Sea Peoples

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(Redirected from Shekelesh)

Sea Peoples is the term used for a race of ship-faring raiders who drifted into the eastern shores of the Mediterranean and attempted to enter Egyptian territory during the late 19th dynasty, and especially year 5 of Rameses III of the 20th Dynasty. The term "Sea Peoples" was never used in Egyptian records, but has been popularized in the last century.

Historic records

The earliest mention of the Sea Peoples proper is in an inscription of the Egyptian king Merneptah, whose rule is usually dated from 1213 BC to 1204 BC. Merneptah states that in the fifth year of his reign (1208 BC) he defeated an invasion of an allied force of Libyans and the Sea People, killing 6,000 soldiers and taking 9,000 prisoners.

About 20 years later the Egyptian king Ramses III was forced to deal with another invasion of the Sea Peoples, this time allied with the Philistines. In the mortuary temple he built in Thebes, Ramses describes how, despite the fact "no land could stand before" the forces of the Sea People and that they swept through "Hatti, Kode, Carchemish, Arzawa, and Alashiya" destroying their cities, he defeated them in a sea battle. He gives the names of the tribes of the Sea People as including: the Peleset, the Tjeker, the Shekelesh, the Denyen, and the Weshesh. However, because this list is identical to the one Merneptah included in his victory inscription, and because Ramses also describes several fictitious victories on his temple walls, some Egyptologists believe that he never actually fought the Sea Peoples, but only claimed the victories of Merneptah as his own—a common practice of the Pharaohs.

A Sea People appear in another set of records problematically dated around the early 12th century BC. Ammurapi, the last king of Ugarit (c.1191 BC - 1182 BC) received a letter from the Hittite king Suppliluliuma II warning him about the "Shikalayu who live on boats" who are perhaps the same people as the Shekelesh mentioned in Merneptah's list. It may be relevant that shortly after he received this communication, Ammurapi was overthrown and the city of Ugarit sacked, never to be inhabited again.

Hypotheses about the Sea Peoples

The abrupt end of several civilizations in the decades traditionally dated around 1200 BC have caused many ancient historians to hypothesize that the Sea People caused the collapse of the Hittite, Mycenaean and Mittani kingdoms. However, Marc Van De Mieroop and others have argued against this theory on several points. Grimal argues that the kingdoms of the Mittani, Assyria, and Babylon were more likely destroyed by a group who dwelled on the edges of the settled lands called by the Akkadian word Habiru. Another argument Grimal makes is that the attempted Sea People invasion of Egypt that Ramses III foiled is now seen as nothing more than a minor skirmish, the records of his victories on his temple walls being greatly exaggerated. Though it is clear from the archeological excavations that Ugarit, Ashkelon and Hazor were destroyed about this time, Carchemish was not and other cities in the area such as Byblos and Sidon survived unscathed.

Another hypothesis concerning the Sea People, based on their recorded names, is that they may have been formed of people involved in the Greek migrations of this period, either the Greek-speaking invaders (identifying the "Ekwesh" with the Achaeans and the "Denyen" with the Dananoi, an ancient name for the Greek people). This theory implies that the Philistines were part of this Greek-speaking confederacy. This theory was recently revived by the archeologist Eberhard Zangger in 2001 (earlier in German) that the Sea Peoples were the early semi-literate city states of the Greek Mycenaean civilisations, who destroyed each other in a disastrous series of conflicts lasting several decades. There would have been few or no external invaders and just a few excursions outside the Greek speaking part of the Aegean civilization. The city states were semi-literate in the sense that very few individuals could master the complex Syllabary used to write in Linear B and other written forms of the early Greek language, and thus, relatively few documents were produced in daily life to bear witness to the fratricidal nature of the wars. In contrast, the completely alphabetic writing system which started to appear with the rise of Ancient Greece around 800 BC was relatively easy to learn and use, thus giving rise to the production of many documents, both fictional and non-fictional.

In contradistinction to the foregoing interpretation of relevant textual records, the archaeological record provides a substantial basis to believe that peoples from central Europe and the Italian peninsula may have contributed to the Sea Peoples phenomenon. Pottery and bronze weapons of a distinctly Italic type have been found in quantity at excavations of structures built atop the charred ruins of cities believed to have been burnt to the ground by the Sea Peoples. Attempts have been made to identify certain Sea Peoples with Italian peoples; for example, some scholars have speculated that the Shekelesh can be identified with the ancient people of Sicily.

Additionally, brooches of a plainly Central European type, and amber beads, have also been found at some of the sites. None of these items appear in the archaeological record of the area prior to the Sea Peoples period. Also worth noting is that some of the knives and cups of an Italic design bear a strong resemblance to knives and cups unearthed in Hungary and central Germany, dating to the period 1800 - 1600 BC.

One thing about the Sea Peoples is beyond doubt: following violent conquest, the Sea Peoples always burnt rich cities to the ground. They made no attempt to retain this wealth, but instead built new settlements of a lower cultural and economic level atop the ruins. This demonstrates a deep scorn and contempt for what these cities represented. It is unlikely that the traditional Helladic warrior classes would have so discarded the spoils of victory, if the writings of Homer are to be considered a guide.

This leads us to look elsewhere for an explanation of who the Sea Peoples were. Textual and archaeological records show that Greek and Egyptian state structures utilized mercenaries from the north and west. It is possible that these mercenary groups eventually allied themselves with indigenous slave classes to bring down a number of complex but ossified state structures in Greece and the Near East.

Some scholars have tenuously identified the Tribe of Dan with the Danua or Denyen, one of the Sea Peoples, speculating that the Danites abandoned the Sea People confederacy and joined the Israelite tribal confederacy sometime during the twelfth century BC. Such an identification would explain the special enmity between the Danites and the Philistines found in the Book of Judges.