page_title: Sherden
section_title: Early historical references
hierarchical_section_title: Sherden / Early historical references
caption_attribution_description: English: Sherden personal guards of Ramesses II, on a relief in the Sun Temple of Abu Simbel. Drawing as published by Ippolito Rosellini. Русский: Воины-шердана изображённые древними египтянами
context_page_description: The Sherden are one of the several ethnic groups the Sea Peoples were said to be composed of, appearing in fragmentary historical and iconographic records from the eastern Mediterranean in the late 2nd millennium BC.
  On reliefs, they are shown carrying round shields and spears, dirks or swords, perhaps of Naue II type. In some cases, they are shown wearing corselets and kilts, but their key distinguishing feature is a horned helmet, which, in all cases but three, features a circular accouterment at the crest. At Medinet Habu the corselet appears similar to that worn by the Philistines. The Sherden sword, it has been suggested by archaeologists since James Henry Breasted, may have developed from an enlargement of European daggers and been associated with the exploitation of Bohemian tin. Robert Drews suggested that use of this weapon by groups of Sherden and Philistine mercenaries made them capable of withstanding attacks by chariotry and so made them valuable allies in warfare, but Drews's theory has been widely criticised by contemporary scholars.
context_section_description: The earliest known mention of the people called Srdn-w, more usually called Sherden or Shardana, is generally thought to be the Akkadian reference to the "še–er–ta–an–nu" in the Amarna Letters correspondence from Rib-Hadda, mayor (hazannu) of Byblos, to the Pharaoh Amenhotep III or Akhenaten in the 14th century BC. Though they have been referred to as sea raiders and mercenaries, who were prepared to offer their services to local employers, these texts do not provide any evidence of that association, and they shed no light on what the function of these "širdannu-people" was at the time.
  
  The first certain mention of the Sherden is found in the records of Ramesses II (ruled 1279-1213 BC), who defeated them in his second year (1278 BC) when they attempted to raid Egypt's coast. The pharaoh subsequently incorporated many of these warriors into his personal guard. An inscription by Ramesses II on a stele from Tanis that recorded the Sherden pirates' raid and subsequent defeat, speaks of the constant threat which they posed to Egypt's Mediterranean coasts:
  the unruly Sherden whom no one had ever known how to combat, they came boldly sailing in their warships from the midst of the sea, none being able to withstand them.
  After Ramesses II succeeded in defeating the invaders and capturing some of them, Sherden captives are depicted in this Pharaoh's bodyguard, where they are conspicuous by their helmets with horns with a ball projecting from the middle, their round shields and the great Naue II swords, with which they are depicted in inscriptions about the Battle of Kadesh, fought against the Hittites. Ramesses stated in his Kadesh inscriptions that he incorporated some of the Sherden into his own personal guard at the Battle of Kadesh.
  Years later, other waves of Sea People, the Sherden included, were defeated by Merneptah, son of Ramesses II, and Ramesses III. An Egyptian work written around 1100 BC, the Onomasticon of Amenope, documents the presence of the Sherden in Palestine. After being defeated by Pharaoh Ramsses III, they, along with other "Sea Peoples", would be allowed to settle in that territory, subject to Egyptian rule.
  The Italian orientalist Giovanni Garbini identified the territory settled by the Sherden in Northern Palestine as the one occupied, according to the Bible, by the Israelite tribe of Zebulun, where also appears a village named Sared. Archaeologist Adam Zertal suggests that some Sherden settled in what is now northern Israel. He hypothesizes that Biblical Sisera was a Sherden general and that the archaeological site at el-Ahwat (whose architecture resembles nuraghe sites in Sardinia) was Sisera's capital, Harosheth Haggoyim, though this theory has not received wide acceptance in the scholarly community.
caption: A rendering of two guards from the relief above, in a 19th-century drawing; their equipment is clearly visible.
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