Death from the Waves - the Sea People

Around 1200 BC, a great migration of peoples occurred - a shadowy multitude of many different tribes and cultures who roved violently across the near east upon a mighty fleet of bird-prowed ships. The Egyptians - one of the few powers who survived their assaults -  dubbed them as 'the Sea Peoples'.
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A depiction of the Sea Peoples by the inimitable Giuseppe Rava. Here we see 1: a priest; 2. an aristocrat; 3 & 4. warriors of the 'Ekwesh' - one of many tribes amongst the Sea Peoples mass.

 

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A ship of 'the Sea Peoples'. Note the bird-headed stern and prow, the 'castles' at prow and stern, the wicker screens to protect rowers. These boats were small and light too, possibly light enough to be moved overland on wheels.

​Amongst the many Sea Peoples tribes were: The Sherden, The Peleset, The Ekwesh, The Teresh, The Lukka, The Shekelesh, The Meshwesh, The Kariska, The Denyen, The Tjekker, The Weshesh (yes, many of those names sound like they should be pronounced with no teeth in!)

Together, this huge host descended from the north and the west in a series of waves, and proceeded to churn the near east into oblivion. Within a period of forty to fifty years at the end of the thirteenth and the beginning of the twelfth century almost every significant city in the eastern Mediterranean world was violently destroyed, many of them never to be occupied again.

The Sea Peoples' path of destruction. They came in two major waves - one naval, one inland.

The Timeline of Destruction

​The First Wave, circa 1230 B.C

• ​Rumours of trouble had been swirling through Mycenaean Greece for some time - of some population disturbance to the west and north of their lands. Fears grow that the trouble is rolling their way!
• Pylos - the Greek city of old King Nestor, a protagonist from the Trojan War - puts 800 extra watchmen on the coastal watchtowers. They also write of having to recycle bronze because of a shortage of tin (caused by a lack of tin ingots and a disruption to the tin trade routes).
• Soon after, Pylos was obliterated, presumably by the Sea Peoples.
• In the following years, all of Mycenaean Greece fell, the Sea Peoples being one of a number of causes.
• The Sea Peoples then crossed the Aegean and struck the land of Lukka, 'conscripting' their warriors into their movement. The Hittite King Tudhaliya IV and his army may have tried to defend against this attack on Lukka. More, it seems that the Hittite vassal kingdom of Ugarit also sent its prized fleet and chariot army to help... but things didn't go to plan! According to a later tablet authored by the Ugaritic King:

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• ​“All my troops and chariots are in the Hittite country, and all my ships are in the land of Lycia (Lukka), and have not returned!”

• The Sea Peoples then struck all along the southern Anatolian coast - pillaging the southernmost reaches of the Hittite 'Lower Land'.
• Upheaval and frantic fortification efforts in Cyprus at this time suggests the island could have fallen to the Sea Peoples next.
• The shore cities of the Levant were razed next: Amurru, Ashkelon, Hazor and Meggido (Biblical Armageddon) were ravaged.
• They finally strike Egypt in 1208 BC, being repelled - only just - by Pharaoh Merneptah at the Battle of Perire.

​The Second Wave, circa 1200 B.C.

• This fresh wave of Sea Peoples again arises somwhere west and north of the Aegean. This time, they reach Anatolia's western shores and plunge deep inland.
• First, the shanty town built atop the ruins of Homeric Troy (known to archaeologists as Troy VIIa) was razed.
• The depopulated patchwork of Hittite vassal states inland from Troy would have toppled easily next.
• Then the Sea Peoples blazed through the Hittite Empire. The likelihood is that the Hittite Empire was by this time greatly enfeebled thanks to recent civil wars. Thus, the capital, Hattusa, was razed.
• Soon after, the armies of the Assyrian Empire were beaten back to a strip of land near the banks of the River Euphrates.
• The Sea Peoples then turned southwards, and the prosperous shore city of Ugarit suffered sudden, violent destruction - at this time Ugarit was possibly still poorly equipped to fend off the attacks due to the aforementioned loss of their fleet and chariots during the first Sea Peoples wave. Halpa, the Hittite Viceroyalty, was destroyed too amongst many more settlements as the Sea Peoples thundered towards Egypt once again.
• Pharaoh Ramesses III was even forced to adopt an ancient version of the 'scorched earth policy', burning all of his grain fields in Canaan and withdrawing his troops to more defensible positions further south.
• At the Battle of Zahi in 1178 BC, Ramesses met and famously repelled and broke this second and final wave of Sea Peoples, outmanoeuvring their boats in the tricky waters of the Nile Delta. The Egyptian supremo described that Sea Peoples’ attack as follows:

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"The people were disturbed in their islands. All at once nations were moving and scattered by war. No land stood before their arms, Not the Hittites, Cilicia, Carchemish, Arzawa nor Cyprus. They were all laid to waste. They desolated the people of Amurru, and its land was like that which has never come into being. They were coming for Egypt. Their confederation was the Peleset, Tjekeru, Shekelesh, Denyen and Weshesh lands united. They laid their hands upon the lands as far as the circuit of the earth, their hearts confident and trusting: ‘Our plans will succeed!"

              – From the temple of Ramesses III at Medinet Habu in West Thebes

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The reliefs at Medinet Habu, showing Ramesses III and his Egyptian forces fighting off a huge swell of Sea Peoples at the Battle of Zahi. Puzzlingly, while Ramesses' associated writings identify five Sea Peoples tribes being involved, these accompanying representational scenes seemingly represent only two (Horned Sherden and feather-hatted Peleset or Lukkans).

A depiction of the frantic Battle of Zahi, between Egypt and the - until then - unstoppable Sea Peoples. Artwork by Giuseppe Rava.

Who were the Sea Peoples?

This is probably one of the most enigmatic questions in history, and while I certainly don't expect this blog to provide a definitive answer, I hope my speculation proves interesting.

The Sea Peoples origin theories range from:

• "Bloodthirsty invaders" - a war-like mass hell-bent on plunder who exacerbated or even caused the collapse of the Bronze Age.
• "The Great diaspora" - a multitude of peoples fleeing from the drought and famine.
• "The Greek diaspora" - specifically the wandering, homeless factions of the Mycenaean Greek world, which collapsed soon after the Trojan War.
• "A myth" - after all, the Sea Peoples are only clearly mentioned once in the surviving historical writings (Ramesses III's attestation, above)!

I can state with some confidence that the Sea Peoples were not, as per the first theory, "Bloodthirsty Invaders".

We must remember that this happened in the decades known as the Bronze Age Collapse, a time when - amongst other things - a mighty drought had gripped the world. The starvation attested by the Hittite tablets would have been widespread across much of Europe and the near east. If anything, hunger is likely to have been the thing that spurred the Sea Peoples to march in search of food and a better home. In other words, they were almost certainly a symptom of this Collapse, not a cause. 
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Most plausibly, they were a loosely united host of tribes and states struck earliest and hardest by the drought and the storm of ruinous earthquakes that accompanied it. E.g. the peoples in Greece, Thrace and western Anatolia, and even those from Italy, Sicily and Sardinia too. In short, a mix of the "Great diaspora" and the "Greek Diaspora". Indeed, there are some depictions of what looks like Greek armour and the Egyptian depictions of the Sea Peoples - see the section at the end of the blog for imagery.

The Sea Peoples in action. Artwork by Giuseppe Rava.

​I should pause to point out that, while most historical discussions (this blog included) tend to focus on the destruction associated with the Sea Peoples, this does not mean that they were a violent people per se.

In my opinion, the violence that followed the Sea Peoples' advance was most probably just another sad repetition of how mass migrational movements - of hungry and frightened people - often play out. Desperation and a stark lack of charity inevitably lead to conflict.

Now, let's have a look at the individual tribes associated with the Sea Peoples' movement:
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The Tribes

There are many speculative theories on the identities of the individual Sea Peoples tribes. What follows is a selection of the most interesting, along with a few of my own takes:

The Sherden

The Sherden are probably the most famous of the Sea Peoples factions, distinguished by their distinctive horned helmets. They had been involved in small-scale piratical raids on the eastern coasts for generations before the age of collapse. Indeed, the legendary Egyptian Pharaoh Ramesses II even retained a small guard unit of Sherden. He said of their earlier, smaller raids:

"The unruly Sherden whom no one had ever known how to combat, they came boldly sailing in their warships from the midst of the sea, none being able to withstand them.

A Sherden sea raider.

The Sherden, in the service of Pharaoh. Artwork by Giuseppe Rava.

But where did they come from? All we know from Ramesses III's writings is that they originated north of Egypt. Pretty vague! They may have originated from Sardinia (Sherden-ia), or perhaps they later settled there, giving that island their name and ending their days of migration and raiding.
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The Shekelesh

​In 8th c BC - some four centuries after the Bronze Age had ended - ​Greeks colonising Italy arrived on the island of Sicily. Here they encountered a group called the Sikels, whom they believed had come to Italy after the Trojan War (which probably occured very close to or during the Bronze Age Collapse and the Sea Peoples' movement). Perhaps these Sikels  arrived in Sicily and gave the island its name after the collapse... or maybe the island had always been the home of the Sikels, and these ones the Greeks met were the indigenous remnant - the ones who had not set off on the Sea Peoples' movement.

Reliefs suggest the Shekelesh warriors carried two spears and no shield, wore a gold medallion, and a bronze skullcap or cloth headdress.

A moody Shekel. Artwork by Giuseppe Rava.

A captive Shekel. From the carvings at Egypt's Medinet Habu Temple.

The Lukka

Fairly easy one this - the Lukkans originated from the region in southwestern Turkey, known in the later Classical Age as 'Lycia'. It seems that the Lukkans were somewhat wild - a people with no king, but many tribes. Bordering on Hittite lands, they were at times friendly with the Hittite King, other times not so much. Also, as legend has it, the Lukkans came to Troy's aid in the Trojan War.

The likelihood is that the Lukkans either rose in support of the Sea Peoples' movement, or - more likely in my opinion - were swept along by it (after having their already drought-stricken lands ravaged by the invaders, there wasn't much option but to join them)
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Anatolia, circa 1237 BC. Note the Lukkan region in the bottom left.

The Lukkan warlord, Sarpedon, as depicted in "Troy: Total War".

The Denyen / Danuna 

There is a strong likelihood that the Denyen were the core of the Mycenaean Greek refugees. In The Iliad, Homer sometimes referred to the Greeks as "Danaans" - a term supposed to cover all of the many city states that Agamemnon had mustered for his siege of Troy.

The Denyen. The one on the left wears a typically Aegean boar's tusk helmet - and this is how the Denyen are depicted in the Amarna Papyrus (see adjacent image). Artwork by Giuseppe Rava.

A fragment from the Amarna Papyrus, which links the name "Denyen" to the Aegean Greeks, thanks to the helmet style.

The Peleset

There are a few theories as to the origins of the Peleset - Crete and Anatolia being two mooted homelands. Generally it is thought that they originated somewhere in that region. I personally can't help but see the similarity in the name "Peleset" with the Greek city state "Pylos". This is just more conjecture, but with so little evidence to work with, it is not implausible. Also, the feathered tiaras the Peleset wore can be plausibly linked back to the southern stretches of Greece (where the city of Pylos was).

​Interestingly, after the Battle of Zahi, some Peleset were taken captive in Egypt and settled in Pharaoh's northeastern border regions to farm and patrol those lands. These people eventually became known as the Biblical Philistines.
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A Peleset admiral. Note the feathered headdress, similar to the Lukkan style. Artwork by Giuseppe Rava.

​The Weshesh, the Tjekker & the Teresh

I've grouped these three together because there are theories associated with each that they *might* have been Trojan diaspora, possibly swept along in the Sea Peoples' movement in the same way the Lukkans were. That they fought with short swords, long spears and round shields and sported 'hoplite-like plumes' on their helmets suggests they might have originated from Trojan/Aegean lands at least. Also, a mummified Teresh servant found in the court of Ramesses III still shows fair hair, sugesting he was most probably not of Egyptian or African origin.
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The Aegean Region prior to the Sea Peoples' arrival. Note the Greek (Ahhiyawan) city states of Pylos and Tyrins, and Hittite-allied Troy, across the waves. Map from 'Empires of Bronze: The Shadow of Troy' by Gordon Doherty.

The Tjekker might have been:

• Direct Trojan diaspora.
• The Teucri people, displaced by the Trojan War.
• Associated with the hero Teucer, who traditionally founded a settlement on Cyprus.

The Weshesh might have been:

• Direct Trojan diaspora (Weshesh being a distorted version of the Hittite name for Trojan lands, "Wilusa").
• Tribes from the western Anatolian seaboard.
• One of the Lost Tribes of Israel! (I won't go into this here, as it's a bit of a wild one).

The Teresh might have been:

• Direct Trojan Diaspora (The Hittite name for Troy was "Taruisa", with the "sa" being pronounced "sha", e.g. "Taruisha").
• The Tyresenians, a group of pirates who lasted long after the Bronze Age, and after whom the Tyrrhenian Sea is named.
• From the Tarsus region in southeastern Anatolia (again due to name similarity).

Troy - King Priam's legendary city. But by the day of the Sea Peoples, Troy, having been plundered at the climax of the Trojan War, would have looked nothing like this. The Sea Peoples would have had little trouble in overrunning the shanty huts and tents that stood on the site.

Maybe none of these three groups were Trojans, maybe all were. We will never know for sure. Yet legend remains that one Trojan group - having survived the Trojan War - then went on to escape the Sea Peoples' rampage and the fall of the Bronze Age. Eventually , as the story goes, they settled in northern Italy, founding the Etruscan civilization from which Rome would one day rise.

With this in mind, one can consider another theory - given the similarity in the names - that the Teresh might have been the refugees from the fallen Greek city of Tiryns. I'm playing with possibilities here, but legend also has it that Diomedes, King of Tiryns and a key Greek player in the Trojan War, also sailed to northern Italy after the Bronze Age Collapse, and was something of a rival to the Trojan settlers there.

All of this is hopefully food for thought. Please do leave your comments below. 
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Thanks for reading!

   

​​Gordon Doherty is the author of the Empires of Bronze series, available in all good online stores!

Buy 'THE DARK EARTH' now!