Prayer Tents Bible References - Prayer Tents

SEA PEOPLES

A designation used by the Egyptians to describe attackers (“Foreigners from the sea”) who invaded Egypt during the reigns of Merneptah (19th Dynasty) and Rameses III (20th Dynasty). The term encompasses more than 20 groups of people, named by their place of origin. Of the names which can be identified, two can be traced to North Africa, but most are related to the Aegean Sea area, particularly western Asia Minor (Turkey), or to Lycia (southwestern Asia Minor) or Cilicia (southeastern Asia Minor), and the islands of Cyprus and Crete. Several of these groups are known from earlier Egyptian records.

Four invasions of Egypt are recorded, but two, one in the 5th year of Merneptah and the other in the 8th year of Rameses III (ca. 1174 b.c.e.), were the most significant and related to severe crises that occurred in the eastern Mediterranean basin. Merneptah comments that the people came with their families, women and children, and that he killed 6000 and captured 9000. Some of the captives were used as mercenary troops. Rameses III’s encounter with the Sea People, depicted in a relief on the wall of the funerary temple of Medinet Habu, shows the Sea People wearing kilts and adorned with either feathered headdress or horned helmets. The bows of their boats featured a bird’s head. Carts bearing women and children follow the ships by land. In both cases, the Sea People were not just engaging in a foray into Egypt, but were looking for a place to settle.

It is during the attack on Egypt in the 8th year of Rameses III that we hear of the Peleset, or Philistines, whom Rameses allowed to settle in Palestine on the Philistine Plain from Raphia in the south to Joppa. A second group, Tjikkar, settled around the city of Dor.

Bibliography. W. F. Albright, “Syria, the Philistines, and Phoenicia,” CAH3 (1975) 2/2: 507-16; R. D. Barnett, “The Sea People,” CAH3 (1975) 2/2: 359-78; M. Dothan, “Archaeological Evidence for Movements of Early ‘Sea People’ in Canaan,” AASOR 49 (1989): 59-70; N. K. Sandars, The Sea Peoples: Warriors of the Ancient Mediterranean, 1250-1150 b.c., rev. ed. (London, 1985).

Lawrence A. Sinclair