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

lesh are geographically based, being derived from the
names of the islands Sardinia and Sicily, respectively,
whereas for example Weshesh “Ausones” or “Osci” and
Tanayu or Denye(n) are ultimately rooted in the hydronymy
of Europe and the North Pontic steppe (PIE *av- or
*au- “source, stream” and *dnu- “river”) and hence may
safely be assumed to have been introduced by the people
in question themselves from that region into their new
homeland. 607
HYPOTHESIS 2A. The mobilization process that led to
the emergence and exploits of the Sea Peoples was a
process of only partial ethnogenesis; it was not in
origin an ethnically-driven process, in the sense that
no role was played, in this mobilization process, by
any prior ethnic identification between the various
constituent peripheral groups that ultimately coalesced,
albeit never completely, into the Sea Peoples.
Given the fact that, as we have noted above, various
groups of the Sea Peoples settled separately in various locations
of the Levant, and that they have distinct names
and features in the Egyptian sources, this negative hypothesis
appears to come nearer to the truth than the positive
hypothesis 2B below. As a consequence, we may
conclude that to a certain extent a process of ethnogenesis
took place (= the emergence of the Sea Peoples as a distinct
phenomenon), but was not followed by ethnicization
(i.e. that prospective Sea Peoples, each in their own corner
of the Mediterranean, took ideological consciousness of
the fact that they had so much in common with the other
eight groups that they could adopt a common destiny).
HYPOTHESIS 2B. The mobilization process bringing
the nine groups to ultimately constitute the Sea Peoples,
was in part based on some pre-existing basis for
mutual ethnic identification between these nine
groups already prior to the beginning of the Sea Peoples’
mobilization and exploits.
An argument in favor of hypothesis 2B, which we
consider less likely than hypothesis 2A, might be provided
by the fact that the boats of the Sea Peoples are of a common
type with a bird head at bow and stern, which, as we
have noted, is a typical Urnfield feature. It should be noted
in this context, however, that Shelley Wachsmann suggested
that the Egyptian artist who drew the boats of the
Sea Peoples took one example as the norm, so that the apparent
unity in type of ship may be illusory. At any rate, an
Urnfield ideology would be secondary to all groups of the
607 Cf. Rosenkranz 1966: 136; Brown 1985: 131-2.
120
Sea Peoples with the exception of the Weshesh if our identification
of the latter with the Ausones or Oscans applies.
Another unifying element may have been formed by the
fact that all members of the Sea Peoples might ultimately
be of Indo-European stock. But this is by no means sure
for the Sherden and the Shekelesh, and, if these might turn
out to be Indo-Europeans after all, the differences between
the various groups are already too pronounced to allow for
the perception of a common heritage as a binding factor.
Finally, there is the question of how to classify the
post-conflict ethnic situation of the various constituent Sea
Peoples in the various regions of the Levant where they
ended up after their unsuccessful sea- and land battles
against Ramesses III. When we scan the range of possible
models which van Binsbergen derived from general ethnic
theory for specific application to the Sea Peoples case, it is
striking that no one specific model seems to fit the bill
once and for all.
One might be tempted to classify the post-conflict local
accommodation between Sea People settlers and their
host groups with the melting pot model (no. 6 in our section
1), with this proviso that the colonists, contrary to the
situation in the modern Americas, merge with the indigenous
population to the extent that they ultimately become
extinct as a separate ethnic group (= ethnothanasia). 608
However, even if locally, in the Levant, all sense of a distinct
Sea Peoples identity was ultimately lost, there are indications
that yet some knowledge of distant Central
Mediterranean origins lingered on, laying the foundations
for the subsequent Phoenician exploration and colonization
of the Central Mediterranean in the Early Iron Age. Perhaps
their knowledge of the central Mediterranean waters
stimulated the Phoenicians to explore these regions and
beyond in the course of the Early Iron Age.
In the Levant itself, however, total local accommoda-
608 Of the remaining cases of colonization assumed in the preceding
sections, the Pelasgian ones from presumably c. 1600 BC onwards
to western Asia Minor and Crete and the one by the Trojan
followers of Aeneas to Italy in the Early Iron Age seem closest to
the immigrant model (no. 2 in our section 1), with the noted adjustment
that the former emigrate to higher developed societies,
whereas the latter arrive in a lower developed one. As opposed to
this, the coming of charioteering Hyksos elements to Greece c.
1600 BC and that of the Tyrsenians to Tuscany from c. 700 BC
onwards rather adhere to the conquest model (no. 3 in our section
1), with the noted adjustment that the Hyksos elements, in contrast
to the Tyrsenians, do not plant their own language(s), but adapt to
that of the indigenous Thraco-Phrygian population groups.