The Ethnicity of the Sea Peoples - RePub - Erasmus Universiteit ...

The story continues with the Sherden fighting, like
the Shekelesh, Ekwesh, Lukka, and Teresh, as allies or
mercenaries on the side of the Libyans, who, under the
leadership of their king Meryey, made an attempt to invade
the Egyptian delta in order to settle there in the fifth year
of the reign of Merneptah (= 1208 BC). 550 Subsequently,
in the memorial of the invasion of the Sea Peoples in year
eight of Ramesses III (= 1176 BC) at Medinet Habu, we
encounter the Sherden both as attackers and as mercenaries
on the Egyptian side. 551 The service of Sherden in the
Egyptian army can be shown to continue into the reign of
Ramesses V (1147-1143 BC), when members of this ethnic
group are staged as proprietors of land granted to them by
the pharaoh. As in the case of their kinsmen in the Levant,
the Sherden in Egypt by then had acculturated to the extent
that they all bore Egyptian names. 552
The final mention of Sherden in the Near East is provided
by the Onomasticon of Amenope, which reflects the
political situation in the 11th century BC. Here the Sherden
occur in an enumeration followed by the Tjeker and
Peleset. From this enumeration one has deduced that there
were Sherden living to the north of the Tjeker at Dor and
the Peleset in their Philistine pentapolis at the time, in a location
plausibly identified with Akko. 553 In archaeological
terms, their settlement here may well be reflected in Late
Helladic IIIC1b pottery554 – as we have noted before, the
hallmark of settlement of Sea Peoples in the Levant.
Having reviewed the history of Sherden in the Near
East, the question remains to be answered: where did they
come from? As we have seen, the Egyptian sources inform
us that they came overseas. Now, two propositions have
been put forward as to the origin of the Sherden: the island
of Sardinia in the central Mediterranean and the region of
Sardis in western Anatolia. The first option was proposed
by Emmanuel de Rougé already in 1867. 555 Some years
later, in 1873, his view was challenged by Gaston Mas-
550 Breasted 1927: Vol. III, no. 574; Drews 1993a: 49.
551 Strobel 1976: 18; Sandars 1980: 106-7, afb. 68. For their presence
on the Egyptian side, see Helck 1971: 226, note 10, and
Drews 1993a: 153 citing from Edgerton & Wilson 1936: plate 29.
552 Gardiner 1947: 195; for a full survey of the references to
Sherden in Egyptian texts, see Kahl 1995.
553 Moshe Dothan 1986; Bikai 1992: 133.
554 Bietak 1993: 297-8.
555 De Rougé 1867: 39.
112
pero. The latter argued that, on the analogy of the fact that
the original homeland of the Tyrsenians is traced back to
Lydia by ancient authors, the Sherden are more likely to
originate from western Anatolia as well, where the name of
the capital of the Lydians, Sardis, and related toponyms
like mount Sardena and the Sardanion plain and an ethnonym
like Sardonians would be reminiscent of their presence.
556 Accordingly, the Sherden were considered to be
on their way from their original home in Lydia to their
later home in Sardinia at the time of the upheavals of the
Sea Peoples. 557 The revised view of Maspero has been particularly
influential. Thus a cautious scholar like the Egyptologist
Alan Gardiner concluded: “Provisionally it seems
plausible to accept the identification of the name Sherden
with that of Sardinia, and the identification of the name
Tursha with that of the Tyrsnoi, but to regard Sardinia
and Etruria as much later homes of the peoples in question.”
558 Similarly, Margaret Guido in her book on Sardinia,
after weighing the pro’s and con’s, is inclined to an
eastern origin of the Sherden. 559 As we have seen in section
10 above, there is considerable evidence that Maspero’s
eastern origin of the Tyrsenians is correct. In the
case of the Sherden, however, the literary evidence from
ancient authors to back up their eastern origin is absent:
here Maspero’s thesis rests upon nothing more than a likeness
in names, which might be spurious. It comes as no
surprise, therefore, that de Rougé’s identification of the
Sherden as Sardinians can still count on some supporters
up to the present day, like Richard D. Barnett in his contribution
to the third edition of the Cambridge Ancient History560
and Drews in his book on the end of the Bronze
Age. 561
As it comes to the actual facts, it must be admitted
that these are meagre, indeed. The often referred to mention
of Šrdn “Sardinia” in a Phoenician inscription on a
stele from Nora, dated to the 9th century BC, can only
provide us with a terminus a quo for the name of the is-
556 Maspero 1873: 84-6; Maspero 1875: 195; Maspero 1910: 360,
note 2; cf. Burn 1930: 12-3; Gardiner 1947: 197-8; Redford 1992:
243, note 13; 246.
557 Hall 1926: 282.
558 Gardiner 1947: 198.
559 Guido 1963: 187-91.
560 Barnett 1969: 12.
561 Drews 1993a: 53-61; 70-2.