Latest / Ramses the Great: Egypt's Most Powerful Pharaoh — Fexingo History / Ramses the Great's Sea Peoples: The Invasion That Changed Egypt
Transcript
- Lucas: Today I want to talk about something Ramses faced that wasn't just another enemy kingdom — it was something far more chaotic. The Sea Peoples. Luna: The Sea Peoples — I've heard the term, but it always felt like a vague label for 'bad guys from the north.' Lucas: That's exactly how they appear in Egyptian records. The inscriptions at Medinet Habu — Ramses's mortuary temple — list them as a coalition of tribes: the Sherden, the Peleset, the Tjekker, the Denyen, the Ekwesh, the Teresh, the Lukka. Each name likely corresponds to a specific people from the Aegean or Anatolia. Lucas: The Peleset, for example, are almost certainly the Philistines you know from the Bible. The Sherden may have come from Sardinia. The Ekwesh have been linked to the Achaeans — Homer's Greeks. So what you're seeing is a massive migration of displaced populations, not just a raiding party. Luna: And this happens during Ramses's reign? I thought the Sea Peoples crisis peaked later, under Merenptah and Ramses III. Lucas: You're right that the biggest battles came later, but the first major clash with the Sea Peoples was actually in Year 5 of Ramses II — around 1274 BCE, the same year as the Battle of Kadesh. Ramses fought the Sherden off the coast of the Delta. He actually captured many of them and integrated them into his own army as mercenaries. Luna: He turned pirates into soldiers? That's very pragmatic. Lucas: It was. Egyptian records show Sherden warriors serving as elite guards and chariot fighters. They're depicted with distinctive horned helmets and round shields. But the Sea Peoples weren't just a one-time problem. They kept coming over the next century, and they were symptomatic of something much bigger — the Bronze Age Collapse. Lucas: Around 1200 BCE, the entire eastern Mediterranean system fell apart. The Hittite Empire vanished. Mycenaean palaces burned. Ugarit in Syria was destroyed and never rebuilt. Egypt survived, but it was weakened. Ramses II's diplomatic marriage to a Hittite princess and the peace treaty with Hattusili III looks even more significant when you realize the Hittites were about to disappear. Luna: So Ramses saw the storm coming and tried to build alliances. Lucas: Exactly. The Hittite king Hattusili III wrote desperate letters asking for Egyptian grain during a famine — the Sea Peoples had disrupted trade routes. But even Ramses couldn't stop the tidal wave. His son Merenptah fought a major Sea Peoples invasion in Year 5 of his reign, and Ramses III faced an even larger coalition 30 years later at the Battle of the Delta, recorded extensively at Medinet Habu. Lucas: The Medinet Habu reliefs are our best visual source. They show Egyptian archers on shore, ships in battle, and prisoners being led away. One inscription says: 'No land could stand before their arms, from Hatti, Kode, Carchemish, Arzawa, and Alashiya — they were cut off.' Luna: That's chilling — it reads like a list of civilizations being erased. Lucas: It is. And it makes you wonder: if Egypt hadn't had the Nile's resources and a strong centralized state, would it have fallen too? Ramses II left Egypt militarily strong, but the pressure never stopped. By the end of the 19th Dynasty, Egypt was struggling. The Sea Peoples were a symptom of a world changing forever. Luna: You know, listening to this, I realise how much these episodes make me appreciate the work that goes into keeping a history podcast ad-free and deeply researched. Lucas: I hear you. And honestly, if today's conversation felt worth a coffee to you, there's a link for that — buy me a coffee dot com slash fexingo. It's a simple way to support the show so we can keep diving into these stories without interruptions. Luna: Absolutely. Every bit helps, and it means we never have to cut corners or run ads. Lucas: So, back to the Sea Peoples — one of the most fascinating details is that the Sherden who joined Ramses's army later became a kind of warrior caste. They kept their own weapons and maybe even their own identity. In the Ramesseum, there's a scene of Sherden soldiers marching beside Egyptians. That integration is remarkable. Luna: Did any of those Sea Peoples groups ever settle in Egypt permanently? Lucas: Not as a group, no. The Peleset ended up on the coast of Canaan — the Philistine pentapolis of Gaza, Ashdod, Ashkelon, Gath, and Ekron. But some individual Sherden may have stayed. There's evidence of Sherden names in Egyptian administrative texts from the period, so they integrated at the personal level. Lucas: What's also interesting is that the Sea Peoples seem to have come in waves. The early wave Ramses faced in Year 5 was mostly Sherden — probably raiders. The later wave under Ramses III included families — women and children in oxcarts — which suggests a full migration, not just a military expedition. Luna: So Ramses II's policy of co-opting them might have been smarter than just fighting. Lucas: It was. By turning some Sea Peoples into allies, he weakened the coalition and gained skilled fighters. It's a classic divide and conquer strategy. But it couldn't stop the larger collapse. The Hittite Empire, which had been Egypt's great rival, simply vanished from history. After the peace treaty, they just... disappear from the record. Luna: That's sobering. And it puts Ramses's achievements in perspective — he held Egypt together during a time when other civilizations were crumbling. Lucas: He did. And the fact that we can still walk through Medinet Habu and see the Sea Peoples carved in stone is a testament to that. Those reliefs were propaganda, sure, but they also preserve a memory of a world that was ending — a world of Mycenaean palaces, Hittite capitals, and the great port of Ugarit, all gone. Lucas: Next time you look at a map of the Mediterranean, think about the Sea Peoples. They were the shockwave of the Bronze Age Collapse, and Ramses II was the pharaoh who stood in their path. He didn't stop the collapse, but he kept Egypt alive.