September 2026 | Vol. 14.9
By Eric Cline
The spectacular success of Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey movie and the (spoiler alert) numerous mentions of the shadowy threat hovering just offscreen has sparked a resurgence of interest in the Sea Peoples and the role that they played in the devastation of civilizations that occurred shortly after 1200 BCE. This was the same topic that was posed to me in the inaugural edition of ANE Today’s “Ask a Near East Professional” feature ten years ago, in 2016, and so I have been asked by the current editor to revisit my answer here. In the following, I have reproduced my original response, updating it with some of the new information that has appeared in the interim.
To begin with the first part of the question, “Who were the Sea Peoples?,” the simple answer is that there is still no simple answer. It remains an archaeological mystery that is the subject of much debate even today, now more than 160 years after the discussions first began. But it’s a fascinating story with lots of twists and turns, right up to the present day.
It begins with the early French Egyptologist Gaston Maspero, who suggested in the 1860s and 1870s that a group of marauding invaders whom he called the Sea Peoples were responsible for bringing the Late Bronze Age to an end shortly after 1200 BCE. He based this on a number of Egyptian inscriptions, especially those on the walls of Medinet Habu, the mortuary temple of Ramses III, which is near the Valley of the Kings in Egypt.
By about 1900, this hypothesis had become so solidified that Egyptologists and other archaeologists essentially took it as a fact, even though there was no real proof that’s what had happened. At the time, even the mere existence of the Sea Peoples was only documented in the records left by Ramses III and by Merneptah, who ruled 30 years earlier. Each claimed to have fought against an invasion of these Sea Peoples. Merneptah said it happened in the fifth year of his reign, which would be about 1207 BCE, while Ramses III said he fought both a land and a naval battle against them in his eighth year, which would be about 1177 BCE.
In both cases the Egyptians won, or at least claimed that they won. Merneptah says that the invaders whom he defeated included the Shardana, Shekelesh, Lukka, Teresh, and Ekwesh, while Ramses III says that the invaders in his time were the Shardana, Shekelesh, Tjekker, Denyen, Weshesh, and Peleset. So, there were five groups the first time and six groups the second time, with two of the groups overlapping, for a total of nine groups. Some scholars would also include a tenth group, the Meshwesh, who were involved in both attacks as well, but since they are from Libya and thus more local to the region, I usually omit them from my discussions.
So, we know who the Sea Peoples are, but in name only. Where did they come from? And where did they go after they lost? Answering the second question is easier, if we believe the Egyptian records, because Ramses III says that he settled the survivors in his strongholds in Egypt, which means either in Egypt itself or in portions of Egyptian-controlled Canaan. There are, in fact, other indications that some settled (or were settled) in those regions, for the Tale of Wenamun from a century or so later describes the site of Dor as being a Sikel (probably Shekelesh or Tjekker) city, while the Peleset are usually identified by scholars as the Philistines, whom the Bible tells us, and archaeology confirms, were also resident in the area, beginning in the twelfth century BCE. However, the situation is muddied by the fact that the Shardana (also called the Sherden) appear in Egyptian texts and inscriptions already a century or more earlier, fighting as mercenaries both for and against the Egyptian army.
As for where they came from, the early Egyptologists were split in their opinion as to whether the Sea Peoples had come from the west, i.e., Italy, Sicily, and Sardinia, and traveled east, or whether they were from the Eastern Mediterranean and had fled west after being defeated by the Egyptians. Even today we still play linguistic games with the names of the individual groups whom the Egyptian pharaohs mentioned. Most (although not all) scholars would now argue that the Sea Peoples began their migration from the Western Mediterranean, and that there is a linguistic link between the Shardana and Sardinia as well as the Shekelesh and Sicily. However, when they headed east and overran various countries and areas, others apparently joined in along the way, so that the Denyen and Ekwesh might be from the Aegean (Homer’s Danaans and Achaeans), the Lukka are almost certainly from Lycia in southwestern Turkey, and so on.
If that thinking is correct, then the two waves of Sea Peoples that crashed upon the shores of Egypt thirty years apart were composed of a motley crew from many different areas of both the western and eastern Mediterranean plus the Aegean and perhaps Cyprus as well. But all of that, plain and simple, is still just a hypothesis, for there are very few other texts or even archaeological evidence at the moment to confirm the entire story.
What we have instead are bits and pieces of the puzzle, though we are acquiring more as time goes on. For instance, we now know, from one tablet recently published from an archive uncovered at Ugarit, on the coast of what is now modern Syria, that an unnamed “enemy” had overrun the settlement at nearby Ras Ibn Hani and was now approaching Ugarit itself, probably sometime around 1190 BCE. Another, more well-known, tablet from the same site, published long ago, records a dire situation — “enemy ships” had been spotted, and the city was essentially undefended because all of its troops and chariots had been sent elsewhere. In both cases, as well as on a few other tablets, the enemy is unfortunately never explicitly named. However, the city itself was destroyed by fire immediately afterward and was not reoccupied for at least four centuries, so it seems fairly clear that someone — quite possibly a faction of the Sea Peoples — was responsible.
There were also numerous other sites destroyed during this time, but it’s not always clear who or what did it and why — perhaps foreign invaders; perhaps an uprising by the local populace; perhaps an earthquake; or perhaps simply a local accident unrelated to anything else. It can be difficult, and sometimes impossible, to tell what caused the destruction of a site, especially if no weapons (such as arrowheads, swords, or spear tips) or bodies are found in the rubble.
However, speaking of bodies, a Philistine cemetery, along with the remains of four young children which were found under the floor of nearby houses, was recently excavated at the site of Ashkelon. The cemetery and the intramural burials of the youngsters all date from the late twelfth century BCE, i.e., at least a generation or two after the initial invasions during the time of Merneptah and Ramses III, so these are not the remains of the original Sea Peoples, but rather their descendants who settled in the area. Ancient DNA recovered from the bodies of the four children specifically indicates that among their grandparents or great-grandparents were both local Canaanites and individuals from farther away, with the computer models suggesting either Crete, Sardinia, or Spain. Thus, we now have circumstantial evidence that some foreigners, again quite possibly from amongst the original Sea Peoples, settled down in the region — either voluntarily or at the behest of the Egyptians after their victories in either 1207 BCE or 1177 BCE.
Archaeologists excavate a Philistine cemetery at Ashkelon, 2015. Photo by Menahem Kahana/AFP via Getty Images.
As to what role the Sea Peoples actually played in the destruction of civilizations around 1200 BCE and shortly thereafter, I personally still think that they have been set up as a scapegoat, because of the Egyptian inscriptions, and that they were as much victims as oppressors. I doubt that they were responsible for all of the destructions that we blame on them, for I think that they were only one of the many factors that together contributed to a “perfect storm” that ended the Bronze Age. Support for this suggestion comes from a variety of evidence and sources. For instance, other individual texts from Ugarit and elsewhere report that there was famine in the Hittite lands up in Anatolia as well as in various cities, such as Emar in inland Syria. Scientific analyses now indicate that this was most likely the result of a long-lasting drought which affected a large area stretching all the way from Italy to Mesopotamia and from Anatolia down to Egypt, and which may have led to migrations by various people searching for a better life. There is also some evidence that disease may have played a role in all of this, for we know that Pharaoh Ramses V and members of his family died from what was most likely smallpox, sometime around 1140 BCE.
I think that all of these stressors, as they are sometimes called, which may have included earthquakes and possible internal rebellions in addition to disease, drought, famine, and external invaders, as well as possible disruptions of trade and thus supply-chain issues (to put it in modern terms), all combined to cause a systems collapse, as I have detailed at length in my book 1177 BC: The Year Civilization Collapsed, which first appeared in 2014, with a revised edition in 2021 (Princeton University Press). There is, however, still no smoking gun, nor one single cause, that we can point to as responsible for the collapse of civilizations just after 1200 BCE. It remains one of the most interesting mysteries of ancient history, as do the specific identities and origins of the various Sea Peoples, which means that Nolan’s Odysseus may not have been far wrong in his musings towards the end of the movie.
Eric Cline is Professor of Classics and Anthropology at The George Washington University.
How to cite this article:
Cline, E. 2026. “Who Were the Sea Peoples? And Did They Bring About the End of the Bronze Age?”, The Ancient Near East Today 14.9. Accessed at: https://anetoday.org/sea-peoples-bronze-age/
Want to learn more?
Why Odysseus Had to Go to Scheria —Memories, Flashbacks, and the End of the Bronze Age
The Myth of the Servant: A New Tale of Kingship from the Ancient Near East
3 Comments
-
Rick Carpenter
Look about 1000 years later at the Viking Age for what I believe could be many parallels to the hypothesis on the Sea Peoples’ possible origins. Different origins, different times, different foci (raiding vs settling), etc. Also, consider the current coastal “culture” in any country. Many are similar to other coastal cultures around the globe, notable for contact with other coastal populations due to trade and exploration, and somewhat different from their own inland compatriots.
-
Peter J. Huber
I tried to print the article by Eric Cline, but was unable to produce an acceptable paper copy. If you can do so, then please tell me how!
Joe Zias
The answer to many of these questions, lies with DNA testing, and not with pottery which is traded over vast distances.