The Pontians

The Sea Peoples were a group of tribes who raided Egypt and other Eastern Mediterranean regions around 1200 BC during the Late Bronze Age. They included well-attested groups such as the Lukka and Peleset, as well as others such as the Weshesh whose origins are unknown. The term "Sea People" is a modern coinage, and is often regarded as a misnomer since most of them appear to have travelled by land. The modern concept of the Sea People originates in the work of the 19th-century Egyptologists Emmanuel de Rougé and Gaston Maspero, who drew on primary texts such as the reliefs on the Mortuary Temple of Ramesses III at Medinet Habu. Subsequent research developed their interpretation further, attempting to link these sources to other Late Bronze Age evidence of migration, piracy, and destruction. In early scholarship, the Sea Peoples were often regarded as a primary cause of the Bronze Age Collapse but recent work tends to view them as refugees fleeing a crisis which was already in motion.