Battle of the Delta

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Battle of the Delta or sometimes Battle of the Nile
Part of Egyptian-Sea People wars
Sea Peoples in their ships during the battle with the Egyptians. Relief from the mortuary temple of Ramesses III at Medinet Habu
Sea Peoples in their ships during the battle with the Egyptians. Relief from the mortuary temple of Ramesses III at Medinet Habu
Date c.1178 BC or 1175 BC[1]
Location Nile Delta
Result Egyptian victory
Belligerents
Egypt Sea Peoples
Commanders
Ramesses III Unknown
Strength
Unknown Unknown, thousands
Casualties and losses
Unknown Many killed, and captured

The Battle of the Delta, was a great sea battle between Egypt and the so-called Sea Peoples, circa 1178 B.C.E. or 1175 B.C.E. when the Egyptian pharaoh Ramesses III repulsed a great sea invasion by the 'Peoples of the Sea'. The conflict occurred somewhere at the shores of the eastern Nile Delta and partly on the borders of the Egyptian Empire in Syria, although their precise location is unknown. This battle has been described as 'the first naval battle in history'. This major conflict is recorded on the temple walls of the mortuary temple of pharaoh Ramesses III at Medinet Habu.

Contents

[edit] Historical Background

Further information: Battle of Djahy (12th century BC) and Bronze Age collapse

The Sea Peoples were known under such names as the Tjekker, Peleset, Sherden and others. In the 12th century B.C.E., they invaded the Middle East from the eastern Mediterranean, surging through the Hittite Empire, which they destroyed and plundered its capital Hattusha. They also attacked Syria and Palestine where many cities were burned and ruined. Cyprus had also been overwhelmed and its capital ransacked. It was clear that their ultimate goal was a huge and wealthy land such as Egypt, because the invaders did not want the spoils of the foreign land but the land itself. They were almost desperate to find a place for inhabitation and Egypt seemed a perfect choice. So there would have been more of a sense of Egypt being virtually under siege itself and fighting for its existence. The attack of the Sea Peoples was probably the greatest threat Ancient Egypt ever faced. The Sea Peoples had already destroyed the Hittite empire when they attacked Egypt; contemporary reliefs from Ramesses III's mortuary temple at Medinet Habu depict scores of families of the Sea Peoples at the borders of Egypt's Syrian empire where Ramesses III fought a successful battle to halt the Sea People's onslaught into her Asiatic Empire. This illustrates the fact that the conflict was partly a vast migration of the Sea Peoples to conquer and colonize both Egypt and her Empire in Asia. As the Hittitologist Trevor Bryce notes:

"the Peleset and Tjekker warriors who fought in the land battle [against Ramesses III at Syria] are accompanied in the reliefs by women and children loaded in ox-carts."[2]

The seriousness of the crisis faced by many of the Near Eastern states is aptly summarised by Ammurapi, the last king of Ugarit who wrote several letters pleading for assistance from Eshuwara, the king of Alasiya. Amurapi highlights the desperate situation facing Ugarit in letter RS 18.147:

"My father [Eshuwara], behold, the enemy's ships came (here); my cities(?) were burned, and they did evil things in my country. Does not my father know that all my troops and chariots(?) are in the Land of Hatti, and all my ships are in the Land of Lukka?...Thus, the country is abandoned to itself. May my father know it: the seven ships of the enemy that came here inflicted much damage upon us".[3]

Ramesses III describes a great movement of peoples in the East from the Mediterranean which, caused a massive destruction of the former great powers of the Levant, Cyprus and Anatolia:

"the lands were removed and scattered to the fray. No land could stand before their arms, from Hatti, Kode, Carchemish, Arzawa, Alashiya on being cut off. [ie: cut down]"[4]

Every foreign power on the Mediterranean was destroyed in the face of the Sea Peoples's onslaught; only the Egyptians were able to withstand their attack. However, this proved to be a phyrric victory, because in the end, Egypt were so weakened by it that it was never as powerful as it was prior to the Sea People's invasion. The conflict with the Sea Peoples also drained her treasury. Thus, the Egyptians used to say that death comes from across the seas.

[edit] The Battle

After defeating the Sea Peoples on land in Syria, Ramesses rushed back to Egypt where preparations for the invaders assault had already been completed. The inscriptions of Ramesses III at his Medinet Habu mortuary temple in Thebes record this epic event in great detail. When Ramesses looked at the sea, he stared at a formidable force, thousands of enemies, and possibly the end of the Egyptian empire. This was a turning point for the pharaoh, particularly the idea of having to fight a sea battle, because the Egyptians had never had to do this seriously before. Ramesses reacted with great tactical brilliance; he lined the shores of the Nile Delta with ranks of archers who were ready to release volleys of arrows into the enemy ships if they attempted to land. Knowing that he would be defeated in the battle at sea, Ramesses enticed the Sea Peoples and their ships into the mouth of the Nile, from where he struck his ambush. He had assembled a fleet for this specific occasion. In an inspired tactical maneuver, the Egyptian fleet worked the Sea Peoples' boats towards shore where the Egyptian archers, based on land, devastated the enemy with volley after volley of deadly arrows. Meanwhile, the Egyptian marine archers, calmly standing on the decks of their ships, fired in unison. Their ships were overturned, many were killed and captured and some even dragged to the shore where they were executed. Consequently, the Sea Peoples were defeated even before they could even set foot on Egypt's land. As Ramesses III states regarding the fate of the Sea Peoples who dared to attack Egypt:

"Those who reached my boundary, their seed is not; their hearts and their souls are finished forever and ever. As for those who had assembled before them on the sea, the full flame was their front before the harbour mouths, and a wall of metal upon the shore surrounded them. They were dragged, overturned, and laid low upon the beach; slain and made heaps from stern to bow of their galleys, while all their things were cast upon the water."[5]

[edit] Aftermath

While there is no documentation for any pursuit of the defeated Sea Peoples, who fled to the Levant, Egypt was saved from the fate of total destruction which befell Hatti, Alasiya, and other great Near Eastern powers. (Carchemish in fact survived the Sea People's attacks) Ramesses could certainly content himself with a great and decisive victory. Although he had defeated the Sea Peoples, the Egyptian pharaoh could not ultimately prevent some of them (specifically the Peleset) from eventually settling in Canaan and Palestine some time after his death. The Egyptians did repulse the attack of the Sea Peoples on their homeland, but the conflict exhausted and weakened Egypt's treasury to such an extent that she would never again recover to be a powerful empire. Ramesses III is generally considered to the last great pharaoh of the Egypt's New Kingdom.

[edit] References

  1. ^ Gary Beckman, "Hittite Chronology", Akkadica, 120 (2000). p.23 The exact date of the batle is unknown and depends on whether Amenmesse had an independent reign over all Egypt or if it was subsumed within the reign of Seti II. However, a difference of 3 years is minor.
  2. ^ Trevor Bryce, The Kingdom of the Hittites. Oxford University Press, 1998. p.371
  3. ^ Jean Nougaryol et. al. (1968) Ugaritica V: 87-90 no.24
  4. ^ Dothan, Trude & Moshe, People of the Sea: The search for the Philistines. New York: Scribner, 1992. p.23
  5. ^ James H. Breasted, Extracts from Medinet Habu inscription, trans. 1906, iv.§§65-66

[edit] See also