A Lovely Theory

I found a fun little map at the Wikimedia Commons showing the Aegean Bronze Age ending in a wave of invasions. Boldly and confidently it showed the Dorians sweeping down through Greece, Thracians crossing the Bosphorus, and Sea Peoples sweeping in from...the Black Sea. Maybe they were coming from Colchis?

I love Jason's expression here; a sort of "What the hell am I holding!?"

At least it showed Libyans as the major threat to Egypt. And it didn't have -- as so many maps have had -- the Sea Peoples as the do-everything, Swiss Army Knife invaders of the Aegean.

Really, there is no such beast. There is no single mysterious tribe that sweeps out of nowhere in their boats to lay waste to the empires of the Late Bronze Age. The closest any period accounts come to lumping together the various named tribes and identities is from the pharaoh Merneptah, who singles out three names from a longer list with a parenthetical "...of the sea." In another spot he makes mention of them coming out of islands.

Otherwise there are all sorts of people who sometimes worked together. Rameses II focuses his ire on the Libyans, casting the various other names he lists as hangers-on to their unjust and unwise attack on his majesty.

Heck...I don't know enough about Pharaoh-speak, but I can't help think that these inscriptions go out of their way to come up with as long an enemies list as possible to make the Pharaoh seem greater. (Unrelated, I think the Catalog of Ships is a later bardic addition; "Yes, you guys are in this story, too; your town sent two ships." Apparently scholarly agreement is Homer didn't write that part, anyhow.)

In any case, you might as well be inventing aliens or Atlanteans or something. Although it is both plausible and likely new peoples migrated into the area and caused trouble, it is entirely counter to both the archaeological record and to the political situation of the time to suggest the Sea Peoples are responsible for everything.

Anyone else instantly recognize the Raft of the Medusa?

Look; Greece was ravaged, but the coasts did not suffer worse and inland regions less. Egypt was attacked by land and sea but in any case that's nothing new; for all that apparent stability Egypt spent most of its history fighting to maintain its borders. Look at how much ground was lost while Akhenaten had other matters on his mind. Rameses II fought the Hittites at Kadesh and is really not that far from the period of Hyksos rule.

And the Hittites? They aren't a naval power. They barely have coastal access (depending on where you feel they stand in regards to the coast around Miletus, Assuwa, Arsawa, the Troad...) And they have known and powerful enemies on their borders already. The Kaska have long been a pain in their neck and the Assyrians -- fresh from stomping Babylonia -- have trounced them once in the field and will go on to take over when they are gone.

There's a world view in which an idea like the Sea Peoples can flourish. And that's a world view that has too narrow a focus on, and invests too much importance in, what happens in the Mediterranean. And, particularly, what happens to Greeks (or in this case proto-Greeks.)

It is a known problem in classical scholarship. As a field it inherits a whole cultural baggage of "Foundations of Western Civilization" that focused on the Greek texts. We've got some great texts about when the Greek city-states (well, some of them) faced off agains the Persian Empire, Thing is, that empire was huge. It is absolutely certain they had battles just as large on other frontiers. Those battles didn't get recorded by Herodotus and recited by bored British schoolchildren for multiple generations.

Come at me, bro

(One suspects the Persian account of Thermopylae was along the line of, "Met mild resistance at a narrow pass. Delayed one day. Took Athens in the morning.")*

The same idea has to be true of the sack of Hattusa. The Classics buffs have been poring over Latin and Greek texts, not looking at the archaeology of Mesopotamia. There's no need to postulate mystery guys in boats when there's known and attested mobs of extremely competent charioteers to the East and South of the Hittites. Some of whom had been already beating on them for a while.

You've got not just Mesopotamia, but Libya and all of sub-Saharan Africa to launch an attack from. You can't even leave out Europe; there's no textual or archaeological evidence for anything larger than tribal groups but, hey, whatever else you might say about him and his Iron Swords Beat Chariots ideas Robert Drews makes some compelling arguments.

Sea Peoples in all their glory

Still, saying you can't blame the whole Collapse on the Sea Peoples doesn't mean they didn't have an influence. Not as a single unified source, though. Even the accounts that lump them together into a single invading force imply that theirs is a coalition of convenience, not a singular command. Really, there is no sign in any period account that anyone in the Bronze Age would have thought of the various named peoples in the aggregate. The very idea of "Sea Peoples" -- like the term itself -- is modern.

And within the accounts, not all are associated with ships, the sea, or even islands. The exceptions, however; the exceptions have some of that mystery and excitement of the archetype. The Lukka, for instance, are described as pirates and raiders who live on their boats. The Sherden are described as expert sailors against whom none could stand. Although, oddly, the same Pharaoh who had those remarks carved in stone hired several of them as personal bodyguards. Yet another tidbit that one would love to hear the full story of!

And, yes, it is a pity. As a story-teller, the classical conception of the Sea Peoples (like that of the...sigh...Dorians) is perfect. The causes of the Bronze Age Collapse are mysterious and likely are neither singular nor all-embracing (I personally think it is a mistake to lump the Fall of Troy in with the Burning of Mycenae; they as likely had different causes and happened in very different ways). It doesn't make for a compelling story, though. How much better if you can blame it on Atlantis, or Aliens, or Zombies (yes; the latter book does exist. It's pretty good, too.)

Or Sea Peoples. Because in the classic form, they are well-organized pirates swarming out of the mysterious sea in huge fleets. And what writer couldn't use a few pirates?

The unforgettable Kelly Freas -- making a joke no-one today will get

* Okay, this is a bit unfair. Besides, say, Marathon et al, the Athenian navy trounced the hell out of the Persian fleet. Xerxes literally couldn't afford to keep fighting them. Given the relative poverty of the Greek city-states, from his POV this is starting to look like the Russian Front.