Category Archives: History

How did people in the past view their own ancient history?

I’ve had the happy experience of being on the Scilly Isles for the last couple of weeks, surrounded by ancient historical monuments as well as natural beauty, and it set me wondering about how people in the past thought about the older monuments they saw around them.

Bant's Carn entrance grave above Halangy Village
Bant’s Carn entrance grave above Halangy Village

A couple of examples. On St Mary’s there is an Iron Age village, Halangy (from the early AD period). It now overlooks the stretch of water across towards Tresco, but when the island was first settled, a person standing here would be looking across a wide expanse of cultivated land towards some low hills. But up the hill from the houses, with a space carefully left between, is a much older entrance grave, Bant’s Carn, from either the Neolithic or Early Bronze Age – possibly 2 or 3000 years older. The grave overlooks both the village and the drystone walls marking out ancient field divisions.

How did the Halangy villagers regard that tomb? Was it a place of solace or spiritual protection, either in the ordinary difficulties of life or more specifically from the slow but relentless impact of rising sea levels? Or perhaps a nuisance that called for regular observances but apparently contributed nothing and took up valuable land? Or was its function lost to history by the Iron Age, and it simply stood there as an enigmatic reminder of an older time? Many such old human relics are given names suggesting they were built by giants – apparently their monumental scale made it seem impossible that they could have been built by human ancestors. But at least there would be a sense that whoever built it was living in the same place, sharing something of the same experience of life.

Wayland's Smithy, beside The Ridgeway
Wayland’s Smithy, beside The Ridgeway

Another example comes from The Ridgeway. The modern national trail follows the middle portion of a very ancient trackway linking the Wash in East Anglia with the Channel coast and River Severn. It was used actively for thousands of years, and scattered along it are all kinds of monuments of the human past. The particular one I want to focus on is Waylands Smithy, a very long Neolithic burial mound beside the track which itself incorporated an older, smaller tomb within it.

Now picture yourself as a person walking the Ridgeway in the Late Bronze Age (c. 1200BC say for definiteness) – perhaps you are carrying trade goods, or going to a festival to celebrate. You camp one night close to Waylands Smithy, and wander over to look at it in the moonlight. What do you make of it? Something like 2000 years separates you from its builders, and presumably the symbolism which was clear when first constructed is obscure to you. Do you even recognise it as a burial place? And if you do, does that recognition bring comfort or anxiety? Unlike the case of Halangy village, you have no possible personal connection with the culture who erected it, and no sense that those people could be your own ancestors.

All this made me think a lot about my own writing, set in the Late Bronze Age in the Levant. Uphill from the town of Kephrath are caves used as family tombs over a number of generations. There is a very direct link between the current occupants of the town and those tombs, and so there is no mystery about them, other than the basic mystery of death. But elsewhere in the land nearby, there are older constructions, to which Kephrath and its occupants have no connection. What would they make of them?

No answers here, but a lot of provocative questions about the past!

A quick post

A quick post for today, highlighting a couple of things. First, the Past Horizons blog has reported some interesting archaeological finds recently.

Cover - Triumphal Accounts in Hebrew and Egyptian
Cover – Triumphal Accounts in Hebrew and Egyptian

One concerns the copper mines at Timna which I touched on long ago in my PhD as an example of how Egyptian and Levantine cultures might interact and share cultural values.

Now originally when this was found, there was a theory that these represented “King Solomon’s Mines”, dating from the 10th century BC (Iron Age). But fairly soon it became clear that the original extraction work had gone on much earlier, in the Late Bronze Age, certainly back to the 13th century and possibly 200 years earlier still. So originally the mines were worked during the period of Egyptian control of the Levant, though certainly it carried on into the Israelite monarchy period. So if King Solomon ever exploited these resources, he was continuing a long tradition, not starting a new one.

Temple area at Timna - Past Horizons blog
Temple area at Timna – Past Horizons blog

But the next assumption was that the enterprise was fundamentally run as an Egyptian colonial outpost, with Egyptian overseers directing a local workforce. This assumption has now been challenged by careful exploratory work. It now seems that the Egyptian presence was considerably smaller in scale, and probably represented a trade outreach rather than any kind of direct control. The Hathor temple shows clear signs of reuse of an earlier holy place, and virtually no Egyptian writing has been found. So the new picture is much more nuanced – the endeavour seems to have been a shared activity between different groups, and it is likely that the technical know-how concerning mining was provided by local groups rather than imported from The Beloved Land.

Finally, I have registered both Scenes From a Life and The Flame Before Us with the audiobook auditioning service ACX. The basic idea is that potential readers flock along to the site, select books which they like and are suited for, and audition for you. Any royalties are split between author and reader. It’s a nice idea, so let’s see what happens next. Should you know anybody keen on going in to such a venture, the two project links are Scenes From a Life and The Flame Before Us.

Kephrath timeline

Some months ago (Timelines and maps, January 2015) I talked about setting up a timeline + map for my Kephrath stories. At that time I was just using some third party pages for which I entered data in some convenient form and then linked to a remote web page. This time around I have done it properly and used a proper Javascript library (https://code.google.com/p/timemap/) within the context of my own web site – check out http://www.kephrath.com/Timeline.aspx for the result. The link is also in the blog menu above…

Some events from In a Milk and Honeyed Land and Scenes from a Life, plus surrounding history
Some events from In a Milk and Honeyed Land and Scenes from a Life, plus surrounding history

Fundamentally this works in exactly the same way as the third party pages, but of course I now have much more direct control over the content and appearance. Basically the source data is supplied in a format called JSON – easy to grasp and prepare, but rather strict and unforgiving about the details of formatting. The JSON data includes not only the events themselves – dates and descriptions – but also the details about colours and layout.

The latest version of Google maps allows you to remove modern artifacts such as roads, country names, and the like, so is ideally suited for me. Or indeed many of my historical fiction co-authors who write about various times in the past.

So far, key events are in place for In a Milk and Honeyed Land, and Scenes from a Life. I am currently in the process of entering the additional data for The Flame Before Us – this book covers only a few months of time, unlike the two earlier books which spanned a considerable number of years. So the dates will be rather squashed together. But of course the beauty of the system is that as I write more books, the new fictional history – and any relevant actual historical events surrounding it – can simply be added in.

The start of The Flame Before Us, plus surrounding events
The start of The Flame Before Us, plus surrounding events

Remember: http://www.kephrath.com/Timeline.aspx !

The changing place of women in the ancient Near East

Image of Seshat (from Wikipedia)
Image of Seshat (from Wikipedia)

So far as we can tell, the place of women in ancient Near Eastern culture shifted rapidly between the second and first millennia BC. At the start of that time, say around 1400BC during the Late Bronze Age, it was possible in some places for women to own and manage property, hold positions of considerable social rank, be literate, and so on. By the middle of the first millennium, say around 600 or 700 BC, just before the Babylonian armies conquered most of the Levant, women had a distinctly subordinate role, defined by the status of their father or husband.

We understand this partly through the written word, and partly through artefact. Some Egyptian letters written by or for women document their business transactions, for example. Or in other cases letters written by a husband show that his wife was trusted with the business while he was away. The Hebrew Bible describes women in the pre-monarchy era who were recognised as owners of land and leaders of the people.

Physical artefacts such as amulets or official seals from the earlier period show roughly equal numbers of male and female figures – usually, though not always, gods and goddesses. Later ones showing figures are heavily skewed towards male subjects, and where a scene would previously have called for a woman to be shown, an abstract representative symbol such as a star or tree often appears.

What these sources do not tell us is what social or cultural impulse was behind these changes of representation, and the shifts of attitude they reveal. Certainly, the region had become a more dangerous place. The Bronze Age great kings with their extensive vassal territories had been swept away, replaced by small localised kingdoms in permanent strife. Life, and travel, had become hazardous. So did the place of women change because of the widespread unrest? Did communities feel a need to protect their women, or less positively simply want to assert ownership over a valuable resource?

In fiction, I have chosen to present this change in several ways. The Four Towns, including Kephrath, are traditionally arranged matrilocally… a man moves into the household of his new wife, rather than bringing her into his family home. Descent and property is reckoned through daughters rather than sons. This is the world of In a Milk and Honeyed Land. There is no solid evidence this was done in Canaan, but the Hebrew Bible records traces of such traditions in Mesopotamia.

The Approach of the Sea Peoples
The Approach of the Sea Peoples

In my fictional world, the advent of the Sea Peoples signals the change. The ancient world cataclysm is described in The Flame Before Us. Greek women were, at least in classical times, strictly subordinate to men. I have assumed that this also applied to their Mycenaean precursors, who carried this cultural habit with them as they moved through the Levant. So the social disruption brought about by so many newcomers – whether for war or peace – changed the nature of the existing culture as it absorbed them.

The exact historical cause is unknown, and will probably remain so. However, it seemed to me that the interaction of European and Middle Eastern cultures at this early date might well lead to some unexpected results. Perhaps this was one of them.

Egyptian interest in Canaan in the Bronze Age

Part of the background of all of my Kephrath books is Egypt. I call this the land of the Mitsriy – the name reflects both the biblical and modern Arabic names for that nation, whereas Egypt comes to us via a roundabout route through Greek.

Maximum extent of Egyptian power (Wikipedia)
Maximum extent of Egyptian power (Wikipedia)

Ancient Egypt was not as a rule interested in conquest per se, in the way that the later Assyrians, Babylonians, or Romans were. They were usually satisfied with securing a buffer area of tribes and cities to both north and south. These vassals rendered tribute of various kinds – goods, valuables, or people for the most part – in return for their local rulers being left in place by the Pharaoh. Loyalty was rewarded by support against enemies, rebellion (real or imagined) by punitive action.

Egypt appointed regional governors – one was at Gaza (Gedjet in the stories) – but control was light. The area was not regularly policed: military action was normally a direct response to some provocation, though now and then flag-waving marches took place. Indeed, rivalry and internal fighting between cities seems to have been positively encouraged, perhaps to prevent wider alliances being formed. A few militaristic pharaohs certainly did campaign through Canaan northwards, even reaching the Euphrates River on occasion. But the purpose here was to establish zones of control with reference to the other Great Kings of the age – Mitanni and the Hittites for the most part – and there was no attempt to set up permanent garrisons in these areas.

Rameses III against the Sea Peoples (Wikipedia)
Rameses III against the Sea Peoples (Wikipedia)

This system started to break down around the end of the 19th dynasty (soon after 1200BC). Threats arose from other quarters, including north Africa and across the Mediterranean sea, and weaker pharaohs reduced the level of activity in the provinces. The major trade and defence route along the coast – The Sea Road – was defended all the more heavily, but elsewhere the Egyptian presence thinned out. The last great pharaoh in military terms of this era was Rameses III, who successfully defended Egypt against several attacks by The Sea Peoples and from Libya. Even he, however, decided that the only successful way to defend Canaan was to make terms with the invaders and grant them land. This event is recounted at the end of The Flame Before Us.

It used to be thought that Egyptians disappeared almost overnight from Canaan, at the end of the Bronze Age. This simple picture has been replaced by the understanding that Egyptian decline was a long and complex process. There was a continued – if reduced – presence in Canaan for a few hundred years. To be sure, there was no longer a serious military presence, and Egyptian words and wishes no longer commanded the same respect and obedience that used to be the case. But Egyptian cultural influence – building styles, pottery, systems of government, and habits of language and writing – persisted, and were influential in shaping the future of the kingdoms which emerged from this time, including the Israelites.

Battle of Qadesh relief, Abydos
Battle of Qadesh relief, Abydos

It’s always tempting with history to imagine “what-if” scenarios. What if the Egyptians under Rameses II had been more successful at the Battle of Qadesh against the Hittites, and gained control of the whole region up to Turkey? What if a more vigorous foreign policy had held the Sea Peoples back further north, avoiding the necessity to give territory away in the Gaza area? What if the Egyptians had poured more energy into linking up with the civilisations of Mesopotamia, instead of falling behind technologically and (in the end) being overrun? But these are for another day…

Shipping and boats in the ancient world – on rivers

FerribyBoats.co.uk - Reconstruction of one of the Ferriby Bronze Age boats
FerribyBoats.co.uk – Reconstruction of one of the Ferriby Bronze Age boats

Back to ancient history today, with part 2 about boats and shipping. Last time I talked about transport at sea; this time it’s the turn of rivers. I knew very little about this until recently, but in fact the widespread navigability of rivers across non-Mediterranean Europe was a crucial factor in driving the settlement patterns across Europe, from Brittany to the Urals.

The Mediterranean countries have no great network of rivers, so it was natural that communities and nations turned to the great inland sea for long distance transport of heavy goods. But north of the Alps the situation was entirely different. Going up one river as far as possible, then arranging for a short portage to the next river, traders could span great distances with comparative ease.

I had read before of the Viking overland routes down to the Black Sea and Byzantium, but this was only one example among many. There were corresponding journeys all through modern France, Germany, Poland and so on. When the Romans tried to defeat the Germanic tribes by crossing the Rhine into the Teutoberg Forest, they perceived it as a trackless and impenetrable maze. In contrast, the tribes living there saw the rivers as a network of easy transport and communication.

Hull County Council Museum - remnant of the Hasholme Iron Age boat
Hull County Council Museum – remnant of the Hasholme Iron Age boat

France was readily crossed from north to south as well, enabling the tin trade from the British Isles to flourish. According to a Greek writer, this journey took about 30 days for a group fully loaded with goods. This direct route to Marseilles was much more economical than the sea route around Spain – which is going to be a key plot theme in my next historical fiction book.

Rivers across northern and central Europe drove not only settlement patterns, but also boat technology. Specialised river vessels were developed, quite different in design to the ocean-going ones. They were usually between 10 and 15 metres long, had flat hulls with no keel, and were easily propelled by oar, pole, or dragging from a towpath. They could carry 25-30 people, or about 5 or 6 tons of freight or livestock with a small handling crew. Some might even be called the original ancestors of modern roll-on-roll-off ferries, since the bow section flattened out when beached, so that barrels could be easily shifted on board or off.

Hull County Council - artist's impression of the Hasholme Iron Age boat
Hull County Council – artist’s impression of the Hasholme Iron Age boat

This river transport network survived in places up to the Middle Ages. By then, the increasing demand for energy in the form of water mills outstripped the need for navigation, and rivers were divided into sections so that easy transport was blocked. The brief ascendance of canals in the late 18th and 19th century might be seen as the last vestige of this ancient impulse to travel on inland water. But from the Middle Ages, roads, followed by railways, had essentially taken over the task of the rivers to move heavy freight.

Back around 1200BC however, the existence of these river boats was a key factor in human occupation and travel outside Mediterranean Europe, and will surface in some form in my next book…

Law, Liberty, Legacy – Magna Carta at the British Library

British Library - Magna Carta
British Library – Magna Carta

A brief digression today to talk about an exhibition I went to last weekend at the British Library – Law, Liberty, Legacy exploring Magna Carta, which is on display until September 1st this year – see http://www.bl.uk/events/magna-carta–law-liberty-legacy

Just to describe it first, the exhibits begin with the social and legal situation in England previously, go on to record the events that took place in 1215 and their immediate aftermath, and finally trace many of the ways in which Magna Carta has inspired and steered social action right through to the present day.

As you might expect, the items on show are almost entirely pieces of literature, from legal decisions through activist pamphlets to satire and celebration. I had no idea that so many books had survived from the 13th and 14th century, and to see them in one place was arresting in itself. This does mean, however, that unlike the themed displays in the British Museum there is very little by way of physical artefact to engage with – the exhibition is definitely one which you need to grapple with on an intellectual and imaginative level.

I found the reception history of Magna Carta fascinating. It has been said that the document has been far more influential and memorable as a source of inspiration for social justice, than as a law code or constitutional document. After all, most of it deals with medieval and feudal concerns and issues. These were left behind in this country long ago, and are often quite irrelevant elsewhere. Only three of the original stipulations are still part of English law, and at least one of these, to do with the special role of the church of England, may not survive much longer. Here in England we have no problem discarding previous ideas and replacing them with new ones!

The fragments which have most consistently served as a rallying cry relate to justice – a person is entitled to a fair trial involving their peers, the rulers of the land are not above the law, and the state should not use arrest simply as a means of political coercion. These themes have echoed over and over again since 1215, and are still absolutely central to debate in this and other countries. Here in the UK, this is at the heart of contemporary questions relating to state surveillance and responses to suspected terrorists – how does a nation balance personal liberty and national protection?

I found it fascinating to see how far these principles have spread over the years, and how often they have been used to challenge the actions of various UK governments through the years. From individual radical pamphlet writers facing incarceration on charges of treason, to former colonies seeking independence, to today’s activists demanding transparency in government, over and over again the clauses are invoked. And, of course, it has also been invoked by numerous out-and-out villains seeking to deflect official interest away from their actions!

One of the most poignant displays was in relation to the US Declaration of Independence. Many of the original legislative documents of the individual states were already built around principles of a fair trial and the like. So it is no surprise to see Thomas Jefferson and others appealing to Magna Carta as a source of inspiration. But one item on display is Jefferson’s original hand-written draft of the Declaration, on which he neatly underlined those clauses which he had wanted, but which were omitted from the final declaration. One of these related to racial equality, and one has to wonder how different American history might have been if Jefferson and others had succeeded in building that in to the American Constitution right from the start.

So this is an important exhibition to be held, and judging by the crowds present at the weekend it is a popular one. It is well worth seeing, whether you approach it from a historical interest viewpoint or one of social justice. If you are in the London area sometime before September 1st, I recommend you take the opportunity to see it.

Shipping and boats in the ancient Mediterranean – at sea

Cover - The Flame Before Us
Cover – The Flame Before Us

Now that The Flame Before Us is happily released,  my thoughts are turning to the next venture. I have several ideas which I want to pursue, but the one for today involves a sea journey, out from Phoenicia along (and ultimately outside) the Mediterranean Sea.  Right now I do not have a working title, but the action will start very soon after Flame finishes.

But leaving aside plot details, this means that I have been reading up about ships and shipping in the ancient near east and beyond. Now, much Mediterranean shipping of that time was purely coastal, returning to beach on a handy shore as night fell. But there were what you might call “long-haul” vessels as well, which even if they routinely remained in sight of the coast for navigation, were fully able to remain at sea for long periods of time.

A lot of our information about these comes from shipwrecks, such as the one recovered from the south Turkish coast which has provided a wealth of information about 14th century BC maritime life. She was lost approximately 100 years before the events of In a Milk and Honeyed Land. The ship was carrying about 10 tons of copper ingots, a rather smaller quantity of tin, and a wide selection of valuables and other cargo originating in Mycenaean Greece, Cyprus, Canaan, Babylon, Egypt, Assyria, and various parts of Europe. The ship herself was around 15m in length. Scientific American reckoned that it was one of the ten most important archaeological discoveries of the 20th century.

Model of the Uluburun ship (from Wikipedia)
Model of the Uluburun ship (from Wikipedia)

So shipwrecks give us a lot of information, and pictorial evidence from various sources gives us more. For example, the pictures of Rameses III’s battles against the Sea Peoples show us both Egyptian and other vessels. We do not always know if the artist meant the drawing to be strictly accurate, particularly where rigging is concerned, but they are a good start.

There have been several recent reconstructions of ancient sea-going ships, such as the Phoenician vessel that I blogged about some time ago, based on a ship dating from about half a millennium later than the Uluburun wreck. The best known mariners of this era were the Phoenicians, but many other nations had their own ships as well.

Something else that I recently found out is how prevalent river transport was across much of Europe… but this will be the subject of another blog.

Recent activities on other sites

As readers will know, much of my time recently has been put into getting The Flame Before Us ready for publication. It is now available for Kindle pre order at Amazon.com, Amazon UK, Amazon India, and elsewhere. The softcover version is going through the last stages of production and will be available at round about the same time.

But outside that I have been involved with a range of other things. One that I was particularly pleased to take part in was a contribution to Suzanne Adair’s “Relevant History” blog. Entitled Stamped on these Lifeless Things, it was an exploration of early writing. A lot of fun to write, and judging from the comments, readers enjoyed it too. One lucky reader got a free copy of In a Milk and Honeyed Land which at the time of writing has just successfully made its way across the Atlantic.

There are a few reviews which have appeared on other sites recently –

Historical Novel Society

  • The Queen of Washington (Francis Hamit) – spies and intrigue during the American Civil War.
  • Will Poole’s Island (Tim Weed) – again in America, but this time in the early colonial days, exploring different interactions between the settlers and original inhabitants.
  • Turwan (Richard J Carroll) – over to Australia and a fact-based account of one man’s relationship with aboriginal groups.

The last two had a lot of points of similarity, setting personal cross-cultural friendship in contrast to a background of social prejudice.

The Review Group

  • Splintered Energy (Arlene Webb) – a near-future first contact science fiction book taking a different approach to the subject. This book is only the first in a series of four, so is far from complete at the end – plenty of material for enthusiasts to get their teeth into.

All of the above reviews are live at the sites indicated, and will be making their way onto Amazon and elsewhere shortly.

Other books – reviews planned but not yet written –

  • Camp Follower (Suzanne Adair) – again in the US, exploring military actions and intrigue in North and South Carolina in the War of Independence. I am slowly getting my head around the twists and turns of American history. I am part-way through Suzanne’s Hostage to Heritage at the moment, also exploring the same context from a different perspective.
  • Lincoln at Gettysburg (Garry Willis) – not a work of fiction, but rather an analysis of the rhetorical and social background to Lincoln’s speech. As a non-American I found this fascinating, particularly the place in American thought of this and other early documents, in contrast to our own British attitude to things like Magna Carta.
  • The Oblate’s Confession – monastic life in Northumbria after the synod of Whitby, tackling both personal and religious life.

Plenty of excitement there…

The Origins of the Sea Peoples

Versatile Blogger logoBefore I get started on the blog post itself, I should briefly mention that I was nominated by Helen Hollick (http://ofhistoryandkings.blogspot.co.uk/) for the Versatile Blog award. My explanatory post for that will follow in a few days.

So, today’s post explores theories about the original home of the Sea Peoples. These appear in The Flame Before Us in the form of a small clan of Sherden, travelling in ox carts south through the province of Canaan looking for a new home. The story, and the history behind it, has the Sherden as one group among many, and it seems that the Sea Peoples as a whole consisted of a collection of tribes linked loosely together. We know the names of many of these groups, though not their inter-relationships – as well as Sherden, we have Lukka, Tursha, Peleset, Danuna, Peleset, Tjekker, Weshwesh, Shekelesh and so on.

The various ancient literary sources do not give enough information about these people to be sure of their original homeland. Their names appear first as small groups of fighters allied to larger powers, with the suggestion that they served as mercenaries. Earlier texts describe them in north Africa, forming part of a Libyan army. Later ones place them on the move south through the Levant, this time in larger numbers and with family groups. It is not clear whether their journey from the north was voluntary migration, or if they were forced out by pressure of events.

The Egyptians, from whom we get the term “Sea Peoples”, recorded where they met various groups, and not their ultimate point of origin. One Egyptian word used of them is, unfortunately, ambiguous: it can be applied to either islands or coastal regions. The Hebrew Bible focuses on one group, the Philistines, (identified with Egyptian prst) as they moved south and settled in the coastal plain. We are told that the Philistines arrived from Caphtor (Crete), but, this is generally viewed in the same way as the Egyptian material – it tells us an immediate embarkation point rather than an original homeland.

So, research has largely focused around a few areas to give indirect information. The most popular one has been to look at place names around the Mediterranean, and decide if these give clues. Other people have looked at language relics, or archaeological links from their later settlement in the five cities in Canaan given by Egypt to different possible starting points.

Four major theories have emerged:

1. Various Mediterranean islands, with the links supplied by name – Sherden from Sardinia, Shekelesh from Sicily, and so on. This theory arose in the 19th century, and is probably the idea most commonly encountered.

2. Various places in Asia Minor, or more specifically southern Turkey, with name links such as Sherden from Sardes, Shekelesh from Sagalassos, etc. This theory was proposed by the Egyptologist Maspero, and is occasionally revisited. However, it has never really gained a great following, perhaps because it does not tackle the question of their relationships with the Hittites.

3. Various locations in the Balkan peninsula, along either the Aegean or Adriatic coasts. For example, Pliny lists Sardeates and Siculi as people-groups in this area, which recent scholars have linked to Sherden and Shekelesh respectively.

4. Various Mycenaean Greek locations. Although various name correspondences with the writings of Homer have been suggested, such as prst from Pylos, the main argument here is in fact archaeological. The twelfth century BC bichrome pottery from south-west Palestine known as Philistine Ware is considered similar to Aegean Late Helladic IIIC, suggesting that a travelling people brought their pottery techniques and designs with them.

In The Flame Before Us, I have gone along with the fourth of these. This is partly because I think that basing the link only on a correspondence of names is quite weak, and – clearly from the above list – open to multiple different possibilities. But in terms of the story, this also allows me to make links between the Greek participants in the Trojan War, and the Sherden of the story.

It seems to me that the destructive pattern attributed to the Sea Peoples is best seen as an extension of the Trojan War recounted in the Iliad and elsewhere. That war, stripped to a basic historical core, tells how Mycenaean Greeks travelled in ships to plunder a city on the western edge of the Hittite world. Seen in this way, the fall of Troy is simply the first episode in a chain of events that rippled around the eastern Mediterranean, encompassing Ugarit and Hatsor among many other cities.

At the end of the day the historical homeland of the Sea Peoples remains obscure, but in story-telling terms I am proposing a way for early Greek ideas and culture to enter into the Levant.