Sea Peoples
Channel: the aleatoric learning channel
Date: 2021-10-30

Although the archaeological inscriptions do not include reference to a migration, the Sea Peoples are conjectured to have sailed around the eastern Mediterranean and invaded Anatolia, Syria, Phoenicia, Canaan, Cyprus, and Egypt toward the end of the Bronze Age.French Egyptologist Emmanuel de Rougé first used the term peuples de la mer in 1855 in a description of reliefs on the Second Pylon at Medinet Habu documenting Year 8 of Ramesses III. Gaston Maspero, de Rougé's successor at the Collège de France, subsequently popularized the term "Sea Peoples"-and an associated migration-theory-in the late 19th century. The historical narrative stems primarily from seven Ancient Egyptian sources and although in these inscriptions the designation "Of the sea" does not appear in relation to all of these peoples, the term "Sea Peoples" is commonly used in modern publications to refer to the following nine peoples, in alphabetical order: The Medinet Habu inscriptions from which the Sea Peoples concept was first described remain the primary source and "The basis of virtually all significant discussions of them". Amongst them are some of the sea peoples spoken of in the Egyptian inscriptions previously mentioned, and many of the peoples who would later take part in the great migrations of the 12th century BCE. The major event of the reign of the Pharaoh Merneptah, 4th king of the 19th Dynasty was his battle against a confederacy termed "The Nine Bows" at Perire in the western delta in the 5th and 6th years of his reign. Exactly which peoples were consistently in the Nine Bows is not clear, but present at the battle were the Libyans, some neighboring Meshwesh, and possibly a separate revolt in the following year involving peoples from the eastern Mediterranean, including the Kheta, or Syrians, and for the first time in history, the Israelites. The American Hittitologist Gary Beckman writes, on page 23 of Akkadica 120: A terminus ante quem for the destruction of the Hittite empire has been recognized in an inscription carved at Medinet Habu in Egypt in the eighth year of Ramesses III. This text narrates a contemporary great movement of peoples in the eastern Mediterranean, as a result of which "The lands were removed and scattered to the fray. No land could stand before their arms, from Hatti, Kode, Carchemish, Arzawa, Alashiya on being cut off." Ramesses' comments about the scale of the Sea Peoples' onslaught in the eastern Mediterranean are confirmed by the destruction of the states of Hatti, Ugarit, Ashkelon and Hazor around this time. The inscriptions of Ramesses III at his Medinet Habu mortuary temple in Thebes record three victorious campaigns against the Sea Peoples considered bona fide, in Years 5, 8 and 12, as well as three considered spurious, against the Nubians and Libyans in Year 5 and the Libyans with Asiatics in Year 11. The Onomasticon of Amenope, or Amenemipit, gives slight credence to the idea that the Ramesside kings settled the Sea Peoples in Canaan. The eruption is thus unlikely to be connected to the Sea Peoples. John Chadwick championed a Sea Peoples hypothesis, which asserted that, since the Pylians had retreated to the northeast, the attack must have come from the southwest, the Sea Peoples being, in his view, the most likely candidates. An origin outside the Aegean also has been proposed, as in this example by Michael Grant: "There was a gigantic series of migratory waves, extending all the way from the Danube valley to the plains of China."Such a comprehensive movement is associated with more than one people or culture; instead, it was a "Disturbance", according to Finley: A large-scale movement of people is indicated ... the original center of disturbance was in the Carpatho-Danubian region of Europe.