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

site or manoeuvring in mountainous terrain. At the end of
the Bronze Age, however, a new style of infantry is introduced
with, amongst others, round shields, slashing
swords, metal greaves, and javelins, which can outmatch
the until then unchallenged chariotry, especially by eliminating
the horses with javelins thrown in full run. In general,
this shift from chariotry to infantry warfare during the
period from the end of the Late Bronze Age to the early
phase of the Iron Age is undisputable. But it did take place
more gradually than Drews wants us to believe. In the first
place, especially the Egyptian pharaohs from the time of
Ramesses II onwards were quick to adapt to the military
innovations by hiring Sherden mercenaries from (as we
will argue) Sardinia, who were specialists in the new style
of fighting. Secondly, certain groups that overran the Late
Bronze Age states during the catastrophe, like the Kaskans
of Anatolia and the Philistines of Palestine, still used
chariots in their army during the Early Iron Age. This being
so, it should not be overlooked that one of the greatest
military assets of the Sea Peoples was (as their name implies)
their sea power: once they had cleared the waters of
the eastern Mediterranean from enemy ships, they could,
just like the Vikings in a later age, attack any location of
their choosing by hit and run actions, thus leaving the landlocked
imperial armies no chance at a proper defence! Another
point of criticism of Drews’ views concerns his
denial of a migratory aspect to the catastrophe, which leads
him to the assertion that the Peleset and Tjeker were already
living in Palestine during the Late Bronze Age – a
supposition which, insofar as the period of Ramesses III is
concerned, is simply untenable. As Drews himself admits,
the innovative infantry is only effective when applied in
“overwhelming numbers” (p. 211). Furthermore, the Peleset
and the Tjeker are never mentioned in contemporary
Late Bronze Age texts, thanks to which the situation in the
Levant before the catastrophe is reasonably clear; for the
Peleset, Drews can only fall back on the Biblical account
of the Philistine ruler Abimelech from the times of Abraham
and Isaac, which, however, is a patent anachronism.
Finally, as we have just noted, in the period of Ramesses
III some of the groups of the Sea Peoples clearly had the
intention to settle in the Egyptian delta as evidenced by the
oxcarts with women and children depicted on the enemy’s
side in the reliefs of Medinet Habu. Of special interest to
our main theme is the fact that Drews denies that the persons
referred to by the ethnonyms which belonged to the
Sea Peoples “were ever a cohesive group” (p. 71; my ital-
41
ics). In my opinion, his military explanation of the catastrophe,
stressing the advancement of infantry, would gain a
lot if the groups were indeed cohesive. In a contribution to
the Journal of Near Eastern Studies 59 of 2000, Drews
elaborates his anti-migratory view on the catastrophe at the
end of the Bronze Age.
The treatment of the Philistines by Ed Noort in his
Die Seevölker in Palästina of 1994 is, like the work of
Drews just discussed, characterized by the modern fashion
to minimalize the migratory aspect of the catastrophe. In
the end, however, he cannot but admit that the Philistine
culture of the Early Iron Age is a mixture of an intrusive
element from Crete, the Peleset, with the indigenous Late
Bronze Age population of Canaan. Consistently within this
frame of reference, he considers the mention of Abimelech
in the Bible as a Philistine ruler in the period of the Patriarchs
an anachronism.
In his work of 1999 on Ugarit, Cyprus and the Aegean,
Hans-Günter Buchholz, specifically discussed the
problem of the Sea Peoples, especially in his concluding
remarks (pp. 708-741), where he presents a wealth of recent
literature. Like many of his predecessors, however, he
considers it an open question whether the Sherden and the
Shekelesh originated from the West or not.
In 2000 appeared a collection of papers edited by
Eliezer D. Oren entitled The Sea Peoples and Their World:
A Reassessment. 79 Most shocking news is that Annie
Caubet informs us that the famous oven in Ras
Shamra/Ugarit, in which tablets were found which presumably
had a bearing on the last days of Ugarit, is not an
oven at all but a ceiling from an upper storey. In addition
to this, Peter Machinist presents a valuable overview of the
sources on the Philistines in their pentapolis of Asdod, Askelon,
Gaza, Ekron, and Gath. Also worthy of note here,
finally, is the fact that Shelley Wachsmann takes up the
suggestion by Kimmig, again, that the ship(s) of the Sea
Peoples as depicted at Medinet Habu are characterized by
Urnfield influence for their having a bird head ornament at
the stern as well as the prow.
The latest publication on the topic I know of is Eric
H. Cline’s and David O’Connor’s contribution to a collection
of papers edited by David O’Connor and Stephen
Quirke entitled Mysterious Lands, which appeared in 2003.
This presents a handy and up-to-date overview of the
Egyptian sources on the Sea Peoples, but, as it leaves out
79 Cf. Barako 2004.