Do the Sea Peoples have a Nordic origin?
"Sea Peoples" is the term used in Egyptian texts to describe the Haunebu (literally "behind the islands"), people who attempted to invade Egypt between the 13th and 12th centuries BC. It appears that they originated from Illyria, Anatolia, Cyprus, and Crete, and swarmed towards the African coasts.
Allied with the Libyans, they exerted pressure on Egypt's western border, where they were repelled by Pharaoh Merneptah (1224-1204 BC), while other groups attacked the Hittite Empire, possibly contributing to its collapse. A second, more formidable invasion was held back by Pharaoh Ramesses III around 1170 BC. These invaders, whose names are mentioned in Egyptian and Hittite documents, later settled in various regions of the Mediterranean: the Shardana (Sardinians) in Sardinia, the Shakalasha (Siculi) in Sicily, the Lukki (Lycians) and Akhaluasha (Achaeans) in Asia Minor, the Danuna (Danaans) in Greece and Palestine, the Peleset (Philistines) in Palestine, and the Tursha (Tyrrhenians) in Italy.
The first mention of these peoples appears in an inscription of Merneptah (in 1225 BC or 1208 BC) that recalls his victory over a first wave of invasion, during which he allegedly killed 6,000 enemies and captured 9,000 prisoners. The attack was carried out by an alliance composed of three Libyan tribes and the Sea Peoples, consisting of five groups (Eqweš or Akawaša, Tereš or Turša, Lukka, Šardana or Šerden, and Šekleš).
In an inscription from the funerary temple of Ramesses III at Medinet Habu (Thebes), he recounts having faced, about twenty years later, a second incursion by the Haunebu, which he defeated in a naval battle after they had destroyed several Hittite and Mitanni cities.
In this inscription, the hieroglyphic names of the Peleset and Zeker (Teucri?) are accompanied by a determinative that indicates a population (a man and a woman), rather than a military one, suggesting that the invading force was accompanied by their families and belongings. In the temple reliefs, these populations are depicted traveling on solid-wheeled carts pulled by oxen or on boats decorated with bird or animal heads at the ends, while the soldiers wear helmets with tall feathers or horns.
Skilled and warlike sailors with sturdy ram-prowed ships, the Sea Peoples are mentioned in the Medinet Habu stele, where the following ethnonyms are listed first: Pheres, Saksar, and Denen. According to some scholars, these names may refer to three Germanic tribes: the Frisians (Pheres), the Saxons (Sachsen), and the Danes (Denen). Other Sea Peoples were non-Indo-European but joined the northern invaders and, in some cases, mingled with them. The 13th century BC was a time of terrifying catastrophes: climate changes and resulting famines pushed people from Northern Europe towards the Mediterranean regions in search of better living conditions.
With their raids, the invaders caused or accelerated the collapse of the Mycenaean civilization, the Hittite Empire, and the Minoan cities, while Egypt managed to withstand the invasions but endured incursions and devastations, until the Peleset, not fully subdued, settled in that coastal strip of land belonging to Canaan, which took the name Palestine from them.
Ancient Construction
The question that many archaeologists and historians avoid regarding these nations concerns their regions of origin: it seems reasonable to consider Anatolia, Cyprus, and Crete as areas where these peoples temporarily settled before heading south and west with their swift ships. Linguistic data and other details suggest that these people were originally from Northern Europe. It is known, for example, that the Peleset, even though they quickly became Semitized, retained some northern traits, such as the habit of decorating pottery with the image of the swan, an animal of the high latitudes that rarely ventures south of the Po River.
It is evident that official historiography does not want to give up the Orientalist dogma championed by Semerano, perhaps to avoid admitting even a tenuous link between the northern peoples and the descendants of the Atlanteans. However, amid the mists of the northern seas and the icy lands of Scandinavia, civilizations must have arisen, traces of which have filtered into Homeric poems. In fact, in the 1950s, Professor Spanuth argued that the island of the Phaeacians described by Homer was the royal island of the Atlanteans. Perhaps more realistically, engineer Giovanni Vinci located the land of the Phaeacians in Norway. In the 8th book of the Odyssey, the poet describes a structure that resembles a cromlech, a circle of monoliths. "Here is also the square around the beautiful sacred enclosure of Poseidon: it is furnished with large stones dragged to the spot and planted in the ground." Such circles are not unique to the north, but along with other details, the scenario painted by the rhapsode often evokes mountains, coasts, seas, and mists of Scandinavia.
This northern line of thought, which dates back at least to Tilak, does not exclude the possibility that the Middle East was a center of ancient culture dissemination, but the ostracism faced by northern-focused scholars is nonetheless suspicious. Some scholars doubt there is any connection between the Shardana and Sardinia, and especially deny that the root “dan” links the Denen, Danai, and the Hebrew tribe of Dan, although the Bible (Song of Deborah, Judges 5) states that the tribe of Dan "dwells on ships," a practice of a seafaring people, not nomadic or Semitic shepherds. The connection between the Danen and the Tuatha De Danann, ancestors of the ancient Irish, should also be considered. According to Leonardo Melis, the foremost scholar of the Shardana, the ethnonym Shardana, meaning "princes of Dan," contains a morpheme that links lineages settled in various territories, even distant from each other. Garbini, a rather isolated voice, emphasizes the Indo-Germanic nature of the Peleset, in whose language the typical genitive suffix –s can be traced.
Were the Sea Peoples distant heirs of the Atlanteans, who moved to Northern and Central Europe? Some iconographic evidence depicts warriors with feathered helmets not unlike those worn by Native Americans. The weaponry (moon-shaped hilt sword, circular shield, horned helmet with chinstrap) described in Egyptian reliefs recalls that of the Nuragic statuettes. After Atlantis submerged, some survivors moved eastward, while others went westward.
This could explain why some customs and traditions of peoples settled on opposite shores of the Atlantic are similar: the most famous example is that of the Egyptian pyramids and the analogous Mesoamerican structures. The pyramids erected all over the world remain an intriguing mystery: recently, monumental pyramids were discovered in Visoko, in the former Yugoslavia, which are thought to date back to the 11th millennium BC. They are the remnants of a culture about which we currently know nothing, and we know little about who built similar structures, albeit of smaller size, elsewhere in Europe, including Italy. Erosion and the growth of vegetation have softened their edges and made them resemble hills, but they are not natural formations, rather the silent traces of a remote past that we struggle to reconstruct.
