Who were the Sea peoples?

[julia]

   Sea Peoples and the Phoenicians

--------- Phoenicians ---------

Ancient Ships and Sea Trade

Carthage, Hannibal | Colonies | Alphabet

Cedars of Lebanon | Origin

 Who were the Minoans | Beirut

Byblos, Sidon and Tyre | Lebanon

Adonis | Aphrodite | Europa

Elissa | Isis and Osiris

Links | Home

People | Palestine | Palestinians
   
  Sea Peoples and the Phoenicians


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

As presented by Sanford Holst

in Ifrane, Morocco on June 28, 2005 at the

Annual Conference of the World History Association

Relentless attacks by groups known as the Sea Peoples around 1200 B.C. virtually destroyed all the major powers of the Mediterranean, and cleared the way for the rise of the Greeks, Romans and Western civilization. Surprisingly for such a pivotal moment in world history, the events which took place at that time are not well understood and are widely debated. Many theories have been advanced to explain these times, and their participants have been declared to come from Anatolia, or the Aegean, or even Atlantis. We will consider each of these theories, and a new observation which has apparently not been considered before.

An important element mentioned by almost all sources, and yet considered by virtually none, is the simple fact that—in the midst of a cataclysm which destroyed almost every city in the eastern Mediterranean area—the Phoenician cities remained untouched. This turns out to be a key which helps to unlock the mystery of the Sea Peoples—an event which changed the course of history.

 

The traditional major milestone events in the Sea Peoples invasion are:

·          1208 B.C. - King Merneptah of Egypt turns back an incursion by the Sea Peoples and Libyans at the Nile Delta.

·          1180 B.C. - The Hittite empire falls.

·          1180 to 1176 B.C.  - The Levant falls (except for the Phoenician cities).

·          1176 B.C.  - King Ramses III of Egypt stops the Sea Peoples by land and by sea, allowing them to keep the land they have taken.

[Note: experts do not agree on the specific year in which each of these events occurred.  In each case there is a cluster of dates within a narrow band for these events.  One of the well-supported dates within each band has been identified for use in this paper.  Using any of the other dates within these bands does not change the outcome.]

 

The main current theory advanced to explain the origin and actions of the Sea Peoples is described by Eliezer D. Oren[ii] as “the collapse of the two great empires of that day—the Hittite in Anatolia and the Mycenaean in Greece—brought about their (peoples’) mass migrations to the coastlands of the Levant and Cyprus.” The collapse of these two empires is basically laid to economic and environmental factors.

Shelley Wachsmann[iii] adds a very good point which is missing from the above explanation, and that is the participation of people from Central Europe and the Black Sea region. This may have been a significant factor in the events of this time.

Another theory which previously was very prominent held that the Sea Peoples were almost entirely from western Anatolia. This view was championed by R. D. Barnett[iv] and by others such as Eberhard Zangger[v]. However recent scholarship has shown rather clearly that these peoples came from a wider area, indicating a wider range of causes for these events.

An examination of the Sea Peoples would be remiss if it did not also acknowledge another popular theory: that these people were from the lost city of Atlantis, as identified by Frank Joseph[vi] and others. This theory had a very promising historical genesis: a description by Plato, unknown peoples, and inscriptions on Egyptian temples. Now, however, some of those people listed by the Egyptians, such as the Lukka, have been identified and their homes in Anatolia are known. Also, Plato identified Atlantis as having perished long before the Sea Peoples. Until Joseph excavates his proposed site or someone else can show this legendary place still existed—and then perished—at the same time as the Sea Peoples (sending them out to conquer other lands), this possibility is not adequately supported.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

As previously mentioned, these theories sometimes comment upon but do not look into the curious fact that the Phoenician cities were unaffected by the destruction which went on all around them at this time. First, let us verify that these cities were not destroyed during these events.

Tyre was one of the leading Phoenician cities in 1200 B.C., and we are fortunate to have an excellent archaeological study of this site which went all the way down to bedrock. Performed by Patricia Bikai in 1973, this work documented clearly the relevant layers of interest to us.[vii] They not only show there was no widespread destruction at that time but that there was great continuity from layer to layer, indicating that the local society continued to live in the same way throughout this period. The results are highly conclusive.

Sarepta (modern Sarafand) between Tyre and Sidon was also the subject of detailed archaeological study. Glenn Markoe describes the results as showing no destruction and great continuity in the strata.[viii] This likewise is very conclusive.

Sidon and Byblos were the other significant Phoenician cities at this time, but to date insufficient research has been conducted to support or deny the conclusion of no destruction at these sites.[ix] It is hoped that additional archaeological work will eventually be performed to verify their status as well.

The most northern Phoenician city was on the island of Arwad, also known as Arvad and Arados. It had been taken from the Phoenicians prior to the coming of the Sea Peoples and was being held by the Hittites. This city was in fact destroyed by the Sea Peoples

• —and after their incursion it was returned to the Phoenicians.[xi] This destruction, far from disproving the current assertion, adds to the view that the Phoenicians were accorded a special status in the events of this time.

Based upon the sum of this evidence, we can only conclude that observations of the Phoenician cites being undamaged during this time, and having been accorded a special status by the invaders, have been verified. That there was a relationship or partnership of some nature between the Sea Peoples and the Phoenicians is clearly in evidence.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The next step in solving the mystery of the Sea Peoples is to examine the economic and environmental factors cited by Philip C. Betancourt[xii] and others as being the primary cause of the mass migration of the Sea Peoples. In this interesting train of logic Betancourt et al seem to begin by observing that after the Sea Peoples are settled in Palestine there is a similarity between their pottery and that of the Mycenaeans. Therefore the assumption is made that the Sea Peoples were Mycenaeans. This leads to a search being made in Greece to find the cause of the Sea Peoples migration. Betancourt notes there was an adequate supply of food at this time in Greece and that the population had grown very large. An essential link in their food system was the extensive trade in the Aegean which allowed shortages in any locality to be made up by shipments from other areas.

He also points out that widespread disruption of this system of distribution could cause a collapse of the society and a descent into warfare and migration. He postulates further that a simple two-year drought could cause this whole system to collapse. All of this is offered in order to support a position that the Mycenaeans might be the Sea Peoples.

But at that point the model fails. He admits that the similarity between Mycenaean and Philistine pottery did not begin until a later date—the middle of the 12th century B.C.—and not at the beginning of that century when the Sea Peoples migration took place. Further there is no evidence of widespread drought or famine in Greece prior to the Sea Peoples attacks. Similarly there is no evidence of the Mycenaeans destroying the Hittite empire, nor of their forming vast caravans of people moving by land down the Levantine coast. Yet the actual Sea Peoples did all these things. We will soon see how the Mycenaeans fit into the events of this time—but clearly they were not the Sea Peoples.

Trevor Bryce[xiii] and others who examined conditions in Anatolia at this time found a completely different picture than the one shown in Mycenaean Greece. Food shortages definitely existed in Anatolia, which the Hittites were able to relieve by importing wheat and other goods from Egypt and Canaan. The peoples of western and northern Anatolia, however, were not members of the Hittite or Mycenaean worlds and in fact were frequently at war with those two societies. Here is where we find unrelieved food shortages and the increasing pressure to take some form of necessary action.

To illustrate the problem clearly, Itamar Singer[xiv] cites texts from the Emar region which state there was a year of hardship in which three qa of grain cost one silver shekel. Then later a shekel would buy only two qa of grain. Finally that same amount of silver would buy only one qa of grain. The price of grain had already become a hardship, and then it had tripled in cost. There clearly was a rising food shortage at this time.

Having said this, it must be noted that other motivations existed for the Sea Peoples as well. As pointed out by Wachsmann,[xv] some groups among them may have joined simply due to greed. The quick-strike raids in the Aegean and across the southern coast of Anatolia seem particularly of this nature, given that delivering settlers into those areas does not seem to have been the prime motivation.

A symbiotic relationship seems to have developed between those who were motivated to find good land for their families and those who simply wanted booty and adventure. The chaos created by each benefited the other, and the results suggest they came to share mutual enemies and mutual allies.

We have seen how pressures were increasing in and around Anatolia. But why was this particular moment chosen for exploding into action? Before answering that question, let us examine the intense pressures which were mounting upon the Phoenicians.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

The Phoenician people had been the dominant sea traders in the Mediterranean prior to 1500 B.C.[xvi] [xvii] and in some cases they partnered with others to hold that position. Then the rise of the Mycenaeans[xviii] caused sea trade in the Aegean—and even as far as Cyprus—to fall into the hands of that new power. This pushed the Phoenicians backward from the west.

The growth of Ugarit, located just north of the Phoenicians, as a major sea trader[xix] exerted additional pressure from that direction. Immediately beside that powerful city were the Hittites, whose increasing territorial expansion across lands which were north and east of the Phoenicians brought that dangerous land-force closer.

Also after 1500 B.C. the Egyptian pharaohs sent their armies up the Levantine coast and demanded to be recognized as overlords of the Phoenicians[xx] as well as the rest of the Levant. Although the Phoenician people retained a great deal of independence under this arrangement, they were subjected to heavy demands for tribute which was theoretically buying Egyptian protection. As the Amarna letters showed, however, that protection was somewhere between weak and non-existent, with raiders continuing to come into Phoenician lands unimpeded.[xxi]

During this time the Hittites continued to press southward. They engulfed Ugarit and came to the borders of Phoenicia. The powerful Ramses II of Egypt fought the Hittites, but ended by signing a treaty with them in 1258 B.C. which ceded to the Hittites all the lands they had taken.[xxii] To the Phoenicians it became evident that on the next push southward by the Hittites, Egypt would yield again and Phoenicia would in all probability cease to exist.

As a brief digression from the Phoenicians’ problems, we note that during the next fifty-five years of Ramses’ long reign after this treaty was signed, the Hittites were beset on all sides but were holding their own. They fought the Assyrians in the east, the fierce Kaska people who controlled the north shore of Anatolia, and they fought the several groups of people who divided western Anatolia among them.[xxiii] Meanwhile the Mycenaeans continued to raid into western Anatolia and held lands in the neighborhood of Miletus, which was also known as Millawanda.[xxiv]

In 1213 B.C. the great Ramses II died[xxv] and a paroxysm seized the entire region. It is well known that in the ancient Mediterranean the death of a powerful king frequently led to attacks by neighboring states, each seeking to determine if the successor king was weaker and if prized lands might be wrested away. The Phoenicians would certainly have been aware of this and feared an imminent campaign southward by the Hittites. However the Hittites were preoccupied by problems at home and put off action in this direction.

Instead it was the Sea Peoples who took action. In 1208 B.C. they sailed to Egypt in small numbers, estimated at 5000 warriors,[xxvi] and attacked the successor to Ramses: king Merneptah. To do this they joined with the Egyptians’ western neighbors, the Libyans, and mounted an attack on the Nile Delta. Merneptah routed these forces, as described on his victory stele at Thebes.[xxvii]

This attack by the Sea Peoples on Egypt, the breadbasket which had been supplying the Hittites with wheat via Ugarit,[xxviii] is consistent with the argument that these people were driven by food shortages in their lands. The Sea Peoples’ first strike, if successful, would have acquired ownership of some part of that food source. Even though the Hittites were the long-time adversaries of virtually all the people who made up the Sea Peoples, the first strike had gone against Egypt instead.

One might well ask what services the Sea Peoples could possibly have received from the Phoenicians at this time. What led to the special treatment the sea-traders were given? As we have seen, the widespread food shortage in the north had driven up the price of wheat to incredible levels. There can be little doubt the Phoenicians therefore included wheat shipments in their sea trade at this time. Since Ugarit held a virtual monopoly on wheat shipments to the Hittites,[xxix] the markets open to the Phoenicians were western Anatolia, the Aegean and the Black Sea—the areas which have now become well documented as the original home of the Sea Peoples. At a time when food shortages were severe enough that this need was about to erupt into a truly massive migration of people, the Phoenicians were the ones who brought some quantity of food.

With the Hittites threatening their northern border, the Phoenicians would have used whatever leverage they had with the Sea Peoples to shift attacks from the failed effort at Egypt to a more promising one against the Hittites. With hindsight we can now see what attraction this course of action would have held for the Sea Peoples. Though the Hittites themselves had no excess food to offer, they stood between the Sea Peoples and an achievable goal: the land of Canaan surrounding the Phoenicians which was second only to Egypt as a source of wheat.[xxx] And by going through the Hittite land and Canaan, the Sea Peoples would bring a force numbering hundreds of thousands to confront the wheat-rich Egyptians rather than the handful of warriors who had failed on the first attempt.[xxxi]

The attacks on the Hittites began by land. In fact the greatest campaigns the Sea Peoples would mount were by land. This has led recent sources to refer to them as the Land and Sea Peoples[xxxii] which is a much more accurate appellation. The Kaska lived to the north of the Hittites, between them and the Black Sea, and attacked at this time. The Assuwa, Arzawa and Lukka lived in the land to the west of the Hittites, between them and the Aegean Sea, and they attacked. But there was a problem. The Mycenaeans continued to hold the Aegean and attacked the Anatolian people from that side.[xxxiii] As a result the Sea Peoples poured into the Aegean from Anatolia and the Black Sea and ravaged the Mycenaeans in their islands and on the Greek mainland. The Mycenaean citadel-cities may or may not have been taken at this time, but the coastal towns were certainly laid waste by these raiders. Betancourt’s model was therefore partially correct—because this widespread disruption would eventually cause the cities to wither and die.[xxxiv]

When the Aegean had been thus cleared, the people of west Anatolia were no longer fighting on two fronts, and could turn their full attention to the Hittites. The open Aegean also allowed additional ships belonging to the Sea Peoples to sail through those waters and begin raiding the Hittites all along their Mediterranean coast.[xxxv] This would prove to be pivotal in the struggle against that entrenched power. In 1182 B.C. Ugarit fell and the flow of wheat from Egypt was cut off.[xxxvi] Approximately two years later the Kaska captured Hattusas, the capital of the Hittites, and that empire died.[xxxvii]

The Hittite blockage had been removed and now nothing stood in the way of the Sea Peoples. With their wives, children and household possessions in two-wheeled carts, the Sea Peoples—now more properly the Land Peoples—flowed across the former Hittite territory. At its southeastern corner they turned south on their path of destruction and, observing their special relationship with Phoenicia, they by-passed that land. Flowing down through Canaan they destroyed the cities they encountered.[xxxviii] Many settled beside the wheat fields and took some of the land for themselves and their families.

A very large number of the Land and Sea Peoples continued on and eventually arrived at the border between Canaan and Egypt. There they were met by the armies of Ramses III and a great battle was fought, with a second battle being fought in the Nile Delta according to descriptions on his funerary temple at Medinet Habu in Thebes.[xxxix]

The [Northerners] in their isles were disturbed, taken away in the [fray] at one time. Not one stood before their hands, from Kheta (Hittites), Kode (Cilicia), Carchemish, Arvad, Alasa (Cyprus), they were wasted. {The}y {[set up]} a camp in one place in Amor (near Ugarit). They desolated his people and his land like that which is not. They came with fire prepared before them, forward to Egypt. Their main support was Peleset, Thekel (Tjeker), Shekelesh, Denyen, and Weshesh. (These) lands were united, and they laid their hands upon the land as far as the Circle of the Earth. Their hearts were confident, full of their plans.

Now, it happened through this god, the lord of gods, that I was prepared and armed to [trap] them like wild fowl. He furnished my strength and caused my plans to prosper. I went forth, directing these marvelous things. I equipped my frontier in Zahi, prepared before them. The chiefs, the captains of infantry, the nobles, I caused to equip the harbor-mouths, like a strong wall, with warships, galleys, and barges. They were manned [completely] from bow to stern with valiant warriors bearing their arms, soldiers of all the choicest of Egypt, being like lions roaring upon the mountain-tops. The charioteers were warriors, and all good officers, ready of hand. Their horses were quivering in their every limb, ready to crush the countries under their feet. I was the valiant Montu, stationed before them, that they might behold the hand-to-hand fighting of my arms. I, king Ramses III, was made a far-striding hero, conscious of his might, valiant to lead his army in the day of battle.

Those who reached my boundary, their seed is not; their heart and their soul are finished forever and ever. As for those who had assembled before them on the sea, the full flame was in their front, before the harbor-mouths, and a wall of metal upon the shore surrounded them. They were dragged, overturned, and laid low upon the beach; slain and made heaps from stern to bow of their galleys, while all their things were cast upon the water.

This description at Medinet Habu was accompanied by pictures displaying battle scenes in which the Sea Peoples’ boats were shown as having a very peculiar design: The fore-post and aft-post were identical and each had a bird’s head at the top. Wachsmann traced this design to vessels found only in Central Europe[xl] along the Danube River corridor. The Danube River empties into the Black Sea on the north side of Anatolia, where boatmen from this region could join the rest of the Sea Peoples. It should be noted that the names of several groups among the Sea Peoples were not found anywhere in the Anatolian or Aegean regions, and might reasonably have designated people who came from the Black Sea area. Also, as noted earlier, refugees from the shattered Mycenaean world would eventually join the Sea Peoples, though they did not begin to arrive in Cyprus and Palestine until the latter part of the 12th century B.C.[xli]

 Experts differ over exactly how many battles were fought between Ramses and the Sea Peoples, as well as where they were fought. But the net result is that the Sea Peoples were finally stopped in their southward movement. Most of them settled in Canaan and gave their own name to the land, such as the Peleset people who settled a wide swath of the land which became known as Palestine.[xlii] Others sailed west and settled upon islands which were likewise given the name of the tribe which settled there: the Shekelesh who settled on Sicily,[xliii] the Sherden who settled on Sardinia,[xliv] and other settlements in other lands.

This brings us back to the central question: Who were the Sea Peoples? Perhaps the best and most unambiguous way to answer this is to separate the winners from the losers in these epic series of battles. The major losers were a) the city of Ugarit which was totally destroyed and never rebuilt, b) the Hittite empire which was destroyed and left only a fragment on the Euphrates River, c) the Mycenaeans who were fatally wounded and would disappear completely within a hundred years, and d) Egypt which had won the battles but lost the Levant—it would waste away and become a shadow of its former self.

The winners, who constituted the Sea Peoples’ confederacy, were a) the tribes of people who came from Anatolia, and the lands to its north and west, who settled in the Levant and on islands across the Mediterranean, b) the Kaska who kept their original lands in the north of Anatolia and added the heart of the Hittite territories to their own, c) the west Anatolian people who remained in their own lands, added some of the Hittite lands, and gained influence in the Aegean, and d) the Phoenicians who seem to have gained more than anyone else from the mass migration of the Land and Sea Peoples.

All of the Phoenicians’ powerful adversaries had been destroyed—and the Phoenician cities were untouched by this devastation which happened around them. The historical record[xlv] [xlvi] shows these sea-traders quickly began to expand their domain by placing trading posts in Cyprus, the Aegean, Sicily, Sardinia, North Africa, Algeria, Morocco and Spain. Among the cities which they created we see in Morocco: Lixis (modern Larache), Sala (Rabat), Mogador (Essaouira) and Tingis (Tangier); in Spain: Gadir (Cadiz), Malaka (Malaga), Ibisa (Ibiza); in Algeria: Icosia (Algiers); in Tunisia: Utica and Carthage, both now gone; in Sardinia: Karalis (Cagliari); in Sicily: Panormus (Palermo); in Cyprus: Kition (Larnaca).  These were in addition to their home cities in Lebanon: Tyre (Sor), Sidon (Saida), Beirut (Beirut), Byblos (Jbail), Tripoli (Trablous), and many others. They became a powerful and wealthy empire which stretched from Morocco to the Levant.

The Sea Peoples had forcefully cleared away the old powers from the Mediterranean and left freshly plowed ground. In time the Greeks and Romans would rise and they—together with the often overlooked Phoenicians—would sow the seeds of Western civilization.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

http://www.phoenician.org/sea_peoples.htm

[Apollo]

Excellent article, Julia.  I have long surmised that there is a link between the Phoenicians and the Sea People.

Ramses claimed to have conquered the Sea People, and yet did he really?  Shortly after, Egypt fell into decline, the Mycenaens drifted away and Greece fell into a Dark Ages.

It would be so easy to imagine the Sea People as Atlantis.

And yet, I have also heard that the battles between the Sea People and their enemies were more along the lines of Viking skirmishes as opposed to an actual war. They certainly did not come from beyond the Pillars of Hercules, and they were hardly an empire the size that Plato suggests.

All the details do not quite "fit."  Until they do, this was not Atlantis.

[Blackstone]

Here's a thought: after this 'war' with the 'Sea Peoples' it seems likely trade in the Mediterranean was significantly damaged.  Markets were gone or weakened, shipping destroyed, treasure used up or lost, so with trade hamstrung, it seems reasonable for the coastal peoples to decline.  It happened to Europe when Rome lost its control over the Med.  Pirates and Privateer-equivalents everywhere, no trade by sea, so people got poorer, less able to move resources where needed, so areas declined until conquered by less or unaffected neighbers - 'Barbarians'.  Oh, and with lots of dead people, especially the warriors, they likely couldn't defend themselves as well either.

[atalante]

Here is a link which analyzes the economic basis for the 1200 BC migrations of many groups of Sea Peoples.

quote from:
http://www.saudiaramcoworld.com/issue/199503/who.were.the.sea.people..htm
   
 
Who Were the Sea People?



Written by Eberhard Zangger
Illustrated by Rosemary Robertson


Through the epics of the Greek poet Homer, tales of an "age of heroes" have been passed down through millennia. In The Odyssey and The Iliad the poet told of an era dominated by aristocratic warlords who bore ornamented weapons and commanded well-organized, armored chariot troops. This "golden age" culminated in the legendary Trojan War, fought between Troy, located in what is now northwestern Turkey, and Mycenaean Greece.

Homer himself, however, lived four centuries after the Trojan War, in a time when the communities around the Aegean were populated by little more than farmers and shepherds. The tools of the day were not finely-wrought gold nor silver nor bronze, but crudely forged of iron. Nevertheless, Greeks of Homer's time—the eighth century BC—were surrounded by powerful reminders of a more magnificent, more prosperous past. Mighty walls, some more than seven meters (22') thick, built of boulders two meters in diameter, jutted out of the soil in some places. Every now and then, a collapsed grave would reveal treasures of gold jewelry, silver vessels, beautifully painted pottery and decorated weapons.

Since the Middle Ages, however, Homer's historical accuracy has been in question. It was not until late in the last century that archeologi-cal excavations around the Mediterranean began to show that Homer had indeed drawn, at least in part, on real events.

Today, we know that many sophisticated feudal societies ruled the lands around the eastern Mediterranean between 1700 and 1200 BC, the Late Bronze Age. The interior of Anatolia— now part of modern Turkey—was controlled by the centrally organized Hittite state, whose Great King resided in Hattusa near the Kizihrmak River (See Aramco World, September-October 1994). It was also in this era that in Egypt, the pharaohs of the New Kingdom began construction of the famous temples at Luxor, Karnak and Abu Simbel. In Greece, small yet rich and influential kingdoms made up the Mycenaean civilization, which we have named after its most famous archeological site, Mycenae. Likewise, Syria and Palestine were the home of numerous states ruled by aristocrats and lesser chieftains.

At times these states of diverse sizes and powers were allied to one another, and at other times they fought. In most, the political system was characterized by a palace administration supported by the relatively new development of writing. In nearly all, autocratic rulers oversaw professional armies and carried out the exploitation of economic opportunities at home and abroad. Most had well-developed social hierarchies in which specialized professions produced goods of extraordinary quality. This stimulated far-reaching international trade throughout the eastern Mediterranean.

Modern excavations in the eastern Mediterranean region have also provided evidence of the sudden, violent demise of these otherwise thriving civilizations of the Late Bronze Age. Within a few years—or decades, at the most—some of these nations collapsed completely, with the large and powerful Hittite state in central Anatolia disappearing most suddenly of all. From Troy in the northwest, to Ugarit on the coast of Syria, and southwest to the Nile Delta, unidentified attackers razed and burned international trade centers and port cities. After the assaults, most of the shattered cities were either abandoned or rebuilt only on an insignificant scale. All across the eastern Mediterranean, civilizations that had been shaped by aristocrats became societies of herdsmen and shepherds. When the fighting was over, entire languages and scripts had vanished.

This sudden collapse is one of the most dramatic events in the early history of the Mediterranean, and many archeological mysteries surround it. First, there is the Homeric account of the Trojan War, which would have to be placed within this time of crisis if one accepts that The Odyssey and The Iliad contain at least a kernel of historic truth. The second group of events that connects logically with this historical turning point is the invasions of the so-called "Sea People." Coming, it seems, out of nowhere and lacking any obvious motive, it was these united clans that so successfully attacked throughout the region. Despite numerous scholarly attempts to identify them, we still do not know exactly who the Sea People were, where they came from, why they attacked, and, finally, where they disappeared after their raids. Scholars are even uncertain whether the Sea People's existence was a cause or an effect of the political collapses. Were the Sea People conquerors, pirates, deserters, or refugees?

Our knowledge of the Sea People's raids rests on texts from Anatolia, Syria and Egypt. The name "Sea People" is, however, a modern expression introduced in 1881 by the French Egyptologist Gaston Maspero. The Egyptian inscriptions themselves usually refer to the names of the individual attacking tribes, who are said to have come "from the midst of the sea" or "from the islands." What we are calling "Sea People" were clearly separate states or tribes who had formed a military alliance to attack the Near East and Egypt.

The reliefs depicting the attacks of the Sea People, carved on the walls of the mortuary temple of Pharaoh Ramses III in Medinat Habu, near present-day Luxor, are also the earliest known illustrations of naval battle scenes. From these walls we know—at least approximately—what the Sea People looked like, how they dressed, what kinds of weapons they used, and what kinds of ships they sailed. We even know some of their names. But to learn anything of their motives we have to examine the historical context of their raids.

According to the inscriptions, the Sea People first appeared in about 1208 BC, the fifth year of the reign of Pharaoh Merenptah. At this time, Egypt was facing attacks by Libya, its archenemy to the west, which was approaching the frontier accompanied by a number of allies described as "northerners." On the famous Victory Stela, found in 1896 at the Temple of Merenptah in Thebes, Merenptah declared he had overwhelmed the enemy, and provided a list of the allies of Libya, whom we now refer to collectively as the Sea People: Shardana, Lukka, Meshwesh, Teresh, Ekwesh and Shekelesh. Most of these tribes apparently came from the Aegean, and we do not know why they fought on the side of Libya. Nor can we be sure Merenptah's claim to have overpowered them is fully justified because, after this battle, Egypt's domestic affairs gradually degenerated nearly to the point of civil war. Possibly because Egypt was so preoccupied with its internal problems that it failed to fulfill its treaty obligations to come to Hatti's aid, it managed to survive relatively unharmed the upheavals that took place shortly thereafter all around the eastern Mediterranean.

Thirty years after Merenptah's encounter with the Sea People, around 1177 BC, Pharaoh Ramses in ordered the construction of his own mortuary temple and residence in Thebes, on whose walls architects and scribes recalled the dramatic events of the preceding decades. According to those inscriptions, the Sea People had returned, this time to attack Mediterranean shores from Anatolia, Cyprus, Syria and Palestine to Lower Egypt. The inscription reads:

As for the foreign countries, they 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. Hatti, Kizzuwatna, Carchemish, Arzawa and Alasiya were cut off. A camp was set up in one place in Amurru; they desolated its people, and its land was like that which has never come into being. They were advancing on Egypt while the flame was prepared before them. Their league was Peleset, Tjeker, Shekelesh, Denyen and Weshesh, united lands. They laid their hands upon the lands to the very circuit of the earth, their hearts confident and trusting: "Our plans will succeed!"

But Ramses and his troops defeated the invaders. When the vanquished pleaded for mercy, the pharaoh allowed them to settle on his soil:

I slew the Denyen in their isles; the Tjeker and the Peleset were made ashes. The Shardana and the Weshesh of the sea, they were made as those that exist not, taken captive at one time, brought as captives to Egypt like the sand of the shore. I settled them in strongholds bound in my name. Numerous were their classes like hundred-thousands. I taxed them all, in clothing and grain from the storehouses and granaries, each year.

Such Egyptian inscriptions, however, have to be taken with a grain of salt. Neither the scribe's intentions nor his instructions required him to report historical truth; for him, the laws of symmetry, esthetics and religion had priority over factual accuracy. Egyptian regnal accounts often begin with the state of disarray prevailing in the country until the pharaoh whose reign is being described appears to re-establish order—that was, after all, the function of kingship. Yet, the widespread destruction all around the eastern Mediterranean, and many contemporary documents from Ugarit and Hattusa reporting similar onslaughts by mysterious attackers, confirm the gist of the Medinat Habu inscriptions.

At the time of the Sea People's second raid on Egypt, most areas mentioned in the Medinat Habu inscriptions were either occupied by or allied to the Hittite kingdom in central Anatolia. Hence, the purpose of the raids may well have been to weaken the Great King of Hatti from his periphery, by attacking his allies. From royal correspondence from Ugarit and Cyprus, it appears that the combined fleets of the Sea People massed off the southwestern tip of the Anatolian peninsula, from where they first attacked the western coast of Cyprus.

Battles directly between the Sea People and Hittite troops may also have taken place on the Anatolian mainland, however, because extant clay tablets inscribed with diplomatic notes show how the Great King of Hatti had to turn to his vassals at the port city of Ugarit, in northern Syria, to demand additional troops and food.

But by then, Ugarit itself was threatened by the Sea People. Desperately seeking support in his turn, the adolescent king of Ugarit wrote to his royal colleague on Cyprus:

The enemy ships are already here. They have set fire to my towns and have done very great damage in the country.... Did you not know that all my troops were stationed in the Hittite country, and that all my ships are still stationed in Lycia and have not yet returned? The country is thus abandoned to itself.... Consider this, my father, there are seven enemy ships that have come and done very great damage. Now, if there are more enemy ships, let me know about them so that I can decide what to do.

This letter never left Ugarit. Archeologists found it there in a kiln, where it was supposed to be fired before the courier departed with it. At the peak of its economic and cultural success, and showing no signs of decay, Ugarit was wiped out and was never resettled again.

The pressure on the Great King of Hatti increased further. His scribes wrote one more text illustrating the Sea People's assaults and what turned out to be a successful Hittite counterattack:

I called up arms and soon reached the sea—I, Suppiluliuma, the Great King—and with me ships of Alasiya joined battle in the midst of the sea. I destroyed them, catching them and burning them down at sea.

Soon thereafter, however, enemy forces indeed reached the Hittite capital of Hattusa. It is doubtful that they were Sea People forces; and in fact their identity is still uncertain. There may have been internal strife in Hatti, for an inscribed bronze plate found in 1986 indicates that two members of the royal family had competed for the throne. Most scholars, however, accept that a path of destruction leads out of the northeast into Hattusa, meaning that the city was most likely destroyed by the Kashka, its neighbor and bitter enemy of several centuries' standing. The Kashka had already destroyed the Hittite capital on one occasion and forced the king to move temporarily; this time, they annihilated the 600-year-old civilization.

A similar pattern of destruction appears in most of the cities attacked by the Sea People. By targeting government buildings, palaces and temples while leaving the residential areas and countryside mostly unharmed, the attackers aimed at the control centers of the aristocratic rulership. This tactic foreshadows the strategy of today's warfare, and is one of the earliest known examples of it. Concentrating attacks on such centers, the Sea People must have realized, preserves strength and shortens the war.

After Hattusa and Ugarit, many other cities in Anatolia, Syria and Palestine fell to the invaders. The Sea People continued their sweep to the south until they met the Egyptian army.

This generally accepted outline of the Sea People's incursions leaves many of its most significant questions unanswered. We still do not know either the origins or the motives of the Sea People. It is also hard to understand why they did not attempt to permanently subdue the countries they overwhelmed. Finally, virtually nothing is known about the fate of the Sea People themselves following these crisis years.

Now that there is a wealth of highly specific information in hand from numerous excavations and text sources relevant to those years, scholars have become more and more inclined to think that the time has come to begin solving some of these riddles. Although a search for a unifying explanation began some time ago, and academic conferences abound on the crisis years, the Sea People, and the Trojan War, there has still been little progress toward a plausible explanation for this watershed in history. Some archeologists suggested that the Sea People may have been invaders from central Europe. Others saw them as scattered soldiers who turned to piracy, or who had become refugees. For a long time, researchers sought to explain the transformations around 1200 BC by invoking natural disasters such as earthquakes or climatic shifts, but earthquakes on such a broad geographic scale are unheard of, and no field evidence has indicated significant climatic change. Currently, very few—if any—archeologists would consider the Sea People to have been identified.

I stumbled on these problems, mostly by accident, in an unlikely place. In the spring of 1990, I was writing up the conclusions of my dissertation research, which had involved several years of investigation in the Mycenaean heartland, searching out clues to determine what the landscape of the Bronze Age had been. The work had little to do with the Sea People.

Studying numerous earth cores taken by hand augers and power drills, I had discovered that parts of the lower town of Tiryns, one of the Greek citadels from the era of the Trojan War, had been buried under several meters of mud deposited by a flash flood that had occurred around 1200 BC. This catastrophe coincided with an earthquake, for which evidence was found in the archeological record of the Tiryns citadel. Both of these events occurred shortly after 1200 BC, precisely at the time when the Mycenaean civilization suddenly collapsed.

When summarizing these conclusions, I remembered that earthquakes, floods, and the demise of a brilliant culture are also mentioned in Plato's dialogues Timaeus  and Critias . When I turned to reread these, I noticed that the philosopher's story may well represent yet another account—thus far unrecognized—of the events of the crisis years. Plato describes two prehistoric civilizations that possessed bronze weapons, chariots and writing, and he describes how a devastating war broke out between them. Those facts, and numerous additional elements of the account, have much in common with the Trojan War: Plato mentions a navy of 1200 ships; Homer, adding up the vessels of the united Greek army, reached a total of 1186 ships. Both Plato and Homer described the opposing armies as consisting of many allies. Both also allude to severe internal problems in the Greek camp, and both relate how the attacking Greek contingents, in the end, overwhelmed the defenders.

If applied to the Trojan War, however, Plato's account would attribute far more political, economic and military power to Troy and its allies in western Anatolia than anyone has yet credited them with. Yet, if Troy is understood to be an equal opponent of the united Greek army, then the traditional, Homeric account of the Trojan War becomes far more plausible. According to Homer, it took 100,000 Mycenaean soldiers a decade of siege to subdue Troy, a city that has thus far been believed to have been the size of a modern athletic field.

An even more novel idea that emerged from this reading of Plato's account, however, was that it may have been Troy and its allies that in fact triggered the conflicts at the end of the Bronze Age. Plato's source, an Egyptian priest, says:

So this host, being all gathered together, once made an attempt to enslave by one single onslaught both your country [Greece] and ours [Egypt], and the whole of the territory within the Straits.

This passage would argue that Troy and its allies were in fact the aggressors who brought on the crisis. At the same time, the passage is reminiscent of the Sea People accounts at Medinat Habu. Thus I considered a hypothesis based on simple equivalence: The Sea People may well have been Troy and its confederated allies, and the literary tradition of the Trojan War may well reflect the Greek effort to counter those raids.

From this new perspective, I realized that archeology possesses several texts that indeed describe a coalition of Late Bronze Age states in western Anatolia that appears to have played a decisive role during the transformations around 1200 BC. Homer, for instance, lists contingents on the Trojan side in The Iliad, saying that Troy's allies came from all along the Aegean east coast between Thrace in the north and Lycia in the south. This coastal strip, including its offshore islands, coincides with the geography of what many scholars think may represent the homeland of the Sea People.

The same kind of alliance is also mentioned in several unambiguous cuneiform tablets from Hattusa. According to these documents, 22 states in western Anatolia formed a coalition against the Hittites as early as the 15th century BC. Other documents provide evidence that such a coalition was forming for a second time a few years before the Hittite state vanished. In a letter to his wife, the Great King of Hatti describes how states to the west were rallying against him, and says that it would be difficult to keep the situation under control if they succeeded. Some texts from Hattusa also show that Hatti felt increasingly threatened by one particular neighbor in the west called Ahhiyawa, a country that many scholars locate in northwestern Turkey and which thus may be Troy itself.

To take stock of the mysteries surrounding western Anatolian states at the end of the Bronze Age, we can outline today's knowledge in the table above.

Seven of the known Late Bronze Age civilizations had all of the following attributes: a geographical region or realm, a people, at least one substantial city, a script and a contemporary name. However, in each of these categories we find one isolated entry that is somehow related to western Anatolia, but is considered mysterious or inexplicable within the parameters of traditional scholarship.

There is, first of all, the problem of Troy, one of the most formidable archeological sites in the world, whose inhabitants, realm, script and language, and contemporary name—as well as its history and fate—remain obscure despite more than 120 years of excavation and research. There are also the Sea People, whose city, realm, script and language and name are unknown: They came from nowhere and then vanished. There are the many references to Assuwa, Asiya, Ahiya and Ahhiyawa, states or confederations of states in western Anatolia, which played an important role in contemporary documents from Egypt and Hattusa, but whose city or cities, people, language and script are unknown. And finally there is the Discos of Phaistos, a unique—some would also say notorious—document, discovered on Crete in 1908, whose spiral inscription, using 45 different symbols, is inscribed on a clay disc 16 centimeters (6¼") across. Although the origin and importance of this artifact are fiercely disputed, its discoverer, Italian archeologist Luigi Pernier, claimed parallels between the characters used in the Discos script and images of the Sea People from the Medinat Habu inscriptions. Indeed, the latest attempt by scholars to decipher the Discos even bears the title "The Language of the Sea People," but the city, people, realm, language and name to be associated with the Discos are all unknown.

Combining all these incomplete entries into one row in our table would produce all the attributes of a complete civilization in western Anatolia. We even possess a contemporary name for such a civilization, as "Assuwa" was the term used to describe the confederated states, of which Ahhiyawa seems to have been the most important constituent. If these deductions prove correct, archeological scholarship has overlooked an entire, and important, Bronze Age civilization.

In a practical sense, the possibility that western Anatolia hosted a civilization equal—or in some respects even superior—to those of Mycenaean Greece and Minoan Crete is quite plausible. The Aegean shore of Anatolia contains countless natural harbors and advantageous places for settlement. The interior offers an abundance of natural resources including ores, timber and water, while the coastal maritime route has been of strategic and economic importance for millennia. Despite ample evidence that it was well-inhabited during the Late Bronze Age, and despite archeological evidence from Troy and Beycesultan that indicates these Anatolian societies may well have been sophisticated enough for them to rank with Greece and Crete, the thought has simply never been entertained in archeological circles. Why not?

Two characteristics of Old World archeological research methods illuminate how this may have occurred. Building on foundations in art history and philology, today's archeology tends to concentrate on the study of architectural monuments, artifacts and documents. This tendency rests on the implicit assumption that most of the relevant aspects of any ancient culture will indeed be recorded in these remains. But the approach puts any civilization whose people built with perishable mud-brick and wood, instead of with stone, at a serious disadvantage, for the remains of their structures will not survive. Similarly, when a civilization has traded in metal, cloth, timber, grain, leather, cattle or horses, slaves and other perishable goods rather than in pottery, the evidence of that activity will not survive the centuries. And if this civilization, in addition, used papyrus, wax or leather, rather than stone or clay, to write on, then its people may become almost invisible to archeological research.

Furthermore, the art-historical emphasis in archeology tends to highlight research that deals with concrete artifacts rather than the reconstruction of past political, economic and military relations—precisely the matters in which the Late Bronze Age Anatolian states seem to have excelled. Hence, by excavating standing monuments and artifact-rich sites, European archeology itself may have contributed to a slanted picture of antiquity.

The second characteristic goes back to the birth of scientific archeology in 19th-century Europe. The founders of the discipline had absorbed the Enlightenment belief that classical Greece and Rome were superior to the cultures of modern times. Also, both 19th-century Europe and Greece of the fourth century BC were engaged in conflicts with Anatolian powers: The Ottoman Empire's interests conflicted with those of European powers in much the same way that Troy's conflicted with Mycenae and, later, Persia's with classical Greece. As the culture of antiquity was presented as the model for modern culture in Europe, the antipathies born in Greece of the fourth century BC were also readopted and reinforced. All these conflicts—contemporary and historical—caused considerable anti-Anatolian sentiment.

Early archeology, as a strictly European discipline, unavoidably took up these attitudes. Johann Winckelmann, widely considered the founder of art history, regarded the ancient Greeks as "equal to the gods," while their contemporaries abroad were "barbarians." Later, the European university system institutionalized such attitudes through the omnipresence of ancient Greek sculpture and architecture in European institutions of higher learning.

As a result, ancient Greece was, and to a considerable extent still is, considered the cradle of Western culture, despite clear indications that several of its achievements—agriculture, metallurgy and elements of sophisticated architecture—actually came to Greece from Anatolia.

If we can clear our minds of these inherited assumptions, we find that the fall of the Late Bronze Age civilizations can indeed be plausibly reconstructed.

Early in the 14th century BC, as the power of the Minoan civilization on Crete dwindled, the many small kingdoms on the Greek and Anatolian sides of the Aegean took advantage of the vacuum. The Greek Mycenaean kings adopted the system of a palace-administered society from the Minoans, and gradually took over Cretan trade routes. Troy achieved sole control of some islands in the eastern Aegean and of the important maritime trade route through the Dardanelles to the Black Sea. It also assumed many of Crete's functions in the metals trade. Thus both the Mycenaean and the Trojan civilizations reached the peak of their political and economic power between 1375 and 1250 BC.

Eventually, the equilibrium must have shifted. Perhaps because Greek vessels attempted to use the straits to the Black Sea for their own trade activities, a serious conflict arose between the two sides of the Aegean. Traditional accounts recall how a small Greek contingent was sent to punish Troy in about 1250 BC. In a surprise attack, Greek units succeeded in destroying the city at its absolute cultural peak.

This first Greek assault was not the legendary Trojan War. It did, however, mark the beginning of the decline of the Late Bronze Age cultures. The Trojans rebuilt their city, but this time, the archeological evidence makes clear, they built not with status in mind, but defense. Soon after the citadel of Troy was finished, both the Mycenaean kings in Greece and the Great King of Hatti reinforced their own citadels in similar fashion. The new fortresses followed a common plan: The protected area was expanded to provide shelter not only for the upper classes but also for members of the lower echelons of society; the walls were reinforced to withstand massive onslaughts; access to freshwater springs was included in the protected areas to assure water supply under conditions of siege; and finally, defense galleries and secret escape routes were incorporated into the structures. The similarities between the citadels at Hattusa and Mycenae are so striking that one might almost infer they had been jointly designed.

Hatti's biggest concern, however, lay to the east, at the other end of Anatolia. From its heartland in upper Mesopotamia, Assyria launched a successful attack around 1236 BC, which captured copper mines on the eastern border of Hatti. Rather than confront the militarily superior Assyrian state, Hatti determined to acquire a new source of vital copper from an easier target. The Great King managed to conquer Cyprus, one of the richest mining districts in the eastern Mediterranean. At the same time, he barred ships from western Anatolia from entering the ports of his vassals in Syria, thus interrupting trade between his rivals. This blockade was just as much an act of aggression in the 13th century BC as it would be today; war became inevitable.

The first encounters between forces from western Anatolia and those of Hatti probably took place on the mainland, but eventually western Anatolian strategists developed a plan to circumvent the stronger state by sea and attack Cyprus and Syria instead. This naval assault probably occurred around 1195 BC, and it is this that became known as the Sea People invasions.

We may never find out whether the western Anatolian Sea People actually aimed to end Hatti's hegemony over central Anatolia once and for all, or whether they were simply retaliating against Hatti's aggressions in hope of regaining their lost trade routes. In either case, though the first battles may have been indecisive, western Anatolia soon received support from Kashka, which used Hatti's preoccupation with the Sea People to march again toward the Hittite capital. They left it in ashes in about 1190 BC.

With Hatti destroyed, the western Anatolian states—the Sea People—suddenly found themselves commanding an area stretching from the Aegean to Palestine. Pushing farther into the Levant, they became involved in the kind of battles that are depicted on the walls of Medinat Habu. Egypt, weakened by its internal strife, was unable to overwhelm the enemy. Only one state remained powerful enough to fight the western Anatolian allies, which were led by Troy: Mycenaean Greece.

Although Greece itself may not have been attacked, it was clearly facing a difficult future with a neighbor as powerful as western Anatolia, and a neighbor, to boot, whom Greece had already offended sufficiently to earn unwavering enmity. After much preparation, a Greek army entered the battlefield, planning attacks on the centers of cities—the same strategy used by the western Anatolian states. With the Anatolians busy in the Levant and Egypt, Greek soldiers ravaged the western Anatolian heartland, forcing the Anatolians to pull back to defend their homes. Finally, the opposing armies gathered at the city whose fate would decide the outcome of this unprecedented war. The battles at Troy probably took place around 1186 BC, and they likely lasted a few months before the Greek attackers succeeded—again—in conquering the doomed city.

In an apocalyptic war, there are no winners. Many famous Greek aristocrats lost their lives in the fighting. Those who survived had a hard time reassuming leadership upon their return, because provincial deputies had assumed their thrones and the returning warriors were too weakened and impoverished to regain their titles. Greece and Anatolia entered an era of anarchy. With the disappearance of the palaces and the aristocracy, the fine craftsmanship, the artistry, and the knowledge of writing disappeared as well. The Odyssey, numerous legends, and even the Greek historian Thucydides all recount how the survivors of the Trojan War spread all around the central and eastern Mediterranean. The archeological evidence confirms the migrations, and names still found today—Sicilian, Sardinian, Etruscan, Philistine and Thracian—are first documented after the end of the crisis years.

Although the Sea People vanished from the political records, they left a legacy second to none in world history. In Palestine, where many clans from both Greece and western Anatolia sought refuge, the Philistine and Phoenician civilizations arose, reviving and spreading much of the inventiveness in metallurgy, seafaring, warfare and trade that had characterized fallen Troy and its allies. The civilization of Rome claimed to have originated with Aeneas of Troy. And the memory of Troy and the Trojan War stood firmly at the center of interest for Western scholars up through the Middle Ages. Today it still remains one of the central legends of the West, related by one of the most eloquent poets the world has ever known.



Geoarcheologist Eberhard Zangger holds a German master's degree and a Stanford University doctorate in geology. He works as a senior physical scientist on many archeological projects around the eastern Mediterranean and lives in Zurich. His theory on the identity of the Sea People is detailed in his recent bookEin neuer Kampf um Troia, published in Germany by Droemer Knaur.




This article appeared on pages 20-31 of the May/June 1995 print edition of Saudi Aramco World.

 

[BlueHue]

Dr Velikovsky has allready published a BOOK
ON SEA-PEOPLE ORIGIN IN 1970 (AND OTHERS after HIM)
NOT in 1200/ 1193 bc but in 380 bc lived Rammesses-3 but DIEHARDS still think it was in 1193/ 1200 bc

What is YOUR opinion ? 

Ps
(thanks for re-discovering dr Velikovsky for THIS Website >)

[Mario Dantas]

Hi BlueHue,

Sagan on Cosmos: "Velikovsky"




Velikovsky revealed a great deal of things,

Carl Sagan is here "demolishing" Emmanuel Velikovsky' theory, nevertheless he is really explaining how the "near collision" occurred, that is when Atlantis disappeared. It is an interesting exemplification, although he doesn't really put an effort to explain in more details the reach of Velikovsky's hypothesis...

I believe his theory is very likely to be correct, Venus is the hottest planet in the Solar system. The Sea People and Moses People are intertwined somehow. Religion came after Mythology, Jupiter being Zeus and Cronus Saturn...  One of the reasons for many theories about the Sea People is that, in fact, there were many groups that "sprang" from their Islands in the Atlantic and "landed" upon Mediterrenean coasts and further...

(Tacitus)

As I am about to relate the last days of a famous city, it seems appropriate to throw some light on its origin. Some say that the Jews were fugitives from the island of Crete, who settled on the nearest coast of Africa about the time when Saturn was driven from his throne by the power of Jupiter. Evidence of this is sought in the name. There is a famous mountain in Crete called Ida; the neighbouring tribe, the Idaei, came to be called Judaei by a barbarous lengthening of the national name. Others assert that in the reign of Isis the overflowing population of Egypt, led by Hierosolymus and Judas, discharged itself into the neighbouring countries. Many, again, say that they were a race of Ethiopian origin, who in the time of king Cepheus were driven by fear and hatred of their neighbours to seek a new dwelling-place. Others describe them as an Assyrian horde who, not having sufficient territory, took possession of part of Egypt, and founded cities of their own in what is called the Hebrew country, lying on the borders of Syria. Others, again, assign a very distinguished origin to the Jews, alleging that they were the Solymi, a nation celebrated in the poems of Homer, who called the city which they founded Hierosolyma after their own name.

Most writers, however, agree in stating that once a disease, which horribly disfigured the body, broke out over Egypt; that king Bocchoris, seeking a remedy, consulted the oracle of Hammon, and was bidden to cleanse his realm, and to convey into some foreign land this race detested by the gods. The people, who had been collected after diligent search, finding themselves left in a desert, sat for the most part in a stupor of grief, till one of the exiles, Moyses by name, warned them not to look for any relief from God or man, forsaken as they were of both, but to trust to themselves, taking for their heaven-sent leader that man who should first help them to be quit of their present misery. They agreed, and in utter ignorance began to advance at random. Nothing, however, distressed them so much as the scarcity of water, and they had sunk ready to perish in all directions over the plain, when a herd of wild asses was seen to retire from their pasture to a rock shaded by trees. Moyses followed them, and, guided by the appearance of a grassy spot, discovered an abundant spring of water. This furnished relief. After a continuous journey for six days, on the seventh they possessed themselves of a country, from which they expelled the inhabitants, and in which they founded a city and a temple.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moses


The crudeness of these reports can be rather embarrassing but are not far from the truth... important groups of tribes involved, those of the Sea, and those on "solid ground". People had lost their hometown and had to live some place else... While some adored the  omnipotent and most high God , Elohim, Yahweh or Adonay, others remained in "sin" worshiping Zeus and the rest of the Olympian Gods. 

According to the Torah, the name "Moses" comes from the (Hebrew) verb meaning "to pull/draw out" [of water], so named by Pharaoh's daughter (identified by the Midrash as Bithiah from I Chr; or (Thermuthis) ) after she had pulled the infant from the banks of the river.

An implicit subtle signal regarding Moses "provenance"?  just speculating...


Regards,
M

[Mario Dantas]

The link to enlightening Carl Sagan youtube on the Velikovsky affair is not working anymore... nevertheless he says "almost impossible" if you care to know.


other links to his work:

http://www.knowledge.co.uk/velikovsky/peoples.htm

http://www.varchive.org/ce/affidavit.htm

regards,
M

[BlueHue]

MOUNT IDA where Zeus was born
or where he was hidden from evil
may be a misspelling of ATHE
which is also a misspelling
from ADE or short for ADAMAS

Atlantis was the embodiment of OIKUMENE or the KNOWN- World
It was the SACRED Center(= CRETER. Crater-)or CRETE/ hindi SRI-Lanka
Biblical HOLI- LAND egyptian AAU or PTHA, Babyl.ARALU greek ELYSION

In the OIKUMENE- SAGA ADEN/ Atlantis was named the capital ORCHOMENES
" Golden- City"(= oricalchum.)it's KING ATHAMAS became the ADAM of Genesis

[Apollo]

Who Were the Sea People?
From KL47, for About.com
Filed In:Greece > Greek Wars & Battles> Trojan War> Trojan War ArticlesQuestion: Who Were the Sea People?

Answer: The situation regarding the identification of the Sea Peoples is more complicated than you might realize. The major problem is that we only have sketchy written records of their attacks on the established cultures of Egypt and the Near East, and these give only a vague idea of where they came from. Also, as the name suggests, they were a group of distinct peoples of diverse origins, not a single culture. Archaeologists have put some pieces of the puzzle together, but there are still some big gaps in our knowledge of them which will never be filled.

The Egyptians originally coined the name "Peoples of the Sea" for the foreign contingents that the Libyans brought in to support their attack on Egypt in c. 1220 BC during the reign of Pharaoh Merneptah. In the records of that war, five Sea Peoples are named: the Shardana, Teresh, Lukka, Shekelesh and Ekwesh, and are collectively referred to as "northerners coming from all lands". The evidence for their exact origins is extremely sparse, but archaeologists specializing in this period have proposed the following:

The Shardana may have originated in northern Syria, but later moved to Cyprus and probably eventually ended up as the Sardinians.

The Teresh and Lukka were probably from western Anatolia, and may correspond to the ancestors of the later Lydians and Lycians, respectively. However, the Teresh may also have been the people later known to the Greeks as the Tyrsenoi, i.e., the Etruscans, and already familiar to the Hittites as the Taruisa, which latter is suspiciously similar to the Greek Troia. I won't speculate on how this fits in with the Aeneas legend.

The Shekelesh may correspond to the Sikels of Sicily. The Ekwesh have been identified with the Ahhiyawa of Hittite records, who were almost certainly Achaean Greeks colonizing the western coast of Anatolia, as well as the Aegean Islands, etc.

In Egyptian records of the second wave of Sea Peoples attacks in c. 1186 BC, during the reign of Pharaoh Rameses III, the Shardana, Teresh, and Shekelesh are still considered to be a menace, but new names also appear: the Denyen, Tjeker, Weshesh and Peleset. An inscription mentions that they "made a conspiracy in their islands", but these may have only been temporary bases, not their actual homelands.

The Denyen probably originally came from northern Syria (perhaps where the Shardana had once lived), and the Tjeker from the Troad (i.e., the area around Troy) (possibly via Cyprus). Alternatively, some have associated the Denyen with the Danaoi of the Iliad, and even the tribe of Dan in Israel.

Little is known about the Weshesh, though even here there is a tenuous link to Troy. As you may know, the Greeks sometimes referred to the city of Troy as Ilios, but this may have evolved from the Hittite name for the region, Wilusa, via the intermediate form Wilios. If the people called Weshesh by the Egyptians were indeed the Wilusans, as has been speculated, then they may have included some genuine Trojans, though this is an extremely tenuous association.

Finally, of course, the Peleset eventually became the Philistines and gave their name to Palestine, but they too probably originated somewhere in Anatolia.

In summary then, five of the nine named "Sea Peoples" - the Teresh, Lukka, Tjeker, Weshesh and Peleset - can plausibly be linked to Anatolia (albeit somewhat inconclusively), with the Tjeker, Teresh and Weshesh being possibly linked to the vicinity of Troy itself, though nothing can be proven and there's still much controversy about the exact locations of ancient states in that region, let alone the ethnic identity of the inhabitants.

Of the other four Sea Peoples, the Ekwesh are probably the Achaean Greeks, and the Denyen may be the Danaoi (though probably aren't), while the Shekelesh are the Sicilians and the Shardana were probably living in Cyprus at the time, but later became the Sardinians.

Thus, both sides in the Trojan War may be represented among the Sea Peoples, but the impossibility of obtaining precise dates for the fall of Troy and the raids of the Sea Peoples makes it difficult to work out exactly how they are connected.

http://ancienthistory.about.com/od/hittites/f/seapeople.htm

[BlueHue]

SORRY ' APOLLO'
I ignore whether you discussed dr V's findings on your Topic-thread ?

Dr Velikovsky
 discovered the True identity of the Peoples of the Sea in his BOOK( dd 1970.)
The " Attack of the Sea Peoples" was a non - existing Event in 1200 bc.

Most of Greece around 380 bc was so afraid of RAIDS from untrusworthy" Freindly Greek Neighbours
that the Greek States went" en -masse "  into Persian hegemony
to secure persian military protection from their agressive kinsmen/neighbours.

But persian  Vassalage entails inpeacetime also the aquirement of military/ mercenary aid
asked/wanted by Persia in quenching other " Official Satrapies" in rebellious State in 380 bc.
Such as Egypt that just had regained independancy under King Rammesses-3( Neferites/Nectanebo-1)

As is known Dr Velikovsky has been demonized by his peers for his discoveries
 and so professional historians refusae to acknowledge that the EVENT of 1200 bc
in reality described the PERSIAN invasion under Adm. Pharbasanus of Egypt in 380 bc.
 and had nothing to do
with the downfall of the Assyrian Empire in 610 bc. nor with the war on Troy

Sincerely " BlueHue " dd 25 Febr. 2009