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It is the term used for a mysterious confederacy of seafaring raiders who sailed into the eastern shores of the Mediterranean, invaded Cyprus, Hatti and the Levant, and attempted to enter Egyptian territory during the late 19th dynasty, and especially year 8 of Ramesses III of the 20th Dynasty. The term "Sea Peoples" was never used in Egyptian records, but has been popularized in the XIX century (from an 1800s journal, "the people of the sea.")
The earliest mention of the Sea Peoples proper is in an inscription of the Egyptian king Merneptah, whose rule is usually dated from 1213 BC to 1204 BC, although mention of individual groups does occur earlier (for example Denyen, during the reign of Amenhotep III, and Shardana, as mercenaries to Rameses II). Merneptah states that in the fifth year of his reign (1208 BC) he defeated an invasion of an allied force of Libyans and the Sea People, killing 6,000 soldiers and taking 9,000 prisoners.
About 20 years later the Egyptian king Ramesses III was forced to deal with another invasion of the Sea Peoples. In the mortuary temple he built at Medinat Habu, in Thebes, Ramesses describes how, despite the fact "no land could stand before" the forces of the Sea People and that they swept through "Hatti, Kode, Carchemish, Arzawa, and Alashiya" destroying their cities, he defeated them in a sea battle. He gives the names of the tribes of the Sea People as including: the Peleset, the Tjeker, the Shekelesh, the Denyen, and the Weshesh. However, because this list is identical to the one Merneptah had included in his victory inscription, and because Ramesses also describes on his temple walls several victories known to be fictitious, some Egyptologists believe that he never actually fought the Sea Peoples, but only claimed the victories of Merneptah as his own—a common practice of a number of the Pharaohs.
A Sea People appear in another set of records dated around the early 12th century BC. Ammurapi, the last king of Ugarit (c.1191 BC - 1182 BC) received a letter from the Hittite king Suppliluliuma II warning him about the "Shikalayu who live on boats" who are perhaps the same people as the Shekelesh mentioned in Merneptah's list. It may be relevant that shortly after he received this communication, Ammurapi was overthrown and the city of Ugarit sacked, never to be inhabited again.
Hypotheses about the Sea Peoples
The abrupt end of several civilizations in the decades traditionally dated around 1200 BC have caused many ancient historians to hypothesize that the Sea People caused the collapse of the Hittite, Mycenaean and Mitanni kingdoms. However, Marc van de Mieroop and others have argued against this theory on several points. Grimal argues that the kingdoms of the Mittani, Assyria, and Babylon were more likely destroyed by a group who dwelled on the edges of the settled lands called by the Akkadian word Habiru. Another argument Grimal makes is that the attempted Sea People invasion of Egypt that Ramesses III foiled is now seen as nothing more than a minor skirmish, the records of his victories on his temple walls being greatly exaggerated. Though it is clear from the archeological excavations that Ugarit, Ashkelon and Hazor were destroyed about this time, Carchemish was not and other cities in the area such as Byblos and Sidon survived unscathed.
Another hypothesis concerning the Sea People, revived by Eberhard Zangger is in part based on their recorded names, and on the fact that the pottery at sites associated with Sea Peoples, such as the Philistines and Tjekker in the Levant, is of Mycenean derivation, to suggest that the Sea People may have been involved in the Greek migrations of this period. Such a theory identifies the "Ekwesh" with the Achaeans and the "Denyen" with the Dananoi, alternate ancient names for the Hellenes, with the further suggestion that the term "Achaeans" derives from a hypothesized ancient Pelasgian word "Acha", which would mean water. This theory implies that the Philistines were part of this Greek-speaking confederacy. This theory was that the Sea Peoples were the early semi-literate city states of the Greek Mycenaean civilizations, who destroyed each other in a disastrous series of conflicts lasting several decades. There would have been few or no external invaders and just a few excursions outside the Greek-speaking part of the Aegean civilization. The city states were semi-literate in the sense that very few individuals could master the complex syllabary used to write Linear B and other written forms of the early Greek language, and, thus, relatively few documents were produced in daily life to bear witness to the fratricidal nature of the wars. In contrast, the completely alphabetic writing system which started to appear around 800 BC was relatively easy to learn and use, thus giving rise to the production of many documents, both epic and ritual.
In addition to the interpretation of relevant textual records, the archaeological record provides a substantial basis to believe that peoples from central Europe and the Italian peninsula may have contributed to the Sea Peoples phenomenon. Pottery and bronze weapons of a distinctly Italic type have been found in quantity at excavations of structures built atop the charred ruins of cities believed to have been burnt to the ground by the Sea Peoples [citation needed]. Attempts have been made to identify certain Sea Peoples with Italic peoples; for example, some scholars have speculated that the Shekelesh can be identified with the ancient people of Sicily.
Additionally, fibulae of a plainly Central European type, and amber beads, have also been found at some of the sites. None of these items appear in the archaeological record of the area prior to the Sea Peoples period. Also worth noting is that some of the knives and cups of an Italic design bear a strong resemblance to knives and cups unearthed in Hungary and central Germany, dating to the period 1800 - 1600 BC.
Without a doubt, the most compelling archaeological evidence relating to settlement of the Sea Peoples in the Eastern Mediterranean derives from the remains of the Philistine culture, found along the southern Coastal Plain of modern day Israel. The archaeological evidence from this region, termed Philistia in the Bible, shows distinct remains of the disruption of the Canaanite settlement that existed during the Late Bronze Age, and its replacement (with some integration) by a culture with a predominantly foreign (mainly Aegean) origin. This includes distinct pottery (at first pottery clearly belonging to the Myc IIIC tradition, but then gradually transforming into unique Philistine pottery in which both Aegean and local styles are mixed), architecture, cult, and even some evidence of non-Semitic, Indo-European, language. Finds of the Philistine culture are found at numerous sites, in particular in the excavations of the five main cities of the Philistines (the "Pentapolis" of the biblical text), Ashkelon, Ashdod, Ekron, Gath, and Gaza (although very little excavations have been conducted at the last site). Although some scholars (e.g. S. Sherratt, Drews, etc.) have challenged the theory that the Philistine culture is an immigrant culture, claiming instead that they are a development of the Canaanite culture, the overall evidence argues strongly for the immigrant hypothesis, as argued, for example, by T. Dothan, Barako, and others.
One thing about the Sea Peoples is beyond doubt: following violent conquest, the Sea Peoples always burnt rich cities to the ground. They made no attempt to retain this wealth, but instead built new settlements of a lower cultural and economic level atop the ruins. This demonstrates a cultural discontinuity. It is unlikely that the traditional Helladic warrior classes would have so discarded the spoils of victory, if the writings of Homer are to be considered a guide.
See:
• List
of Cities in Egypt
• Cairo
• Sharm
El Sheikh
• King Tut - Tutankhamun
•
Nile
• Egyptian Hieroglyph
• Mummy
• Giza
• Great Sphinx of Giza
• Great Pyramid of Giza
• Egyptian Museum
• Ramesses III
• Ramesses IV
• Map of Egypt
• Economy of Egypt
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