Pulasti (Philistine) and Tsakkaras (painting)

The Tjeker or Tjekker ( Egyptian: ''ṯꜣkꜣr'' or ''ṯꜣkkꜣr'') were one of the

Sea Peoples The Sea Peoples are a hypothesized seafaring confederation that attacked ancient Egypt and other regions in the Eastern Mediterranean, East Mediterranean prior to and during the Late Bronze Age collapse (1200–900 Common Era, BCE).. Quote: ...

. Known mainly from the "

Story of Wenamun The Story of Wenamun (alternately known as the Report of Wenamun, The Misadventures of Wenamun, Voyage of Unamūn, or nformallyas just Wenamun) is a literary text written in hieratic in the Late Egyptian language. It is only known from one incomp ...

", the Tjeker are also documented earlier, at

Medinet Habu Medinet Habu ( ar, مدينة هابو; Egyptian: ''Tjamet'' or ''Djamet''; cop, ''Djeme'' or ''Djemi'') is an archaeological locality situated near the foot of the Theban Hills on the West Bank of the River Nile opposite the modern city of Lu ...

, as raiders defeated by

Pharaoh Pharaoh (, ; Egyptian: '' pr ꜥꜣ''; cop, , Pǝrro; Biblical Hebrew: ''Parʿō'') is the vernacular term often used by modern authors for the kings of ancient Egypt who ruled as monarchs from the First Dynasty (c. 3150 BC) until the a ...

Ramesses III Usermaatre Meryamun Ramesses III (also written Ramses and Rameses) was the second Pharaoh of the Twentieth Dynasty in Ancient Egypt. He is thought to have reigned from 26 March 1186 to 15 April 1155 BC and is considered to be the last great mona ...

Egypt Egypt ( ar, مصر , ), officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, is a transcontinental country spanning the northeast corner of Africa and southwest corner of Asia via a land bridge formed by the Sinai Peninsula. It is bordered by the Medite ...

in years 5, 8, and 12 of his reign. They are thought to be the people who developed the port of Dor in

Canaan Canaan (; Phoenician: 𐤊𐤍𐤏𐤍 – ; he, כְּנַעַן – , in pausa – ; grc-bib, Χανααν – ;The current scholarly edition of the Greek Old Testament spells the word without any accents, cf. Septuaginta : id est Vetus T ...

during the 12th century BCE from a small

Bronze Age The Bronze Age is a historic period, lasting approximately from 3300 BC to 1200 BC, characterized by the use of bronze, the presence of writing in some areas, and other early features of urban civilization. The Bronze Age is the second pr ...

town to a large city.

Origin

As with other Sea Peoples, the origins of the Tjeker are uncertain. Their name is an Egyptian

exonym An endonym (from Greek: , 'inner' + , 'name'; also known as autonym) is a common, ''native'' name for a geographical place, group of people, individual person, language or dialect, meaning that it is used inside that particular place, group, ...

, usually romanized as ''tkr'', and expanded as ''Tjekru'' or ''Djekker''. The Egyptian may also be romanized as ''skl'', i.e. ''Sikil'' or ''Sical''. As such there is no consensus on the original form or etymology of the name, or the origin of the people. They have sometimes been identified with the

Sicels The Sicels (; la, Siculi; grc, Σικελοί ''Sikeloi'') were an Italic tribe who inhabited eastern Sicily during the Iron Age. Their neighbours to the west were the Sicani. The Sicels gave Sicily the name it has held since antiquity, b ...

of Sicily, who are also linked to ''

Shekelesh The Shekelesh (Egyptian language: ''šꜣkrwšꜣꜣ'' or ''šꜣꜣkrwšꜣꜣ'') were one of the several ethnic groups the Sea Peoples were said to be composed of, appearing in fragmentary historical and iconographic records in ancient Egyptian f ...

'': another exonym attributed to a different group amongst the Sea Peoples. Another theory, put forward by

Flinders Petrie Sir William Matthew Flinders Petrie ( – ), commonly known as simply Flinders Petrie, was a British Egyptologist and a pioneer of systematic methodology in archaeology and the preservation of artefacts. He held the first chair of Egypt ...

, links the ethnonym to

Zakros Zakros ( el, Ζάκρος; Linear B: zakoro) is a site on the eastern coast of the island of Crete, Greece, containing ruins from the Minoan civilization. The site is often known to archaeologists as Zakro or Kato Zakro. It is believed to have been ...

, in eastern Crete. Some other scholars have accepted the association. A possible identity has been suggested with the

Teucri In Greek mythology, King Teucer (; Ancient Greek: Τεῦκρος ''Teûkros'') was said to have been the son of the river-god Scamander and the nymph Idaea. Mythology Before the arrival of Dardanus, the land that would eventually be called ...

, a tribe described by ancient sources as inhabiting northwest Anatolia to the south of

Troy Troy ( el, Τροία and Latin: Troia, Hittite: 𒋫𒊒𒄿𒊭 ''Truwiša'') or Ilion ( el, Ίλιον and Latin: Ilium, Hittite: 𒃾𒇻𒊭 ''Wiluša'') was an ancient city located at Hisarlik in present-day Turkey, south-west of Ç ...

. However, this has been dismissed as "pure speculation" by

Trevor Bryce Trevor Robert Bryce (; born 1940) is an Australian Hittitologist specializing in ancient and classical Near-eastern history. He is semi-retired and lives in Brisbane. His book, ''The Kingdom of the Hittites'', is popular among English-speaki ...

Settlement at Dor

The Tjeker may have conquered the city Dor, on the coast of

near modern

Haifa Haifa ( he, חֵיפָה ' ; ar, حَيْفَا ') is the third-largest city in Israel—after Jerusalem and Tel Aviv—with a population of in . The city of Haifa forms part of the Haifa metropolitan area, the third-most populous metropo ...

, and turned it into a large, well-fortified city (classified as "Dor XII", fl. c. 1150–1050), the center of a Tjeker kingdom that is confirmed archaeologically in the northern

Sharon plain The Sharon plain ( ''HaSharon Arabic: سهل شارون Sahel Sharon'') is the central section of the Israeli coastal plain. The plain lies between the Mediterranean Sea to the west and the Samarian Hills, to the east. It stretches from Nahal ...

. The city was violently destroyed in the mid-11th century BCE, with the conflagration turning the mud bricks red and depositing a huge layer of ash and debris. Ephraim Stern connects the destruction with the contemporary expansion of the

Phoenicia Phoenicia () was an ancient thalassocratic civilization originating in the Levant region of the eastern Mediterranean, primarily located in modern Lebanon. The territory of the Phoenician city-states extended and shrank throughout their hist ...

ns, which was checked by the

Philistines The Philistines ( he, פְּלִשְׁתִּים, Pəlīštīm; Koine Greek ( LXX): Φυλιστιείμ, romanized: ''Phulistieím'') were an ancient people who lived on the south coast of Canaan from the 12th century BC until 604 BC, when ...

further south and the

Israelites The Israelites (; , , ) were a group of Semitic-speaking tribes in the ancient Near East who, during the Iron Age, inhabited a part of Canaan. The earliest recorded evidence of a people by the name of Israel appears in the Merneptah Stele ...

. The Tjeker are perhaps one of the few Sea Peoples for whom a ruler's name is recorded — in the 11th-century papyrus account of

Wenamun The Story of Wenamun (alternately known as the Report of Wenamun, The Misadventures of Wenamun, Voyage of Unamūn, or nformallyas just Wenamun) is a literary text written in hieratic in the Late Egyptian language. It is only known from one incomp ...

, an Egyptian priest, the ruler of Dor is given as " Beder". According to Edward Lipinski,Page 96 the Sicals (Tjekker) of Dor were seamen or mercenaries, and ''b3-dỉ-r'' (Beder) was the title of the local governor, a deputy of the king of Tyre. No mention of the Tjeker is made after the story of Wenamun.

Notes

References

* * * * Stern, Ephraim (August 1990). "New Evidence from Dor for the First Appearance of the Phoenicians along the Northern Coast of Israel" ''Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research'' No. 279, pp. 27–34. *{{cite book , author=Woudhuizen, Frederik Christiaan , year=1992 , title=The Language of the Sea Peoples , location=Amsterdam , publisher=Najade Press , isbn=90-73835-02-X * Woudhuizen, Frederik Christiaan (April 2006).
The Ethnicity of the Sea Peoples
'. Doctoral dissertation; Rotterdam: Erasmus Universiteit Rotterdam, Faculteit der Wijsbegeerte. Sea Peoples