeks tell a story of how the Danaans,  one of the main branches of the ancient Greek peoples, came from their Original homeland to settle with the lnachids of Argolis. These  Danaans,  otherwise known  as  the daughters of Danaus, were  fleeing from their cousins the sons  of Aegyptus.  Danaus and  Aegyptus  were brothers, the former having fifty daughters but no sons, and  the  latter  having  fifty sons but  no  daughters. Aegyptus was intent on marrying his fifty Sons to the fifty daughters of Danaus, but Danaus and his girls wanted no part of any such  wedding. H. J. Rose  in his,  “A Handbook  of Greek  Mythology” (page  272),  has  an interesting take on this wedding  between cousins. He says, “This was of course  the natural thing for them to do,  by Greek law, for a girl with  no brothers, … an encumbrance on the estate, as Attic law called her, was by universal custom married to her next of kin.” This is interesting because Rose has here shown  us, that the Greeks dealt with the problem of inheritance, where the father has had no sons but only daughters, in a way that was very similar to the Hebrew law. For his comment cannot help but remind us of the story in the scriptures, about the daughters of Zelophehad. Zelophehad  had, not fifty, but five daughters and no sons. None of them were married, at the time that Joshua and the chieftains were dividing up the land of Canaan. They complained in the presence of the high priest, that it would not be fair if the inheritance of their father were to be divided up amongst  the other  tribes. It was  therefore  agreed upon, so that a family might not lose its inheritance altogether,  that in the case  where  there were  no sons but only daughters, the girls could  indeed  inherit the property. Now, while the girls had  gotten their inheritance,  there were those who feared that they may marry men  from  other tribes thereby letting  the inheritance be divided  up among the other  tribes anyway. In order  to prevent  this possibility, a remedy was decided upon whereby the daughters would have to agree to marry within their own clan. Then, hopefully, the girls would  eventually  produce  sons  of their own who  could  pass  the  inheritance down  through  their family line. While we are told about the girl’s request  to receive their father’s inheritance, the Hebrew scriptures do not inform us as to what the daughters of Zelophehad thought  about  the forced  marriage  arrangement,  this later stipulation, would  obviously not have been  so favorably accepted by them  as the original judgment was.  Sure  enough, in keeping  with  the  comparison between the  Greek and  Hebrew stories,  just  as Hypermnestra and her sisters the daughters of Danaus were married  unto their father’s brother’s sons, so we are told in the Hebrew scriptures at Numbers 36:11 “For Mahlah, Tirzah, and Hoglah, and Milcah, and Noah, the daughters of Zelophehad, were  married unto  their father’s  brother’s sons.”
Now, of course, the intent here is not necessarily  to equate the story about  the daughters of Zelophehad with the story about the daughters of Danaus, however, the similarities between the Hebrew and Greek laws in this regard, are certainly worth our notice. It should furthermore be here pointed out, that the Hebrew story takes place, chronologically speaking,  in the days just prior to the Danite apostasy. Also noteworthy, is the fact that the daughters of Zelophehad, who are  biblically referred to, at Joshua 1 7:6, as the daughters of Manasseh, (they were in fact his great, great, great, granddaughters) were of the clan of Gilead. thus, they were associated with the Danites (the Greek Danaus) in the so called, “song of Deborah,” (Judges 5:17 “Gilead abode beyond Jordan: and why did Dan remain in ships?”) as opposed to joining the sons of Jacob (the GreekAegyptus) in their war against Sisera. Therefore, it seems possible at least, that the Danites who left Israel in those days, could have brought with them, as one of the grievances justifying their departure, this story of their Gileadite Allies, which was indeed current at that very time. In fact, the Greek law, that parallels the Hebrew one, and which they apparently continued to follow in their new Grecian homeland, had only recently  been  introduced into Hebrew law just prior to their emigration.
The Greeks say that the Danaans came to the city of Argos and demanded their portion of royalty there. They claimed to be descendants oflo and therefore members of the royal family. (it does  seem reasonable that, as descendants of Abraham, they could have pressed their partial ownership of Hebron, the parent city, as a “legal” claim to royalty over it’s colony.) They had been chased from the land of Aegyptus,  (the Jacobite) by their brothers, the  sons  of Aegyptus.  To accomplish  this emigration,  they are said to have invented  the keeled ship, which enabled them  to sail over the deep  seas, and make their escape to Argos. The Greek claim that the Danaans  invented  the keeled  ship, fits nicely with the Biblical claim that the Danites lived in ships, they were after all in possession of the seaport Joppa, where by all indications ship building was a major industry. It is often said, by historians who have studied the matter, that the Phoenicians with their access to the cedars of Lebanon, one  of the  few  trees  which  produces timbers  large enough  to be suitable  for the task, were  the probable inventors of the keeled ship. A simple reclassification of the Hebrew Danite, as a branch of the Phoenicians, makes this speculation fit the Greek myth.
Neither does  the Saga end  here  because then,  in accordance with Greek mythology, the sons of Aegyptus also  went  to Argolis, following  after  the  delinquent Danaans, to bring them back and punish them for their treachery. But it took them a bit longer to get there, leap fragging from port to port along the coasts, in their less seaworthy  unkeeled barges.  By the time the sons  of Aegyptus arrived at Argos, the Danaans  were already established, with  a degree of royal power,  and  the Argolian army was ready to defend them. Now, the sons of Aegyptus, a mere posse in the face of an army, could not enforce  a return  upon  the Danaans,  and because they were  told  not  to return  empty  handedly,  they decided to quit their homeland back in Israel, and resolved to remain in Argos. The sons of Aegyptus sued for their portion of the royalty at Argolis on the same basis that the Danaans did, and they were recognized as well.
This brings us to a story that seems to reflect the circumstances that brought  about  an end  to the war between the  northern Canaanites of Hazor and  the Jacobites,  which must have been what was known to the Greeks as, “the myth ofLynceus and Yyperrnnestra” or, otherwise known as, the myth of”The Danaids.” The Jacobites were  not  united  in their  war  against  the Canaanites, as we have pointed out the Danites did not participate  in this war, and  they were admonished by Deborah for their complacency, so were the people of Gilead who also apparently sat out the hostilities. The term “Gilead” was an often used alternative  name  for the phrase “upper Manasseh,” which makes a plausible origin for the name  “Hypermnestra,” for the Hebrews were fond of assigning a figurative woman to represent national or tribal groups,  and the word  “hyper,” is the usual Greek term indicating “above” or “beyond,” as in beyond a river. Also, as if there weren’t enough coincidences between these  two stories  already,  the Greek name “Lynceus” means the same thing in Greek, that the Hebrew name “Laish” means in Hebrew, namely a “small lion.” Therefore,  as allies in opposition  to the Jacobite aggression,  it is not completely unreasonable, that the tribe of “upper Manasseh,” who spared  the city of “Laish,” during the war against  Canaan,  may have served as the origin for the Greek  myth wherein Hypermnestra,  ( refusing her charge to kill hirn,spared the life of Lynceus.  Perhaps they were  considered contractual partners, as if under a treaty. It is plausible, is it not, that such a treaty or contract, might be symbolized, in Greek mythology, as a marriage. At least we don’t have to rely exclusively on the Hebrew story of the daughters of Zelophehad, as the origin for the Greek myth about the wedding of Hypermnestra and Lynceus.
Those Jacobites who made  up the coalition of the willing in the struggle against Canaan,  were able to win the war  through  the efforts of a very  brave  woman named Jael.  Jael  was  not  a Jacobite; instead she belonged to a race, known as the Kenites, who were, at that time, also at peace  with the Canaanites. However, the Kenites were on friendly terms with the sons of Jacob as well, in fact, Zipporah, the wife of Moses was a Kenite (also called Midianite and Ethiopian), and the apostate Danite priesthood were her descendants.
Jael herself was a relative who could not have been too far removed  from the Danite priesthood, for it is noted right in the Scriptural account of the war, that her family was descended from the house of Hobab, who is therein called the father-in-law of Moses. It may have been  this Kenite relationship  to the Danite priesthood, combined with  Danite  treaty obligations mentioned earlier as necessitated by the close proximity of the Danite stronghold at Laish to Hazor the chief city of the northern Canaanites, that gave the Canaanite  General Sisera the false sense of security that he must have had in order for him to take a nap in the tent of Jael.
Jael deluded the weary Sisera completely and when he had fallen asleep, she took a pin and ran him through so that he died. Now, how many stories are there in which a man  is beguiled  into falling asleep by, and  in the presence of, the woman  who intends to murder  him, and  then  while the man  is sleeping the treacherous woman  runs him through with a pin and kills him? I can think of only two, one is the Scriptural account of Jael and Sisera, and the other is the Greek myth that is known as “The Danaids.” Furthermore, it is not only this very particular story that coincides between the Scriptures and  the myth, but also the placement sequentially  of each tale. Just as the story of Jael and Sisera comes at the end of the war that saw a falling out between the Jacobites and their brothers the Danites, who “dwelt in ships,” so too the Greek myth of the Danaids is the story of the subsequent reconciliation  between the progeny of ” Danaus, who fled in ships from their brothers  the sons of Aegyptus at the time of their quarrel.
It should  be said  at  this  juncture  that,  while  the scriptural story makes the female assassin Jael out to be a heroine, the Greek myth of the Danaids is coming to us from the complete opposite point of view, for the Greek heroine Hypermnestra  is famed  for not doing, exactly what Jael did do. In fact the Greeks must have looked at the deed  of Jael as an act of the most heinous  kind of treachery, for they have assigned  to the other forty-nine sisters of Hypermnestra, those who did commit  the deceitful  act,  an  extra  punishment of frustration  in Hades. They are compelled  to unsuccessfully fill a leaky water  jar forever. Thus the Danaids can always be recognized on pottery, coins, and other works of art, by the fact that they were always carrying their ever present water  jugs. It is interesting  to note, in this regard, that according to the song of Deborah, the water distributors played an important  role in spreading the word that rallied  the  warriors who  fought  on  the  side  of the perfidious Jael, furthermore, when Sisera came  to the tent of Jael, the first thing he asked for was to be served water. At any rate, in vilifying the treacherous Jael it does seem as though the Greeks felt the need for some reason, perhaps the one here outlined, to defame the entire water carrying guild as well.
Are we to conclude that these  two very similar traditions, containing complete series of parallel motifs, each sprang up  independently and  without cross contamination between these two cultures,  the Greek and the Hebrew, separated only by a well worn  path across the Mediterranean sea? We know that pottery traversed between Greece  and the Levant, so why are we so reluctant to identify the popular stories that were told in each place? This, perhaps wouldn’t be so difficult to admit in itself, but in fact I think that we shall find, that it was more than simple cross contamination, it was a more direct contact,  for  the  original  waves  of immigration to Argolis in Greece,  the forefathers of the Mycenaean civilization, were the sons of Anak, closely followed by the Danites and the Jacobites, but of these, predominantly the Danites, so much so, that throughout the  writings of Homer, he  usually refers to the Peloponnesian  Greeks, by the general term “Danaans.”
At this point, the question  naturally arises;  Did the Danaans come from the Scriptural home of the Danites in the land of Jacob,  or as the Greek myth seems to indicate,  from the land of Egypt? If there  is a simple answer to this question, it is this; The Greeks had a poor knowledge of world  geography. Furthermore, our understanding of Greek geography leaves much to be desired. While,  on  the  one  hand,  it is true  that  we moderns now call the land of the Nile, Egypt, and we did get this habit from the Greeks, it is not so certain, on the other hand, that the original ancient  Greek myth tellers themselves, had this same interpretation. For the ancient myth itself, which we have culled from Apollodorus (2.1.4-5), runs thus; “Belus (the father of Aegyptus) remained in Egypt, reigned over the country, and married Anchinoe, daughter of Nile, by whom he had twin sons, Aegyptus and  Danaus, but according to Euripides, he had also Cepheus and Phineus. Danaus was settled  by Belus in Libya, and Aegyptus in Arabia” Here, we can plainly see that Aegyptus was not a King of Egypt, but of some  other land in Arabia. The Greek myths go on to tell us, that Aegyptus in his Arabian  land, conquered  a nearby people who were known as the “Melampodes,” and that it was this territory, that he went on to name after himself, “Egypt.” The term, “Melampodes,” often interpreted as meaning  “black  footed,”  is thought  by many to be another name for the Egyptians themselves. Certainly Aegyptus would not have had to conquer the people whom his father was ruling over. However, if we are to look for a people whose land neighbored the land of Arabia, and who were  not already  subjected to Egyptian suzerainty then I suggest that we look to those ancient  rebellious slaves from Egypt, who lived on the border  of Arabia, the Jacobites. And since the people who lived in the land of Jacob  at that time, were  the same people who once served as slaves, stomping out the mud bricks for the Pharaoh’s building projects, the term “Melampodes,” or “black footed,” could easily have been  a derisive reference to them,  as famed  for their muddy black feet. They had as we know, come from the land of the Nile, so the Greek confusion  between the Melampodes and the Egyptians wouldn’t seem to be so far fetched after all. (Do we call the calf god, “of Egypt,” because of the Greeks? Perhaps we should change  that to, “Jacob’s calf god.”)
Furthermore, it should be pointed out that the term “Egypt,” was  not the popular  nor usual  name  for the land of the Pharaohs. By any measure, the most popular name  was “Misir,” as in its equivalent  Hebrew  name Mizraim. The Hittites, the Assyrians, and the Chaldeans, like the modem Arabs all used this name,  and not the name  “Egypt.” In fact the Greeks were aware  .:of this name  for the land of the Nile from a very early date as well. The ancient  Greek script, called linear 8, which was used by the Danaans, and has been deciphered as the language of Mycenaean Greek  by the modem philologists, does  contain  the usual term, in the form “Misirayo,” which  has been  translated to mean,  “the Egyptian.” The term “Aikupitiyo,” has also been  found to occur  in the same linear  B script, and  it has been translated as well to mean,  “the Egyptian.” Of course, these modern scholars are  only  following a well established usage and offer no explanation as to why the Mycenaean Greeks should refer to the Egyptians by two different names in the same script. Allow rne to offer an explanation; the Mycenaean word, “Aikupitiyo,” means, just as it so closely resembles “Jacobite,” they were  like the  people  of Misir, but  not  exactly.  This resemblance between the two words,  is striking, but this it in itself is not enough  to identify them with each othe. However, combined with the similarities between the stories in the Hebrew scriptures, and the myths of the Greeks, we  may  draw some more definite conclusions.
We know from the Scriptures that the Jew wandered to the land  of the “Jacobite,” but  the  myths  have  Io wandering to the land of “Aegyptus.” And, while we know that the Danites had a family quarrel  with their brothers the “Jacobites” which caused them to retreat into their ships, the myths have the Danaans fleeing by ship from their brothers, the sons  of “Aegyptus.” We notice the error, but we especially notice the consistency of it, it is apparent that the earlier myths had it right, but the later speculation misplaced the name  of Jacob on the land of the Nile. If this last point should seem like a circular argument, remember,  the  evidence  for identifying Io and  the Danaans,  with the Jew and the Danite,  are strong  enough to stand on their own. Identifying Jacob with Aegyptus is a conclusion based upon  these stronger evidences, it is certainly not supposed by me  to be  proof  of the  Io and  Danaus theories.
So far we’ve only covered  the few short generations between Joshua’s  expelling of  the  Anakim, and Deborah’s report  of the Danite apostasy,  many other similar waves of Greek immigration by the descendants of lo, were to follow. For it was about 100 years after the days of the Danite apostasy,  that the sons  of Perseus immigrated to Argolis from the city of Joppa in Phoenicia, and these more recent  Danites had, in the mean time, developed their own version of the events  of Hebrew history. These sons of Perseus, those whom we will be referring to as the Perseids,  have been attributed with building  the walls of Mycenae  and  as  such,  can  be placed  into actual  historic chronology.  For these walls have been  found  by archaeologists and dated in synchronization with Egyptian history. The Perseids knew that they were related  to the earlier established Danaans  by race, but as to the story of lo and  Hermes  they must  have  had  their  doubts. It is apparent that they had  neither  the ability nor the desire  to abolish  the earlier mythology, so they simply added their own  version of history onto it,  as  if their stories were subsequent events. They gave a son to Hypermnestra and  Lynceus whom they called ”Abas,” (plausibly meant to represent Abraham) which is  the  usual  Hebrew  word  for “father,” and they made  this Abas to be the father of their  own mythological history,  which  they began at the story of a Acrisius and Proteus. Of any story attributable to the  Greek  mythological character who was known as Abas there is little to report. It was said by some that he was a great warrior, but there is no report of his participation in any war, some say that he invented the shield, or that he had a magic shield which one only had to display, (a bit like the Ark of the Covenant) and the enemy would be miraculously dispersed. Not to discount the story  of his shield,  but there was a much  more important role to be played by Abas, which  was that of a genealogical connector between the earlier Danite/Inachid dynasty and  the subsequent Danite/Perseid one.
