The Peleset Sea People came from the Anatolian coast facing Cyprus, new paper argues

The Peleset, the Sea People whose name passed to the Philistines, came from the southern Anatolian coast opposite Cyprus, argues Carlos J. Moreu, an independent scholar, in a paper posted to the Knowledge Commons repository on 6 November 2026. It has not appeared in a journal.

At Ramesses III's temple at Medinet Habu, Peleset captives wear the same crown-like headdress and panelled kilt as the Denyen, whom Moreu places in Cilicia. The temple's Year 8 inscription lists Alashiya, which he reads as Cyprus, among lands laid waste before the Peleset moved on Egypt; he makes them refugees from attacks by Mycenaean Greeks. He links the biblical Anakim with Anaku, the "tin land" of Akkadian texts, and puts the Peleset homeland in western Cilicia and Pamphylia.

His nearest parallels for the Peleset warriors come from Enkomi: a steatite seal and an ivory game box showing men in that headdress, which he dates to the period of the reliefs. Enkomi lies in the area illegally occupied by Turkey since the 1974 invasion. Moreu counts it, with Sinda and Hala Sultan Tekke, among Cypriot towns probably destroyed by warfare then.

Whether incomers or internal conflict drove the Late Bronze Age collapse on the island is still argued. The Enkomi images have been used before to argue that the Tjeker, another Sea People, settled on Cyprus; in 1984 J. Muhly objected that the headdress is too common in Near Eastern art to show where its wearers came from [1, pp. 44–45].