Sea Peoples

The Sea Peoples were a group of tribes hypothesized to have attacked Egypt and other Eastern Mediterranean regions around 1200 BC during the Late Bronze Age. The hypothesis was first proposed by the 19th-century Egyptologists Emmanuel de Rougé and Gaston Maspero, on the basis of primary sources such as the reliefs on the Mortuary Temple of Ramesses III at Medinet Habu. Subsequent research developed the hypothesis further, attempting to link these sources to other Late Bronze Age evidence of migration, piracy, and destruction. While initial versions of the hypothesis regarded the Sea Peoples as a primary cause of the Late Bronze Age collapse, more recent versions generally regard them as a symptom of events which were already in motion before their purported attacks.
The Sea Peoples included well-attested groups such as the Lukka, as well as others such as the Weshesh whose origins are unknown. Hypotheses regarding the origin of the various groups are the source of much speculation. Several of them appear to have been Aegean tribes, while others may have originated in Sicily, Sardinia, Cyprus, and Western Anatolia.
The concept of the Sea Peoples was first proposed by Emmanuel de Rougé, curator of the Louvre, in his 1855 work Note on Some Hieroglyphic Texts Recently Published by Mr. Greene, as an interpretation of the battles of Ramesses III described on the Second Pylon at Medinet Habu, based upon recent photographs of the temple by John Beasley Greene. De Rougé noted that "in the crests of the conquered peoples the Sherden and the Teresh bear the designation of the peuples de la mer", in a reference to the prisoners depicted at the base of the Fortified East Gate. In 1867, de Rougé published his Excerpts of a dissertation on the attacks directed against Egypt by the peoples of the Mediterranean in the 14th century BC, which focused primarily on the battles of Ramesses II and Merneptah and which proposed translations for many of the geographic names included in the hieroglyphic inscriptions. De Rougé later became chair of Egyptology at the Collège de France and was succeeded by Gaston Maspero. Maspero built upon de Rougé's work and published The Struggle of the Nations, in which he described the theory of the seaborne migrations in detail in 1895–96 for a wider audience, at a time when the idea of population migrations would have felt familiar to the general population.
The migration theory was taken up by other scholars such as Eduard Meyer and became the generally accepted theory amongst Egyptologists and Orientalists. Since the early 1990s, however, it has been brought into question by a number of scholars.
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.
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".
Three separate narratives from Egyptian records refer to more than one of the nine peoples, found in a total of six sources. The seventh and most recent source referring to more than one of the nine peoples is a list (Onomasticon) of 610 entities, rather than a narrative. These sources are summarized in the table below.
Possible records of sea peoples generally or in particular date to two campaigns of Ramesses II, a pharaoh of the militant 19th Dynasty: operations in or near the delta in the second year of his reign and the major confrontation with the Hittite Empire and allies at the Battle of Kadesh in his fifth. The years of this long-lived pharaoh's reign are not known exactly, but they must have comprised nearly all of the first half of the 13th century BC.
In his Second Year, an attack of the Sherden, or Shardana, on the Nile Delta was repulsed and defeated by Ramesses, who captured some of the pirates. The event is recorded on Tanis Stele II. An inscription by Ramesses II on the stela from Tanis which recorded the Sherden raiders' raid and subsequent capture speaks of the continuous threat they posed to Egypt's Mediterranean coasts:
The Sherden prisoners were subsequently incorporated into the Egyptian army for service on the Hittite frontier by Ramesses and fought as Egyptian soldiers in the Battle of Kadesh. Another stele usually cited in conjunction with this one is the "Aswan Stele" (there were other stelae at Aswan), which mentions the king's operations to defeat a number of peoples including those of the "Great Green (the Egyptian name for the Mediterranean)".
The Battle of Kadesh was the outcome of a campaign against the Hittites and their allies in the Levant in the pharaoh's Year 5. The imminent collision of the Egyptian and Hittite empires became obvious to both, and they both prepared campaigns against the strategic midpoint of Kadesh for the next year. Ramesses divided his Egyptian forces, which were then ambushed piecemeal by the Hittite army and nearly defeated. Ramesses was separated from his forces and had to fight singlehandedly to get back to his troops. He then mustered several counterattacks while waiting for reinforcements. Once the reinforcements from the South and East arrived, the Egyptians managed to drive the Hittites back to Kadesh. While it was a strategic Egyptian victory, neither side managed to attain their operational objectives.
At home, Ramesses had his scribes formulate an official description, which has been called "the Bulletin" because it was widely published by inscription. Ten copies survive today on the temples at Abydos, Karnak, Luxor and Abu Simbel, with reliefs depicting the battle. The "Poem of Pentaur", describing the battle, also survived.
The poem relates that the previously captured Sherden were not only working for the Pharaoh but were also formulating a plan of battle for him; i.e. it was their idea to divide Egyptian forces into four columns. There is no evidence of any collaboration with the Hittites or malicious intent on their part, and if Ramesses considered it, he never left any record of that consideration.
The poem lists the peoples who went to Kadesh as allies of the Hittites. 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 BC (see Appendix A to the Battle of Kadesh).
The major event of the reign of the Pharaoh Merneptah (1213–1203 BC), 4th king of the 19th Dynasty, was his battle at Perire in the western delta in the 5th and 6th years of his reign, against a confederacy termed "the Nine Bows". Depredations of this confederacy had been so severe that the region was "forsaken as pasturage for cattle, it was left waste from the time of the ancestors".
The pharaoh's action against them is attested in a single narrative found in three sources. The most detailed source describing the battle is the Great Karnak Inscription; two shorter versions of the same narrative are found in the "Athribis Stele" and the "Cairo Column". The "Cairo column" is a section of a granite column now in the Cairo Museum, which was first published by Maspero in 1881 with just two readable sentences – the first confirming the date of Year 5 and the second stating: "The wretched [chief] of Libya has invaded with ——, being men and women, Shekelesh (S'-k-rw-s) ——". The "Athribis stela" is a granite stela found in Athribis and inscribed on both sides, which like the Cairo column, was first published by Maspero two years later in 1883. The Merneptah Stele from Thebes describes the reign of peace resulting from the victory but does not include any reference to the Sea Peoples.
The Nine Bows were acting under the leadership of the king of Libya and an associated near-concurrent revolt in Canaan involving Gaza, Ascalon, Yenoam and the Israelites. 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 Hittites), or Syrians, and (in the Israel Stele) for the first time in history, the Israelites. In addition to them, the first lines of the Karnak inscription include some sea peoples, which must have arrived in the Western Delta or from Cyrene by ship:
Later in the inscription Merneptah receives news of the attack:
"His majesty was enraged at their report, like a lion", assembled his court and gave a rousing speech. Later, he dreamed he saw Ptah handing him a sword and saying, "Take thou (it) and banish thou the fearful heart from thee." When the bowmen went forth, says the inscription, "Amun was with them as a shield." After six hours, the surviving Nine Bows threw down their weapons, abandoned their baggage and dependants, and ran for their lives. Merneptah states that he defeated the invasion, killing 6,000 soldiers and taking 9,000 prisoners. To be sure of the numbers, among other things, he took the penises of all uncircumcised enemy dead and the hands of all the circumcised, from which history learns that the Ekwesh were circumcised, a fact causing some to doubt they were Greek.
A number of primary sources about the Sea Peoples pertain to the reign of Ramesses III, who reigned from 1186 to 1155 BC. The battles were later recorded in two long inscriptions from his Medinet Habu mortuary temple, which are physically separate and somewhat different from one another. The Year 8 campaign is the best-recorded Sea Peoples invasion.
The fact that several civilizations collapsed around 1175 BC has led to the suggestion that the Sea Peoples may have been involved at the end of the Hittite, Mycenaean and Mitanni kingdoms. The American Hittitologist Gary Beckman writes, on page 23 of Akkadica 120 (2000):
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, Ascalon and Hazor around this time. As the Hittitologist Trevor Bryce observes, "It should be stressed that the invasions were not merely military operations, but involved the movements of large populations, by land and sea, seeking new lands to settle."
This situation is confirmed by the Medinet Habu temple reliefs of Ramesses III which show that "the Peleset and Tjekker warriors who fought in the land battle [against Ramesses III] are accompanied in the reliefs by women and children loaded in ox-carts."
The inscriptions of Ramesses III at Medinet Habu record three victorious campaigns against the Sea Peoples that are 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. During Year 8, some Hittites were operating with the Sea Peoples.
The inner west wall of the second court describes the invasion of Year 5. Only the Peleset and Tjeker are mentioned, but the list is lost in a lacuna. The attack was two-pronged, one by sea and one by land. That is, the Sea Peoples divided their forces. Ramesses was waiting in the Nile mouths and trapped the enemy fleet there. The land forces were defeated separately.
The Sea Peoples attacked again Year 8 with a similar result. The campaign is recorded more extensively on the inner northwest panel of the first court. It is possible, but not generally believed, that the dates are only those of the inscriptions and both refer to the same campaign.
In Ramesses' Year 8, the Nine Bows appear as a "conspiracy in their isles". This time, they are revealed unquestionably as Sea Peoples: the Peleset, Tjeker, Shekelesh, Denyen and Weshesh, which are classified as "foreign countries" in the inscription. They camped in Amor and sent a fleet to the Nile.
He had built a fleet especially for the occasion, hidden it in the mouths of the Nile, and posted coast watchers. The enemy fleet was ambushed there, their ships overturned, and the men dragged up on shore and executed ad hoc.
The land army was also routed within Egyptian controlled territory. Additional information is given in the relief on the outer side of the east wall. This land battle occurred in the vicinity of Djahy against "the northern countries". When it was over, several chiefs were captive: of Hatti, Amor and Shasu among the "land peoples" and the Tjeker, "Sherden of the sea", "Teresh of the sea" and Peleset or Philistines.
The campaign of Year 12 is attested by the Südstele found on the south side of the temple. It mentions the Tjeker, Peleset, Denyen, Weshesh and Shekelesh.
Papyrus Harris I of the period, found behind the temple, suggests a wider campaign against the Sea Peoples but does not mention the date. In it, the persona of Ramses III says, "I slew the Denyen (D'-yn-yw-n) in their isles" and "burned" the Tjeker and Peleset, implying a maritime raid of his own. He also captured some Sherden and Weshesh "of the sea" and settled them in Egypt. As he is called the "Ruler of Nine Bows" in the relief of the east side, these events probably happened in Year 8; i.e. the Pharaoh would have used the victorious fleet for some punitive expeditions elsewhere in the Mediterranean.
The Rhetorical Stela to Ramesses III, Chapel C, Deir el-Medina records a similar narrative.
The Onomasticon of Amenope, or Amenemipit (amen-em-apt), gives slight credence to the idea that the Ramesside kings settled the Sea Peoples in Canaan. Dated to about 1100 BC (at the end of the 22nd dynasty) this document simply lists names. After six place names, four of which were in Philistia, the scribe lists the Sherden (Line 268), the Tjeker (Line 269) and the Peleset (Line 270), who might be presumed to occupy those cities. The Story of Wenamun on a papyrus of the same cache also places the Tjeker in Dor at that time. The fact that the Biblical maritime Tribe of Dan was initially located between the Philistines and the Tjekker, has prompted some to suggest that they may have originally been Denyen. Sherden seem to have been settled around Megiddo and in the Jordan Valley, and Weshwesh (connected by some with the Biblical tribe of Asher) may have been settled further north.
Other Egyptian sources refer to one of the individual groups without reference to any of the other groups.
The Amarna letters, around the mid-14th century BC, including four relating to the Sea Peoples:
Padiiset's Statue refers to the Peleset, the Cairo Column refers to the Shekelesh, the Story of Wenamun refers to the Tjekker, and 13 further Egyptian sources refer to the Sherden.
The earliest ethnic group later considered among the Sea Peoples is believed to be attested in Egyptian hieroglyphs on the Abishemu obelisk found in the Temple of the Obelisks at Byblos by Maurice Dunand. The inscription mentions kwkwn son of rwqq- (or kukun son of luqq), transliterated as Kukunnis, son of Lukka, "the Lycian". The date is given variously as 2000 or 1700 BC
Some Sea Peoples appear in four of the Ugaritic texts, the last three of which seem to foreshadow the destruction of the city around 1180 BC. The letters are therefore dated to the early 12th century. The last king of Ugarit was Ammurapi (c. 1191–1182 BC), who, throughout this correspondence, is quite a young man.
The list of Sea Peoples groups include some which are securely identified and others which are not.
The Lukka people are known from numerous other Hittite and ancient Egyptian records. While the Lukka lands were located in the later region of Lycia, Lukka people appear to have been highly mobile. The Lukka were never a unified kingdom, instead having a decentralized political structure. The Lukka people were famously fractious, with Hittite and Egyptian records describing them as raiders, rebels, and pirates. Lukka people fought against the Hittites as part of the Assuwa confederation, and later fought for the Hittites in the Battle of Kadesh.
Karkiya was a region in western Anatolia known from references in Hittite and Egyptian records. Karkiya was governed by a council of chiefs rather than a king, and was not a unified political entity. The Karkiyans had relations with the Hittite Empire, but were never part of the empire proper. Relations with the Hittites had ups and downs, and Karkiyan soldiers fought for the Hittites at the Battle of Kadesh, most likely as mercenaries. The name has been argued to be related to later terms for Caria, though the linguistic connection is not certain.
Historians generally identify the Peleset with the later Philistines. The Peleset are generally regarded as originating somewhere within the Aegean cultural area; evidence for this identification comes from Genesis 10:14, which associates the Philistines with Caphtor and Casluhim, and Deuteronomy 2:23, which mentions the Caphtorim settling in Gaza. Aegean-style material remains such as Philistine Bichrome ware, as well as genetic evidence suggesting that immigrants from Europe settled in sites such as Ashkalon at the beginning of the Iron Age. Both genetic and archaeological evidence suggests that any newcomers quickly acculturated and intermarried with local populations.
The Shekelesh appear in the earlier Great Karnak Inscription, where they are described as auxiliary troops of the Libyan ruler Meryey. In the inscription, the Pharaoh Merneptah claims that he killed between 200 and 222 of them. They may also appear in Hittite records as the seafaring Shikalayu (Hittite: 𒅆𒅗𒆷𒅀𒌋 ši-ka-la-ia/u-u), though this connection is speculative. It has been hypothesized that the Shekelesh have some connection to Sicily, though evidence is sparse, and proposals vary as to whether Sicily was their original homeland, or if they settled there after the Bronze Age.
The Sherden are previously mentioned in the records of Ramesses II, who claimed to have defeated them in his second year (1278 BC) when they attempted to raid Egypt's coast. The pharaoh subsequently incorporated many of them into his personal guard. They may also appear in the Amarna Letters, with their name rendered in Akkadian as "še-er-ta-an-nu". Based on onomastic similarities, similar weapons, presence in the same places of the Mediterranean and similar relationships with other peoples there, and other analysis of historical and archaeological sources, some archaeologists have proposed to identify the Sherden with the Nuragic civilization of Sardinia. Potential further evidence for this position comes from 12th century Nuragic pottery found at Pyla-Kokkinokremos, a fortified settlement in Cyprus.
The Weshesh are the most sparsely attested among the Sea People. They are only found in documents pertaining to the reign of Ramesses III, and no visual representation of them has ever been identified.
The Ekwesh and the Denyen have been tentatively identified with the Ancient Greek ethnonyms Ἀχαι(ϝ)οί, (Achai(w)oí) and Δαναοί, (Danaoí), which are attested in the Homeric epics.
The Tjeker are commonly known from the Story of Wenamun but also took part in the Battle of Perire against the Egyptians along with the Battle of the Delta under the rule of Ramesses III. They are thought to have settled along the coasts of early Palestine and to have been the people who developed Tel Dor from a town to a larger city. Much like other groups, their origins are unknown, though some historians have suggested they could have originated from Crete, or that they may have originated from the Teucri tribe that roamed northwest Anatolia to the south of Troy, though this has been dismissed as "pure speculation" by Trevor Bryce.