The Sea Peoples

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Hello guys, I hope you're doing well.

I'm all good here.

I'm currently sitting in the garden with Gunnar, my sprocker spaniel, right next to me.

Today on the ancients, we're talking through the great enigma, that is the sea peoples, who are often credited as the main factor behind the cataclysm that was the Bronze Age collapse more than 3,000 years ago.

What I loved about this chat was delving into the surviving sources for the sea peoples, particularly from ancient Egypt, and how they describe the different peoples who made up these invaders and the different equipment they wore, one of them wearing these strange hats.

We delve into that and so much more in today's episode with our returning guest, Professor Eric Klein, a fan favorite on the ancients and a best-selling author on the Bronze Age Collapse.

Let's go.

The Sea Peoples.

One of the great mysteries of ancient history.

They're often credited as the prime factor in the Bronze Age collapse.

These groups of bloodthirsty raiders that laid waste cities across the eastern Mediterranean.

that tore down a flourishing, interconnected world of civilizations like the Mycenaeans, the Minoans, the Hittites and the Assyrians.

If in doubt, blame the Sea Peoples.

But now, that rather simplistic explanation for one of the greatest civilization collapses in history is rightfully being contested.

What do we actually know about these people?

What evidence survives?

Where did they come from?

Were they more raiders or refugees?

And could their mystery soon be solved by DNA?

We're going to explore all of this and more in today's episode.

This is the story of the Sea Peoples with our returning guest, Professor Eric Klein.

It's time for Klein.

Eric, it is great to have you back on the podcast.

It's wonderful to be back here.

Thank you for having me.

You're more than welcome.

And we are talking all things, the Sea Peoples, a very enigmatic group that we have covered in our past chats, but today we're dedicating an entire episode to them and really interrogating the surviving evidence.

But they always seem to have been the fool guys for so long, Eric, when anyone is talking about the story of the Bronze Age collapse.

Yes, I think that they are the the bad guys everybody likes to point to, but I think they've been given a bum wrap, basically.

So I'm here to help argue their side today.

And is it also one of those big enigmatic questions of late Bronze Age history, the question of who exactly were the Sea Peoples.

Yeah, we've got the question of who were the Sea Peoples and what did they actually do?

What were they responsible for?

Set the scene for us, Eric.

What time period are we talking about with the arrival of the Sea Peoples and when they have this devastating impact on the Bronze Age world?

Okay, so let me take us back 3,200 years.

We're going back to the end of the late Bronze Age.

We're going back to approximately 1200 BC or BCE, if you prefer, but 1200,

and the world is collapsing.

This is the Late Bronze Age, where they've been using copper and tin to make bronze.

Everybody is happily interacting with each other in modern terms, from Italy on the west to, say, Iran on the east, and from Turkey down to Egypt.

We've got major civilizations, Mycenaeans, Minoans, Assyrians, Babylonians, Hittites, Canaanites, basically the G8 of the ancient world, as I call them.

They've been happily interacting for three or four hundred years at this point, diplomacy, trade, everything like that.

And then suddenly, in the decades after 1200 BC, everything comes crashing down.

The globalized network that had connected them falls apart just within a matter of decades.

That's where we are here.

That's where the sea peoples play some sort of role in

helping the world as they knew it come to a crashing halt.

The question is exactly, what did the sea peoples do?

And again, as we said, who are they?

And what types of evidence do we have surviving to try and understand these questions, to try and give an opinion on those, to give an answer?

So that actually is part of the problem is we don't have nearly enough.

Normally, as an archaeologist and ancient historian, I would like three different lines of evidence before I'll believe anything.

So usually it's archaeology, it's literary texts, and then it's something else as well.

If we were talking about biblical accounts, I would say, okay, the Bible is one, extra-biblical, you know, outside the Bible, like Neo-Assyrian texts is another, and then archaeology would be the third.

In this case, the Sea Peoples are not mentioned in the Bible at all, except for the Philistines, which we will get get to.

So we might actually have them, but it doesn't say in the Bible what they did.

So we are limited to Egyptian inscriptions, inscriptions from other cities, in this case, possibly Ugarit on the coast of what is now North Syria, and then archaeology.

So we might have three different types of evidence if you call the inscriptions from Egypt,

if you put them in a different category from inscriptions elsewhere.

But the problem is we don't have nearly enough data, nearly enough evidence to actually solve this problem right now.

So you don't have, let's say, a body that has been identified as probably being one of these sea peoples that they could get DNA from or anything like that.

You're smiling as I say that.

I can presume the answer already.

Yes, it's funny you should ask that because the answer now could be yes,

but not one of the sea peoples themselves, but one of their immediate descendants.

We may have a grandson or granddaughter.

In fact, we might have four of them that have been found in recent years at the site of Ashkelon in what is now Israel.

Wow.

Well, let's explore what seems to be one of the main pieces of evidence we have for the sea peoples, which are these texts.

from Egypt.

And before we explore them, Eric, can you explain what these texts are?

Yes.

So in terms of the literary text from Egypt, these are the earliest that we've got in terms of our recent discoveries.

These are the ones that we've known about for, well, they're not even recent.

They're from, oh,

I would say certainly by the mid-1800s, there was a whole...

set of hypotheses around these.

Basically, it boils down to two Egyptian pharaohs, Merneptah and Ramses III.

Merneptah is in the years before 1200 BC, and Ramses III is after 1200 BC.

So the two sets that we're talking about, one is in, or one set is in the fifth year of Merneptah.

Now, that would be 1207 BC.

The other set of inscriptions, or rather the main one, is from the eighth year of Ramses III, which would be 1177 BC.

And yes, that's where the title of my book comes from.

Right.

Now, bear in mind, though, that 1207 and 1177 are simply our years

for

those years back then.

It would be better simply to say the fifth year of Renepta and the eighth year of Ramses III, because it's a sliding scale and things get moved all the time.

So when I started writing the book, the eighth Eighth Year of Ramses III, I was following the chronology in which it was 1186.

And then over the years of my research, I changed to the chronology suggested by Professor Ken Kitchen of the University of Liverpool.

And that made the eighth year 1177.

So we can argue till kingdom come about what the actual chronology is, but let's just say our first inscriptions are from the fifth year of Manepta and then the next set, eighth year of Ramses III.

Now, those are three decades apart.

There are 30 years between them.

So we believe that there were two waves of these sea peoples that came through.

So in order to talk about the inscriptions, we have to first talk about the ones from Merneptah, and then we can move on.

And before we do that, Eric, I mean, how powerful and prominent was Egypt at this time?

Because if you mention names like Ramses III, I will immediately think of his namesake predecessor, Ramses II, Ramses the Great.

So is this quite a good time for the Egyptians before the Sea Peoples arrive?

Yes, you could put it that way.

This was a good time to be an Egyptian, right?

This is the New Kingdom period.

We're in the 18th and 19th dynasties.

King Tut, for example, is 18th dynasty, Hatshepsut, Tutmosis III.

And then when we get into the 19th, and we'll eventually get into the 20th dynasty as well.

This is the end of the New Kingdom period.

So Egypt is one of the great powers at the time.

I mentioned just a moment ago the G8, right?

The eight major powers.

But of those eight, Egypt and the Hittites are the two big ones.

So it was dominant.

It's like, you know, the U.S.

and Russia, right?

Egypt and the Hittites back then.

And so

Merneptah and Ramses III, and yes, we put Ramses II right in at about that time.

Merneptah is actually one of Ramses II's sons.

I think he had something like, wow, 50 sons.

I mean, there were a lot.

There were a lot of sons there.

We might know Merneptah also, perhaps, better, because in one of his inscriptions, which actually dates to the exact same time, he mentions Israel.

And it's the first time that Israel has been mentioned outside the Bible anywhere.

And in that inscription, which is either called Merneptah inscription or the Israel steely,

the word Israel is written with a determinative, meaning it's a people.

It's a group of people, not necessarily a place.

But he does put them up in Canaan.

So interestingly, that inscription is the same date.

It's 1207.

Yeah, it's his fifth year.

So one of the things that I've investigated over the years is whether there's any connection between the the sea peoples coming and Merneptah going up and fighting against, you know, the Israelites, if you will.

So this is our time period.

It's right there.

Right.

And now let's explore the texts from the reign of Meneptah, from the fifth year of Meneptah.

So what are these texts, Eric?

Is there more than one?

Yes, there's more than one, but they basically all say the same thing.

So, for instance, the main one is what we call the Great Karnak Inscription, which is found in Luxor, in Karnak.

But we've also got another one that's called the Cairo column.

We've got one called the Heliopolis text.

We've got one called the Athrobisthele.

I'm probably mangling that name, but they all basically say the same sort of thing.

And what it mentions is an invasion of Egypt.

by groups that he actually names.

Merneptah and Ramses, for that matter, don't actually call them the Sea Peoples.

That's our name for them.

It's actually a name made up by Gaston Mosperau, a French Egyptologist.

What the actual Egyptians give us is the names of the groups.

Interesting.

So we actually know who comes.

So, for instance, let me just tell you briefly, the Great Karnak inscription says beginning of the victory that His Majesty achieved in the land of Libya.

And then he starts naming it.

Ekwesh, Teresh, Luka, Shardana, Shekelesh, northerners coming from all lands.

And then there's kind of, you know, dot, dot, dot, and that we jump.

In the third season, he is saying the wretched fallen chief of Libya has fallen upon the country of Tahinu with his bowmen.

And then he names again some of the sea peoples, the Shardana, the Shekeles, the Ekwes, the Luka, the Teresh, taking the best of every warrior and every man of war for his country.

And it goes on like that.

And then eventually it says he won, and he gives numbers, list of the captives carried off from this land of Libya, and the countries which he brought with him.

And then he says, Shekelesh, 222 men captured or killed.

Teresh, 742 men.

Shardana, Ekwesh.

And it's interesting.

He says, Ekwesh, who had no no foreskins.

So the Ekwesh are circumcised, which is very unusual for that time period.

And there he says, they carried off their hands because they had no foreskins.

Basically, if you kill somebody, you want an example that you've killed them.

So frequently, you'll cut off one of their hands and bring the hand back.

Or as like the Bible says, you could cut off their foreskins and bring them back.

But if they're circumcised, you can't do that.

So anyway, so we've got numbers here.

We actually know how many people were killed and or captured in this great Karnak inscription.

The other ones are similar.

The Cairu column is just a shorter version, as are the others.

So basically, that's it for what we've got from Merneptah in terms of inscriptions.

It's interesting, though, you mentioned their Karnak, so the great temple complex of Amun, this real chief god of New Kingdom Egypt.

So a prime sanctuary in New Kingdom Egypt at the time.

And the fact that they put this great inscription up there, presumably for people to see, does that emphasize the importance of this victory for Manepta, that he's putting it there and he's celebrating his success against these sea peoples there?

Absolutely.

He's putting it there.

He's putting it elsewhere.

But yes, the general populace.

are meant to see this, or at least the priests that are running the temples.

So it's not just Meneptah, it's most of these pharaohs at that time.

They would put their great triumphs up on the walls for everyone to see.

So yes, he's following standard practice at that time.

And that's exactly what we're going to see with Ramses III as well.

Yeah, he's going to put it up on a wall too.

Yeah.

Well, let's get towards that.

I mean, because we're not going to linger on that text for the moment, we will come back to it and then interrogate the names, but we should do this other piece of evidence first.

Although I would like to ask, just to kind of sum up that, what you were saying there, Eric, does that inscription therefore place the events in Libya?

What do we mean by Libya in the ancient Egyptian sense?

So it's the same as Libya today.

You know, it's off

to the left or the east of Egypt.

And yes, it looks like in this first wave that the sea peoples come in, land in Libya from wherever they're coming from, and then link up their allies with the chief, the king of Libya, and together they sweep into Egypt from the east.

So, why they're linked up, why they're allies, you know, no real idea.

And this doesn't seem to be the case the next time they come through, but it may be as simple as the fact that in 1207 they were defeated when they came that way, so they tried something different 30 years later.

But yeah,

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Well, let's then explore the return of the Sea Peoples then, some 30 years later.

So, talk us through this text, this evidence we have from the eighth year of Ramses III's reign.

So here we have a similar situation insofar as it's written up on a wall, as we just mentioned.

But in this case, the wall is Ramses III's mortuary temple at Mednet Habu.

It's across the river, across the Nile.

from the Luxor temple that Merneptah had put his up in.

Basically, if you're heading towards the Valley of the Kings and you're going to see King Tut's tomb, you will be right in the vicinity.

You'll drive by this Medinet Habu.

So here is a much longer inscription with much more detail and a picture.

He's actually drawn a picture of the battle, in this case, the naval battle.

And it turns out there are two parts to the fight with the sea peoples.

One is a land battle, and one is a naval battle, which probably took place somewhere in the delta.

The land battle may have taken nearby, or it's been recently suggested that the land battle might actually have taken place way up in northern Syria.

Kind of

an offensive defense, if you will.

Like, we know they're coming.

Let's go up there and fight them up there first.

Like another Kadesh kind of idea, is it?

Yes.

It's like another Kadesh, exactly.

Right.

So, but as I say, it's debated where the land battle took place.

It's also, for that matter, debated where the naval battle took place, but most thinking thinks the Delta.

At any rate, let me simply read to you what it says, at least at the beginning, because it is quite detailed.

He says, The foreign countries made a conspiracy in their islands, and that's going to be important right there, in their islands.

All at once, the lands were removed and scattered in the fray.

No land could stand before their arms, that is before their weapons, from Hate, Kode, Karkamesh, Artsawa, and Alashia on being cut off at one time.

So let me pause there for a moment because we know where those places are.

He says no land could stand before them.

From Hate,

that's the Hittites, that's up in Anatolia, modern-day Turkey.

Kode and Karkhamesh, that's where Syria and Turkey meet today.

That's where the border is, basically.

Artsawa or Arzawa, some call it, is on the western coast of Turkey, Anatolia.

And Alasya, Alashia is, you know, 95% probably the ancient name for Cyprus during the Bronze Age.

So basically, he's saying they're coming from east to west.

They're coming across Turkey, down into Syria, overrunning Cyprus, and then moving on in modern terms.

Okay.

So he then says, a camp was set up in one place in Amor or Amuru.

That is northern Syria, just south of the city of Ugarit, which

we've met before in the previous podcast, and we'll meet again.

So basically, They came across, they got as far as northern Syria, and then they set up camp.

We don't know how long they stayed there, but that's why some people now think that the land battle might have been fought up there, because the Egyptians came up there and fought them at their camp there.

But again, that's debated.

So he then continues, all right, a camp was set up in one place in Amor.

They desolated its people, and its land was like that which has never come into being.

They were coming forward toward Egypt while the flame was prepared before them.

You can see how detailed he's getting.

And then he names them, just like Merneptah.

Their confederation was the Peleset, Tejeker, Shekelesh, Denyan, and Weshesh, lands united.

And we'll come back to these, but you can see some of them are the same as came 30 years earlier, but some of them are brand new.

So then he continued, they laid their hands upon the lands as far as the circuit of the earth, their hearts confident and trusting, our plans will succeed.

So they think they're going to win.

What an epic narrative.

Absolutely epic.

Yes.

And that translation is from John Wilson, who was an Egyptologist at University of Chicago.

All right.

And then, let's see.

Towards the end, he then says, okay.

The northern countries quivered in their bodies, namely the Paleset, the Tajeker, dot, dot, dot.

They were cut off from their land and coming, their spirit broken.

So this is when the Egyptians are now wreaking havoc on the sea peoples.

They were teher on land.

Now, we don't quite know what teher means.

It's used elsewhere with Hittite troops, so not quite sure what's going on there.

But then he says, and again, this is Ramses III, another group was on the sea.

So he says they were something on land and another group was on the sea.

That's why we think there's two parts to this, a land and a sea.

Those who came on land were overthrown and slaughtered.

Ammon Rei was after them, destroying them.

Those who entered the river mouths, the Nile Delta, that's why we think that's where the naval battle is, were like birds ensnared in the net.

Their leaders were carried off and slain.

So yeah, it's very poetic.

And that's basically where that inscription ends.

But there is a follow-up if you're interested.

Well, Eric, you can't tease it like that and leave it hanging.

Of course, I'm interested.

All right, just check in to see if we're all still here.

Right.

Okay.

So a couple years later in year 12, there is something called the Papyrus Harris.

So this would be, you know, four or five years later.

And what Ramses III is doing is looking back.

And he says, I extended all the boundaries of Egypt.

I overthrew those who invaded them from their lands.

I slew the Denyan who are in their islands.

The Tejeker 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.

And then he ends by telling us what he did with them.

I settled them in strongholds bound in my name, meaning he settled them in Egypt or in Canaan.

Numerous were their classes, like hundred thousands.

I text them all in clothing and grain from the storehouses and granaries each year.

So he wins.

He tells us what he does.

End of story.

They never come again.

That was it.

They come twice, they lose twice, they never come back.

How much can we believe of that?

Do we actually think that there's a bit of an exaggeration there?

And actually, the Sea People's invasions of Egypt, were they actually quite devastating?

Well,

okay.

So, yeah.

Can we believe it?

Well, it's a beautiful story.

You know, not good if you're the Sea Peoples, but pretty good if you're Egyptian.

I'm sure there's a certain amount of embellishment.

I mean,

he probably took quite a few hits with his troops.

It wasn't all, you know, roses and glory.

Did it actually happen?

Yes, I think it did.

You don't just make this up.

And it is unusual.

The names, we see some of the names before this, the Shardana.

We see some of them afterward.

But this grouping is unusual.

And so I do think that we can believe it to a certain extent.

And I think the fact that Merneptah mentions something similar gives it credence.

Now, there have been some suggestions that maybe Ramses is copying Merneptah, you know, and they didn't actually come a second time.

But I think the evidence is in favor of two waves.

So, yes, it's probably exaggerated.

But on the whole, I think there's a lot of information here that we can pry apart and use, especially since some of it is corroborated, at least to a certain extent, elsewhere.

So before going on to really interrogating that text, we should also talk about the picture that survives as well.

Eric, how are the sea peoples, how are they portrayed in this accompanying image from these texts from Ramses' reign?

Well, that's in part what gives it credence or can I say verisimilitude, I suppose.

You know, we can.

of course you can eric okay good

basically the details are so

well well the details are so detailed that we it looks like there are different people here they're wearing different outfits one group is bristly helmets like you know horse hair sticking up others are wearing skull caps

Some of them have round shields.

Some of them have different shaped shields.

There are different groups here, obviously.

And they're portrayed very carefully in this huge picture that we've got.

And, you know, when I say picture, I don't mean, you know, five by seven or eight by 10.

I mean the whole thing is, you know,

20 feet, 30 feet tall by 15, 20 feet wide.

I mean, it's huge.

And we've got...

Let's see, I'm looking here at the picture.

We've got one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight boats that are shown, including one that is capsized.

We've got the warriors fighting each other.

There's a number that are sideways or upside down.

And in ancient pictures like this, if somebody is sideways or upside down, it usually means they're dead.

So they've been killed here.

The ships, the ships are so detailed that scholars have written articles and even books on these.

talking about the rigging and the rudders and the oars.

I mean, you know, it's almost as if the artist had been there and it's an eyewitness description.

You can see each of the little oars, can't you, as well?

That's beautiful.

Yes, absolutely.

And then you can see everybody fighting.

You can see, you know, they're shooting the arrows.

They've got the shields up.

There's one guy who's literally hanging over upside down, obviously quite dead, you know, hanging off the gunwale.

if you will we're definitely looking at a naval battle and again i don't you don't make this stuff up.

I don't, I wouldn't think.

It looks to me as if something happened.

And then you've got the inscription right next to it, which tells us what's going on there.

It is such an extraordinary piece of evidence, both to have those texts that you've talked us through, Eric, and then that picture, which it felt like we needed to cover first and foremost when talking about the story of the Sea Peoples.

Now, let's really interrogate the texts.

So, where do we think

these people,

these sea peoples came from?

Who are these groups?

That's an easy question to answer because we have no idea.

We have literally a problem.

Thank you very much, Eric.

Exactly.

Thank you.

It's been wonderful to be here.

Yes.

The problem is

what we have to do is play linguistic games because we actually have no archaeological evidence for where these people came from.

There has not been any site anywhere that we can point to and say that's where the Sea Peoples came from, or that's where one of the groups of the Sea Peoples came from.

But having said that, we can play linguistic games and we can point to some archaeology and say, well, maybe this is them.

So let me give you an example.

The one we usually point to are the Shardana or the Shardim, and they come both times.

They invade during Merneptah's time and they invade during Ramses III time.

Now, I would ask you and your listeners, if you take the word Shardana and compare it to somewhere today in the Mediterranean, does that sound like any place?

Is there any place that has those same consonants and vowels?

Well,

there is a place, isn't there?

There's an island famous for its naragic warrior culture at the time, isn't isn't it?

Sardinia.

Absolutely.

Yes.

So are the Shardana from Sardinia is the big question we ask.

And you can see that the letters, you know, both consonants and vowels are very similar.

But it could be a false friend, right?

It could, they're not related at all.

Maybe, maybe not.

And yet, as you just mentioned, we have this wonderful Bronze Age civilization on Sardinia, which is in itself quite mysterious.

So it's possible that the Shardana come from Sardinia.

On the other hand, it's also possible that we have it backwards.

It may be that the Shardana, after being defeated by the Egyptians, went scurrying off to the western Mediterranean and settled in Sardinia, giving it their name.

And in fact, That's what the earliest Egyptologists thought had happened.

When Maspero and the others in the 1800s, when they were trying to figure out who the sea peoples were, they suggested they went from east to west and they settled down in Sardinia.

These days, I'm in the group that says they're coming from Sardinia if they're coming from anywhere.

So that's one example.

What about the other group, then?

One of the other groups, the Shekelesh or Sickles.

Same thing.

There's another area that sounds very similar, and that would be.

What's the ancient Greeks called the Sikelioi, isn't it?

The native inhabitants of Sicily.

So

exactly.

And, you know, Sardinia and Sicily are pretty close to each other.

So could the Shardana be from Sardinia and the Shekelesh be from Sicily?

It is certainly possible.

But that's as far as we get.

Yes, it's possible, but you can't prove it.

And we're still looking for any sites on either of those islands where we could say, Yes,

this is Shardana, or yes, this is Shekelesh.

So we can do the same thing with some of the others, but there we have to move across the Mediterranean a bit.

So

if you'll permit me, let's move over to Greece, for example.

Let's do it.

Merneptah has a group called the Ekwesh,

and people have suggested that we might recognize them.

Any thoughts?

Achaeans?

Absolutely.

The Achaeans in the Trojan War, right?

Yes, they are Homer's Mycenaeans.

Exactly.

So the Equesh could be the Achaeans, in which case they're Mycenaeans from Greece.

Well, what are the Mycenaeans doing as the Sea Peoples?

One of the things that I've suggested and others is that as the Sea Peoples swept across the Mediterranean, if you will, right, from, say, Italy, Sicily, Sardinia, where they might begin, and they overrun Greece, that some of the people they have overrun join.

And so we suddenly get some some Mycenaeans in the sea peoples.

Okay, now, part of the problem, though, is that in the second wave, in Ramses III's time, 30 years later, the Equish are not part of that group.

They're gone.

They only come in the first group.

However, in their place, we have a group called the Denyon or the Danuna.

And they come in Ramses III's time.

So best guess by anybody out there who the Denyan Denyan or Danuna might be?

I presume it's the Denaeans, isn't it, from Greece again?

Absolutely, absolutely.

So it's once again, it's Homer's Mycenaeans

because his alternate name, yes, he calls them Achaeans, but he also calls them, you know, Danunans or Danaans, basically.

So it may be that we have people from Greece both times, but they're known by different names both times.

Why that might be, who knows?

But

part of the problem there, however, is there is an area in southeastern Anatolia, southeastern Turkey, called the land of Danuna.

And it may be that they're simply from Anatolia.

We don't know.

Because that would work also.

So you get the idea.

We're playing linguistic games.

We have really no archaeological evidence.

And the others,

some we can work with, and others are more hazy.

So let let me just run through some of the rest quickly.

The Luca.

The Luka come in the first band under Mernapta.

Not Greece, but somewhere in Turkey.

Oh, Lycia, do you think?

Absolutely.

Absolutely.

Yes.

That's the south coast.

That's, oh, God, Xanthus.

What's the name of it?

Antalia?

Maybe not Antalia, but...

But down of that region.

Down in the region.

Danovan region.

Yes.

So the Lycians.

Maybe the Luca, and both of them are known as pirates, the Lycians later, and the Luca Luca in the Bronze Age so it does look like we've got some of them in here as well and the other group during Merneptah's time there are five at that point the last one we've already done shardana shekhlesh equish luka the teresh we're not quite sure about the teresh it's anatolia with the question mark it could be like the trojans

it might be but we're really not sure do you you think Thracians is a bit too far away?

Yes, I do think that's too far away.

I won't go there, but we don't know for sure.

If we turn to Ramses, then again, we've already done Shardana, because they come the second time as well.

We've already done Sheklesh, because they come the second time as well.

We've mentioned the Denyan, who may be the Dana'ans.

So now we're left with three new groups that hadn't been there the first time.

One is the Tjekir.

Okay.

Yeah, which we don't quite know about.

And the Tajekir might be an alternate spelling for the sickles or the Shekelesh.

But why both groups would be named here, not quite sure.

So I kind of like the Tajekir being from somewhere.

in Anatolia, but there's no proof.

And if they do that, maybe the region of Troy.

Don't know.

The problem there is we have another group called the Wesh.

That's actually, I think, one of my favorite groups because I just like saying the name Weshesh.

Weshesh.

Nancy Sanders, very famous British ancient historian, who wrote a book called The Sea Peoples.

It came out in the 70s, second edition in the 80s, absolutely brilliant book.

And she called them the shadowy Wesh because we just don't know much about them.

But the Hittite name for Troy, the Hittite name for Troy was Willusa.

And I could see Weshesh being the people from Willusa.

But again, that's just, you know, a shot in the dark.

And so the last one, we've got one, two, three, four, five, six that came that time.

There are overlaps, as I mentioned, with Merneptah.

So there's a total of nine groups between the two waves that make up the sea peoples.

So the last of the nine, I've left almost the best for last in a way, is the group called the Peleset.

And the Peleset are the only ones that we actually think we know who they are.

You said their name already earlier on, Eric.

Absolutely.

These would be the Philistines who are mentioned in the Bible and are known archaeologically.

And in fact, if you go and take a look at the biblical account, it says that the Philistines are from Kaftor.

Kaftor is one of the names for ancient Crete.

Crete.

Which means that we do have people from the Aegean and the Philistines maybe from Crete, if you want to toss the biblical account in as one of your pieces of evidence.

As you've been saying all of that, Eric, I just can't get the thought out of my mind, with you having already read those texts, how with Manepta, that invasion seems to come across the Mediterranean and then from Libya, from the west, whereas the next one seems to be coming from the north and down the Levant, then, you know, from the east almost.

I'm kind of like putting in my mind: okay, where is a place where you could have a few of the same named groups almost congregate as a base so that they could either go south across the sea and Libya eastwards or north through Anatolia and down the Levant to attack Egypt?

And it does, my mind does always seem to pinpoint the Aegean and Crete and that area.

Yeah, I would agree.

I would agree.

I would say that even if some of the sea peoples started from over in the western Mediterranean, and there may now be some evidence that there was drought and famine there, and there was a migration, I would agree that they would probably have congregated somewhere in the Aegean or the western Anatolia, something like that.

And if, in the first case, they came down to Libya and joined up there and then came into Egypt, leaving Crete and just sailing south might be

an obvious route if the winds and the currents allow you to do that, which is problematic at certain times of the year.

But yes, I would agree that maybe they're meeting up in that area.

But again, one thing we haven't mentioned, but in terms of locations, the Egyptians, especially Ramses III, talk about some of these groups being specifically of the sea or coming from their isles or being northerners from all lands.

Okay.

You know, if you're Egyptian, pretty much everything is to your north.

But the fact that they're mentioned of the sea or from their isles, I think also points to the Aegean to a certain extent, whether it's Crete or somewhere else.

Very interesting.

Oh, you've got Rhodes and all the Cyclades, the Cycladic Islands as well, don't you?

Very, very interesting.

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You did mention they're also in passing climate, so we'll get to the question of why they're moving as well.

But I think, first of all, should we get a sense of the nature of this movement in regards to their composition?

Do we think that these are just men, just warriors going to Egypt and pillaging and plundering everything?

Or are they actually, use the word earlier, are they migrations?

Are they bringing their entire families with them?

I'm going to go with the latter.

They are migrations.

And I say that based on the pictures that we can see that Ramses left us.

And if we take a look at those, then we can also segue into the DNA that we mentioned earlier.

Fantastic.

So along with the picture of the naval battle that Ramses gives us, he also shows us pictures of some of the sea peoples.

And they're not just men.

They're not just, you know, warriors hopped up on testosterone out for

a weekend raid, and then we're going to go home again.

No, these are families.

We see one picture which has carts, and on the carts are women and children, and luggage.

I mentioned in the last podcast that they came with their Samsonite luggage.

They are moving with their household goods.

So, yes, I think this is a migration.

There are people moving in search of a better life, a better land.

And whether it was drought and famine that caused them to move or whatever, there is in all of these what is called a push-pull factor.

Something is pushing them out of their original lands and pulling them towards the new lands.

Now, the problem here is that there's also a drought in this region.

So, you know, out of the frying pan, into the fire, as we've said before.

But yet, this is definitely not just a group of guys running around, you know, having fun on a weekend and killing everybody and then going home again.

These are entire families that are moving.

And that's why it's very interesting to, first of all, look at them in terms of a refugee population, a migrant population.

And I know that this is the flavor of the moment because we've got refugees all around us today, and we have for the last 15, 20 years, the refugees fleeing the civil war in Syria and so on.

But honestly, it really does look like these are migrants.

And at one point, I had compared them to the 1930s Dust Ball, the Dust Ball in the United States.

where the migrants fled Oklahoma because of it was so dry that it became a Dust Ball.

And they went off to Texas and California during the 1930s.

I think that's kind of what we've got here as well.

And when we get to Canaan, right, modern-day now, Canaan is modern-day Israel mostly, but it's also Gaza Strip, it's Jordan, it's Lebanon, parts of Syria, that whole area of Canaan, which goes almost all the way up to Agarit in North Syria and then all the way down again.

This is where the Philistines have been found archaeologically.

We know they settled down there, and that fits with Ramses III saying that he settled them in strongholds in my name.

And it might not just be the Philistines.

I mean, the site of Teldor is described as a place.

It's a Tajeker city or a sickle city.

So others may have settled there as well.

But we've known the Philistines since late 1800s.

We know from the Bible that there are five cities, the Philistine Pentapolis.

And one of them, Talsafi Gath,

was identified as Philistine already back in about 1899.

Then the pottery that we identified as Philistine actually looks just like Mycenaean pottery.

except that it's made of local clay.

It's clay that's found in Rhodes or Cyprus or even in the Levant itself.

It's what I would call degenerate Mycenaean.

Not to say that it's bad, but just it's not made on mainland Greece like real Mycenaeans should be.

These are now, but I wouldn't even say they're copies.

I would say there are Mycenaeans or Minoans who have moved from the Aegean to Canaan.

And so I think we are looking at the Peleset.

We are looking at the Philistines.

And actually that correlation between Paleset as being the Philistines was already suggested way back by Jean-François Champolléon, the guy who deciphered hieroglyphics.

He had already suggested that the Paleset were the Philistines.

Interesting.

Yeah.

So one of the

cities, one of the archaeological tells is Ashkelon, where we can see there are Philistines living there.

We've got their pottery, there's a cemetery.

But in this particular case, not only do we have an entire Philistine cemetery, which was excavated, oh boy, now 10, 15 years ago, maybe.

Time flies, doesn't it?

I remember like yesterday when this was brand new.

And what they did, they were excavating the cemetery at Ashkelon, finding all kinds of Philistine pottery, but they were also excavating some of the houses at Ashkelon.

And in 2016,

they

were excavating a couple of houses.

And underneath the houses, they found burials of infants.

Now, this is not unusual.

This is an intramural burial.

You bury it under the floor.

to keep them close to you and you can put anybody under there but in this case there were infants and they were not sea peoples themselves, obviously.

I mean,

babies don't fight, but never mind.

But

the ceramics were dated to later in the 12th century or even early in the 11th century.

So that would be 75, 100 years after

everything we're talking about, right?

1207, 1177.

Now we're talking down at, you know, like 1107 or 1077, right?

You know, somewhere later 12th century, early 11th century, they did DNA.

And four of the kids, they were able to get the DNA from them.

And they tested out, and I know genetics doesn't work this way, but they tested out as basically being one-third local Canaanite

and two-thirds other.

But of course, it also works with plus-minus, so it could be 50-50.

But either way, they are partially local Canaanites and partially from elsewhere.

So what does that mean?

Well, we're looking here at probably the grandkids of the original sea peoples, right, two generations later.

And let's just hypothetically say that granddad was a sea person, a paleset, if you will, and that he came and settled down in the region of Ashkelon, intermarried, and had kids with a local Canaanite woman, the grandkids would be of mixed heritage, right?

The kids would, and then the grandkids would.

So I'm wondering, and you know, and the people who published this are wondering if we do have evidence now

that

we've got sea peoples from elsewhere.

Because the computer models that they ran when they tried to figure out where the other

might have come from computer models said most likely either Crete Sicily or Spain Spain wow okay Spain is interesting Sicily fits with the Shekelesh Crete fits with the Peleset, which, you know, the Bible says that's where the Philistines come from.

Either way, no matter which model you follow, they are from the Aegean or the Western Mediterranean or even the Western, Western Mediterranean, you know, Iberia, Spain.

And so this is now a new set of data that we didn't have before, ancient genetics, ancient DNA, suggesting that the Philistine descendants or part of the Philistines are from outside, which fits perfectly.

And it does make you wonder, doesn't it, what will be discovered in the years ahead, thanks to DNA and genetics.

And, you know, if more bones can be analyzed from a cemetery, you know, Philistine cemetery and the like, that actually the mystery of the sea people is

at least it might become even clearer in the years and decades ahead.

Yes, hopefully it will.

And I'll be the first to say, as would the excavators and the people doing the DNA, that four samples, four little kids is too small of a sample, right?

You really, yeah, it could be an aberration.

What we need are a whole nother set of DNA samples from these.

Now, there is the whole Philistine cemetery there as well, which they could have or could still perhaps sample.

But, you know, it's really hard to get DNA from back then.

And they got lucky that they got, you know, from these four kids.

But yes, I would say the next time a cemetery is found, the next time a burial is found that we think is a sea person,

if they're able to retrieve the DNA, yes, we now need to start building up a database.

Eric, that is all absolutely extraordinary.

Let's move on to the next part, which is if we go back to those Egyptian texts, the second one from the reign of Ramses, how he mentions what the sea peoples, what these groups did before they reached Egypt, and you labeled those cities that they attacked and the peoples they attacked in what is Turkey and Syria today.

Now, is there archaeological evidence that could potentially align with these people descending on the Levant and wrecking havoc before reaching Egypt?

Yes, but the emphasis is on potentially.

Yes.

What we've got are a series of destructions at various cities at this time, which may or may not be attributed to the sea peoples.

Way back when, that was what the archaeologists did.

When Gaston Maspro had said, hey, we got the sea peoples, and other people then read the texts of Merneptah and Rameses.

What they did is anytime an archaeologist found a site that had been destroyed that dated to about this time period, they said, hey, Sea Peoples.

Well, a city can be destroyed for any number of reasons.

Sea peoples, yes, possibly.

Invaders.

Internal rebellion, also possibly.

Earthquakes, also possibly.

The cow kicking over the lantern, also possibly, right?

And it's possible that what we interpret as a destruction wasn't anything of the sort, that it was just a local house burning down or whatever.

But there are a series of these destructions that one can see in Greece, in Anatolia, in northern Syria, in Cyprus.

And so the question is: are these, in fact, destructions?

And if they are, are they attributed to the sea peoples or to something else, you know, mother nature, like an earthquake?

In a number of cases,

I think we can definitely say there were invaders, in part because we have inscriptions, textual evidence that corroborate it.

But in, I would say, 90% of the cases, we don't know.

Mycenae is destroyed.

Tirans is destroyed.

Pylos is destroyed.

All on mainland Greece.

We don't know who did it.

A number of sites in Anatolia are destroyed.

Same thing.

The only place that we really know, and I'm just going to use one site here, is the site of Ugarit in northern Syria that we've mentioned before, because we know it's destroyed.

The French excavators found between one and two meters of destruction, ash, burnt wood, debris in the city.

It was so destroyed, and the inhabitants fled that it's not re-inhabited for at least 400 years, maybe 600 years.

And as regards, just to paint the picture for us, is this a prosperous coastal town in Syria?

Was this a really rich place before it is destroyed?

Absolutely.

That's an excellent way of putting it.

Yes.

It an international port.

You could call it an entrepot, if you will.

There are items from Egypt, from the Mycenaeans, from the Hittites, from the Minoans.

It's an international port, but it's also a bit inland.

It itself has at least one, if not two port cities, also, one of which is Rasib and Hani, and then Minet al-Beda, were the two actual ports for Ugarit.

So it's just inland, but not much.

So yes, it is not one of the G8, but a more of a minor player, and yet a major minor player, if you will, right?

Because it's not a kingdom or an empire.

It is a city-state.

It's Ugara.

It's like Singapore or something like that today, right?

You know, maybe not a G8, but an incredibly important place.

Yes, exactly.

And in fact, in some of the computer simulations that we have run since my books came out, the only way that the the collapse of the late Bronze Age could have happened as we see it, the only way it could have happened is if Ugarit and the Hittites collapsed at the same time.

That would have brought down the entire network.

Mycenaeans go down, the rest of the G8 are like, sorry, bye guys, but they remain up.

Same with Cypriot, same with, but if that city of Ugarit and the empire of the Hittites went down at the same time, computer simulations say that's what brought down the whole thing.

So yes, that gives you an idea how important it was.

Now,

in addition to the archaeological evidence that we've got for the city being destroyed, and I mean, we've got arrowheads in the buildings, you know, in the walls, we've got bodies in the streets, we've got that one to two-meter destructions.

We also have a very well-known clay tablet, a letter that dates to exactly this time period, and it is a letter from from the king of Ugarit being sent to the king of Alashia.

And you'll recall that Alashia is the Bronze Age name for Cyprus.

So, King of Ugarit writing to the king of Cyprus, and he says, My father, now the ships of the enemy have been coming.

They have been setting fire to my cities, and they have done harm to the land.

So, I mean, there's your smoking gun, if you will, or your smoking arrow, right?

The ships ships of the enemy have been coming.

They've been setting fire to my cities.

They've done harm to the land.

And then he says, doesn't my father, and he's not actually his father, but that's a term of respect for a more senior king.

Doesn't my father know that all of my infantry and chariotry are stationed in Hati?

So they're up with the Hittites.

And that all of my ships.

are stationed in the land of Luka.

So over by, you know, Lisha.

They haven't arrived back yet, so the land is thus prostrate.

May my father be aware of this matter.

Now, the seven ships, so he actually tells us there are seven, the seven ships of the enemy which have been coming have done harm to us.

Now, if other ships of the enemy turn up, send me a report so that I will know.

Now, it was long thought by the excavators of Ugarit that that was found in a kiln and it was being baked before it was sent so you know it wouldn't fall apart or so that nobody could change anything but more recent re-examination suggests it was not in a kiln but it was in a basket along with about 70 other tablets that were up on the second floor of the palace and in the destruction the basket fell down to the courtyard overturning so it landed upside down and the wicker of the basket disintegrated over time, but left the tablets in a pile looking like a kiln.

So we're not actually sure if this was ever sent or if it's a copy or even if it's from the 1177 or the 1207.

But regardless, Ugara is overrun before Egypt is.

So this would have given Egypt, you know, advance notice, if you will.

And remember, we said that the inscription of Ramses III said that the Sea Peoples had set up a camp in Amuru, which is just to the south of Ugarit.

So, my best thinking is that the Sea Peoples overran Ugarit, then paused, set up camp for a while in northern Syria, kind of getting their act together again before continuing.

And that is why Egypt was able to come up and have some advance notice,

if you will.

And it aligns, doesn't it, with the depiction as well that they have the big naval battle in the Nile Delta.

Garrett also talks about ships.

So once again, you get that continuation of a big naval threat almost, you know, hugging the Mediterranean coastline all the way down.

Exactly.

Absolutely.

Right, right, right.

So it works perfectly that way.

The other thing that we've got, which is brand new, recently, and by recently,

you're talking about an archaeologist, recently,

2016,

the French excavators and the philologists actually published some more of the tablets from Ugarit that they had found even earlier.

And in among those new tablets is another

one, which again mentions an enemy advancing on Ugarit.

And in this case, The king of Ugarit is writing to one of the Hittites, I believe, and he says, I've written to you two times, three times before.

The enemy is advancing on us.

They have already overrun Ras Ibn Hani, which was one of their ports.

And the advance guard is now coming towards Ugarit.

Please send reinforcements.

Well, if reinforcements were ever sent, they did not get there in time.

because Ugarit is destroyed.

So we now have another tablet that fits.

And the problem is, and I would happily throttle the ancient scribe because he says the enemy has overrun Rasa Benhani and is advancing.

Why couldn't he have said the Shardana, the Shekhalesh, the Weshes, the Pel?

Why couldn't he have said who they were?

No, he says generically the enemy.

So just like the tablet we already knew says the ships of the enemy, now we simply have the enemy.

So we still don't know who it is, but we do know that there was an enemy that overran Ugarit and burnt it to the ground.

So that is the best case that I can present to you for evidence and actually multiple lines of evidence for a city that was probably destroyed by the Sea Peoples, and that would be Ugarit.

And that means that we have covered quite a lot, if not all, of the evidence that we have for the Sea Peoples, or that is closely aligned with the Sea Peoples.

Which brings me then to a big question as we near the end.

The Sea Peoples, how big an impact did they have on the Bronze Age collapse?

This is the $100,000 million, billion, trillion dollar question.

Right.

How much of an impact did the Sea Peoples have?

I have no idea.

None of us have an idea.

It could be 100%.

It could be 0%.

It used to be that they were pointed to as the sole culprit.

They were the the bogeyman right they did it you see a destruction they did it the collapse of the late bronze age it's the sea people's fault blame them nowadays

i am others have been saying that's too simple it's too simplistic they're not that banded together i do think that it's a motley crew, if you will, ragtag adventurers that have banded together.

I don't see a single general that's commanding them, anything like that.

And I also see a lot of other factors, a lot of other stressors, some of which we've mentioned today, others of which we discussed last time.

We've got earthquakes, we've got drought, we've got famine, you know, we've got all these other things as well.

So I stick to what I've been saying for a while now: that the sea peoples are a symptom, they're not the cause, that they may have started their migrations because

of other things such as drought and famine.

They themselves might have caused things like internal rebellions along the way.

So I think they are part and parcel of the large picture.

So, but I can't give a percentage.

You know, they're not responsible for 40% of what happened, right?

But they are one of the factors.

So, I see a multi-causal.

I think the term now that's in favor is a polycrisis is what people are saying.

You like a perfect storm, don't you?

I just want a perfect storm.

Exactly.

Right.

There is a perfect storm of everything.

Basically, everything that could possibly go wrong went wrong.

And that results in the cutting of the trade routes.

It results in the collapse of the globalized network across the Mediterranean.

And it results in the end of the world as they had known it for a couple of centuries at that time.

You know, not everybody collapses, and I go into that in the sequel, the after 1177.

Some do, you know, Hittites go away, Mycenaeans go away, but the Sea Peoples, the one remnant that we may have are the Philistines, who then continue on.

And if they are the Peleset, then we do have evidence there.

But the Sea Peoples remain

one of history's great mysteries.

I think we'll solve it one of these days.

Somebody will find and excavate an archaeological site and we'll go, aha, that's where the terrorists come from, or the Weshas or whomever.

But for now, it's still out there, up for grabs.

One of the most interesting questions that we've got from antiquity.

What a great story.

Eric, such a pleasure to have you back on the podcast.

Last but certainly not least, tell us about these books, and I stress the plural books that you've written on this topic.

Yes, because one led to another, which is now leading to another.

So it started out the original 1177 BC.

The year civilization collapsed came out in 2014, but so much additional data came out in the seven years afterward that I would advise people to read the revised and expanded edition, which came out in 2021.

Then three years later, the sequel came out.

I had actually been working on it since 2019, and that is called After 1177, the survival of civilizations.

And it looks at what happened immediately after the collapse and tries to put it kind of in modern terms.

So I talk about resilience, I talk about the adaptive cycle.

I even bring in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the IPCC, and I rank,

I have the temerity to rank the societies as to how well they did in the aftermath of the collapse.

And now,

now I'm working on what I'm calling the third book in the Unintended Trilogy.

I never meant to even write a sequel, let alone a trilogy, but here we go.

And it's going to be the next four or five centuries.

I'm going to pick up where I left off at the end of after 1177.

And no, it will not be called after

1177, though I wanted to.

I suggested that to my editor, and he said, yeah, no, no.

It's going to be called 776 BC.

You still want the 77, don't you?

You've got to have the 77.

You've got to have the double sevens in there, exactly.

So 776 BC, and the subtitle is The Clashing of Civilizations.

So it's going to go in Greek terms from the first Olympic Games,

which are 776 BC, down through the death of Alexander the Great.

So down to about 323 BC.

So early 8th century down through late 4th century BC.

But again, it's not just Greece.

It's going to be pan-Mediterranean and Near East also.

And that's where...

the clashing of civilizations comes in.

That's a play off of the article and book that Samuel Huntington published in the 90s that became fairly famous for a while, at least among academics, called The Clash of Civilizations, where he was talking about East versus West.

So I'm taking that and not calling mine the clash, but the clashing of civilizations, because in those next couple of centuries, we have the Neo-Assyrians knocking off the northern kingdom of Israel.

We've got Neo-Babylonians knocking off Jerusalem and starting the Babylonian exile.

We've got Persians taking down Neo-Babylonians.

We've got Alexander taking on, you know, everybody.

But in there, we've also got things like the Peloponnesian War, right?

Athens versus Sparta.

We've also got the Persian Wars, Greece versus Persia.

So it's not a constant drumbeat of war, and yet it is.

But those centuries are also a a period that some refer to as the Axial Age, because we've got, you know, Confucius, we've got Buddha, we've got the pre-Socratic philosophers all in those couple of hundred years.

We've got all kinds of inventions like democracy, things like that.

So it's a really interesting period.

So basically what I did in the first book is look at the collapse.

The second book is look at the, you know, the resilience and coming back.

And now I'll be looking at what happens after that one day Eric will get you towards the wars of the successes so you're almost there you are almost there

yes Eric it just goes for me to say thank you so much for taking the time to come back on the podcast oh my pleasure thank you it's been wonderful to be here

well there you go there was fan favorite professor Eric Klein returning to the podcast to talk through the story the mysterious story of the sea peoples i hope you enjoyed the episode.

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