Identity of the Sea Peoples (Bronze Age Collapse)

In this two-hour livestream, the host of Wanax TV examines the identity of ten groups associated with the Sea Peoples during the collapse of the Late Bronze Age, tracing the chronology from the Battle of Kadesh to the c. 1175 BC invasion of Egypt under Ramesses III and the Onomasticon of Amenope.

Cyprus enters the talk in the overview of the 12th-century BC campaigns, where the host states that the Sea Peoples destroyed the kingdom of Alashiya on Cyprus before destroying Ugarit and the Hittite Empire. In the chronological section, he argues that the subsequent colonization of Cyprus by Mycenaean Greeks indicates that Greeks formed a major part of the Sea Peoples coalitions.

The main discussion of Cyprus comes in the section on the Sherden, whom the host links to Sardinia and the Nuragic civilization. He connects the Sherden to Pyla-Kokkinokremos, between Enkomi and Kition, occupied briefly between c. 1175 and 1150 BC after the fall of Alashiya. Citing Nuragic pottery found at the site, he suggests the settlement was abandoned after a few decades because Greek colonists took over most of the island. He adds that Phoenicians and Greeks later cohabited and ruled together at Kition in the Cypro-Archaic and Cypro-Classical periods, while inland cities retained remnants of the native population of Alashiya (whom he calls Eteocretans). Discussing the Peleset, he notes that mid-12th-century BC pottery and megaron architecture in Philistia match those of Mycenaean settlers on Cyprus. In the Tjeker section, he briefly mentions the Story of Wenamun (dated here to 1000 BC), in which the traveller is attacked by a mob on Cyprus.