Re: The Origin of the Sea Peoples

On Jul 23, 3:09 pm, Jack Linthicum <jacklinthi...@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
On Jul 23, 2:12 pm, "asteropaeus" <u36063@uwe> wrote:





Don't forget that the dating of Troy's sacking has always suffered from the
wish to connect just those items: Iliad, the chaos after it (oOyssea) and the
Sea-peoples. To note that the dating fits, means no more then that you
stumbled on a lobby within the world of historians, that in order to obtain
large amounts of money for their excavations, do over-emphesize the site and
importance of Troy for world history.
If you look at the amount of space within the walls of "Homeric" Troy (the
layer that is supposedly destroyed by the "Greeks") it is pathetic! You can
cross it (walking) within a matter of seconds!
If you look at the amount of Mycenaean pottery, (that would prove the
political connections), you will find out that it is really not a lot. It is
published, and referred to a thousend times, but the total amount is
stunningly small. It proves nothing more then sporadic contacts! I have seen
sites, where bigger amounts of Mycenaean pottery resulted in conclusions that
there was "nó evident prove of direct contact" Everything that has to do with
Troy gets blown out of proportions.
I do not have an answer yet as were the seapeoples came from, but i think we
should leave Homer out of his, to come to a proper solution.
A part of the seapeoples were circumsiced (Shardana Shekelesh Ekwesh Teresh)
which rules out any Western or Northern location for those. ( prior to the
attacs at least).
Another thing that we have to keep in mind is that the names of the
seapeoples known to us are coming from Egyptian sources. They only named
those they encountered. If the seapeoples were pushed in the back we may have
no text-source that gives names to the ones that did the pushing, since they
never arrived in Egypt.
"The seapeoples" could have been a much larger group of people then we
suppose them to be. And they don't need to have been all maritime of nature.
Several of the ones named bij Egypt were definately NOT!

stan.kurow...@xxxxxxxxx wrote:
My take on this is that the sea people - or at least some of them - were the
remnants of the Greek fleet that destroyed Troy. It's interesting to note
that their depradations started to occur at or about the time of the alleged
fall of Troy.

You are either a very fast walker or somewhat out of date on the work
done recently at Troy by the University of Tubingen. 75 acres is a
pretty good chunk of land about a 600 yard (meter) on a side square. I
was a pretty good runner in highs chool and could do 600 meters in
about a minute and 25 seconds.

The vast expanse that the Sea Peoples or those who got their
reputation covered suggests more than a few pparticipants. They are
recorded in two wars from about 1220 BC and 1190 BC. There are sites
in Anatolia, Greece, Cyprus, Syria and Egypt where they worked their
ways. The Egyptians left us with pictures and accounts of their defeat
in Egypt.

http://www.archaeology.org/0405/etc/troy.html

Was There a Trojan War? Volume 57 Number 3, May/June 2004
by Manfred Korfmann

Despite assumptions to the contrary, archaeological work of the new
Troy project has not been performed for the purpose of understanding
Homer's Iliad or the Trojan War. For the past 16 years, more than 350
scholars, scientists, and technicians from nearly 20 countries have
been collaborating on the excavations at the site in northwestern
Turkey that began as an Early Bronze Age citadel in the third
millennium B.C. and ended as a Byzantine settlement before being
abandoned in A.D. 1350. However, as current director of the
excavations, I am continually asked if Homer's Trojan War really
happened.

The Size of Troy

Troy appears to have been destroyed around 1180 B.C. (this date
corresponds to the end of our excavation of levels Troy VIi or VIIa),
probably by a war the city lost. There is evidence of a conflagration,
some skeletons, and heaps of sling bullets. People who have
successfully defended their city would have gathered their sling
bullets and put them away for another event, but a victorious
conqueror would have done nothing with them. But this does not mean
that the conflict was the war--even though ancient tradition usually
places it around this time. After a transitional period of a few
decades, a new population from the eastern Balkans or the northwestern
Black Sea region evidently settled in the ruins of what was probably a
much weakened city.

The main argument against associating these ruins with the great city
described in the Iliad has been that Troy in the Late Bronze Age was a
wholly insignificant town and not a place worth fighting over. Our new
excavations and the progress of research in southeastern Europe has
changed such views regarding Troy considerably.

It appears that this city was, by the standards of this region at that
time, very large indeed, and most certainly of supraregional
importance in controlling access from the Mediterranean to the Black
Sea and from Asia Minor to southeast Europe and vice versa. Its
citadel was unparalleled in the wider region and, as far as hitherto
known, unmatched anywhere in southeastern Europe. Troy was also
evidently attacked repeatedly and had to defend itself again and
again, as indicated by repairs undertaken to the citadel's
fortifications and efforts to enlarge and strengthen them.

A spectacular result of the new excavations has been the verification
of the existence of a lower settlement from the seventeenth to the
early twelfth centuries B.C. (Troy levels VI/VIIa) outside and south
and east of the citadel. As magnetometer surveys and seven excavations
undertaken since 1993 have shown, this lower city was surrounded at
least in the thirteenth century by an impressive U-shaped
fortification ditch, approximately eleven and a half feet wide and six
and a half feet deep, hewn into the limestone bedrock. Conclusions
about the existence and quality of buildings within the confines of
the ditch have been drawn on the basis of several trial trenches and
excavations, some of them covering a very large surface area. The
layout of the city was confirmed by an intensive and systematic
pottery survey in 2003. We have also discovered a cemetery outside the
ditch to the south. The most recent excavations have determined that
Troy, which now covers about seventy-five acres, is about fifteen
times larger than previously thought.

The Setting of the Iliad

Homer took for granted that his audience knew a war had been fought
for what was alternately called Ilios or Troy. The bard was mainly
concerned with describing the wrath of Achilles and its consequences.
He used Troy and the war as a poetic setting for a conflict between
men and gods. From the archaeologist's point of view, however, the
Iliad can be interpreted as a "setting" in an entirely different
sense. One may see Homer or his informants as eyewitnesses to Troy and
the landscape of Troy at the close of the eighth century B.C., the
period when scholars generally agree Homer composed his epic.

Troy was largely a ruined site in Homer's day, but the remains of Troy
VI/VIIa, both the citadel and the lower city, were still impressive.
Contemporary audiences and later ones from the area around the city
were supposed to be able to recognize the general outlines of places
where the action happened from descriptive references in the Iliad.
They could visualize it, for instance, whenever they climbed up a
slope to a sanctuary in "holy Ilios." "Holy Ilios" is the most
frequently repeated epithet in the Iliad, and one would expect to see
a sacred building in such a place. We can make a convincing case for a
sanctuary or sanctuaries, maybe in the form of a wooden building, from
the early seventh century B.C. at the latest--roughly contemporary
with Homer--on this site, which subsequently served as a cult center
into the late Roman Empire. There is nothing in the archaeological
record to contradict the assertion that Troy and the surrounding
countryside formed the setting for Homer's Iliad in 700 B.C.
Evidence from Homer by Joachim Latacz
Recent Homeric scholarship has shown that the Iliad is the culmination
of a protracted oral transmission of past events, transmitted by epic
poetry improvised and performed by singers. More...

The Hittite Connection

Although Troy is in Anatolia, Carl Blegen, who directed excavations at
the site in the 1930s, regarded Troy VI/VIIa as a Greek settlement.
The idea of a Greek Troy, one that had also been entertained by
Schliemann, became firmly established. These excavators had come from
Greece to Troy, both literally and figuratively, and later returned to
Greece, and were biased, most likely unconsciously, in their outlook.
However, until the 1930s there was very little archaeologically within
Anatolia that might have been compared with Troy, and certainly not in
western Anatolia.

We know today, from our own excavations and even from earlier ones,
that in all main respects, Bronze Age Troy had stronger ties with
Anatolia than with the Aegean. We've learned this from the tons of
local pottery and small finds, such as a seal with a local
hieroglyphic inscription, as well as the overall settlement picture,
mud-brick architecture, and cremation burials. Research by Anatolian
specialists has shown that what we today call Troy was in the Late
Bronze Age the kingdom of Wilusa, powerful enough to conclude treaties
with the Hittite Empire; even the Egyptians seem to have been familiar
with the city. Furthermore, according to Hittite records, there were
political and military tensions around Troy precisely during the
thirteenth and early twelfth centuries B.C.--the supposed time of
Homer's Trojan War.- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

Thanks for the information on Troy. Really good stuff.

My take on the Aegean of this period is that after the Theran
(Santorini) eruption the whole area was weakened to the point of
becoming a second or third rate power center in the Eastern
Mediterranean. The trade routes that the Minoans policed and protected
for so many centuries collapsed and increasingly fell victim to
piracy. The Mycenaeans were probably either incapable or not motivated
to rebuilding the international trading system as it was after
conquering the Minoans. They may have concentrated on just taking the
gold and silver from Spain until the El Argar finally fell.

With no more easy wealth coming in they might have looked to attacking
their neighbors for the plunder they desired. They may have looked on
Troy VI as a very rich but vulnerable nearby target. I think it is
likely that Troy was sacked twice. The first destruction was some time
before Mycenae was burned (around 1300 or 1280 B.C.) when properous
Troy VI was taken by Agamemnon and his allies and later in about 1185
B.C. (Troy VIIA) by the Sea Peoples when their most widespread and
powerful plundering invasions occurred.


W. Sheppard Baird

Author - The Minoan Psychopath
http://www.minoanatlantis.com

.

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