Mediterranean Warfare and The Sea Peoples
Around this time large-scale revolts took place in several parts of the Eastern Mediterranean, and attempts to overthrow existing kingdoms were made as a result of economic and political instability by surrounding people who were already plagued with famine and hardship. Part of the Hittite kingdom was invaded and conquered by the so-called Sea Peoples whose origins - perhaps from different parts of the Mediterranean, such as the Black Sea, the Aegean and Anatolian regions - remain obscure. The thirteenth and twelfth-century inscriptions and carvings at Karnak and Luxor are the only sources for "Sea Peoples", a term invented by the Egyptians themselves and recorded in the boastful accounts of Egyptian military successes:
The foreign countries...made a conspiracy in their islands. All at once the lands were on the move, scattered in war. No country could stand before their arms...Their league was Peleset, Tjeker, Shekelesh, Denyen and Weshesh. —A similar assemblage of peoples may have attempted to invade Egypt twice, once during the reign of Merneptah about 1224 BC, and then again during the reign of Ramesses III about 1186 BC.
Read more about this topic: Greek Dark Ages
Famous quotes containing the words warfare, sea and/or peoples:
“What an admirable training is science for the more active warfare of life! Indeed, the unchallenged bravery which these studies imply, is far more impressive than the trumpeted valor of the warrior.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“And then the man whom Sorrow named his friend
Cried out, Dim sea, hear my most piteous story!
The sea swept on and cried her old cry still,
Rolling along in dreams from hill to hill.
He fled the persecution of her glory....”
—William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)
“History ... is, indeed, little more than the register of the crimes, follies, and misfortunes of mankind.
But what experience and history teach is this—that peoples and governments have never learned anything from history, or acted on principles deduced from it.”
—Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831)