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The Sea Peoples and Egypt:

Conflicting perspectives in the past 50 Years of Egyptology

Abstract

Since the latter half of the previous century, a vast amount of research has been directed toward the ‘Sea Peoples’ phenomenon, ranging from strict adherence to literal interpretations of Egyptian texts to liberal theories about invincible Sicilian pirates and adventurers.  Each of the perspectives on this matter, (un)fortunately, contains its merits and its incongruities.  That is, they all share a common truth while, simultaneously, a degree of misinformation.  To what extent these widely varying perspectives are the result of a particular culture (our own) or whether there exists a universal truth to which all (or none) of the theories discussed herein may claim, is called into question.  The debate can be broadly broken down into two schools of thought, which serve both as critiques and stimuli for each other: (1) those who believe that the ‘Sea Peoples’ were a local phenomenon (Nibbi) and, (2) those who argue for a large scale migration and a close link between the dissolution of the Hittite Empire, Mycenaean palaces, mass destruction along the Levantian coast, and the repulsion of the ‘Sea Peoples’ from Egypt in the Late Bronze Age (Sanders, Redford, Tubb, Oren, et al.).  By contrasting these various theories, perhaps scholars may arrive at a more plausible “truth” on the matter.

Introduction

The Postmodern World and the Study of History

As Western Civilization moves from the late 20^th and into the 21^st Century, it does so as a decidedly postmodern peoples.  One of the underlying tenants of postmodern thought is that while absolute truth exists, reality is absolutely perceptive and, therefore, subjective[1].  This philosophy, one of subjective reality, permeates every aspect of 21^st Century life – including, of course, the academic disciplines.  Today, there exist such disciplines as Postmodern Philosophy, Post-Structural analysis of literature and language (semiotics?); there is even such a discipline as Postmodern Anthropology (a particularly ironic term for any discipline which exists in the space of generalization and speculation – i.e., forms and models).  But perhaps the academic discipline most questioned (abused?) by postmodern analyses is that of History.  History (the academic field) has a well documented history of subjective methodology (traditionally labeled aristocratic, white male), a subjective history brought to the surface, time and time again, through postmodern analyses (feminist, psychoanalytic, Marxist, etc.).

Because History purports to tell the “true” story of its subject[2], an inevitable conflict with postmodern thought arises, which is a likely reason why postmodern criticisms of History have been so popular and invasive in the past 50 years.  Another underlying tenant of postmodern thought has to do with (dis)association.  That is to say, the further removed from the object of study one is, the more aware one becomes of any inclination (to borrow the psychoanalytic term) to transfer one’s own subjective reality onto the object of study.  It is simply easier, in theory, to remain objective about the study of Egyptian history than, say, American history.  Therefore, when one studies Egyptian (or any ancient) history, one remains hyperconscious of the fact that the particular document (or object) which is analyzed comes from a very particular (foreign) source.  For example, of the multitude of inscriptions carved throughout Egypt by Rameses II, the historian is acutely aware of the fact that much of the confident, bombastic text is, in fact, an attempt on the part of the pharaoh to create a certain (majestic? divine?) persona for himself.  That is to say, the inscriptions are an attempt (apparently successful, in this case) at immortality by remaining, on account of his extraordinary deeds depicted in the inscriptions, in the consciousness of the living world forever[3].  However, a modern historian is faced with a whole different set of value laden difficulties in trying to write the history of American Democracy in relation to its counterparts in Communism, Fascism, etc.[4]  The crux of this dilemma has to do with one’s (dis)association with the object of study.  In this case, the highly charged (politicized?) values of contemporary political theories of Communism, Fascism, etc. are too close to the world of the person who analyzes them – one’s own environment is inherently laden with a multitude of second level signifiers based solely on one’s position within said environment (that is, one’s particular relationship to one’s environment).  Try as one might to remain objective, the position of the individual within the context of a particular system necessitates a subjective – in contrast to a universal – analysis. 

That having been said, one cannot help but be amused by the plethora of competing (postmodern) theories regarding Egyptian history.  Have you heard the theory informing us that the great pyramids at Giza were constructed with tuning forks?  That is right; each block was floated into place by three men, a rope and a tuning fork.  It is a comical farce, no doubt, but if the lost city of Plato’s(!) Atlantis can be found in the Andes Mountains of South America, why couldn’t the ancient pyramid builders have built their engineering marvels with a handful of men and some tuning forks?  After all, it is now known that the pyramids were not constructed on the shoulders of enslaved Hebrews.  But that is the beauty of a postmodern world: truth is something to be constructed, shaped, and molded (from a certain point of view)[5].  And the construction of each truth, like that of each pyramid, must be analyzed for not just why and how it was constructed, but for how reliable the foundations are upon which each truth rests.  Such are the questions which must be asked in the present endeavor: Who, exactly, were the ‘Sea Peoples’ referred to by Merneptah and Rameses III?  And to what extent, if any, were they associated with the large scale, catastrophic events that heralded end of the Late Bronze Age and sent the Aegean spiraling into a Dark Age, destroyed many coastal cities in the eastern Mediterranean, saw the dissolution of the Hittite Empire, and saw Egyptian influence in the Near East wane and retreat to its ancestral home in the Nile Basin?

Contending Theories about the ‘Sea Peoples’

There are almost as many conflicting theories regarding the so-called ‘Sea Peoples,’ recorded during the reigns of Merneptah (c. 1220 BCE) and Rameses III (c. 1185), as there are ancient Mediterranean scholars fortunate enough to study them.  The present study has tried to narrow its discussion to only a handful of the more convincing, popular, or intriguing theories on the matter – not necessarily in that order.  One of the difficulties, which will be discussed later, has to do with interpretation of sources.  Since much of the textual evidence (i.e., the Egyptian evidence) regarding ‘Sea Peoples’ is based on syntactic and semantic interpretation, it is not so much the evidence that continues to change (from the Egyptologist’s point of view) but how it is interpreted.  Each individual theory (or collection of theories) regarding the ‘Sea Peoples’ takes a relatively clear stance in regard to how each piece of evidence should be interpreted. 

There are three primary Egyptian sources which come into question by most theorists: Inscriptions, both textual and pictorial, on both the interior and exterior of Medinet Habu, the mortuary temple of Rameses III; the Papyrus Harris, a historical document dated to within a few decades of Rameses III’s victories over the ‘Sea Peoples’; and the “Hymn of Victory,” also known as the ‘Israel Stela,’ erected by Merneptah to celebrate his repulsion of the ‘Sea Peoples’ (Nibbi, 1975,  p. 102).  Additionally, there are the ‘Athribis’ Stela, the Cairo Column, and the long inscription at the Karnak temple, all dealing with Merneptah’s reign c. 1220 BCE (Nibbi, 1975, p. 102).  The sources most often referred to are the inscriptions at Medinet Habu.

The theories themselves can be loosely categorized[6] in the following way:

·        Those who believe the Sea Peoples came from points all over the Mediterranean: from Sicily, the Aegean and Anatolia and were largely foreign to both Egypt and the Southern Levant (e.g., L. Cottrell, 1969)

·        Those who believe the Sea Peoples came, in part, from the Aegean, but also largely from the coasts of Anatolia and were well established in the Southern Levant before their raids on Egypt (e.g., N. Sanders, 1985)

·        Those who believe the Sea Peoples were local enemies of the Egyptians, occupying lands in the Delta, Southern Levant and Libya, excluding any incursions from invaders overseas, such as from Italy, the Aegean or Anatolia (e.g., A. Nibbi, 1975)

Although listed intentionally without numbers, which would almost certainly be construed as a qualification of validity, the items listed above are constructed with a certain spatial relationship in mind.  The first grouping consists of peoples ranging far and wide, from extremely far off lands in the north, east and west, even according to the most liberal interpretations of Egyptian geography.  The third grouping (and the lowest, thus placing it furthest south on a hypothetical map) views the ‘Sea Peoples’ as neighbors directly bordering Egypt and, at times, living in places occupied by Pharaoh.  From the Egyptian perspective, all potential ‘Sea Peoples’ were invaders from the north; thus, the further “south” a people originates, the closer they are in relation to Egypt.  The grouping listed between the first and third theories represents, logically enough, those who believe the ‘Sea Peoples’ were a mixture of foreign (Aegean, Anatolian) and neighboring (Southern Levant, Jordan Valley) peoples[7].  The following sections will survey the most divergent and controversial theory at present, that of Alessandra Nibbi (1975), then move from Nibbi to where the bulk of the ‘Sea Peoples’ scholarship seems to point (the middle grouping on the above list).  While neither Nibbi (1975) nor Sanders (1985) – nor the bulk of other recent scholars – agree with each others’ final analyses, they sufficiently refute or incorporate the first (and earliest) theoretical grouping, espoused by Cottrell (1969), to the extent that it would be redundant to provide a separate section for that grouping.

Nibbi’s Argument

Alessandra Nibbi’s contribution to the ‘Sea Peoples’ debate is her 1975 treatise, The Sea Peoples and Egypt.  Her thesis must be understood in its context as a rebuttal to the scholarship which dominated the scene prior to her involvement, mainly that the Mycenaeans were being pushed out of their land; “And the Trojans, too, were on the move, the Danaoi, whom the Egyptians called the Danu” (Cottrell, 1969, p. 126); that the ‘Achaiwasha’ (from Hittite documents) were Homer’s Achaeans; that the ‘Shardana’ were men from Sardinia, “tall men with feathered helmets and long swords who fought as mercenaries in the Pharaoh’s armies” (Cottrell, 1969, p. 126); that the ‘Shekel’ were from Sicily; the Phillistines from Palestine; that the ‘Khatti,’ (Hittites) had joined them; and that “All now became reluctant allies, since all had been dispossessed of their ancestral lands” (Cottrel, 1969).  And, of course, Nibbi (1975) wanted to refute the popular belief that the ‘Sea Peoples’ listed in Egyptian texts were responsible for the mass destruction and turmoil which gripped the East Mediterranean in the Late Bronze Age:

We must not hope to find in the Sea Peoples the answer to all the destruction of cities at the end of the Bronze Age.  One is encouraged by the more objective methods now being used by archaeologists in these areas and by their conclusions which do not require an invasion of peoples from the north. (p. 2)

Nibbi’s argument centered around two relatively major points of contention with the manner in which Egyptian sources had been understood up to that point: translation of the texts, a largely philological/linguistic field; and a fundamental understanding of Egyptian geography.  Each raises its own fundamental questions about how historians interpret the data before them, and neither is fully independent of the other[8]. 

First, Nibbi’s linguistic contention about how Egyptian texts are translated must be addressed.  She is very upfront about her idea that each text must be taken literally; this will become an easy – and justified, to an extent – criticism of her thesis by later scholars.  The most significant of her linguistic contentions has to do with the translation of “sea.”  She contends that the translation of “Great Green” as “sea” is problematic because the translation is based on the Semitic word for “water.”  This usage for “water” was not used in Egypt until the New Kingdom period, brought in by the Hyksos (Nibbi, 1975).  She also notes that the distinction between various ‘Asiatic’ tribes is not made in Egypt until after the expulsion of the Hyksos (p.24).  The term “Great Green,” however, dates back well into the Old Kingdom (Nibbi, 1975, p. 35).  The logical question, then, is what did “Great Green” mean in the Old Kingdom? 

It is possible that green was associated with spring, richness, and fertility, but green is often used across cultures as a color for sickness or ill health, so such a simple explanation is not entirely convincing, albeit plausible.  Nibbi (1975) associates the “Great Green” with still, inland (fresh?) water: “If ‘Great Green’ originally referred to stretches of papyrus, then its meaning would denote swamp – land and essentially undrained areas, because we now know that papyrus will not grow where the level of the water changes very much or where there is fast flowing water” (p. 36).  Thus, if “Great Green” is a reference to inland and/or swampy water, then it could not be a reference to the Mediterranean itself but, rather, the Nile Delta and northeastern border of Egypt between the Sinai mountains, Mediterranean Sea and Red Sea.  Figure 1 is Nibbi’s hypothetical organization of the Nile Delta based on this linguistic evidence.

“In the earlier texts from the time of Merneptah, the Ekwesh are said to be ‘of the hill-countries of the ym’…[and] When the Asiatics are mentioned in the Egyptian texts, they always have as their determinative the hill-country sign” (Nibbi, 1975, p. 46-7).  In other words, the Ekwesh (i.e., the supposed ‘Sea Peoples’) are really called the ‘of the hill-countries of the sea (ym) peoples.’  They are not only described as being “of the sea [ym].” However, the signs for “island” and “hill” were, more or less, interchangeable (Nibbi, 1975, p. 49).  So there had to be a reason for including both ym and “hill-countries” (or possibly “isle countries”) into the description of these northern invaders. 

Depictions of ‘Sea Peoples’ are very consistent as far as it being a migratory event including women, children and beasts of burden:

Bearing in mind the extent of the area threatened and destroyed by the enemy it seems reasonable to conclude that the only people who would have been in a position freely to attack both the Hittite states and the Egyptian frontier…would be the people who were actually at home in the area between the two….  One cannot imagine outsiders attempting to do this in similar conditions, and accompanied by women and children. (Nibbi, 1975, p. 66)

If Nibbi is correct on this matter, then the usage of both ym (sea or something to do with water) and hill-countries would be perfectly feasible descriptions for peoples in the Southern Levant/northeastern Egyptian border[9].

Nibbi’s final piece of linguistic evidence is very damaging to the idea of a battle near the Mediterranean proper and is very relevant to her fundamental understanding of Egyptian history: Not only did Egyptians not have a word for “sea” until the Hyksos came, but there is a conspicuous absence of any ‘sea deity’ in the very large Egyptian pantheon (1975, p.125-6).  This absence of a designated sea deity suggests that (a.) Egyptians did not frequent the open waters of the Mediterranean and, consequently, (b.) were an inland peoples. (1975, p. 126).  Nibbi (1975) is, therefore, confident when she states, “It is becoming increasingly clear that Lower Egypt, and particularly the Delta, contained at all times a number of strong foreign elements which were often actively hostile to the Pharaoh” (p. 7).  Furthermore, Rameses II records “having plundered the warriors of the Great Green without any reference to a naval battle or to an attack on the part of the enemy” on the Aswân Stela (Nibbi, 1975, p. 105).  Thus, Nibbi (1975) contends that “the Delta had never been Egypt, and it had always been quite a triumph for the Pharaoh to subdue any of its nomes sufficiently to extract dues from them” (p. 56).  Rameses III boasts of taking the land of the ‘Sea Peoples’ after having defeated them.  This would necessitate a border proximity to Egypt and points toward the Delta, northeast toward the Southern Levant and/or Libya (all areas bordering Egypt on the north).  Crete, Sicily, Greece, Cyprus and, to a large degree, Anatolia are too far afield and were never controlled by Pharaoh (Nibbi, 1975, p. 70).

But how does one make sense of the ‘conspiracy’ on the ‘islands’ of the Sea Peoples?  “When the Nile rose, the whole country was under water, except for the settlements, which were situated on natural hills or artificial mounds, which, viewed from a distance, resembled islands”  (Nibbi, 1975, p. 10); see figure 2.

Nibbi seems to present a well thought-out, convincing case for who the ‘Sea Peoples’ were (or were not).  That is, hers is a very convincing case if one agrees with her translation of the texts and her fundamental understanding of Egyptian geography.  More recent analyses of the ‘Sea Peoples’ phenomenon must be to Nibbi’s work.

N. K. Sanders

N. K. Sanders’ study of the ‘Sea Peoples’ question is at once contemporary with, and more updated than, Alessandra Nibbi’s treatise.  The first edition of her book, The Sea Peoples: Warriors of the Ancient Mediterranean, was published a mere three years after Nibbi’s, in 1978.  A revised edition followed in 1985.  The necessity for a second edition, however, is understandable[10] because of the nature of the evidence she dealt with.  While Nibbi’s work was consciously Egypt-centric, bordering on xenophobic (not unlike the Egyptians themselves), and almost entirely dealing with reinterpretation of old evidence, Sanders’ approach was much more archaeological in character.  That is, the analysis employed by Sanders was to compare grave goods, pottery styles, sword styles, etc. from the Danube to the Red Sea.  In large part, Sanders was presenting and synthesizing evidence for the first time as opposed to retranslating extant texts.  Of course, Sanders would have liked to deal with the efforts of translating new texts, but that, alas, is one of the many problems with Late Bronze Age history outside of Egypt and the Levant, no such texts exist.

Sanders’ (1985) analysis of the situation equates as follows:

Confusion has been increased by throwing together all sorts of widely differing events.  The wars of Merneptah and Rameses III on the borders of Egypt, the fall of the Hittite empire in Anatolia and the disasters that overtook the Mycenaean palaces on the Greek mainland, the ‘fall of Troy’ and the rise of the Philistines: all these are attributed to the ‘Sea Peoples.’  Whoever or whatever they were, the trouble-makers were not ‘a people,’ and only to a limited extent were they ‘of the sea.’” (p. 10)

In some respects, then, Nibbi and Sanders appear to be in agreement: (a.) the ‘Sea Peoples’ were not one particular people, (b.) their label as being “of the sea” is misleading, and (c.) earlier attempts to blame the cataclysmic collapse throughout the East Mediterranean in the Late Bronze Age on the Sea Peoples is untenable. 

Among possible scenarios forwarded in the past, Sanders (1985) notes that there is no evidence for a Dorian (or Eastern European) invasion of Greece, and “Theories of catastrophic drought towards the end of the 2^nd millennium…do not stand up to investigation” (p. 20). Populations north of Greece, primarily along the Danube, show very little sign of a mass population movement.  Although large stockpiles of bronzes indicate a high incidence of warfare, and there is evidence for a shift, over time, from agrarian to pastoral living (Sanders, 1985, pp. 86-8).  Instead of an invasion of Greece in the Late Bronze Age (Dorian or otherwise), “the whole of the southern and central Greek mainland was not overwhelmed at the same moment, as might have happened if there had been a massive attack from beyond the frontier” (Sanders, 1985, p. 180).  The evidence for this slow and steady “migration” can be found in the massive cyclopean walls of Mycenae and Tiryns, which were not the kind of projects built in haste to ward off invading armies, and in other areas of Greece (notably in Messinia and at Pylos), there is no evidence at all for a strategic defense of the palace center.  In fact, the nearest likeness to the fortifications at Mycenae and Tiryns is at the Hittite capital of Hattusas (Sanders, 1985, p. 62), another Late Bronze Age fort whose ultimate demise continues to elude archaeologists and historians alike.

“There is a lot of evidence, both archaeological and linguistic, for a southward shift of Anatolian people from the plateau to northern Syria” (Sanders, 1985, p. 143).  On Cyprus, “Enkomi and Kition are our best guide to events” between 1200 and 1050 BCE (Sanders, 1985, p. 144).  The destruction of a defensive wall at Enkomi is replaced by ashlar masonry of Mycenaean character, preceding deposits of LH IIIC pottery (Sanders, 1985, p. 144), thus placing the ‘Mycenaean reconstruction’ securely in the LH IIIB phase.

Unlike Nibbi, Sanders (1985) does attempt to draw a connection between the events in Egypt and those which preceded them in the Levant: “the further we travel from Egypt the less confident we must be…and where Egypt is a broken reed we are hard put to know where to turn for help” (p. 12).  Often, residual cultural evidence is all one has to work with:  The destruction of major Mycenaean palace centers coincides with the use of LH IIIB pottery and also “with an intense interest in the Levant” (Sanders, 1985, p. 180).  Thus, it appears likely that the Mycenaeans were familiar with the Levant (including Analtolia) and may have emigrated there for one reason or another.

In fact, Sanders (1985) is very forthcoming with her theories about why and how such an emigration from the Aegean to the Levant occurred:

An epoch of prosperity and comparative stability throughout the East Mediterranean and the Near East had depended upon an equilibrium that held between the two major powers, Egypt and Hittite Anatolia; and it virtually ended with the death of Pharaoh Rameses II around 1224, and Tudhaliyas IV, the last really powerful Hittite king, a few years later. (p. 11)

When the fruits of trade with the Near East broke down for Mycenaean lords, they could not or would not return to subsistence farming, meaning they were left with only their weapons and their boats (Sanders, 1985, p. 184).  However, “if there was a disporia it was limited to one class, the lords and their immediate followers” (Sanders, 1985, p.186), because subsistence living did occur on the mainland after the Mycenaean Palace Age came to an end.

Although Sanders (1985) never specifically refutes Nibbi’s somewhat maverick claim that the Egyptians were an inland peoples, she does suggest evidence to the contrary:  

An ambassador in Cretan dress shown on the walls of the 15^th-century tomb of Rekhenire in Egypt is overpainted by one wearing a mainland kilt….  For a time Cretan exports to the Levant, to judge from pottery found there, continued alongside Mycenaean ones, and there are still Egyptian imports in late-15^th-century warrior graves at Knossos; but a significant increase in the amount of mainland pottery in the Levant follows the fall of Knossos in the early 14^th century. (p. 58)

She also adds, “Egypt imported goods from Greek lands in the early 14^th century (Armarna period), but that trade fell off sharply after this” (1985, p. 75).  Unfortunately, this evidence avoids addressing Nibbi’s actual claim because it is very possible that the only peoples navigating the Mediterranean at this point in time were Cretans and Mycenaeans.  In fact, if the boom in Mycenaean-like pottery (LH IIIB) in the Levant, after the fall of Knossos, is any indication, one would suspect that the Mycenaeans were the initiators of trade (be it between Egypt, Anatolia or the Levant).  Similarly, an apparent shower complex was unearthed at the Cretan palace of Phaestos, which is unique among Aegean structures and has its only corollary in Egypt, where such bathing apparatuses were common.  Sanders (1985) states, “That the Egyptians had some knowledge of Cretan and mainland topography is shown by the Theban Topographical List of Amenophis III of around 1400” (p. 114).  If this does not provide evidence that Egyptians ventured outside the confines of the Nile Delta as early as the 15^th Century, it certainly suggests that the Egyptians were aware of the Mycenaean and Minoan cultures, with whom they were involved in some form of trade and/or diplomacy.

Furthermore, the steady shift in Mycenaean weaponry, influenced by peoples near the Danube, is mirrored in the Levant, presumably because of Mycenaean emigration there:

What really happened, rather than any shortage of metal, was a change in fighting tactics, with the long spear now the principal weapon, and the dagger (type E and F) a supporting weapon. (Sanders, 1985, pp. 73-4)

Figure 3 provides examples of the sword (flange hilt, type IIa) with origins in the Danube, but they were likely in-troduced to the Levant by My-cenaean emigrants.

Finally, San-ders (1985) re-sorts to the Egyptian and (scanty) Hittite/ Levantian texts which deal with po-tential ‘Sea Peoples’: The Shardana are listed among the Lybian allies by the Merneptah stela.  These same Shar-dana are shown as Egyptian allies under Rameses II in the battle of Kadesh (depicted at Karnak).  The Shardana wielded swords: “They were swordsmen and spearmen, whereas the native Egyptian troops used the bow” (pp. 105-6).  The Shardana, it is safe to infer at this point, appear to be mercenary forces under Rameses II.  They are typically depicted with round shields and horned helmets, but helmets of those attacking Egypt are always variant from those fighting for Pharaoh – Pharaoh’s forces usually included a sun disc, perhaps representing allegiance to Amun-Re (Sanders, 1985, p. 106).  The fact that they (Shardana) wore horned helmets presents a problem for earlier theories about origins of the ‘Sea Peoples.’  The only precedent for this is from Mesopotamia and the Levant, but the Shardana are often associated with Sardina, an apparent anomaly (Sanders, 1985, pp. 106-7).  “Wherever these great fighters came from it is a fair assumption that it was not far from the northern Syrian coast, and the same might hold true for the troop on the Warrior Vase from Mycenae” (Sanders, 1985, p. 107).

“The Lukka, who also joined the Lybian invaders, had been allies of the Hittites at the battle of Kadesh,” while the Ekwesh are singled out as forming the largest contingent of the Libyan allies against Egypt (Sanders, 1985, p. 107). 

Again, like Nibbi before her, Sanders (1985) states, “Much depends on how we, or rather how the Egyptians, understood ‘the Countries of the Sea’” (p. 114).  Sanders (1985) analyzes certain Hittite texts which may be of some use in this matter:

Two important points arise from the correspondence concerning the ‘Sikala who live in the ships’….  First, they are people as yet unknown to the Hittite king, about whom he wants information, so that they must be newcomers to the coast of Anatolia; and second, they are a real potential danger [to Hatti]. (142)

Since the king of Hatti was unfamiliar with the Sikala ‘who live in the ships,’ it is a fair assumption that they were, indeed, foreign to Anatolia (i.e., not the Lukka, who are attested in various contexts on the Anatolian coast), and since Hittite influence stretched well into the Levant, it is not likely that the Sikala  originated from there either.  Whether they actually originated from Italy/Sicily, as previous scholarship has claimed based on similar sounding names, is questionable, but they were at least as foreign to the Hittites (and Egyptians) as any mainland or Cycladic Mycenaean settlement might have been.

In sum, although Sanders (1985) rules out a Dorian invasion and a single, concentrated attack on Anatolian, Levantian and Egyptian lands, she believes there is much evidence to suggest a gradual dissemination of Mycenaean culture into the East and a likelihood of Mycenaean (war)lords, sailors, soldiers and craftsmen emigrating eastward in the Late Bronze Age.  She sees a similar scenario playing itself out in Anatolia, except the largely inland people of the Anatolian plateau emigrated south via land routes, thus creating somewhat of a domino effect in the Southern Levant and, finally, Egypt.  All the while, local warfare between sea fairing peoples, using recently introduced ‘Mycenaean-like’ tactics, continued to characterize the entire eastern coast of the Mediterranean.  Sanders’ speculative layout of the East Mediterranean in the Late Bronze Age can be viewed in figure 4.  Unlike Nibbi, Sanders does not attempt any retranslation of extant Egyptian accounts (i.e., “Great Green” translates as “the sea” or “Mediterranean”), and while acknowledging the likelihood of at least some of the ‘Sea Peoples’ coming from neighboring territories in the Levant, she gives no indication that the Delta was ever under the control of anyone but Pharaoh.

Other Recent Contributions

While Nibbi and Sanders provide some of the most in-depth, influential scholarship regarding the ‘Sea Peoples,’ many recent scholars have provided illuminating insights on particular aspects of the period in question.  Among the most influential areas of scholarship are those dealing with late Hittite history; the Levant in the Late Bronze Age, particularly the last days of Ugarit; and, of course, the continual reinterpretation of the canonical extant Egyptian sources.

Donald Redford (2000), describes the state of the Post-Amarna period for 19^th Dynasty Egypt:

[C]uneiform texts mentioning Egypt from Hittite or north Syrian sites are sparse in the extreme….  There is a thinning out of Egyptian texts which the historian might use, and an increase in the rhetorical ‘triumph stela.’  Painting and relief, though fascinating for what they portray, tend to the generic or lack captions. (p. 3)

In other words, as Sanders (1985) alluded to in her treatise, there exists a noticeable gap in both Egyptian and Hittite literature in the late 13^th and early 12^th centuries (during which time the Hittite kingdom becomes extinct altogether).

Redford (2000) has an interesting take on Egyptian interests in the Levant, considering it was Thutmose III who expanded Egypt’s dominion farther north than any pharaoh before or after:

The heightened interest of the Ramessides (in contrast to the Thutmosids) in Egyptian territory in the Levant may be put down to several changes in the geopolitical make-up of Western Asia.  For one thing, the 19^th Dynasty hailed from the eastern Delta and were closer to and more familiar with Palestine than their predecessors. (p. 6)

Finally, Redford (2000) was the only scholar who directly addressed Nibbi’s readings of the Medinet Habu inscriptions: “A superficial reading which takes metaphor, simile and metonymy at face value can only result in egregious error in attempting to reconstruct the event” (p. 7).  This was an attack on Nibbi’s methodological approach that the Egyptian texts must be taken literally, “at face value” (1975).

Clearly, a fundamental, ideological chasm exists within the field of Egyptology regarding how such texts should be interpreted.  To a certain extent, Nibbi (1975) contradicts herself by asserting that the texts must be taken literally.  She is quite willing to ignore the “bombastic” element of Pharaoh’s accolades and, despite strong emphasis on the need for the texts to be translated in their entirety, so as to ascertain the proper context of the individual phrases found therein, Nibbi’s translations regularly skim, paraphrase, and jump between inscriptions and areas within the same inscription[11].  Nonetheless, there is merit to her theory of dealing with the Egyptian sources in their own context – although whether one believes the Delta was or was not a part of that context seems highly tenuous.  And she is certainly justified to insist that evidence other than phonetic similarity across cultures be instrumented if one is to draw any associations between peoples listed in Egyptian texts and those identified in various other areas of the Mediterranean basin.  However, phonetic change (vowel shifts) is widely used in linguistic and anthropologic studies (of which linguistic is a subcategory of).  What Nibbi meant to imply – and on this point, most scholars would adamantly agree with her – is that sound patterns,[12] phonemic shifts, need to be systematically analyzed and categorized and then the corresponding sound patterns between Egyptian and Hittite pronunciation may be compared – based on the structural correspondents in the phonemes, not the actual phonetic likenesses of the two sounds/words in question.

Dealing with the scholarship of exclusively Egyptian sources, David O’Connor (2000) states, “[Sea Peoples] never use the bow and arrow, a classic Egyptian weapon extensively used in the Near East as well” (p. 85).  This fact is interesting because so much of the modern scholarship on the matter tells us that the ‘Sea Peoples’ were as much native to the Levant as they were sea-born raiders (Sanders, 1985).  However, Sanders’ theory (1985) accounts for this in that the ‘Mycenaean element,’ who would have almost certainly been depicted in Egyptian art with swords and round shields, introduced their LH IIIB way of life into the Levant prior to any raids on Egypt proper.  So this evidence need not conflict with Sander’s thesis, although there is certainly potential for such a conflict.

O’Connor (2000) goes on to state, “the narratives about the Libyan campaign of Year 11 are much more specific about the Libyan leaders than is the case with the Year 5 Libyan campaign, or the Se Peoples narrative” (p. 94).  This fact makes perfect sense if one considers the dates involved and is willing to shrug off some of the Pharaoh’s haughty recollection of events as a function of political hyperbole; myth-making.  It is entirely possible and, in fact, likely that the Libyan and ‘Sea Peoples’ wars of Years 5 and 8 of Rameses III were not quite as decisive as the inscriptions at Medinet Habu would have one believe.  Thus, while it is safe to assume that Rameses III did manage to repel Egypt’s attackers in Years 5 and 8 (Egyptian culture did continue, after all), it would appear that Rameses III did not achieve complete victory over the Libyans until the campaign of Year 11.  As for the vaunted encounters with ‘Sea Peoples’ in Year 8, it is easy to believe that a healthy portion of the foreigners, with their magnificent ‘Mycenaean’ weapons and tactics, were able to escape the ‘massacre’ in the Nile mouths.  ‘Sea Peoples’ appear to have integrated well on Cyprus, Anatolia and the Southern Levant, after all.

While the foreign tactics and weaponry of the ‘Sea Peoples’ is fresh in mind, perhaps it would be best to turn to O’Connor’s (2000) final point: the imagery of the Year 8 inscription at Medinet Habu.  A lion hunt scene is placed between two ‘Sea Peoples’ scenes on the exterior northern wall of the temple.  Therefore, O’Connor posits, the Sea Peoples are alluded to as lion-like, ferocious enemies – a plausible interpretation considering their different fighting tactics and weapons as opposed to Egypt’s traditional enemies (Libyans and Nubians), who are associated on the southern walls of the temple with ‘desert asses’ (Libyans)  and bulls (Nubians) (p. 95).

In regards to evidence outside of Egypt, it is useful turn to Itamar Singer.  Singer (2000) analyzes a cuneiform letter from Ugarit which refers to the Sikila:

[T]he Sikila people who live on boats [is]…the first mention by name of one of the raiders of Ugarit, who are usually referred to simply as ‘the enemy.’  This cuneiform spelling probably corresponds to Skl in the Egyptian texts, one of the Sea Peoples who fought against Rameses III. (p. 24).

However, lest one attribute all the mass destruction in the East Mediterranean to ‘Sea Peoples,’ Singer (2000) believes Aramean tribes, rather than the various ‘Sea Peoples,’ seem more likely to be the immediate cause of  destruction to “Emar and other inland cities” (p. 25).

Regarding the Jordan Valley, Johnathan Tubb (2000) had this to say:

[I]t would certainly be reasonable to assume the presence of groups of Sea Peoples within the populations of Egyptian-controlled cities in Canaan, either as military personnel or, perhaps, as industrial specialists….  Fortunately, the consensus seems, mercifully, to have shifted away from the more fanciful location, arrived at purely on the grounds of name similarity, and, on the basis of sounder archaeological and textual investigations, has settled instead on the more reasonable, if more generalized suggested homelands of the Aegean and southern and southwestern Anatolia [for the Sea Peoples]. (p. 182)

Singer’s (2000) evidence for a ‘Sea Peoples’ presence in Egyptian controlled territories of the Jordan Valley has to do with burial finds: Pithos and double pithos burials were foreign to Jordan but were characteristic of Aegean and Anatolian practices.  Excavations at the Bronze Age settlement of Sa[h]idiyeh[13], an Egyptian controlled city in the Jordon Valley, contain many (37) of these burials.  Allowing for ‘Sea Peoples’ to have originated from the Anatolian coast and the Aegean lends credence to the idea that Egypt was familiar with and, in fact, employed ‘Sea Peoples’ prior to the wars of Rameses III and Mernerptah (pp. 186-91).

While an Aegean and/or Anatolian origin for the ‘Sea Peoples’ is certainly possible based on the circumstantial evidence provided, Neal Bierling (1992) tempers any desire to equivocate LH IIIB pottery, burials, weaponry and walls with an identification of the ‘Sea Peoples’ as Mycenaean or Hittite:

The scholars referred to above make numerous other comparisons between the Sea Peoples pictured on the Medinet Habu reliefs and the Greeks from the Mycenaean and Anatolian world. These comparisons of modes of dress, weapons, and means of travel cannot be considered as conclusive evidence that the Sea Peoples, of which the Philistines were a part, were from the Aegean and from Anatolia, since these various modes could have been adopted through travel and trade. However, any study of these characteristics will reveal that the Sea People, including the Philistines, have much in common with the Mycenaean world and with Anatolia, especially the west and southwest sector.

It is this commonality between the Levant and the Mycenaean and Hittite worlds which studies of the ‘Sea Peoples,’ outside of Egyptian texts, focus on. 

Finally, Phoenician archaeology has taken off in the past quarter century, allowing pertinent observations to be made about their traditional homeland, the Southern Levant: The term “Phoenician” is derived from the Mycenaean word for “red,” which was po-ni-ki-ja, a reference to chariots – chariot warfare was prevalent in the Near East during the Bronze Age.  A form of the word was also used in Homeric texts and stems from the word phoinix, meaning “purple-red” – Phoenicians were famous throughout the ancient world for their purple dyeing techniques (Mascati, 1999b, pp. 17-8).  This etymology is particularly interesting because the term “Canaanites,” which seems to have encompassed Phoenicians and other inhabitants of the Levant, also stems from a word in 2^nd millennium cuneiform texts (‘Cannan’), meaning “purple-red” (Mascati, 1999b, p. 18).  Of course, it is not known whether the Phoenicians referred to themselves as such (not likely), but the fact that people occupying their traditional homeland were, in the 2^nd millennium, already recognized by the traits which Phoenicians were to become famous for (in classical times) is certainly worth noting.

It is also worth noting that there do not appear to be any significant linguistic or cultural differences between coastal (“Phoenician”) settlements and those that were land locked in the east until c. 1200 BCE (Mascati, 1999b, p.18).  “Phoenician cities emerged as quite independent entities” following the turbulence of c. 1200 BCE (Mascati, 1999b, p.18).  Mascati (1999b) seems to suggest that the coastal cities did not change in the radical fashion of their inland neighbors, and this is what distinguished them (finally) as Phoenician (p.19).

Sergio Pernigotti (1999) discusses the extent of known Phoenician involvement with Egypt in the Late Bronze Age: Byblos was a particularly important Near East connection for Egypt dating back the 3^rd millennium – notably the cedar trade (p. 592).  ‘Asiatics’ began gradually filtering into the Delta as early as the First Intermediate Period (Pernigotti, 1999, p. 592).  We have, here, the only significant hint by a recent source which might support Nibbi’s 1975 claim that the Delta was, at least at some point in the Late Bronze Age, foreign to Egypt – or not under the immediate control of the pharaoh.  This “migration” was curbed by the ‘walls of the prince’ in the 12^th Dynasty (Pernigotti, 1999, p. 592).  After the expulsion of the Hyksos, “Egypt had abandoned all vestiges of its tradition of an ‘oasis’ closed to contact with its neighbors” (Pernigotti, 1999, p. 601).  But Egypt’s imperialist mentality was short-lived.  The Egyptian withdrawal into an “oasis” civilization after their successful repulsion of the ‘Sea Peoples’ meant that they no longer exercised control over the Syira-Palestine territory, allowing Phoenician culture to develop unhindered by Egyptian (or Hittite, for that matter) hegemony (Pernigotti, 1999, p. 602).

Conclusion

In the final analysis, the gulf between Nibbi’s reading of Egyptian history remains as anomalous and provocative as it is taboo.  When it comes to non-literate[14] archaeological evidence versus written documentation (or inscription), the written evidence is always given the most fervent scrutiny and credence.  Perhaps this is because we are, ourselves, a highly literate culture, so we understand things in a literate manner[15].  And in that sense, barring anymore fantastic discoveries of ancient library stores, the Egyptian story of the ‘Sea Peoples’ will forever be foremost in the minds of ‘Sea Peoples’ scholars. 

That being said, there remain a few serious, fundamental questions to be answered in the analysis and translation of extant Egyptian sources: (1) What does “Great Green” really refer to?  Or, more to the point, how do certain scholars know that it does (or does not) refer to the Mediterranean Sea?  (2) What was the status of the Delta in relation to the kingdom of the Pharaoh, both throughout Egyptian history and, more importantly, in the Late Bronze Age?  The latter is a question which may yet bear fruit from Egyptian soil.  One of the positive effects (if one could call it that) of the Aswan Dam is that the Nile inundation in the Delta area is significantly less than what it was for the past 4,000 years.  This may be bad for the environment, but it is helpful to archaeologists who want to dig in the area in search of evidence for a more complete picture of the Delta’s relation to Egypt.  Of course, they will also be looking for artifacts that endured 4,000 years of Nile inundations before the advent of the man-made marvel that is the Aswan Dam, so the survival of such artifacts still remains far less likely than in areas of Upper Egypt.  The chances of any new papyrus stores being unearthed are also almost nil, because the atmospheric conditions are far more humid in Lower Egypt than in the arid regions of Upper and Middle Egypt.

At last, the debate has come full circle: a question of perspective.  There are no absolutes, especially not in this postmodern world.  There will always exist a contentious dynamic of ‘he said/she said.’  No doubt, both Rameses II and Muwatallish each returned home with their own versions of how the Battle of Kadesh was won (never lost).  And, in a very real sense, both kings have claim to truth on the matter (Mertz, 1978).  Today, history tells us that it was more of a draw than a victory for either side.  For that matter, the United States has never lost a war; one must continually remind oneself that Vietnam was not a war but a ‘policing action.’  2,000 years from now, however, one may be confident that Vietnam will be referred to as a war lost.  Alas, the same rings true for the understanding of extant Egyptian texts.  The texts themselves do not and, one may be confident in stating again, will not change.  The perspectives of those who read them, however, will continue to change for as long as they remain in the critical consciousness.  Does this reality (in)validate Nibbi’s, Sanders’, O’Connor’s, Cottrell’s or Redford’s analyses?  In typical postmodern form, the answer is ‘yes and no’; it does both.

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