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The Ethnicity of the Sea Peoples 1 2 THE ETHNICITY OF THE SEA PEOPLES DE ETNICITEIT VAN DE ZEEVOLKEN Proefschrift ter verkrijging van de graad van doctor aan de Erasmus Universiteit Rotterdam op gezag van de rector magnificus Prof.dr. S.W.J. Lamberts en volgens besluit van het College voor Promoties. De openbare verdediging zal plaatsvinden op vrijdag 28 april 2006 om 13.30 uur door Frederik Christiaan Woudhuizen geboren te Zutphen 3 Promotiecommissie Promotor: Prof.dr. W.M.J. van Binsbergen Overige leden: Prof.dr. R.F. Docter Prof.dr. J. de Mul Prof.dr. J. de Roos 4 To my parents “Dieser Befund legt somit die Auffassung nahe, daß zumindest für den Kern der ‘Seevölker’-Bewegung des 14.-12. Jh. v. Chr. mit Krieger-Stammesgruppen von ausgeprägter ethnischer Identität – und nicht lediglich mit einem diffus fluktuierenden Piratentum – zu rechnen ist.” (Lehmann 1985: 58) 5 CONTENTS Preface ................................................................................................................................................................................9 Note on the Transcription, especially of Proper Names....................................................................................................11 List of Figures...................................................................................................................................................................12 List of Tables ....................................................................................................................................................................13 1. Defining Ethnicity.......................................................................................................................................................15 2. Ethnicity and Protohistory ..........................................................................................................................................21 3. Historical Setting ........................................................................................................................................................29 4. An Historiographic Outline.........................................................................................................................................35 5. Contemporary Sources................................................................................................................................................43 6. Lukka and the Lukka Lands........................................................................................................................................57 7. Ethnogenesis of the Greeks.........................................................................................................................................59 8. The Rise and Fall of the Mycenaean Greeks...............................................................................................................69 9. From Danaoi to Dan....................................................................................................................................................77 10. Etruscan Origins..........................................................................................................................................................79 11. The Aeneas’ Saga: Etruscan Origins in parvo ............................................................................................................89 12. Philistines and Pelasgians ...........................................................................................................................................95 13. Teukroi, Akamas, and Trojan Grey Ware.................................................................................................................107 14. The Central Mediterranean Contribution ..................................................................................................................111 15. Concluding Remarks.................................................................................................................................................117 Appendix I. On the Decipherment of Cretan Hieroglyphic ............................................................................................123 Appendix II. On the Position of Etruscan .......................................................................................................................135 Appendix III. A Luwian Trifunctional Divine Triad Recorded for Crete .......................................................................141 Appendix IV. Pelasgian Demeter and Zeus ....................................................................................................................143 Bibliography ...................................................................................................................................................................147 Nederlandse Samenvatting: De Etniciteit van de Zeevolken ..........................................................................................163 Curriculum Vitae Frederik Christiaan Woudhuizen........................................................................................................167 7 PREFACE Significance of the topic It will further be argued that the ‘‘prime mover’’, which set into motion the whole process leading to the upheavals Bringing down the Hittite empire and dealing Egypt a of the Sea peoples, is formed by the truly massive migra- blow from which it never recovered, the Sea Peoples’ epi- tion of bearers of the central European Urnfield culture sode at the end of the Bronze Age was crucial for a shift of into the Italian peninsula c. 1200 BC. the economic and political centre of gravity of the Mediter- Building upon over a century of scholarly Sea Peo- ranean world away from the Levant and towards Greece, ples’ research, and offering a combination of various spe- Africa Minor, and Italy. Soon this shift was to give rise to cialist (and therefore often relatively inaccessible) the splendors of archaic and classical Greece developing approaches from a variety of disciplines, this study will of- into Hellenism, Carthage, Etruscan civilization, Rome, the fer the reader synthetic perspectives onto a crucial period Roman empire, early Christianity, and, in the long run, the of human history. emergence the modern western European civilization, dominated by speakers of Indo-European languages, but Acknowledgments greatly influenced by a Levantine religion (Judaism). For better or worse, the Sea Peoples’ episode was one of the The work I have been engaged with let us say about the few major turning points in world history, comparable to last eight years could not have been accomplished without the period of the great migrations which led to the collapse the help of good friends and colleagues. First of all, my of the Roman empire, or the rise and early spread of Islam. sincere feelings of gratitude are due to my supervisor Wim van Binsbergen, who initiated the project, arranged a sti- The present book’s argument pendium to work it out granted by the Erasmus University, and, in addition to stimulating supervision, provided a With the help of modern anthropological theories about theoretical framework on ethnicity suitable for the analysis ethnicity, I seek, in the present study, to determine whether of the Mediterranean in the Late Bronze Age. Next, the the enigmatic Sea Peoples were merely a bunch of pirates Indo-Europeanist Frits Waanders was so kind to proofread or whether they constituted a set of coherent ethnic enti- an early draft of the entire manuscript and save me from ties, temporarily making common cause in pursuit of the many errors in spelling and judgment – needless to say that richnesses of, and hence a better life in, the Near East. remaining ones are my sole responsibility. Furthermore, I Of vital importance to this endeavour is the question am greatly indebted to the specialist in Linear A, Jan Best, of the homelands of the various groups which make up the who so to say raised me in the interdisciplinary field of Sea Peoples. In order to tackle this problem, an inter- protohistory and kindly proofread an early draft of the sec- disciplinary proto-historical method has been applied, tions on the Greeks and the Pelasgians. For the systemati- which makes full use of the available archaeological, his- zation of the transliteration of the Ugaritic texts, I am torical, and linguistic data as provided by Egyptian, Levan- much obliged to the Assyriologist Frans Wiggermans, tine, Anatolian, Aegean, and central Mediterranean whereas in matters of Egyptian hieroglyphic I was guided sources. by the Egyptologists J.F Borghouts and Willem van Haar- As such, the work aspires at an historical synthesis, in lem. Also of much help was the letter (d.d. 11 January which the Masperonian thesis of a homeland for the Sea 2002) by the archaeologist Manfred Bietak on the sensa- Peoples in Asia Minor and the Aegean is balanced with the tional find of Minoan tephra at Tell el-Dab‘a/Avaris. Un- opinion of others who rather attribute such a role to the is- failing support came from the members of the editorial lands of Sardinia and Sicily and the Italian peninsula in the board of Talanta, consisting of Jan de Boer, Ton Bruijns, central Mediterranean. It will be shown that both the “Ana- Roald Docter, Jorrit Kelder, Vladimir Stissi, Jan Stronk, tolian thesis” and the “central Mediterranean antithesis” Reinier Telling, and Maarten de Weerd, which not only are partly valid, and that some