Throughout the second half of the years 2000, Fred Woudhuizen and Wim
van Binsbergen struggled to complete their voluminous, jointly authored
book Ethnicity in Mediterranean Protohistory. Its principal aim was to
make a critical and original contribution to the study of the Sea
Peoples. Destroying the Ḫatti / Hittite empire, and seriously damaging
the Egyptian New Kingdom, the Sea Peoples dominated the scene of the
Eastern Mediterranean by the end of the Bronze Age. That book appeared
in 2011 as volume 2256 in the prestigious 'International Series' of
British Archaeological Reports (BAR). To a greater extent and with more
justification than could be argued then, Wim van Binsbergen's sections
in that book were inspired by the (admittedly obscure, obsolete, and
unsystematic) work of the French-German linguist / Armenologist Joseph
Karst (1871-1962). Therefore, greatly expanded and reworked, with a new
Introduction, a new Conclusion vindicating Karst's four-tiered model of
Mediterranean linguistico-ethnic identity (as his sole lasting finding),
an extensive Bibliography, and exhaustive Indexes of Proper Names and of
Authors Cited, the present monograph offers such original chapters on
Karst as were withdrawn from the proofs of Ethnicity in Mediterranean
Protohistory. Painstakingly, and with the aid of many newly-drawn maps
bringing out Karst's ideas however bizarre at times, this study
reconstructs, and critically evaluates, Karst's general approach to
ethnicity in the Ancient Mediterranean region. It particularly
highlights Karst's significance for the study of the Sea Peoples and the
Biblical Table of Nations (Genesis 10) - as two main puzzles in this
field. As an exercise in the History of Ideas, this text is hoped to
inspire, benefit, and amuse, Ancient Historians, Bible scholars,
linguists, comparative mythologists, Mediterraneanists, classicists,
students of ethnicity, and archaeologists. New edition, vindicating
Karst's four-tiered model for the Bronze-Age Mediterranean
