Who Are the Sea Peoples? An Introduction.

Ruins. Picture by Sulliman Sallahi.

Somewhere around 1200BC, the world history changed. The great civilisations of the Bronze Age faced an unprecedented crises that eventually resulted in the destruction of the global economy and societies. The next few centuries were later came to be known as the world’s first known Dark Age for there were few records written during this time period. Gone were the scribal traditions, mega-polis, and global trade that had flourished during the Bronze Age.

There were many reasons that were proposed by scholars for the collapse. Internal rebellions (Zuckermann, 2007), “earthquake storms” (Stiros & Jones, 1996) (Nur & Cline, 2000), drought (Carpenter, 1966), famine (Kaniewski et al., 2010) (Drake, 2012) and cultural innovations such as the creation of a class of private merchants (Sherratt, 1998) and a military shift from chariotry to infantry warfare (Drew, 1993). But one of the more intriguing proposals for the change was the invasion of the Sea Peoples.

A depiction of the army of Ramesses III fighting the Sea Peoples.
Sourced from Wikimedia Commons.

The modern umbrella term ‘Sea Peoples’ was first coined by Maspero in 1881 based on de Rouge’s term ‘peuples de la mer’ (literally Peoples of the Sea) (de Rouge, 1867). de Rouge used the term to describe invaders of Egypt during Pharaoh Ramesses III’s reign portrayed on the Second Pylon reliefs at Medinet Habut. Three distinct events became the markers for identifying ‘Sea People’ groups within the Egyptian archives; the aforementioned attacks against Pharaoh Ramesses III in 1179 BC and 1176 BC and an earlier invasion of Egypt by the Libyan king Mertenye during Pharaoh Merneptah’s reign in around 1208 BC where he employed some Sea People groups as mercenaries (Drew, 1993: 54) (Woudhuizen, 2006: 43). From this distinction the nine Sea Peoples ethnonyms are Lukka, Sherden, Shekelesh, Teresh, Eqwesh, Denyan, Weshesh, Tjekker, and Peleset.

Sea Peoples Invasion 

The Great Karnak Inscription narrating Pharoah Merneptah's battle with the Sea Peoples.
Sourced from Wikimedia Commons.

The Sea Peoples involvement to the Late Bronze Age Collapse are inscribed in several primary written records namely from Egyptian, Ugaritic and Hittite sources (Adams & Cohen, 2013). On example is the inscription on the walls of the pharaoh Ramesses III’s mortuary temple at Medinet Habu, where it was written: “The foreign countries made a conspiracy in their islands. All at once the lands were removed and scattered in the fray. No land could stand before their arms, from Khatte, Qode, Carchemish, Arzawa, and Alashiya on, being cut off at [one time]. A camp [was set up] in one place in Amurru. They desolated its people, and its land was like that which has never come into being. They were coming forward towards Egypt, while the flames were prepared before them. Their confederation was the Peleset, Tjekker, Shekelesh, Danuna, and Weshesh, lands united. They laid their hands upon the lands as far as the circuit of the earth, their hearts confident and trusting.” (Wilson, 1969: 262 – 263). 

The Sea Peoples attacks were also found written in secondary sources, meaning written sources that were written hundreds of years after the incident. One example is Homer’s Odyssey which was composed around 750BC that mentioned about attacks by Achaeans on the Egyptian kingdom which were reminiscent of the attacks portrayed in the Egyptian sources.

Aegean Bichrome Pottery.
Picture from (Lindblom, Mommsen, & Whitbread,  2009).

While the textual evidences are few, the non-textual evidences for the Sea Peoples’ invasion narrative are aplenty. Historians have attributed the sudden appearance of Aegean-style architecture,  Aegean-style bichrome & Mycenaean IIIC pottery (Dothan, 1982: 94- 95) (Yasur-Landau, 2010: 243-254) and Aegean-style loam-weights (Kaniewski et al., 2011) in the eastern Mediterranean region as indication for the presence of the previously foreign groups of Sea Peoples. The artefacts’ origin can be traced back to Mainland Greece and Crete with a probable transition through Cyprus or the Anatolian littoral (Mountjoy, 2013) and they appeared in Iron Age Philistine settlements such as the Philistine Pentapolis (Dothan, 1982) to which it became synonymous with Philistine material culture (Killebrew & Lehmann, 2013).

Most scholars, however, agree that the movement of the Sea Peoples was not the result of a single invasion event as the Egyptian archives seem to portray but a long process consisting of several phases lasting at least 50 years (Finkelstein, 2000: 165) (Yasur-Landau, 2010: 220-227, 335) (Killebrew & Lehmann, 2013). 

Who are the Sea Peoples?

Researchers employed linguistic, archaeological, literary and geographical methodologies to assist them in uncovering the Sea People’s homeland (Redford, 1992: 7).

One method used to identify the origin of the Sea Peoples is to find a historical connection with the Sea Peoples ethnonyms (Hall, 1929). As the term ‘ethnonym’ suggests, the Sea Peoples can be portrayed as groups of people within shared ethnicities. Hall (1997: 19-26) distinguishes a number of indicia that constitute an ethnicity: race, language, religion and shared customs.

Ethnicity and its indicia. Picture from (Woudhuizen, 2006: 16).

There are some grey areas in utilising this methodology. The indicia that were proposed are not definite criterions for in-group inclusion because they may change (Woudhuizen, 2006: 16) for example when an entire ethnic group choose to speak a different language. We know that this have happened before with the case of the vikings that had raided France and eventually settled there. 

An ethnic group may also choose not to distinguish themselves by any form of ethnic indicia (Woudhuizen, 2006: 21). This means that a person can be of an ethnicity by virtue of his own belief that he is of that ethnicity and calling himself that ethnicity, which was an observation made by Hall (1997) of the Lue people in Thailand.

Point-of-view. Etic & emic perspectives. Picture by Jan Krnc.

The idea of a shared ethnicity can also be from an etic or emic perspective (Woudhuizen, 2006: 15). An emic perspective takes the point of view from within the social group, but an etic perspective takes the point of view of an external observer of the social group. The epigraphical and literary sources that depicts the Sea Peoples takes on a mainly etic perspective as they are recorded from the perspective of outsiders. Recognising this etic perspective is important because it tells us that the indicia that constitute each Sea Peoples group lie in the perspective of the external scribes, in this case the Egyptian scribes, and that the Sea Peoples group or other external groups may have different indicia to group the Sea Peoples. 

Hence, this leads to another possibility which is that other ethnonyms could be used to call the Sea Peoples. These other ethnonyms could be exonyms, ethnic names called by other external groups, or endonyms, ethnic names called by members within the group. For example, while majority of the world refer to people from Germany as Germans, Germans refer to themselves as Deutsche.

To identify a historical ethnic group, we can reconstruct distribution patterns of language groups, analyse and group written and cultural artefacts, and assume that the nucleus of the ethnic entity is lurking in the background (Woudhuizen, 2006: 16-18).

Sea Peoples and their Contemporaries. Sourced from Luwianstudies.org

In the following blog series about the Sea Peoples that will be published, we will be looking at written attestations and theories as to who the various Sea Peoples are. Do stay tuned and follow my blog to read more on the Sea Peoples.

Bibliography

Adams M., & Cohen, M. (2013). Appendix: The “Sea Peoples” in Primary Sources. In A. E. Killebrew & G. Lehmann (Ed.), The Philistines & Other Sea People in Text & Archaeology (pp. 645 – 663). Atlanta, Georgia: Society of Biblical Literature.

Carpenter, R. (1966). Discontinuity in Greek Civilization. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 

Drake, B. (2012). The Influence of Climate Change on the Late Bronze Age Collapse and the Greek Dark Ages. Journal of Archaeological Science, 39, pp. 1862-70. Doi: 10.1016/j.jas.2012.01.029

De Rouge, Emmanuel. (1867). Extraits d’un memoire sur les attaques dirigees contre l’egypte par les peoples de la mediterranee vers le quatorzieme siècle avant notre ere. Revue Archeologique, 16, pp. 35-45. Retrieved from https://books.google.com.sg/books/about/Extraits_d_un_m%C3%A9moire_sur_les_attaques.ht ml?id=8LFCAAAAYAAJ&redir_esc=y

Dothan, T. (1982). The Philistines and Their Material Culture. Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society Donner, H., & Rollig, W. (1964). Kanaanaische und Aramaische Inschriften. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz

Drews, R. (1998). The End of the Bronze Age: Changes in Warfare and the Catastrophe Ca. 1200

Finkelstein, I. (2000). The Philistine Settlements: When, Where and How Many?. In The Sea Peoples and their World: A Reassessment. University Museum Monograph 108; University Museum Symposium Series 11. Philadelphia: University Museum, University of Pennsylvania

Hall, H. (1929). The Caucasian Relations of the Peoples of the Sea. Klio, 22, pp. 335 – 344. doi: 10.1524/klio.1929.22.22.335. 

Hall, J. (1997). Ethnic Identity in Greek Antiquity. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

Kaniewski, D., Paulissen, E., Van Campo, E., Weiss, H., Otto, T., Bretschneider, J. & Van Lerberghe, K. (2010). 

Killebrew & Lehmann (2013). Introduction: The World of the Philistines and Other Sea People. In A.E. Killebrew & G. Lehmann (Ed.), The Philistines & Other Sea People in Text & Archaeology (pp. 1-17). Atlanta, Georgia: Society of Biblical Literature.

Mountjoy, P. (2013). Chapter 5: The Mycenaean IIIC Pottery at Tel Migne-Ekron. In A.E. Killebrew & G. Lehmann (Ed.), The Philistines & Other Sea People in Text & Archaeology (pp. 53 – 75). Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature.

Nur, A., & Cline, E. (2000). Poseidon’s Horses: Plate Tectonics and Earthquake Storms in the Late Bronze Age Aegean and Eastern Mediterranean. Journal of Archaeological Science, 27, 1, pp. 43– 63. doi: 10.1006/jasc.1999.0431 

Redford, D. (1992). Egypt, Canaan, and Israel in Ancient Times. New Jersey: Princeton University Press

Sheratt, S. (1998). “Sea Peoples” and the Economic Structure of the Late Second Millennium B.C.E. In S. Gitin, A. Mazar, & E. Sterns (Ed.), Mediterranean Peoples in Transition: Thirteenth to Early Tenth Centuries BCE (pp. 292-313). Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society 

Stiros, S., & Jones, R. (1996). Archaeoseismology. Fitch Laboratory Occasional Paper no.7. Athens: British School at Athens.

Woudhuizen, F. (2006). The Ethnicity of the Sea Peoples. Unpublished Phd Dissertation, Erasmus University Rotterdam, Rotterdam. Retrieved from http://hdl.handle.net/1765/7686 

Wilson, J. (1969). The War Against the Peoples of the Sea. In W. K. Simpson (Ed.), The Literature of Ancient Egypt (pp. 69-71. New Haven: Yale University Press. 

Yasur-Landau, A. (2010). The Philistines and Aegean migration at the end of the Late Bronze Age. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press

Zuckerman, S. (2007). Anatomy of a Destruction: Crisis Architecture, Termination Rituals and the Fall of Canaanite Hazor. Journal of Mediterranean Archaeology, 20, 1, pp. 2-32. doi: 10.1558//jmea.2007.v20i1.3