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Sea Peoples

A loose confederation of seaborne raiders and migrants — the Peleset, Sherden, Shekelesh, Denyen, Tjeker, Weshesh and others — who swept the eastern Mediterranean during the Late Bronze Age collapse, recorded by Merneptah (c. 1207 BC) and by Ramesses III, whose Battle of the Delta (c. 1175 BC) finally turned them back. Drawn as a raiding corridor along their attested targets, not as held territory.

After Ramesses III’s victories the confederation dissolved: the Peleset settled the southern Canaanite coast as the Philistines, the Tjeker held Dor, and the rest passed out of written history — leaving the wrecked palaces of the Late Bronze Age world behind them.

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Moments from the Chronicle

• 1177 BC The Sea Peoples and the Bronze Age collapse A seafaring confederation — the Peleset, Sherden, Shekelesh, Denyen, Tjeker and others — raids and migrates across the eastern Mediterranean as the Late Bronze Age world unravels. Ramesses III turns them back at the Battle of the Delta in his eighth year (c. 1177 BC), a lifetime after Merneptah first fought them (c. 1207 BC). The Hittite empire, Ugarit and the Mycenaean palaces fall; the Peleset settle the Canaanite coast as the Philistines.

Further reading

• 1177 B.C.: The Year Civilization Collapsed Eric H. Cline · 2014

  The standard account of the Late Bronze Age collapse and the role the Sea Peoples played in it.

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Sources

• Sea Peoples — Wikipedia (the reporter’s source)