Sea Peoples
The Sea Peoples appear in Egyptian stone as prisoners, warriors and families. On the walls of the mortuary temple of Ramesses III at Medinet Habu, Peleset and Tjekker fighters advance on land. Women and children travel alongside them, loaded into ox-carts. Modern scholars use the name Sea Peoples for a seafaring confederation, or group of tribes, said to have attacked Egypt and neighboring Eastern Mediterranean lands around 1200 BC, in the Late Bronze Age. Yet the group has never been firmly identified. Some of its members are well documented, while others are little more than a name. This documentary asks where the idea came from, which pharaohs claimed to fight these peoples, and what letters from threatened cities reveal. It also asks who the peoples actually were, and whether they ended an age or arrived as it was already ending.
In 1855, Emmanuel de Rougé, curator of the Louvre, published a work titled Note on Some Hieroglyphic Texts Recently Published by Mr. Greene. He drew on new photographs of the Medinet Habu temple, taken by John Beasley Greene. De Rougé was interpreting the battles of Ramesses III shown on the Second Pylon. Prisoners are depicted at the base of the Fortified East Gate, and he wrote: "in the crests of the conquered peoples the Sherden and the Teresh bear the designation of the peuples de la mer". Those French words mean peoples of the sea, and they gave the hypothesis its name.
In 1867 he returned to the subject with Excerpts of a dissertation on the attacks directed against Egypt by the peoples of the Mediterranean in the 14th century BC. This time he focused on the battles of Ramesses II and Merneptah. He also proposed translations for many of the geographic names in the hieroglyphic inscriptions. De Rougé later became chair of Egyptology at the Collège de France, and Gaston Maspero succeeded him there.
Maspero set out the theory of seaborne migrations in detail in The Struggle of the Nations, published in 1895-96 for a wider audience. The timing helped, since the idea of whole populations migrating would have felt familiar to readers of that era. Eduard Meyer and other scholars adopted the theory, and it became the generally accepted view among Egyptologists and Orientalists. Since the early 1990s, a number of scholars have questioned it.
The evidence is thinner than the fame of the name suggests. The story rests mainly on seven ancient Egyptian sources. The words "of the sea" are missing from the entries for many of the nine peoples, yet modern publications apply the label to all nine. The earliest of those sources comes from the reign of Ramesses II.
In 1278 BC, the second year of his reign, Ramesses II turned back a Sherden attack on the Nile Delta and captured some of the pirates. The event is recorded on Tanis Stele II, which describes the threat these raiders 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." Another stele, from Aswan, mentions operations against several peoples, including those of the "Great Green", the Egyptian name for the Mediterranean.
The captured Sherden did not remain prisoners. Ramesses incorporated them into the Egyptian army and sent them to the Hittite frontier. In his fifth year, they fought as Egyptian soldiers at the Battle of Kadesh, against the Hittites and their allies.
Kadesh nearly ended in disaster. Ramesses divided his forces, and the Hittite army ambushed them piece by piece. Separated from his troops, the pharaoh had to fight his way back, then launched several counterattacks while he waited for reinforcements from the south and east. When they arrived, the Egyptians drove the Hittites back to Kadesh. It was a strategic Egyptian victory, though neither side reached its operational goals.
Ramesses made sure the story reached home as a triumph. His scribes drafted an official account called the Bulletin, and ten copies survive on the temples at Abydos, Karnak, Luxor and Abu Simbel, alongside reliefs of the battle. A second account, the Poem of Pentaur, also survives. It credits the captured Sherden with the plan to split the Egyptian army into four columns. No evidence shows any collaboration with the Hittites or any malice, and Ramesses left no record of suspecting it.
The poem also lists the peoples who marched to Kadesh as Hittite allies. Among them are some of the sea peoples, along with many who would take part in the great migrations of the 12th century BC.
Merneptah, fourth king of the 19th Dynasty, ruled from 1213 to 1203 BC, and his great battle took place at Perire in the western delta. It was fought in the fifth and sixth years of his reign against a confederacy called the Nine Bows. Their raids had been so severe that the region was "forsaken as pasturage for cattle". The Nine Bows acted under the king of Libya, while a near-simultaneous revolt in Canaan involved Gaza, Ascalon, Yenoam and the Israelites. The Israel Stele names the Israelites for the first time in history.
The Great Karnak Inscription gives the fullest account of the battle. Shorter versions of the same narrative appear on the Athribis Stele and the Cairo Column. Maspero first published the Cairo Column in 1881, with just two readable sentences, and the Athribis Stele two years later, in 1883. The Karnak text lists Ekwesh, Teresh, Lukka, Sherden and Shekelesh among the invaders, who must have reached the Western Delta, or come from Cyrene, by ship.
A messenger brings the news. Meryey, son of Ded and the fallen chief of Libya, has attacked the land of Tehenu with these bowmen, bringing his wife and children. He has reached the western boundary, in the fields of Perire. According to the inscription, "His majesty was enraged at their report, like a lion." Merneptah assembled his court and gave a rousing speech. Later he dreamed that the god Ptah handed him a sword and said: "Take thou (it) and banish thou the fearful heart from thee."
When the bowmen went out, the text says, "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. Merneptah states that he killed 6,000 soldiers and took 9,000 prisoners. His men verified the tally by taking trophies from the enemy dead, hands from the circumcised and another body part from the uncircumcised. That practice reveals that the Ekwesh were circumcised, which caused some scholars to doubt that they were Greek.
The Merneptah Stele from Thebes celebrates the peace that followed the victory. It never mentions the Sea Peoples.
Ramesses III reigned from 1186 to 1155 BC, and the walls of his temple at Medinet Habu hold the best-recorded Sea Peoples invasion. Two long inscriptions there, physically separate and somewhat different, record three victorious campaigns against the Sea Peoples that scholars consider genuine. They fall in his fifth, eighth and twelfth years. Other claimed campaigns, against Nubians and Libyans in Year 5 and Libyans with Asiatics in Year 11, are considered spurious.
The inner west wall of the second court describes the Year 5 invasion. Only the Peleset and Tjeker are named, and the rest of the list is lost in a gap in the text. The attack came in two prongs, one by sea and one by land. Ramesses waited in the mouths of the Nile and trapped the enemy fleet there. The land forces were defeated separately.
The Year 8 campaign, in 1175 BC, is recorded on the inner northwest panel of the first court, with a similar result. It is possible, though not generally believed, that the two dates belong only to the inscriptions and describe a single campaign. Here the Nine Bows appear as a "conspiracy in their isles", and they are unquestionably Sea Peoples: Peleset, Tjeker, Shekelesh, Denyen and Weshesh. They camped in Amor and sent a fleet toward the Nile. Ramesses had built a fleet for the occasion, hidden it in the Nile mouths and posted coast watchers. The enemy ships were ambushed and overturned, and the men were dragged ashore and executed.
The land army was routed in Egyptian-controlled territory, near Djahy. Several captured chiefs are shown, among them men of Hatti, Amor and the Shasu, and Tjeker, "Sherden of the sea", "Teresh of the sea" and Peleset, or Philistines. Some Hittites were operating with the Sea Peoples that year.
The Year 12 campaign is attested by the Südstele on the south side of the temple, which names the Tjeker, Peleset, Denyen, Weshesh and Shekelesh. Papyrus Harris I, found behind the temple, suggests a wider campaign. In it, the pharaoh says, "I slew the Denyen in their isles", and claims to have "burned" the Tjeker and Peleset, which implies a maritime raid of his own. He also captured Sherden and Weshesh "of the sea" and settled them in Egypt.
The Year 8 inscription describes a great movement of peoples, in which the lands "were removed and scattered to the fray" and "No land could stand before their arms". The scale is confirmed by the destruction of the states of Hatti, Ugarit, Ascalon and Hazor around this time. The Hittitologist Trevor Bryce stresses that these were not merely military operations. In his words, they "involved the movements of large populations, by land and sea, seeking new lands to settle." Several civilizations collapsed around 1175 BC, which has led to the suggestion that the Sea Peoples helped end the Hittite, Mycenaean and Mitanni kingdoms. At Ugarit, the final correspondence survives.
The last king of Ugarit, Ammurapi, ruled from about 1191 to 1182 BC, and in these letters he is a very young man. The earliest surviving letter is numbered RS 34.129. It was found on the south side of the city and comes from "the Great King", presumably the Hittite ruler Suppiluliuma II, writing to the city's prefect. He had ordered the king of Ugarit to send a man named Ibnadushu for questioning, but the king was too immature to respond. Ibnadushu had been kidnapped by a people of Shikala, probably the Shekelesh, "who lived on ships". The letter is generally read as a request for military intelligence.
Three later letters, RS L 1, RS 20.238 and RS 20.18, come from the Rap'anu Archive. By now Ammurapi, slightly older, is handling his own affairs. He writes to Eshuwara, grand supervisor of Alasiya, that an enemy fleet of 20 ships has been spotted at sea. Eshuwara writes back and asks where Ammurapi's own forces are. He also asks where the enemy fleet of 20 ships is now. These last three letters seem to foreshadow the destruction of the city around 1180 BC, so they are dated to the early 12th century.
Another letter, RS 18.147, was Ammurapi's reply to a request for help from the king of Alasiya. In it, Ammurapi describes the desperate plight facing Ugarit. Neither kingdom could fend off the onslaught, and both were ultimately destroyed. Ammurapi in turn appealed for aid to the viceroy of Carchemish, but the viceroy could only offer words of advice.
Carchemish itself survived. Its king, Kuzi-Teshub I, son of Talmi-Teshub and a direct contemporary of the last Hittite king, Suppiluliuma II, is attested in power from about 1175 BC. He ran a small empire stretching from southeast Asia Minor and northern Syria to the western bend of the Euphrates.
The Lukka, whose lands lay in the later region of Lycia, turn up in many Hittite and Egyptian records. They were highly mobile and never formed a unified kingdom, relying instead on a decentralized political structure. Both Hittite and Egyptian texts describe them as raiders, rebels and pirates. They fought against the Hittites as part of the Assuwa confederation. In EA 38, an Amarna letter from the mid-14th century BC, the Alashiyans, meaning Cypriotes, state that the Lukka were seizing their villages. An inscription on the Abishemu obelisk at Byblos, found by Maurice Dunand, is believed to name Kukunnis, son of Lukka, "the Lycian". Its date is given variously as 2000 or 1700 BC, which would make it the earliest record of a group later counted among the Sea Peoples.
Karkiya, a region of western Anatolia, was governed by a council of chiefs rather than a king. It was not a unified political entity. Its people had dealings with the Hittite Empire, with ups and downs, but were never part of it. Karkiyan soldiers fought for the Hittites at Kadesh, most likely as mercenaries. The name has been linked to later terms for Caria, though the connection is uncertain.
The Peleset are generally identified with the later Philistines, and most historians place their origin within the Aegean cultural area. Genesis 10:14 associates the Philistines with Caphtor and Casluhim, and Deuteronomy 2:23 mentions the Caphtorim settling in Gaza. Aegean-style remains such as Philistine Bichrome ware point the same way. Genetic evidence suggests that immigrants from Europe settled at sites such as Ashkalon at the beginning of the Iron Age. Both genetic and archaeological evidence indicate that the newcomers quickly adapted and intermarried with local people.
The Shekelesh appear in the Great Karnak Inscription as auxiliary troops of the Libyan ruler Meryey, and Merneptah claims to have killed between 200 and 222 of them. They may be the seafaring Shikalayu of Hittite records, though that link is speculative. A Sicilian connection has been proposed on sparse evidence. Scholars disagree whether Sicily was their original homeland or the place they settled after the Bronze Age.
Some Amarna letters, numbered EA 81, EA 122 and EA 123, may mention the Sherden. One calls a Sherden man an apparent renegade mercenary, and another describes three Sherden slain by an Egyptian overseer. Some archaeologists identify them with the Nuragic civilization of Sardinia, citing similar names, similar weapons, presence in the same parts of the Mediterranean and similar relationships with other peoples. Nuragic pottery of the 12th century, found at Pyla-Kokkinokremos, a fortified settlement on Cyprus, offers potential further support.
The Ekwesh and the Denyen have been tentatively matched with the Ancient Greek names for the Achaeans and Danaans, known from the Homeric epics. The Amarna letter EA 151 mentions the Denyen only in passing, noting the death of their king.
The Tjeker are best known from the Story of Wenamun, and they also fought against Ramesses III. Their origins are unknown. Some historians have suggested Crete, or the Teucri, a tribe that roamed northwest Anatolia south of Troy. Trevor Bryce has dismissed the Teucri idea as "pure speculation".
The Onomasticon of Amenope, dated to about 1100 BC, is a bare list of 610 entities with no story attached. After six place names, four of them in Philistia, the scribe lists the Sherden on line 268, the Tjeker on line 269 and the Peleset on line 270. A reader might presume that these peoples occupied those cities, which gives slight support to the idea that the Ramesside kings settled Sea Peoples in Canaan. The Story of Wenamun, from the same cache of papyri, also places the Tjeker at Dor. They are thought to have developed Tel Dor from a town into a larger city.
The Biblical tribe of Dan was first located between the Philistines and the Tjekker, which has led some to suggest that the Dan may originally have been Denyen. The Sherden seem to have settled around Megiddo and in the Jordan Valley. Some connect the Weshesh with the Biblical tribe of Asher, and they may have settled further north.
The question of cause has shifted over time. Early versions of the hypothesis treated the Sea Peoples as a primary cause of the Late Bronze Age collapse. More recent versions generally regard them as a symptom of events already in motion before their purported attacks. Their origins remain a matter of much speculation. Several groups appear to have been Aegean tribes, while others may have come from Sicily, Sardinia, Crete, Southern Italy, Cyprus and Western Anatolia.
The Weshesh are the most sparsely attested of all. They appear only in documents from the reign of Ramesses III, and no picture of them has ever been identified.
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Common questions
Who were the Sea Peoples?
The Sea Peoples were an unidentified seafaring confederation or group of tribes hypothesized to have attacked Egypt and other Eastern Mediterranean regions around 1200 BC, during the Late Bronze Age. Some groups, such as the Lukka and Peleset, are well attested, while others, such as the Weshesh, have unknown origins.
Who coined the term Sea Peoples?
The French Egyptologist Emmanuel de Rougé, curator of the Louvre, proposed the concept in 1855. He drew on the reliefs of Ramesses III at Medinet Habu, where captive Sherden and Teresh bear the designation peuples de la mer. Gaston Maspero later popularized the theory in The Struggle of the Nations, published in 1895-96.
When did the Sea Peoples attack Egypt under Ramesses III?
The inscriptions at Medinet Habu record three victorious campaigns against the Sea Peoples in the fifth, eighth and twelfth years of Ramesses III, who reigned from 1186 to 1155 BC. The Year 8 campaign, dated to 1175 BC, is the best recorded.
Were the Philistines one of the Sea Peoples?
Historians generally identify the Peleset, one of the Sea Peoples, with the later Philistines. Aegean-style remains such as Philistine Bichrome ware, together with genetic evidence of European immigrants at Ashkalon, support an Aegean origin.
Did the Sea Peoples cause the Late Bronze Age collapse?
Early versions of the Sea Peoples hypothesis treated them as a primary cause of the Late Bronze Age collapse. More recent versions generally regard them as a symptom of events already in motion before their purported attacks.
What do the Ugarit letters say about the Sea Peoples?
Letters from Ugarit show King Ammurapi reporting an enemy fleet of 20 ships and describing his city's desperate plight. One earlier letter mentions a man kidnapped by a people of Shikala, probably the Shekelesh, who lived on ships. Ugarit was destroyed around 1180 BC.
What Egyptian sources record the Sea Peoples?
The Sea Peoples story rests mainly on seven ancient Egyptian sources, including the Great Karnak Inscription of Merneptah, the Medinet Habu inscriptions of Ramesses III, Papyrus Harris I and the Onomasticon of Amenope. The Medinet Habu inscriptions remain the primary source.
All sources
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