The Ethnicity of the Sea Peoples - RePub - Erasmus Universiteit ...

lager, these contacts may have been especially close with
Crete in view of the amount of Minoan pottery discovered
in Thapsos. Vice versa, Khania, Knossos, and Kommos in
Crete have produced Italian (no distinction is made for Sicily)
ware during the later phase of the Late Bronze Age
(Late Minoan IIIA2-B for Kommos and Late Minoan IIIB-
C for Khania). 588 To this comes that the Sicilians are
known to the Homeric world (which, as we have seen in
section 2 above, mainly reflects Late Bronze Age politicohistorical
conditions) as sturdy traders, specialized in the
slave trade. 589
In our literary sources, the Sicilians or Sicels are assumed
to have once inhabited the mainland of Italy, up to
Latium and southern Etruria, and to have crossed over to
Sicily either some time before the Trojan war590 or 300
years before the arrival of the first Greeks, which means in
the 11th century BC. 591 They are specified to have been
driven out of their original habitat by either Umbrians (together
with Pelasgians) or Opicans (= Greek indication of
the Oscans), who, as we have seen in section 10 and will
further elaborate below, both make their entrance in the
Italian peninsula from Urnfield Europe at the end of the
Bronze Age. Therefore, Minoan and Mycenaean ware
found in the Italian mainland may also be indicative of
contacts of the Aegean region with the Sicels, or vice
versa. 592 According to inscriptions from the Archaic period,
the language of the Sicels was closely related to
Oscan at the time. 593
Weshesh
The Weshesh figure only in the attack launched by the Sea
588 Pålsson Hallager 1985; Shaw 1998: 15. For Cyprian material
at Thapsos, see van Wijngaarden 1999: 362, note 48; note that
Drews 1993a: 218, basing himself upon Ross Holloway 1981: 87,
identifies Thapsos during the 13th century BC as a Cyprian trading
post.
589 Homeros, Odyssey XX, 382-3.
590 Dionysios of Halikarnassos, Roman Antiquities I, 9; 16; 20 ff.
591 Thucydides, Peloponnesian War VI, 2, 5; cf. Dionysios of Halikarnassos,
Roman Antiquities I, 22, 5.
592 For the distribution of Mycenaean ware in Italy, see Buchholz
1999 : 83, Abb. 23.
593 Vetter 1953: 359-60, no. 514 (Centuripa vase, 5th century
BC): bratome; cf. Oscan brat or bratom (= Latin gratum “pleasant,
grateful”), see Pulgram 1978: 72-3; 151.
115
Peoples in the eighth year of Ramesses III (= 1176 BC). 594
According to a proposition by François Chabas, they have
been identified as Oscans. 595 In order to fully grasp the validity
of this suggestion, it is important to note that the final
-sh of Weshesh constitutes a suffix, also present, as we
have seen, in Ekwesh (< Akhaia) and Shekelesh (< Sikela),
and that the root hence consists of Wesh-. 596 Furthermore,
in spite of its general derivation from earlier *Opsci, 597 the
root of the Italic ethnonym Oscans consists of Os- as examplified
by its variant form Aus- or rhotacized Aur- in
Ausones or Aurunci, respectively. This root, then, is used
in combination with the typically Italic suffix for the formation
of ethnics, -ci (cf. Aurunci, Etrusci, Falisci, Graeci,
Umbrici, Volsci, etc.). Alternatively, inspired by Maspero’s
pan-Anatolianism with respect to the homeland of
the Sea Peoples, which led him to associate the ethnonym
Weshesh with the place name Wassos in Caria, it has been
suggested by Hall to compare the root of this same ethnonym
to that of the place name Waksos in Crete. 598
The identification of the Weshesh with the Italic
Oscans can be bolstered by archaelogical evidence. As we
have seen in section 10 above, the Italic peninsula is characterized
at the end of the Late Bronze Age by a new material
culture called proto-Villanovan, which, as convincingly
demonstrated by Hugh Hencken, shows close
affinities with Urnfield Europe and, as we have argued, is
likely to be introduced by the ancestors of the historical
Umbrians, Oscan, Latins, and Faliscans, whose languages
are most intimately related to Celtic and Germanic. Now,
as pointed out most recently by Shelley Wachsmann, the
fact that the boat(s) of the Sea Peoples as depicted in
Ramesses III’s memorial at Medinet Habu is(/are) characterized
by bird-head devices at both the bow and the stern
constitutes a typical Urnfield feature. 599 As it seems, then,
there were bearers of the Urnfield culture among the Sea
Peoples, which conclusion only applies if we are right in
594 See note 582 above.
595 Chabas 1872: 299; cf. Reinach 1910: 36, note 3; Macalister
1913: 25.
596 See note 580 above.
597 As based on Greek Opikoi and Ennius’ Opscus.
598 Hall 1901-2: 184; cf. Reinach 1910: 36; Albright 1975: 508;
Redford 1992: 246.
599 Wachsmann 1998: 178; Wachsmann 2000: 122; cf. Kimmig
1964: 223-4, Abb. 1; de Boer 1991.