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Sea Peoples

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Sea Peoples (Haunebu in Egyptian) 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 Ramses III of the 20th Dynasty. The term "Sea Peoples" was never used in Egyptian records, but was popularized in the 19th century.

Historic records

The earliest mention of the Sea Peoples 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 Ramses 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 twenty years later the Egyptian king Ramses III was forced to deal with another invasion of the Sea Peoples. In the mortuary temple he built at Medinet Habu, in Thebes, Ramses 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 Ramses 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.

The Sea Peoples appear in another set of records dated around the early 12th century BC. Ammurapi, the last king of Ugarit (c. 1191–1182 BC) received a letter from the Hittite king Suppiluliuma II warning him about the "Shikalayu who live on boats": compare the Shekelesh of the slightly earlier Merneptah/Ramses inscriptions. 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. Nicolas 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; he suggests that the attempted Sea People invasion of Egypt that Ramses III foiled is to be 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.

Eberhard Zangger (Zangger 2001) revives another hypothesis, suggesting that the Sea People may have been involved in the Greek migrations of this period, based in part 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 Mycenaean derivation. Zangger identifies the "Ekwesh" with the Achaeans and the "Denyen" with the Dananoi — alternate names for the Hellenes familiar from Homer, 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 suggests that the Sea Peoples were the founders of 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 Sicels 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.

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 Hebrew Bible, shows distinct remains of the disruption of the Canaanite settlements 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. Pottery that at first clearly belongs to the Mycenaean IIIC tradition gradually transforms into a uniquely Philistine pottery, in which Aegean and local styles are synthesized, with similar trends in architecture, cult, and even some evidence of non-Semitic, Indo-European language. Artifacts 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 Ashkelon, Ashdod, Ekron, Gath, and Gaza (although few excavations have been conducted at Gaza). 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 an in situ 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.

A recent theory proposed by Sanford Holst (Holst 2005) is that the Sea Peoples, facing starvation, migrated from Anatolia and the Black Sea, in cooperation with the Phoenicians, seeking food and land upon which to settle. Supporters of the theory point to the Phoenicians being uniquely not attacked by the Sea Peoples but this can also be explained by assuming that the Sea Peoples were also from a maritime trading culture and therefore had a different and already existing relationship to the Phoenicians.

Textual and archaeological records show that Greek and Egyptian state structures utilized mercenaries from the north and west. It is possible that these mercenary groups eventually allied themselves with indigenous slave classes to bring down a number of complex but ossified state structures in Greece and the Near East.

Some scholars have tenuously identified the Tribe of Dan with the Danua or Denyen, one of the Sea Peoples, speculating that the Danites abandoned the Sea People confederacy and joined the Israelite tribal confederacy sometime during the twelfth century BC. Such an identification would explain the special enmity between the Danites and the Philistines found in the Book of Judges. This constrasts with the Bible, which identifies the Danites of the Bible as descendents of Dan, one of the 12 sons of Jacob.

References

  • Trude Dothan. (1982). "The Philistines and their Material Culture." Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society.
  • Sanford Holst. (2005). Phoenicians, Lebanon's Epic Heritage. Los Angeles: Cambridge & Boston Press.
  • Eliezer D. Oren (ed.). 2000. "The Sea Peoples and Their World: A Reassessment." Philadelphia: University Museum.
  • Eberhard Zangger, 2001. The Future of the Past: Archaeology in the 21st Century (London:Weidenfeld & Nicholson) ISBN 0-29764389-4 A survey of modern archaeology applying modern techniques to Aegean prehistory.
  • Fred Woudhuizen, The Language of the Sea Peoples, Amsterdam: Najade Press (1992), ISBN 907383502X.
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