The confederation of tribes we label the Sea Peoples were a complex web connecting the threads of what would later become scholarly debate. Their memory is but words in a dusty book, on a desolate shelf, long forgotten by an apathetic modern world. All that remains are pictures set in timeless stone telling of their attempt to conquer Egypt, in what we term the Late Bronze Age. Let us consider a time of prehistory. Discovering a past lost, still undeciphered which could hold a key to our future. In this never- nding story… we open the pages in the middle; for the beginning pages have been destroyed. Nevertheless, we may reconstruct through epigraphical evidence, alternate pages of this foreign his-story. The story tells of a population fleeing. This was such a definite turning of events that time was redefined from the Bronze Age to the Iron Age. In defining the ages of man, a transition occurred from the use of bronze metal in daily lives to the use of stronger iron implements. This marks a definite transition in power and lifestyles. Tribes and their societies depended on war and conquest as well as work and trade for food and survival. The climate was changing and so were their lifestyles, sometimes rapidly. Piracy was prevalent and an acceptable and feasible way of life, as long as you had the resources. The Mediterranean Sea was being traversed and migrations were recorded “over a period of at least fifty years in the later twelfth and early eleventh centuries BCE”.1 These tribes about which I shall speak were recognized and recorded by the Hittites, Egyptians, and the Alashiyans of what we now call Cyprus as well as Syrians of Ugarit. Hewitt believes that they started as united allied villages which grew into provinces and aggregated into larger confederations of allies such as the Sea Peoples. Leahy tells us that “there is a broad consensus that they came mainly from the Aegean and Anatolia, and archaeological discoveries increasingly suggest that upheavals in the Mycenaean world lay behind their abandonment of their native countries”.2 This era was marked with heavy inflation of food subsidies and famine across the Mediterranean. This was a time of chaos, and of fortification to protect what was life sustaining. Forts were built, troops were trained, and resources in metal were the base for the protection of each nation. Its importance cannot be stressed enough. Their era was categorized by it; power was defended by it. The rise and fall of civilizations was defined by it. There was “activity of trade caused by the discovery, by the mining tribes of the North of Asia Minor and Cyprus, of the ores of metals, the methods of extracting metals from the ores, and of working them when extracted.”3 They were in search of ore deposits and a better way of life. During this time “the foreign invaders included women and children in carts, and there can be no doubt that what we see was not just a military force but a population on the move”.4 This population was seeking food, wealth, trade and sustainability. They found all of it in Egypt and the Levant. There was a power struggle in the eastern Mediterranean over land and resources, especially metals. Metals equaled commerce and currency, it made tools to dominate other tribes. In the fifteenth century B.C. the Hittites were powerful, but were fading, while the Egyptian power waxed and then waned. When the Hittite kingdom was abolished, trade routes were upset.5 We can see this in the archaeological patterns formed in the Levant and Syria. This confederation of tribes we will now refer to as the Sea Peoples are thought to have sacked the Hittite cities. We must ask why they would uproot from their homeland and risk death and slavery by a foreign race. Leahy observes that they played a part in the loss of the Levant from Egypt.6 When they arrived there they staked a claim on the Levant. Arriving as mercenaries they used their influence and esources to better their lives. Barako states that because of the weakened state of Egypt, which held political sway over southern Canaan for most of the Late Bronze Age, the Philistines and other tribes of the Sea Peoples were able to threaten their power.7 After all they had allies, ships and metal implement to fight with. Moreover, in textual evidence from Medinet Habu, their threat to Egypt indicates they could conquer the coveted land in the Levant. These mysterious tribes appeared in a power vacuum and carved out a piece of the Levant for themselves and their families. They were hoping, but not succeeding, to include Egypt in their spoils of conquest. What they did was leave a mark on the Mediterranean history of their time. This mark was written in cuneiform and Egyptian hieroglyphics. In chapter one of this paper the physical proof that the tribes of the Sea People actually existed and were not just myth is argued from the epigraphical record of textual and pictorial records inscribed by the Egyptians, Hittites and Ugaritans. Unfortunately we do not have any written proof that survives from the Sea Peoples perspective. Everything found so far is from a foreign perspective. In chapter two we review the scholars who have previously chosen to study the Sea Peoples and classify them. Chapter three explores which were the tribes of the Sea Peoples and which lands they were thought to have occupied. Chapter four digs into the archaeology and their migration route through the archaeological remains. Chapter five gives a hypothetical route by land for the Sea Peoples and talks about the obstacles they may have encountered. It is obvious they traveled by sea as well and that is a complicated subject that I leave to more learned scholars than myself. The land route is a new hypothesis I have enjoyed exploring. Chapter six asks why they migrated and looks at the ruins around them while exploring the earthquake hypothesis again with the new science of Archaeoseismology and earthquake storms. Chapter seven goes into detail about epigraphical evidence of famine and drought reported around that time. Once we establish that they were real historical people, I summarize who has talked about them in scholarship and what archaeological trails they left behind. Where their path took them and what disrupted their lives enough for them to risk all. Erratic weather in different forms and hypothesis will be explored.
Posted on: Sat, 26 Jul 2014 09:21:11 +0000