The Sea Peoples

[Reenk Roink]

Did a search through this forum, and noticed that there were no discussions on this intriguing topic. Now I have read some Grolier and Encyclopedia Americana articles and the more comprehensive link posted on the "Online History Resources" thread (http://home.nycap.rr.com/foxmob/sea_peoples.htm), but I would like you thoughts and views on this topic.

EDIT: Hmm...for some odd reason the link was not working, though it is identical to the one found in this thread: https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showthread.php?t=44301

Just go to 'Find in This Page' and search for "Sea Peoples"

[Banquo's Ghost]

Well, that link doesn't work for me, and therefore I'm not at all sure what you mean by the Sea Peoples.

Forgive me if I'm being dull.

[The Wizard]

The Sea Peoples were a people(s) that assaulted, raided and invaded Egypt in the 2nd milennium BC (not quite sure on this, please verify). We know very little of them save that they attacked Egypt; their origins, language and culture remain a complete mystery, and are subject to much debate.

[Kraxis]

Some people have speculated that they might in fact have been Minoans after the eruption on Thera wiped Crete pretty clean of it's economical status.
Also that they were the ones to create the Philistine states the Jews had so many troubles with.

[Justiciar]

I vaguely recall a naff History Channel documentory claiming that they were Phoenician.

[Kraxis]

I vaguely recall a naff History Channel documentory claiming that they were Phoenician.

Seems unlikely that they were since they raided Phoenecian cities.
Philistine is a similar word, are you sure they didn't mean that?

[Watchman]

What I've read of them suggests that they were a whole slew of different "barbarian" populations that for somewhat muddy reasons went on a general rampage and laid waste to much of the world of far Antiquity; the two major regions to escape their depredations being Egypt (which bloodily repulsed them) and the Assyrian territory for fairly obvious reasons. Migrations the Prequel really. Eventually they settled down and, as per the usual practice, started getting all civilized themselves - just look at the Greeks for one famous example.

Apparently connected is the way the assorted barbarian mercenaries who'd been for a long time serving in the armies of the various chariot-using civilizations (tellingly often as "chariot runners") had on the side learned to take on war chariots and win...

[matteus the inbred]

The sources I've read suggest that they were a mix of Aegean and Anatolian peoples (their tribal names included Sherden, Lukka, Ekwesh, Teresh, Sheklesh, Tjekker, Denyen and Wekwesh, and Peleset, from which both Palestine, where they settled, and Philistine, what they became, are thought to have evolved).
As various people have said, they did attack Egypt several times, and most of the sources about them are Egyptian, although they also served the Egyptians againt Libya. They also partly destroyed the Hittites, using mainly close fighting warriors with long swords and body armour, and were indeed fairly effective against chariots -

Apparently connected is the way the assorted barbarian mercenaries who'd been for a long time serving in the armies of the various chariot-using civilizations (tellingly often as "chariot runners") had on the side learned to take on war chariots and win...

I didn't know that! It makes sense though. They did apparently use chariots themselves, but fairly light ones. And obviously they were into sailing and raiding as well. As with Viking longboats, the rowing crew were also the warriors.
I've always found them quite an interesting little subject!

[Watchman]

Modern analyses to the fall of the chariot I've seen have tended to emphasize the "barbarians'" developement of steady, aggressive, decently armoured infantry armed with javelins and to a lesser degree (as they cost an arm and a leg) improved sword designs, who even if they couldn't catch the lighter chariots (the Egyptian ones for example were essentially mobile archeyr platforms) could destroy the old-style infantry line anchoring them and hence win the field virtually by default.

The war chariot didn't die out overnight of course. In one form or another it remained in use for quite a while, although it is perhaps telling that some of the last serious users dwelt in the out-of-the-way periphery of the Celtic Fringe. But it lost its central dominant place as the central tool of military power to the infantry and the upstart cavalry.

Most of the cultures whose military power was first and foremost built on the chariots had by necessity those so closely tied to their social structures (in the form of a social as well as military elite of charioteers) that they simply could not adapt even if they wanted to. Even if the chariot warriors realized they needed to change, to change the basis of the military power would have stripped them as a class of much of their rights and priviledges; and this was naturally rather inconceivable for most of them. And thus they went down swinging.

The Assyrians had developed a strong native infantry arm by the necessity of their mountainous northern border (where chariots obviously didn't work too well) and having to fight off barbarians in that direction, and also had a budding decent cavalry arm. This gave them enough flexibility to be able to see off most attempts in their direction, and look scary enough that apparently not too many were made in the first place.

The Egyptians didn't have such advantages, but they had enough loyal barbarian mercenaries in their infantry to help turn the tide. If the various invading Sea Peoples themselves didn't fit in the same sentence with "unity", one can only imagine what the relationship between them and Egypt's heterogenic mix of mercenaries from all over the place was.
The Eggies went into terminal decline very soon afterwards though.

[Kraxis]

Most of the cultures whose military power was first and foremost built on the chariots had by necessity those so closely tied to their social structures (in the form of a social as well as military elite of charioteers) that they simply could not adapt even if they wanted to. Even if the chariot warriors realized they needed to change, to change the basis of the military power would have stripped them as a class of much of their rights and priviledges; and this was naturally rather inconceivable for most of them. And thus they went down swinging.

Do not agree about the chariots and their crew.
The charioteer would still be a furious tempest in battle. He would still kill enemies right and left to use and extreme way of saying it. So from his POW he was not the problem. But perhaps he didn't understand the problems the infantry faced, and perhaps that his own equipment (chariot, horses, armour, weapons) was simply too expensive to warrent his position. And that seems natural enough. He would simply think "why fix something that isn't broken?"
I think it would have been very hard to understand what was going wrong.

Meanwhile the barbs that were making the trouble weren't likely to have developed their tactics specifically as a counter to chariots, but more likely to counter each other. Close formed infantry is a natural develoment where you live in valleys and similar. Only the wide open plains/deserts are the natural habitat of the chariot.

[Watchman]

Given the amount of raiding and fighting the "barbarians" did with and for the chariot-riders of the plains, in the latter context commonly alongside of and against chariotry, that they developed effective counter-chariot tactics would have been nearly a foregone conclusion.

Broken and uneven terrain tends to be the natural breeding gorund of at least relatively loose-order light infantry, though. Phalanxes, massed shield walls, cavalry and chariotry tended to be something the lowland folk went for.

Your take on the attitude problem of the chariot warriors strikes me as having merit, although it should be noted a core problem was they no longer were the Lord Death On Wheels they used to be, when pitted against the masses of tenacious barbarians with javelins and a bad attitude.

But then, a certain brand of arrogance and a stubborn refusal to admit the rules have been changed has long been a feature of warrior aristocracies whose power base just got sidewinded.

One thing must be said of the war chariot though. As war machines go, it reallt has a certain unusual degree of charisma to it - even today the very word elects interesting (and, I must admit with embarassement, flighty and romantic) symbolic associations even in educated peacenicks such as myself, and still sees fairly common use in only vaguely related contexts. Case in point: the militaria section of the local bookstore has a book titles Chariots of Fire, which if I recall correctly concerned itself with modern tanks and their crews...

Cavalry had somewhat similar (and at the time somewhat similarly unfortunate) associations back in the day and still does, but there must be something special about those ancient wheeled death-machines for their powerful image to remain over three thousand years after their heyday passed.

Maybe its just the wheel though. The thing had very considerable and profound effect on human civilization as we know it, as well as the deep symbolic associations of the unbroken circle.

[Kraxis]

Yes, the charioteer wasn't the ultimate killer that he used to be in generations past. But if he still did well in battle (but not well enough) and didn't know eaxactly how well his ancestors had done he couldn't possibly see himself as the problem. That is not arrogance but logic. He was arrogant as well, but at times arrogance actually leads to changes as the arrogant person can't stand to get his arrogance kicked over. He want's to retain his position of arrogance.

The barbs fought mostly for the chariots, and as such were most likely under the command of the chariot-peoples. If they had been using chariot-defeating tactics, that were obvious because of their frequent employment by the chariot-peoples, then it seems claer that those peoples would have made notice of that. If however they were using the 'classical' setup then they wouldn't have been wiser.
So when their more homely elements finally came over the mountains, they fought unlike the barbs used previously.

In any case it is hard to dertermine what really was the truth of the matter, and often it turns out that several sides of a single case can have both merits and truth in what they say. History isn't a set fact, and people aren't homogenous, they diverge and itsn't impossible that we are both right.

[Watchman]

The problem with employing barbarian mercenaries is that many of those will eventually take their pay and go back home, and you'll be hiring new ones. Now, the problem with this is that they'll have picked up quite a bit of "odds and ends" during their stay in your sophisticated army. If one of the most important roles they were employed for in your army was as a support for your own "super weapon" when it fought the essentially identical "super weapon" of your peers, among the things they'll pick up is how to fight these "super weapons".

This knowledge then gets diffused to their home regions, and no doubt occasionally put to good use by raiders. But this isn't really a major concern.

It turns into such, however, if and when entire barbarian populations get on the move and pour into your lands. Now that they're being pitted against your "super weapons" on a large scale they'll obviously be adopting the ideas and techniques about fighting those en masse, and if these "super weapons" are what your military power chiefly revolves around...
Of course, major barbarian incursions into civilized lands have a tendency to coincide with larger periods of decline of those civilizations, which isn't going to help matters one bit.

Well, the end result was that with a handful of exceptions the ancient "civilized" chariot powers collapsed one after another and the rampaging hordes sacked a better part of the major urban centers.