The reliefs at Medinet Habu show Egyptian victory.

That is, after all, what they were designed to show.

A temple commemorating the victories of a pharaoh does not dwell on the complexity of geopolitical causation or the humanity of the defeated.

What the reliefs cannot tell us is the perspective of the Sea Peoples themselves.

We have no documents from within the Sea Peoples confederation — no accounts of why they moved, what they were fleeing from, what they hoped to find, or how they understood their own situation.

This is one of the most significant silences in the historical record.