The Sea Peoples

The Sea Peoples were invaders who swept over Asia Minor and Syria toward the end of the 12th century B.C.

Some of the most beguiling questions about these notorious peoples are as follows; Who were they? Where did they come from?

There is continued debate about their origin. Were they Aegean or did they come from the south in Anatolia? Different scholars believe that they originated in both places, and of course other scholars believe that additional places could be the original residence for these people. But why would thousands of people be traveling by land and sea routes in search of new homes?

From nomads to buccaneers, and from peasants to rootless sailors, these and many more possibilities of the kind of people have been suggested. Perhaps they were driven from their land, or were destroyed by famine, an earthquake or the like. Whatever their reasons for leaving, they disrupted the Bronze Age economies and set the great empires of the time to nothing. They saw the total ruin of the Hittite Empire in Anatolia, extensive destruction of cities through Levant, the collapse of Egyptian influence and in the Aegean, the end of Mycenaean civilization. A Dark Age arose that lasted in the case of Anatolia and Greece for more than 300 years.

It is interesting to note that the Sea Peoples were not a single people, and they did not live in one particular place.

It was the Egyptians who invented the name ‘People of the Sea.’ With the Egyptian documents we have from the 13^th and 12^th centuries BC, we would have never been certain about them, and definitely would not of known their name.

Five years after Merneptah became Pharaoh in about 1224 BC, he was faced with an attack from the western desert by Libyans and their allies, ‘northerners coming from all lands.’ In 1186 BC, about a generation after, Ramesses III was Pharaoh and the events we now know as ‘the Great Sea and Land Raids’ took place. Archaeologists have also found inscriptions and carvings at Karnak and Luxor from the 12^th and 13^th centuries.

“The foreign countries…made a conspiracy in their islands. All at once the lands were on the move, scattered in war. No country could stand before their arms….Their league was Peleset, Tjeker, Shekelesh, Denyen and Weshesh…”[1]

It is also interesting to note that the Philistines, a famous people of the Old Testament, were once part of the Sea People Coalition.

[1] From Edgerton and Wilson 1936, pl. 46, p. 53; and Wilson, J. “Egyptian Historical Texts” in Prichard 1969.

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