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The Sea Peoples: The Enigmatic Bronze Age Raiders Who Shaped Mediterranean History
Their origin and specific identities remain a mystery, shrouded in uncertainty. What is known is that they were able to wreak havoc in the Middle East and destabilize the ancient Mediterranean states. They were like the Vikings whose plundering expeditions changed the history of Europe and the world. They are the Peoples of the Sea.
The name “Peoples of the Sea” was invented and popularized by French Egyptologist Gaston Maspero. But it doesn’t really refer to any particular community framed by a state system. It defines a great wave of migration of peoples that swept across the eastern Mediterranean around 1200 B.C.
The invasions of the Sea Peoples
Although perhaps it would be better to use another term instead of “wanderings of peoples” — waves of invasions. Invasions so violent and difficult to repel that they led to the destabilization of the entire region and to the collapse of the most advanced centers of civilization at the time. That is, Mycenaean Greece and the Hittite state.
Not much was missing, and the same fate would also have befallen the most powerful and richest state of the time, namely Egypt. The invasions of the Sea Peoples took place during the reigns of Pharaohs Ramses II, Merenptah and…
