When Harrison Ford, assuming the character of the
much celebrated Indiana Jones-the screen version of the unabashed,
swash-buckling archaeologist - released, in the outset of the 3rd
part of his alter ego saga, the
solemn-sounding line defining the archaeologist’s duty as one of spending most
of the day in libraries scanning books for clues, he sounded as though he quite
legitimately attempted to set world viewers on the right course for acquiring
the real or near-real, picture of events that shaped the history of the major
cultures we admire today
It is
indeed through the painstaking study of primary, in the first place, and
secondary , in the second, literary and archaeological sources, in the form of
the enormous literature written by ancient and modern authors and the huge number of monuments and artifacts left behind by
ancient people, that one may gradually
attain a broad, if far from always safe, perspective of the developments,
during the course of the 13th
and 12th centuries B.C., in
what was the cradle of some of the most important
civilizations in world history, namely
the East Mediterranean .
Forming a huge gulf-like sea
inlet, framed by Greece and
Asia minor, the so-called Anatolia of ancient times, in the north , by the
Syropalestinian coast involving the
states of Syria , Lebanon and Israel
in the east and by Egypt
and Libya in the south, East Mediterranean
witnessed a long-lasted outcrop of climactic upheavals spanning the 13th
and 12th cent. B.C., destined to change the social, cultural and economic
balance to a great extent in that area of the world, and pave the way for major
developments to come in Greece, Israel, Cyprus, Anatolia, Syria and Italy , in the course of the following seven, at least centuries
The most important
civilizations in the East Mediterranean at the beginning of the 13th
cent B.C.(as of this point, all dates will be B.C. unless otherwise stated)
were the Egyptian, the Mycenaean, the Hittite and the Jewish, with those of
Amurru, Ugarit and Mitanni (in modern Syria), Arzawa, Assuwa, Lukka (later
known as Lykia), kashka (in Anatolia), Minoan Crete and Alashiya (modern
Cyprus) keeping a lower, if noteworthy, profile, some of them(particularly
Minoan Crete) having nevertheless left a much more significant cultural and
political impact on the overall area in the Early( c. 3.000-2000 ) and Middle
(c. 2.000- 1500) Bronze Age .
The key feature in the
multi-faceted pattern of developments
spanning the period in question is the high rate of tribal
mobility for reasons that
appear to be strongly connected with military expansion and migratory
movements in search for more
convenient lands for settlement.
Such a major event, assigned
mainly to imperialistic purposes and marking the beginning of this turbulent pattern of developments at about 1250-1230, was the first and perhaps most
literarily celebrated instance of large-scale war in European history, namely
the Trojan war between the Mycenaean Greeks, the then most dominant naval power
in the East Mediterranean, and the state of Troy, a powerful kingdom in the
north west part of Anatolia, the two
peoples most probably fighting to
settle territorial disputes scores, a
common reason for such actions at those times; the war, so vividly narrated in
Homer’s Iliad and fought by peoples akin to each other culturally does not
seem to have involved so many casualties
or lasted for as long as the Homeric epics claim, the archaeological record arguing against
such a thesis; the victorious Greeks’ Aegean sea
peregrinations on their way home, seem to almost overlap in time with the repeated
pattern of migratory eastward overland and overseas movements attested in the
East Mediterranean at the end of the 13th –beginning of12th cent.,
mostly involving the so-called “Sea Peoples” migrations to which we will
presently turn.
Not long before the time of
Trojan War, another very important event seems to have taken place, namely the
Israelite Exodus from Egypt, the earliest evidence
for which can be found in Pharaoh
Merneptah’s “Hymn of Victory” stela ,found at Thebes , of about 1220, referring
to the Israelites, among other peoples, as a distinct national entity in their
known homeland and not being at war with
Egypt, this meaning that the Israelites had reached and settled in Canaan, before Merneptah’s time, and since there
is no earlier reference to them in the Egyptian archives, their Exodus can be
taken to have occurred not long before 1220.
The third major event seems,
interestingly enough, to have happened
not long after, if at all, the Trojan war and concerns Merneptah’s victorious war against the Libyans and their
northern allies , also recorded on the stela mentioned above. This is the first of the two large-scale invasions of
Egypt by “northern peoples”, alias known
as “sea peoples”, recorded in Egyptian royal records, the second taking place
some 34 years later, in the 8th year of Pharaoh Ramses the 3rd
reign (c.1186) and constituting the fourth and most far-and-wide-ranging event of the time in question. The Libyans’
northern allies in the aforementioned war against Merneptah include
the Equesh, a name that has associated them with the Homeric Achaeans
(the same as the Mycenaeans) and the Ahhiyawa
in the Hittite records ,another term with Achaean connotations, applied
to an elusive tribal entity active in Anatolia and occasionally charged by the
Hittites with subversive , for the Hittite interests, activities; given that
Homeric Menelaus, on
his return home from Troy, was
weather-drifted to Egypt where his troops were defeated by the Egyptians, it
may well be pondered, granted the similarities in the accounts involved and the
time proximity, if it is his presence there that is alluded to by the
appearance of the Equesh among the Libyans ‘northern allies.
The second wave of Sea Peoples
attested in Ramses’ the 3rd reign did not fare better against the
Egyptians but what is more important is that, according to the Egyptian
archives, these peoples migratory as well as invasive movement seems to have
followed a twofold course southwards, one overseas and the other overland,
overrunning the kingdoms, according to the Egyptian scribes, of
Alasiya(Cyprus), of the Hittites, of Amurru, of Cilicia and Arzawa in Anatolia.
Their actions bring them headlong into the wave
of the cross-Aegean and E.Meditarranean migrations of tribes from the
Greek mainland and Aegean islands, ousted by the new-coming Dorians and heading for known destinations for
settlement ,such as Cyprus(where they eventually settled) and the
Syropalestinian coast, in much the same way as the Sea Peoples did.
It is to be noted that the
tribe of “Peleset” appears among the second wave of Sea Peoples and that
research has proved that there is very good reason for identifying them with
the Old Testament Philistines since the Peleset were settled by the Egyptians
,after their defeat, as garrison troups in Palestine. Given that much of the
Philistine material culture bears strong affinities to the Mycenaean one, not
least their pottery which
seems to be a version of the
latest Mycenaean pottery discovered in Cyprus
and that there is quite a number of common time and activities aspects
in the Sea Peoples migrations and the
Greek tribes traversing the Aegean over
a broad chronological context spanning the Sea Peoples’ activities, the
Mycenaean element in those Peoples, most notably the Philistines, acquires a
particularly strong dimension.
(By S.Vogazianos –Roy Glasgow
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