Sea Peoples

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For other uses, see Sea People (disambiguation).

The Sea Peoples, or Peoples of the Sea, is a term used to describe a wave of seafaring raiders and settlers thought to have originated from either western Anatolia or southern Europe, specifically a region of the Aegean Sea,[1] who sailed around the eastern Mediterranean and invaded Anatolia, Syria, Canaan, Cyprus, and Egypt toward the end of the Bronze Age.[2] The term is used by modern scholars to refer to nine groups of people, although in the historical inscriptions the designation "of the sea" (Egyptian: n3 ḫ3s.wt n<.t> p3 ym)[3][4] appears only in relation to three (the Sherden, Shekelesh, and Eqwesh).[5] The identity of the Sea Peoples has remained enigmatic and modern scholars have only the scattered records of ancient civilizations and archaeological analysis to inform them.

The term "peuples de la mer" was first used in 1855 by French Egyptologist Emmanuel de Rougé, in a translation of reliefs at Medinet Habu documenting year 8 of Ramesses III.[6]

The nine groups identified as Sea Peoples by modern scholars are, in alphabetical order:[7][8] the Denyen, identified by some with the Greek Danaoi and by others with the Israelite tribe of Dan; the Ekwesh, possibly a group of Bronze Age Greeks (Achaeans); Lukka, an Anatolian people of the Aegean who may have given their name to the region of Lycia and the Lycian language; the Peleset, whose name is generally believed to refer to the Philistines; the Shekelesh, identified possibly with the Italic people called Siculi (from Sicily); the Sherden, possibly Sardinians or people of Sardis; the Teresh, i.e. the Tyrrhenians, possibly ancestors of the Etruscans; the Tjeker, also known as the Sikil and possibly Greek Teucrians; and the Weshesh.

Evidence for migrations of whole peoples are not found on any of the contemporary inscriptions, but versions of a "migration hypothesis" represent the widely held interpretation among scholars of the ancient Near East.[9] Most scholars believe that they invaded Cyprus, Hatti and the Levant.[citation needed]

Development of the concept[edit]

The term "Sea Peoples" was first used by Emmanuel de Rougé in 1855, then curator of the Louvre, who noted that "in the crests of the conquered peoples, the Sherden and the Teresh bear the designation of the "peuples de la mer".[10] De Rougé later became chair of Egyptology at the Collège de France, and was succeeded by Gaston Maspero. Maspero built upon de Rougé's work, and in 1895 published "The Struggle of the Nations",[11] in which he described the theory of the seaborne migrations in detail for a popular audience. The theory was taken up by other scholars such as Eduard Meyer, and became the generally accepted theory amongst Egyptologists and orientalists.[12] According to Drews, Herodotus 1.94 added significant credibility to this interpretation.[12]

Egyptian documentary records[edit]

t Z2ss
"of the sea" in the Great Karnak Inscription,
referring to the Eqwesh, Shekelesh, and Sherden
(n3 ḫ3s.wt n<.t> p3 ym)
in hieroglyphs

There are seven Egyptian sources which refer to more than one of the nine peoples:[13]

Other Egyptian sources refer to one of the individual groups without reference to any of the other groups:[13] the Amarna letters (EA 151 refers to the Denyen, EA 38 to the Lukka, and EA 81, EA 122 and EA 133 to the Sherden), Padiiset's Statue refers to the Peleset, the Cairo Column[17] refers to the Shekelesh, the Story of Wenamun refers to the Tjekker, and 13 further Egyptian sources refer to the Sherden.[18]

Early Amarna age[edit]

The Lukka, as well as the Sherden, also appear in the Amarna Letters (perhaps of Amenhotep III or his son Akhenaten) around the mid-14th century BCE. The letters at one point refer to a Sherden man as an apparent renegade mercenary,[19] and at another point to three Sherden who are slain by an Egyptian overseer.[20] The Danuna are mentioned in another letter[21] but only in a passing reference to the death of their king. The Lukka are being accused[22] of attacking the Egyptians in conjunction with the Alashiyans, or Cypriotes, with the latter having stated that the Lukka were seizing their villages.

Reign of Ramesses II[edit]

Ramesses II, painted relief


In his Second Year, an attack of the Sherden, or Shardana, on the Nile Delta was repulsed and defeated by Ramesses, who captured some of the pirates. The event is recorded on Tanis Stele II.[24] An inscription by Ramesses II on the stela from Tanis which recorded the Sherden raiders' raid and subsequent capture speaks of the continuous threat they posed to Egypt's Mediterranean coasts:







Reign of Merneptah[edit]





Later in the inscription Merneptah receives news of the attack:


Athribis Stele, garden of Cairo Museum


Reign of Ramesses III[edit]

Temple of Ramses III at Medinet Habu

Ramesses III, the second king of the Egyptian 20th Dynasty, who reigned for most of the first half of the 12th century BCE, was forced to deal with a later wave of invasions of the Sea Peoples—the best-recorded of these in his eighth year. The Pharaoh records the Sea People's activities in several long inscriptions from his Medinet Habu mortuary temple:


No land could stand before their arms[edit]

Sea Peoples in conflict with the Egyptians in the battle of Djahy.

The fact that several civilizations collapsed around 1175 BCE, has led suggestion that the Sea Peoples may have been involved in the end of the Hittite, Mycenaean and Mitanni kingdoms. The American Hittitologist Gary Beckman writes, on page 23 of Akkadica 120 (2000):[33]




This situation is confirmed by the Medinet Habu temple reliefs of Ramesses III which show that:[34]


Checking the onslaught[edit]

Further information: Battle of the Delta and Battle of Djahy
The Battle of the Delta. Relief from the mortuary temple of Ramesses III at Medinet Habu.







The Nile Delta today



Trude and Moshe Dothan,[37] suggests that the later Philistine settlements in the Levant were unoccupied for nearly 30 years between their destruction and resettlement by the Philistines, whose Helladic IIICb pottery also shows Egyptian influences.



A few states, such as Byblos and Sidon, survived the Sea Peoples' migrations. Despite Ramesses III's pessimism, Carchemish also survived the Sea Peoples' onslaught. King Kuzi-Teshub I, who was the son of Talmi-Teshub—a direct contemporary of the last ruling Hittite king, Suppiluliuma II—is attested in power there.[39] Kuzi-Tesup and his successors ruled a mini-empire from Carchemish which stretched from "Southeast Asia Minor, North Syria...[to] the west bend of the Euphrates"[40] from c. 1175 BC to 990 BC.

Other documentary records[edit]

Byblos obelisk[edit]

Obelisk temple, Byblos

The earliest ethnic group[41] later considered among the Sea Peoples is believed to be attested in Egyptian hieroglyphics on the Byblos obelisk found in the Obelisk Temple at Byblos in modern day Lebanon. The inscription mentions kwkwn son of rwqq-( or kukun son of luqq), transliterated as Kukunnis, son of Lukka, "the Lycian".[42] The date is given variously as 2000 or 1700 BCE.

Letters at Ugarit[edit]

The ruins of Ugarit.









Hypotheses about the Sea Peoples[edit]


Regional migration historical context[edit]


Prior to the 3rd Intermediate Period of Egypt from the (15th century BCE), names of semitic-speaking pastoral cattle nomadic peoples of the Levant appear, replacing previous Egyptian concern with the Hurrianised 'prw ('Apiru or Habiru). These were called the š3sw (Shasu), meaning "those who move on foot". e.g. the Shasu of Yhw.[47] Sandars uses the analogous name "land peoples." Contemporary Assyrian records refer to them as Ahhlamu or Wanderers.[48] They were not part of the Egyptian list of Sea Peoples, and were later referred to as Aramaeans.


Philistine hypothesis[edit]

Main article: Philistines



Sandars, however, does not take this point of view, but says:[51]



Minoan hypothesis[edit]

Two of the peoples who settled in the Levant had traditions that may connect them to Crete: the Tjeker and the Peleset. The Tjeker may have left Crete to settle in Anatolia, and left there to settle Dor.[52] According to the Old Testament,[53] the Israelite God brought the Philistines out of Caphtor. The mainstream of Biblical and classical scholarship accepts Caphtor to refer to Crete, but there are alternative minority theories.[54] Crete at the time was populated by peoples speaking many languages, among which were Mycenaean Greek and Eteocretan, the descendant of the language of the Minoans. It is possible, but by no means certain, that these two peoples spoke Eteocretan.

Recent examinations of the eruption of the Santorini volcano suggest that it occurred very close (estimated between 1660–1613 BC) to the first appearances of the Sea People in Egypt.[55] The eruption and its aftermath (fires, tsunami, weather changes and famines) would have had wide-ranging effects across the Mediterranean, the Levant and particularly Greece, and could have provided the impetus for invasions of other regions of the Mediterranean.

For more details on this topic, see Caphtor.

Greek migrational hypothesis[edit]

Main article: Mycenaean Greece





Trojan hypothesis[edit]

Main article: Troy

The possibility that the Teresh were connected on the one hand with the Tyrrhenians,[58] believed to be an Etruscan-related culture, and on the other with Taruisa, a Hittite name possibly referring to Troy,[59] had been considered by the ancient Romans. The Roman poet Virgil refers to this belief when he depicts Aeneas as escaping the fall of Troy by coming to Latium to found a line descending to Romulus, first king of Rome. Considering that Anatolian connections have been identified for other Sea Peoples, such as the Tjeker and the Lukka, Eberhard Zangger puts together an Anatolian hypothesis:[60]

Mycenaean warfare hypothesis[edit]




Considering the turbulence between and within the great families of the Mycenaean city-states in Greek mythology, the hypothesis that the Mycenaeans destroyed themselves is long-standing[62] and finds support by the reputable Greek historian Thucydides, who theorized:



Sardinian, Sicilian and Tyrrhenian peoples hypotheses[edit]







Anatolian famine hypothesis[edit]

A famous passage from Herodotus[65] portrays the wandering and migration of Lydians from Anatolia because of famine:



Invader hypothesis[edit]








Serbonian Bog[edit]





  1. ^ "Syria: Early history". Encyclopedia Britannica. Retrieved 8 September 2012. 
  2. ^ "Sea People". Encyclopedia Britannica. Retrieved 8 September 2012. 
  3. ^ As noted by Gardiner V.1 p.196, other texts have
    X1 Z4
    ḫ3sty.w "foreign-peoples"; both terms can refer to the concept of "foreigners" as well. Zangger in the external link below expresses a commonly held view that "Sea Peoples" does not translate this and other expressions but is an academic innovation. The Woudhuizen dissertation and the Morris paper identify Gaston Maspero as the first to use the term "peuples de la mer" in 1881.
  4. ^ The Egyptian Pharaoh Merneptah explicitly refers to the term "the foreign-countries of the sea" in his Great Karnak Inscription, see Line 52, The inscription in Manassa p.55 plate 12.
  6. ^ de Rougé, Emmanuel (1855), Notice de Quelques Textes Hiéroglyphiques Récemment Publiés par M. Greene, E. Thunot, p. 14 : [Original French]: "On a depuis longtemps rapproché ces Kefa, avec vraisemblance, des Caphtorim de la Bible, au quels Gesenius, avec la plupart des interprètes, assigne pour résidence les îles de Crete ou de Chypre. Les habitants de l'île de Chypre durent nécessairement prendre parti dans cette guerre; peut-ètre les Kefas étaient-ils alors les alliés de l'Egypte. En tout cas, notre inscription ne détaille pas les noms de ces peuples, venus des îles de Ia Méditerranée. Champollion a fait remarquer que les T'akkari [qu'il nomme Fekkaros; voyez l'appendice à la suite de cette notice] et les Schartana, étaient reconnaissables, dans les vaisseaux ennemis, à leurs coiffures singulières. De plus, dans les écussons des peuples vaincus, les Schartana et les Touirasch portent la désignation de peuples de la mer. II est donc probable qu'ils appartiennent à ces nations venues des iles ou des còtes de l'Archipel. Les Rabou sont encore reconnaissables parmi les prisonniers.
    [Translation]: "For a long time Kefa has been identified, with verisimilitude, with Caphthorim of the Bible, particularly Genesis, with most interpreters assigning their residence to the islands of Crete or Cyprus. The people of Cyprus had certainly to take sides in this war; perhaps they were then the allies of Egypt. In any case, our entry does not detail the names of these people, from the islands of the Mediterranean. Champollion noted that T'akkari [which he names Fekkaros; see appendix at the following entry] and Schartana, were recognizable, in enemy ships, and with unique hairstyles. In addition, in the crests of the conquered peoples, the Schartana and the Touirasch bear the designation of the peoples of the sea. It is therefore likely that they belong to these nations from islands or coasts of the archipelago. The Rabou are still recognizable among the prisoners."
  7. ^ Kilebrew 2013, p. 2a.
  8. ^ A convenient table of Sea Peoples in hieroglyphics, transliteration and English is given in the dissertation of Woudhuizen, 2006, who developed it from works of Kitchen cited there
  10. ^ de Rougé 1855.
  11. ^ Maspero, Gaston (1896), Archibald Sayce, ed., Struggle of the Nations: Egypt, Syria and Assyria (English ed.), Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, pp. 461–470 
  13. ^ a b Killebrew 2013, p. 2-5.
  14. ^ Kadesh Inscription
  15. ^ Athribis Stele
  16. ^ Bernard Bruyère, Mert Seger à Deir el Médineh, 1929, page 32-37
  17. ^ Cairo Column
  19. ^ Letter EA 81
  21. ^ EA 151
  22. ^ EA 38
  26. ^ Grimal, pp.250–253
  29. ^ The Great Karnak Inscription.
  31. ^ J.H. Breasted, p. 243, citing Lines 13–15 of the inscription
  32. ^ Medinet Habu inscription of Ramesses III's 8th year, lines 16–17, trans. by John A. Wilson in Pritchard, J.B. (ed.) Ancient Near Eastern Texts relating to the Old Testament, 3rd edition, Princeton 1969., p.262
  34. ^ a b Bryce, p.371
  35. ^ The Woudhuizen dissertation quotes the inscriptions in English.
  37. ^ Dothan, Trude and Dothan, Moshe (1993), "People of the Sea: The Search for the Philistines" (Scribner)
  39. ^ Kitchen, pp. 99 & 140
  40. ^ Kitchen, pp.99–100
  42. ^ Bryce, T. R. (1974). "The Lukka Problem – And a Possible Solution". Journal of Near Eastern Studies 33 (4): 395–404. doi:10.1086/372378. JSTOR 544776.  The inscription is mentioned as well in the Woudhuizen dissertation, page 31.
  47. ^ Rainey, Anson (November 2008). "Shasu or Habiru. Who Were the Early Israelites?". Biblical Archeology Review (Biblical Archaeology Society) 34 (06 (Nov/Dec)). 
  48. ^ Page 53
  49. ^ Reford p. 292
  51. ^ Ch. 7
  52. ^ See under Tjeker.
  53. ^ Amos 9,7; argument reviewed by Sandars in Ch. 7.
  54. ^ One is cited under Caphtor.
  55. ^ "New Evidence Suggests The Need To Rewrite Bronze Age History". 2006-04-29. Retrieved 2012-11-07. 
  56. ^ a b Ch. 7, "The Peoples of the Sea."
  57. ^ Odyssey XIV 191–298.
  58. ^ Sandars Ch. 5.
  59. ^ Wood Ch. 6.
  61. ^ Chadwick, p. 178.
  63. ^ The History of the Peloponnesian War, Chapter I, Section 5.
  64. ^ Vermeule p. 271.
  65. ^ I.94
  67. ^ Weiss, Barry (1982). "The decline of Late Bronze Age civilization as a possible response to climatic change". Climatic Change 4 (2): 173–198. doi:10.1007/bf00140587. ISSN 0165-0009. 
  69. ^ Grant, The Ancient Mediterranean, page 79.
  70. ^ a b Finley, page 58.
  71. ^ Pages 8–9.


  • Beckerath, Jürgen von (1997). Chronologie des Pharaonischen Ägypten. Mainz.  Mainz.
  • Chadwick, John (1976). The Mycenaean World. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-21077-1. 
  • Robert Drews (1995). The End of the Bronze Age: Changes in Warfare and the Catastrophe of ca. 1200 B.C. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press. ISBN 0-691-04811-8.  Parts of this book are displayed as a Google Books review.
  • Drews, Robert (1992), Herodotus 1.94, the Drought ca. 1200 B.C., and the Origin of the Etruscans, Zeitschrift für Alte Geschichte (Franz Steiner Verlag) 41: 14–39 
  • Finley, M.I. (1981). Early Greece:The Bronze and Archaic Ages:New and Revised Edition. New York, London: W.W. Norton & Co. ISBN 0-393-01569-6. 
  • Hasel, Michael G. (1998). Domination and Resistance: Egyptian Military Activity in the Southern Levant, ca. 1300–1185 B.C. Brill Academic Publishers. ISBN 90-04-10041-5. 
  • Killebrew, Ann E. (2013), The Philistines and Other “Sea Peoples” in Text and Archaeology, Society of Biblical Literature Archaeology and biblical studies (Society of Biblical Lit) 15, ISBN 9781589837218 
  • Mazar, Amihai (1992). Archaeology of the Land of the Bible: 10,000–586 B.C.E. Doubleday. ISBN 0-385-42590-2. 

External links[edit]