News: Sea People’s Origins Discovered?
In the last month stories have emerged about the translation of a rare set of inscriptions that may shed light on the mysterious Sea Peoples. Who are the Sea Peoples? They are a marauding army that appeared in the Middle East in the 12th or 11th century BC who cut a path of destruction from Mycenaean Greece through modern day Turkey, down the Levant to Egypt. Historians regard the waves of invasions of the Sea Peoples to have ended the Bronze Age in the Middle East destroying the three dominant powers of the era: Mycenaean Greece, the Hittite Empire and the New Kingdom of Egypt. The invasion threw Greek culture into a 400 year dark ages. The Hittite Empire vanished not to be re-discovered until 1884 AD. Rameses III finally defeated the Sea Peoples circa 1175 BC, but, the attack on Egypt was severe enough to send the 2,000 year old civilization into a state of permanent decline.
The fall of Egypt and the Hittite Empire created a power vacuum that allowed the Assyrians, and later the Babylonians, and Persians to emerge as dominant powers in the Middle East. Mycenaean culture disappeared allowing for a different type of regional city-state culture with a whole new approach to art, philosophy and warfare that would displace the Persians. There can be no doubt the Sea Peoples invasion changed the course of history.
The origins of the Sea Peoples has remained a mystery with broad speculation that they could have migrated from Greece, Anatolia (Turkey), Italy, Spain, or even among Celt or Germanic tribes. New translations of a large tablet written in an obscure Luwian language claim that part of the Sea People conquest of the Levant to the border Egypt. These findings will generate controversy as the original stone slab is now lost and scholars are working from a 20th century copy of a 19th century copy raising the specter of a hoax. Adding some legitimacy to the find is the fact that Luwian was not translated until the 1950s which would make forgery difficult.
Nevertheless, the possibility of learning the origin of a group who played such an important role in ancient history is exciting. The article from The Smithsonian is available here:
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/3200-year-old-inscription-lost-language-and-lot-doubt-180965244/
I think I have read somewhere that some scholars think the Phonicians and possibly the Caanites were descendents of these Sea Peoples. I wonder if the decipherment of the language will prove some links between these three civilizations.
The group I have seen most associated with the Sea Peoples are the Philistines who were in Canaan. To my knowledge, there are only one or two archaeological artifacts that establish King David as an actual historical figure but they date to sometime around 1,000 BC which would be consistent with Sea Peoples settlement in Canaan. There were indigenous people living in the Levant dating back over 8,000 years but as the crossroads of the ancient world, the Middle East was constantly awash in people migrating from different regions so it is entirely possible the Sea Peoples ended up in… Read more »
I was just remembering an arch when we were in Joppa on my trip to Israel over 3 years ago, and I think there were symbols of the sea on it. I also vaguely remember looking at @3000 BC archeological ruins of whatever Pre-Caanite civilization lived in Joppa, and our guide told us how much this people were sea-faring folks. They looked to the sea for their food, their livelihoods, and their trading with other folks. Fascinating studying the ruins found in Israel, Jordan, etc. these days. We are learning more and more just how the Bible did get general… Read more »
It is interesting how archaeology in recent years has tended to reinforce the historical basis for parts of the Old Testament. One of my favorites is the Biblical reference to the Hittites, one of the last major empires of the Bronze Age that was forgotten until the 1850s. I agree that the purpose of the Bible is not to be a history textbook. I never used the Bible as a source for teaching the history of Egypt for example. However, I did use Psalm 137 which is a lamentation of the Hebrew captivity in Babylon in my reading assignments on… Read more »