The Sea Peoples were a group of tribes who raided Egypt and other Eastern Mediterranean regions around 1200 BC during the Late Bronze Age. They included well-attested groups such as the Lukka and Peleset, as well as others such as the Weshesh whose origins are unknown. The term "Sea People" is a modern coinage, and is often regarded as a misnomer since most of them appear to have travelled by land.
The modern concept of the Sea People originates in the work of the 19th-century Egyptologists Emmanuel de Rougé and Gaston Maspero, who drew on primary texts such as the reliefs on the Mortuary Temple of Ramesses III at Medinet Habu. Subsequent research developed their interpretation further, attempting to link these sources to other Late Bronze Age evidence of migration, piracy, and destruction. In early scholarship, the Sea Peoples were often regarded as a primary cause of the Bronze Age Collapse but recent work tends to view them as refugees fleeing a crisis which was already in motion.
History of the concept
The concept of the Sea Peoples was proposed by Emmanuel de Rougé, curator of the Louvre, in his 1855 work Note on Some Hieroglyphic Texts Recently Published by Mr. Greene, as an interpretation of the battles of Ramesses III described on the Second Pylon at Medinet Habu, based upon recent photographs of the temple by John Beasley Greene. De Rougé noted that "in the crests of the conquered peoples the Sherden and the Teresh bear the designation of the (Sea Peoples)", in a reference to the prisoners depicted at the base of the Fortified East Gate. In 1867, de Rougé published his Excerpts of a dissertation on the attacks directed against Egypt by the peoples of the Mediterranean in the 14th century BC, which focused primarily on the battles of Ramesses II and Merneptah and which proposed translations for many of the geographic names included in the hieroglyphic inscriptions. 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 published The Struggle of the Nations, in which he described the theory of the seaborne migrations in detail in 1895–96 for a wider audience, at a time when the idea of population migrations would have felt familiar to the general population.
The migration theory was taken up by other scholars such as Eduard Meyer and became the generally accepted theory amongst Egyptologists and Orientalists. Since the early 1990s, however, it has been brought into question by a number of scholars.
The historical narrative stems primarily from seven Ancient Egyptian sources. Although in these inscriptions the designation "of the sea" does not appear in relation to all of these peoples, the term "Sea Peoples" is commonly used in modern publications to refer to the nine peoples.
Primary documentary records The Medinet Habu inscriptions, from which the Sea Peoples concept was first described, remain the primary source and "the basis of virtually all significant discussions of them".
List of Sea Peoples Three separate narratives from Egyptian records refer to more than one of the nine peoples, found in a total of six sources. The seventh and most recent source referring to more than one of the nine peoples is a list (Onomasticon) of 610 entities, rather than a narrative. These sources are summarized in the table below.
Date Narrative Source(s) Peoples named Connection to the sea Denyen Eqwesh Karkisha Lukka Peleset Shekelesh Sherden Teresh Tjekker Weshesh c. 1210 BC Ramesses II narrative Kadesh Inscriptions y y y none c. 1200 BC Merneptah narrative Great Karnak Inscription y y y y y Eqwesh (of the countries of the sea),: "of the countries of the sea" possibly also Sherden and Sheklesh y y y y Eqwesh (of the countries of the sea) c. 1150 BC Ramesses III narrative Medinet Habu y y y y y y y Denyen (in their isles), Teresh (of the sea), Sherden (of the sea): "of the sea" Papyrus Harris I y y y y y Denyen (in their isles), Weshesh (of the sea): "in their isles" and "of the sea" Rhetorical Stela y y none c. 1100 BC List (no narrative) Onomasticon of Amenope y y y y y none
Ramesses II narrative
Possible records of sea peoples generally or in particular date to two campaigns of Ramesses II, a pharaoh of the militant 19th Dynasty: operations in or near the delta in the second year of his reign and the major confrontation with the Hittite Empire and allies at the Battle of Kadesh in his fifth. The years of this long-lived pharaoh's reign are not known exactly, but they must have comprised nearly all of the first half of the 13th century BC.
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. 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:
The Sherden prisoners were subsequently incorporated into the Egyptian army for service on the Hittite frontier by Ramesses and fought as Egyptian soldiers in the Battle of Kadesh. Another stele source is the "Aswan Stele" (one of several stelae at Aswan), which mentions the king's operations to defeat a number of peoples including those of the "Great Green" (the Egyptian name for the Mediterranean).
The Battle of Kadesh was the climax of a campaign against the rival Hittite Empire and their allies in the Levant in the pharaoh's Year 5. Ramesses divided his Egyptian forces, which were then ambushed piecemeal by the Hittite army and nearly defeated, but Ramesses managed to recover and fight to a stalemate. Ramesses left inscriptions and depictions of his victory which survive on temples at Abydos, Karnak, Luxor and Abu Simbel. The "Poem of Pentaur", describing the battle, has also survived.
The poem relates that the previously captured Sherden were not only fighting for the Pharaoh but also involved in strategy: it was their idea to divide Egyptian forces into four columns. There is no evidence in Ramesses' inscriptions of any Sherden disloyalty or collaboration with the Hittites.
The poem also lists the Hittite allies who fought at Kadesh, among them some of the sea peoples spoken of in other Egyptian inscriptions who would later take part in the great migrations of the 12th century BC (see Appendix A to the Battle of Kadesh).
Merneptah narrative
The major event of the reign of the Pharaoh Merneptah (1213–1203 BC), 4th king of the 19th Dynasty, was his battle at Perire in the western delta in the 5th and 6th years of his reign, against a confederacy termed "the Nine Bows". Depredations of this confederacy had been so severe that the region was "forsaken as pasturage for cattle, it was left waste from the time of the ancestors".The Great Karnak Inscription.
The pharaoh's action against them is attested in a single narrative found in three sources. The most detailed source describing the battle is the Great Karnak Inscription; two shorter versions of the same narrative are found in the "Athribis Stele" and the "Cairo Column".All three inscriptions are stated in The "Cairo column" is a section of a granite column now in the Cairo Museum, which was first published by Maspero in 1881 with just two readable sentences – the first confirming the date of Year 5 and the second stating: "The wretched [chief] of Libya has invaded with ——, being men and women, Shekelesh (S'-k-rw-s) ——". The "Athribis stela" is a granite stela found in Athribis and inscribed on both sides, which like the Cairo column, was first published by Maspero two years later in 1883. The Merneptah Stele from Thebes describes the reign of peace resulting from the victory but does not include any reference to the Sea Peoples.
The Nine Bows were acting under the leadership of the king of Libya and an associated near-concurrent revolt in Canaan involving Gaza, Ascalon, Yenoam and the Israelites. Exactly which peoples were consistently in the Nine Bows is not clear, but present at the battle were the Libyans, some neighboring Meshwesh, and possibly a separate revolt in the following year involving peoples from the eastern Mediterranean, including the Kheta (or Hittites), or Syrians, and (in the Israel Stele) for the first time in history, the Israelites. In addition to them, the first lines of the Karnak inscription include some sea peoples, which must have arrived in the Western Delta or from Cyrene by ship:
Later in the inscription Merneptah receives news of the attack:
"His majesty was enraged at their report, like a lion", assembled his court and gave a rousing speech. Later, he dreamed he saw Ptah handing him a sword and saying, "Take thou (it) and banish thou the fearful heart from thee." When the bowmen went forth, says the inscription, "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 for their lives. Merneptah states that he defeated the invasion, killing 6,000 soldiers and taking 9,000 prisoners. To be sure of the numbers, among other things, he took the penises of all uncircumcised enemy dead and the hands of all the circumcised, from which history learns that the Ekwesh were circumcised, a fact causing some to doubt they were Greek.
Ramesses III narrative
A number of primary sources about the Sea Peoples pertain to the reign of Ramesses III, who reigned from 1186 to 1155 BC. The battles were later recorded in two long inscriptions from his Medinet Habu mortuary temple, which are physically separate and somewhat different from one another. The Year 8 campaign is the best-recorded Sea Peoples invasion.
The fact that several civilizations collapsed around 1175 BC has led to the suggestion that the Sea Peoples may have been involved at the end of the Hittite, Mycenaean and Mitanni kingdoms.
Ramesses' comments about the scale of the Sea Peoples' onslaught in the eastern Mediterranean are confirmed by the destruction of the states of Hatti, Ugarit, Ascalon and Hazor around this time. As the Hittitologist Trevor Bryce observes, "It should be stressed that the invasions were not merely military operations, but involved the movements of large populations, by land and sea, seeking new lands to settle."
This situation is confirmed by the Medinet Habu temple reliefs of Ramesses III which show that "the Peleset and Tjekker warriors who fought in the land battle [against Ramesses III] are accompanied in the reliefs by women and children loaded in ox-carts."
The inscriptions of Ramesses III at Medinet Habu record three victorious campaigns against the Sea Peoples that are considered bona fide, in Years 5, 8 and 12, as well as three considered spurious, against the Nubians and Libyans in Year 5 and the Libyans with Asiatics in Year 11. During Year 8, some Hittites were operating with the Sea Peoples. quotes the inscriptions in English.
The relevant section from the Year 8 narrative:
The Sea Peoples attacked again Year 8 with a similar result. The campaign is recorded more extensively on the inner northwest panel of the first court. It is possible, but not generally believed, that the dates are only those of the inscriptions and both refer to the same campaign.
In Ramesses' Year 8, the Nine Bows appear as a "conspiracy in their isles". This time, they are revealed unquestionably as Sea Peoples: the Peleset, Tjeker, Shekelesh, Denyen and Weshesh, which are classified as "foreign countries" in the inscription. They camped in Amor and sent a fleet to the Nile.
He had built a fleet especially for the occasion, hidden it in the mouths of the Nile, and posted coast watchers. The enemy fleet was ambushed there, their ships overturned, and the men dragged up on shore and executed ad hoc.