625 Die Like an Egyptian: Burial Customs in Iron Age I Philistia Shirly Ben Dor Evian and Mario A. S. Martin Abstract The fve tombs of the “Philistine lords” at Tell el-Far‘ah (South) have been a focal point for the study of Philistine burial customs. This, despite the long recognized fact, that they are also highly Egyptianized and possibly earlier than the Philistine pottery within them. In the present study we point out the similarities between these tombs and Egyptian rock-cut chamber tombs from Egypt itself and suggest a different interpretation to the Philistine burial customs they represent. Keywords Tell el-Far‘ah (South) · Philistines · Burial practices 1 Introduction The characteristic burial customs of southwest Israel during the early stages of the Iron Age have yet to be fully comprehended by modern day research. The accumu- lated evidence has thus far pointed to a mixture of burial forms, ranging from man- made caves, 1 to cremations, pit burials, brick-case tombs, jar burials, intramural 1 For Tell ‘Etun, see Edelstein & Aurant, 1992; for Tell es-Saf/Gath, see Faerman et al., 2011. It is with great joy that we dedicate this article to Tom Levy, a dear colleague, an outstanding archaeologist with a passion for both the past and the future, and above all a true mentsh. S. Ben Dor Evian (*) Department of Cultural Heritage and the Recanati Institute for Maritime Studies, University of Haifa, Haifa, Israel e-mail: bdevian@gmail.com M. A. S. Martin Institute of Ancient History and Ancient Near Eastern Studies, University of Innsbruck, Innsbruck, Austria e-mail: mario_antonio@hotmail.com © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 E. Ben-Yosef, I. W. N. Jones (eds.), “And in Length of Days Understanding” (Job 12:12): Essays on Archaeology in the Eastern Mediterranean and Beyond in Honor of Thomas E. Levy, Interdisciplinary Contributions to Archaeology, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-27330-8_27