Featured Episode - The Mysterious Sea Peoples: Their Origins and Identification
Issue 33
In This Episode
Who were the Sea Peoples wreaking havoc at the end of the Eastern Mediterranean Late Bronze Age? What was their motivation and from where did they originate? Join Petros Koutoupis as he attempts to answer these questions and more.
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Glossary
Aeneas - A Trojan hero and the son of the Trojan prince Anchises and the Greek goddess Aphrodite (the Roman Venus).
Aeneid - A Latin epic poem written by Virgil in the second half of the first century BCE. It tells the tale of the legendary Aeneas fleeing Troy and traveling to Italy.
Akkadian - An East Semitic language spoken by an early Mesopotamian civilization starting around 2500 BCE.
Amarna Period - An era of Egyptian history which took place during the later half of the Eighteenth Dynasty and when the royal residence of the pharaoh and his queen was shifted to Akhetaten in what is now Amarna.
BCE - Before the Common Era, the equivalent of B.C.
Bronze Age - Defines a historic period dated to approximately between 3300 BCE and 1200 BC. It is characterized by the use of bronze, the presence of writing in some areas, and other early features of urban civilization.
Canaan - The region that is the Levant and what is Israel and Syria today.
Etruscans - An ancient civilization inhabiting ancient Etruria as early as 900 BCE. They were highly cultured and spoke a unique Etruscan language still largely undeciphered today. The Etruscans were competing with the Greeks and later Carthaginians for control over the Tyrrhenian region and until they were eventually absorbed into the Roman empire.
Hittite - An ancient civilization and empire that controlled most of the Anatolian mainland.
Kadesh - Sometimes spelled “Qadesh”, the ancient city is located in modern-day Syria and right next to the Orontes River.
Keftiu - The ancient Egyptian name referring to the Minoans.
Late Bronze Age - A historical period defining the end of the Bronze Age in the Eastern Mediterranean that began at c. 1500 BCE and ended c. 1200 BCE.
Levant - The general geographical region of the Eastern Mediterranean and Western Asia, more centralized around modern-day Israel, Syria, Lebanon and Jordan.
Linear B - An adaptation from the Minoan Linear A, it is made up of hundreds of signs that represent syllabic, ideographic and semantic values that represent an ancient dialect of the Greek language.
Merneptah - The fourth Egyptian Pharaoh of the 19th Dynasty. Reigned from approximately 1213 - 1203 BCE.
Minoan - An ancient civilization that inhabited (and dominated) the Aegean during the Bronze Age and just before the Mycenaean Greeks. Early archaeological evidence identifies the civilization as early as 3500 BCE.
Mycenaean - A phase or period of the Bronze Age Greece, spanning from approximately 1600-1100 BCE.
Ramesses II - Also known as Ramesses the Great, he was the third pharaoh of the Nineteenth Dynasty of Egypt. He is often regarded as the greatest, most celebrated, and most powerful pharaoh of the New Kingdom.
Ramesses III - The second Egyptian Pharaoh of the 20th Dynasty. Reigned from approximately 1186 - 1155 BCE.
Sea Peoples - A confederation of seafarers that migrated East toward Anatolia, the Levant and Egypt during the end of the Late Bronze Age, some of which pillaged and plundered whole cities along the way.
Strabo - (64 or 63 BCE – c. 24 CE) A Greek geographer, philosopher and historian who lived in Anatolia.
Tyrrhenian Sea - Part of the Mediterranean Sea and off the western coast of Italy.
Recommended Books
1177 B.C.: The Year Civilization Collapsed: Revised and Updated
by Dr. Eric H Cline
In 1177 B.C., marauding groups known only as the "Sea Peoples" invaded Egypt. The pharaoh's army and navy managed to defeat them, but the victory so weakened Egypt that it soon slid into decline, as did most of the surrounding civilizations. After centuries of brilliance, the civilized world of the Bronze Age came to an abrupt and cataclysmic end. Kingdoms fell like dominoes over the course of just a few decades. No more Minoans or Mycenaeans. No more Trojans, Hittites, or Babylonians. The thriving economy and cultures of the late second millennium B.C., which had stretched from Greece to Egypt and Mesopotamia, suddenly ceased to exist, along with writing systems, technology, and monumental architecture. But the Sea Peoples alone could not have caused such widespread breakdown. How did it happen?
In this major new account of the causes of this "First Dark Ages," Eric Cline tells the gripping story of how the end was brought about by multiple interconnected failures, ranging from invasion and revolt to earthquakes, drought, and the cutting of international trade routes. Bringing to life the vibrant multicultural world of these great civilizations, he draws a sweeping panorama of the empires and globalized peoples of the Late Bronze Age and shows that it was their very interdependence that hastened their dramatic collapse and ushered in a dark age that lasted centuries.
A compelling combination of narrative and the latest scholarship, 1177 B.C. sheds new light on the complex ties that gave rise to, and ultimately destroyed, the flourishing civilizations of the Late Bronze Age―and that set the stage for the emergence of classical Greece.
People of the Sea: The Search for the Philistines
by Dr. Trude Dothan
The Philistines are among the most maligned peoples of ancient history. The Bible characterized them as cunning pagan warmongers, the ancient Egyptians as pirates and marauders. In today's language, a "philistine" is an uncouth, uncultured person.
Thanks to the work of Trude Dothan and Moshe Dothan, three thousand years of bad press are at last giving way to a wholly different picture of the Philistines. Through their excavations and other studies, these two eminent archaeologists have unearthed startling answers to some of the great mysteries of biblical history, revealing the Philistines as a highly civilized people. They were advanced artisans and craftsmen, sophisticated architects and ecologically minded town planners.One of the Aegean Sea Peoples who settled on the southern coast of Canaan at the end of the twelfth century B.C., the Philistines entered history as the main adversaries of the Israelites, stigmatized by the wicked Delilah and the arrogant Goliath. While the nature of their written language is still a mystery, the nature of their civilization is not. The remains of monumental buildings, a flourishing olive-oil industry, cast bronze, iron, and ivory artifacts, weaving looms, wine presses, and a wide range of artistically distinctive pottery urge us to make a historical reassessment.
In People of the Sea, the world's preeminent authorities on Philistine history and culture provide the first popular account of their ground-breaking work. Handsomely illustrated with line drawings, photographs, and maps, the book interweaves a fascinating history of the rise and fall of the Philistines with the first-person experiences of archaeologists at work. The result is a work that not only dramatically changes our understanding of an important and legendary era but also serves to illuminate an ancient civilization long lost to history.