The Sea Peoples' Raids was a period of Egyptian history that was marked by the invasions of the migratory Sea Peoples, an alliance of warriors and Late Bronze Age collapse refugees from Sardinia, Sicily, Greece, Lycia, and Anatolia who assembled on Cyprus and resolved to make a living by plundering New Kingdom Egypt as it recovered from a civil war between Seti II, Amenmesse, Twosret, and Ramesses III. The invaders were defeated at the Battle of the Delta and the Battle of Djahy in 1176 BC, and the defeated Sea Peoples were resettled in the Levant, where the Peleset people gave their name to the Sea Peoples' new homeland of Philistia.
History[]
During the reign of Pharaoh Ramesses III (1184-1150 BC), Egypt came under pressure from raiders known as the Sea Peoples. Little is known for certain about their origins, although they may have come from Anatolia. They fought on land as well as on sea, occupying parts of Syria and Palestine (one of the Sea Peoples were the Philistines), but it was the impact of their ships that made the greatest impression on the Egyptians. Their sea raids along Egypt's Mediterranean coast required Ramesses to assemble a fleet of his own and fight back. The result was history's first recorded sea battle. Since the Egyptian vessels were designed for use on the Nile, not at sea, they confronted the raiders at the Nile Delta at the mouth of the river. Both sides' ships had sails, but they almost certainly used oars for greater maneuverability when closing in for battle. The Egyptians aimed to draw close to their enemy and then unleash missile fire - arrows, javelins, and stones - from soldiers on the deck or up in the masts. As the Sea Peoples' fleet was drawn into the narrow waterways of the Delta, Egyptian bowmen also shot at them from the shore. In some cases Egyptians armed with swords and shields boarded enemy vessels, and may even have capsized some ships by hauling on grapnels hooked into the rigging. The Sea Peoples were heavily defeated. In the words of an Egyptian inscription, the enemy was "slain and made (into) heaps from stern to bow of their galleys."
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