Achaeans (Homer) - Egyptian Sources

Egyptian Sources

During the 5th year of Pharaoh Merneptah, a confederation of Libyan and northern peoples is supposed to have attacked the Western Delta. Included amongst the ethnic names of the repulsed invaders is the Ekwesh or Eqwesh, whom some have seen as Achaeans, although Egyptian texts specifically mention these Ekwesh to be circumcised (which does not seem to have been a general practice in the Aegaean at the time). Homer mentions an Achaean attack upon the delta, and Menelaus speaks of the same in Book 4 of the Odyssey to Telemachus when he recounts his own return home from the Trojan War. Later Greek myths also say that Helen had spent the time of the Trojan War in Egypt, and not at Troy, and that after Troy the Greeks went there to recover her. There is also the strange myth of the brothers Aegyptus and Danaus, sons of Belus, with the latter supposedly coming from Egypt, that Marianne Luban has suggested may date to this time.