The heroes of Homer are Bronze Age heroes, and the catastrophe that Homer’s warriors cause and endure echoes, in poetic form, the catastrophe that reshaped the Mediterranean world around 1200 BCE.

Returning To Medinet Habu

The carvings at Medinet Habu remain the most vivid visual record of the Sea Peoples that we have.

Looking at them today — at the warriors in their feathered headdresses, at the Egyptian galleys with their archers, at the ox-carts with women and children — it is possible to see simultaneously the Egyptian propaganda victory and the human reality of migration.

Ramesses III’s inscription says that he made the Sea Peoples “cease forever.” But this was not true.