You flip open a history textbook, perhaps because your instructor has told you you’re going to learn about the Bronze Age. Filling the pages are all the famous ones, many of which you’ve probably heard of: Mesopotamia, Ancient Egypt, Assyria, the Israelites, and such. That’s when the book tells you about one seafaring civilization that led to the collapse of the Bronze Age and who plagued the Mediterranean region for a hundred years; a people described by the Ancient Egyptians, one of the greatest civilizations of human history, as an unstoppable force. Who could these people of the sea be? You scan the pages, but no name is given to you. That is because no one knows their name, at least not for certain. They are the “Sea Peoples,” and they are a mystery over three thousand years in the making.

Let’s begin with what historians are confident enough to agree on. The so-called “Sea Peoples” were active in the Mediterranean region in the 13th and 12th centuries BCE. They conducted raids on coastal settlements and were especially active in Egypt. In fact, much of what historians have to go off of comes from Egyptian sources. They are commonly cited as a strong contributor to the Bronze Age collapse, thus you could think of them as helping to bring about an ancient “Dark Ages” of sorts. The Sea Peoples fade from the historical record after around 1178 BCE, when they were defeated in Xois by the Pharaoh Ramesses III. Supposedly, those among the Sea Peoples not slain in Xois were either enslaved or forcibly put into military service.

Ramesses’s fight against the Sea Peoples was brutal and costly. Cuneiform records from the ancient port of Ugarit provide some idea of how terrifying the Sea Peoples were perceived to be. The following is attributed to Ramesses III:

“No land could stand before their arms: from Hatti, Qode, Carchemish, Arzawa, and Alashiya on, being cut off (destroyed) at one time” (Kaniewski et al., 2011).

Let us note that the city of Ugarit itself, from where this text originates, is believed to have been later destroyed by the Sea Peoples as well.

So why do we know so little about the Sea Peoples? Well, almost everything we know about them comes from Ancient Egypt, and surviving records from thousands of years ago are hardly the most reliable kinds of sources. If we were to think of them as simple raiders or pirates, then we would be viewing them similarly to the Celtic “barbarians” who threatened Rome. In both cases, the fact that we are viewing history from the eyes of victims means some bias is a certainty. No one can even truly agree on what kind of civilization they were, be it a confederacy or simply the navy of some other empire, or even if they were a civilization in the first place.

What about that name: “Sea Peoples”? The name itself was actually popularized by French Egyptologist Gaston Maspero, who is believed to have coined it in an 1881 paper, but some credit has also been given to his senior Egyptologist Emmanuel de Rougé, the latter having termed them “peuples de la mer” (Peiper, 2017). Many scholars in the years since, however, have decried this “unfortunate” title. The exceptionally loose name which is essentially just labeling them as “people from the sea” is just vague enough to be problematic. For instance, ancient Jewish texts describe several different “Peoples of the Sea.” How can historians hope to properly identify these particular Sea Peoples when there is so much room for confusion and misinformation?

Looking to the future, optimism for determining the true identity of the Sea Peoples seems weak. If indeed they are another civilization altogether, then perhaps we’ve already met them and are simply lacking the link to prove such a connection. On the other hand, given how much time has passed and how few records remain, the answer may indeed be utterly lost. But will that stop people from trying to figure it out? Probably not. After all, who doesn’t love a good mystery?

— r

Further reading:

The World History Encyclopedia’s “Sea Peoples” article provides an excellent overview of what is known about this topic.

“The Sea Peoples, from Cuneiform Tablets to Carbon Dating” by Kaniewski et al. (2011), for if you want to look at this from a more archaeological, scientific point of view.

“Evidence for the Sea Peoples from Biblical and Later Jewish Writing from Late Antiquity” by Adam Peiper (2017) provides a much more critical perspective for examining these Sea Peoples and their terminology.