The Peleset () or Pulasati are a people appearing in fragmentary historical and iconographic records in

ancient Egypt Ancient Egypt () was a cradle of civilization concentrated along the lower reaches of the Nile River in Northeast Africa. It emerged from prehistoric Egypt around 3150BC (according to conventional Egyptian chronology), when Upper and Lower E ...

ian from the

Eastern Mediterranean The Eastern Mediterranean is a loosely delimited region comprising the easternmost portion of the Mediterranean Sea, and well as the adjoining land—often defined as the countries around the Levantine Sea. It includes the southern half of Turkey ...

in the late 2nd millennium BCE. They are hypothesised to have been one of the several

ethnic group An ethnicity or ethnic group is a group of people with shared attributes, which they collectively believe to have, and long-term endogamy. Ethnicities share attributes like language, culture, common sets of ancestry, traditions, society, re ...

s of which the invading

Sea Peoples The Sea Peoples were a group of tribes hypothesized to have attacked Ancient Egypt, Egypt and other Eastern Mediterranean regions around 1200 BC during the Late Bronze Age. The hypothesis was proposed by the 19th-century Egyptology, Egyptologis ...

were said to be composed. Today, historians generally identify the Peleset with the

Philistines Philistines (; LXX: ; ) were ancient people who lived on the south coast of Canaan during the Iron Age in a confederation of city-states generally referred to as Philistia. There is compelling evidence to suggest that the Philistines origi ...

Records

Very few documentary records exist, both for the Peleset and for the other groups hypothesized as

. One group of people recorded as participating in the Battle of the Delta were the ''Peleset''; after this point in time, the "Sea Peoples" as a whole disappear from historical records, the Peleset being no exception. Archaeological evidence supports the existence of a migration of Peleset/Philistines from the Aegean into the

southern Levant The Southern Levant is a geographical region that corresponds approximately to present-day Israel, Palestine, and Jordan; some definitions also include southern Lebanon, southern Syria and the Sinai Peninsula. As a strictly geographical descript ...

. The five known sources are below: * : Mortuary Temple of Ramesses III: records a people called the ''P-r-s-t'' (conventionally ''Peleset'') among those who fought against

Egypt Egypt ( , ), officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, is a country spanning the Northeast Africa, northeast corner of Africa and Western Asia, southwest corner of Asia via the Sinai Peninsula. It is bordered by the Mediterranean Sea to northe ...

Ramesses III Usermaatre Meryamun Ramesses III was the second Pharaoh of the Twentieth dynasty of Egypt, Twentieth Dynasty in Ancient Egypt. Some scholars date his reign from 26 March 1186 to 15 April 1155 BC, and he is considered the last pharaoh of the New K ...

's reign. * : Papyrus Harris I: * : Rhetorical Stela to

, Chapel C,

Deir el-Medina Deir el-Medina (), or Dayr al-Madīnah, is an ancient Egyptian workmen's village which was home to the artisans who worked on the tombs in the Valley of the Kings during the 18th to 20th Dynasties of the New Kingdom of Egypt (ca. 1550–1080 BC). ...

. * : Onomasticon of Amenope: * : Padiiset's Statue, inscription: In some translations of the Hebrew bible (Exodus 15:14), the word Palaset is used to describe either the Philistines or Palestina. In the King James bible, it is translated as Palestina.

Identity and origins

PalaceInlays-DepictingPhilistineAndAmorite-MuseumOfFineArtsBoston

Today, historians generally identify the ''Peleset'' with the

, or rather, vice versa. The origins of the ''Peleset'', like much of the Sea Peoples, are not universally agreed upon – with that said, scholars have generally concluded that the bulk of the clans originated in the greater

Southern Europe Southern Europe is also known as Mediterranean Europe, as its geography is marked by the Mediterranean Sea. Definitions of southern Europe include some or all of these countries and regions: Albania, Andorra, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, C ...

an area, including western

Asia Minor Anatolia (), also known as Asia Minor, is a peninsula in West Asia that makes up the majority of the land area of Turkey. It is the westernmost protrusion of Asia and is geographically bounded by the Mediterranean Sea to the south, the Aegean ...

, the Aegean, and the

islands This is a list of the lists of islands in the world grouped by country, by continent, by body of water, and by other classifications. For rank-order lists, see the #Other lists of islands, other lists of islands below. Lists of islands by count ...

of the Mediterranean. Fellow Sea Peoples clans have likewise been identified with various Mediterranean polities, to varying acceptance: the '' Ekwesh'' with the Achaeans, the '' Denyen'' with the Danaans, the '' Lukka'' with the

Lycians Lycians () is the name of various peoples who lived, at different times, in Lycia, a geopolitical area in Anatolia (also known as Asia Minor). History The earliest known inhabitants of the area were the ''Solymoi'' (or ''Solymi''), also kn ...

, the '' Shekelesh'' with the

Sicels The Sicels ( ; or ''Siculī'') were an Indo-European tribe who inhabited eastern Sicily, their namesake, during the Iron Age. They spoke the Siculian language. After the defeat of the Sicels at the Battle of Nomae in 450 BC and the death of ...

, the '' Sherden'' with the

Sardinians Sardinians or Sards are an Italians, Italian ethno-linguistic group and a nation indigenous to Sardinia, an island in the western Mediterranean Sea, Mediterranean which is administratively an Regions of Italy#Autonomous regions with special st ...

, etc. Older sources sometimes identify the ''Peleset'' with the

Pelasgians The name Pelasgians (, ) was used by Classical Greek writers to refer either to the predecessors of the Greeks, or to all the inhabitants of Greece before the emergence of the Greeks. In general, "Pelasgian" has come to mean more broadly all ...

. However, this identification has numerous problems and is usually disregarded by modern scholars. A major issue is the etymological difficulties of the "g" in "Pelasgians" becoming a "t" in the Egyptian translation, especially as the Philistine endonym already corresponded to the form P-L-S-T and therefore required no such modification to be rendered as ''Peleset'' in the Egyptian language. Historian Jan Dressen has proposed that the name Peleset should be identified as an ethnonym for the inhabitants of the Bronze Age city of Pyla on

Cyprus Cyprus (), officially the Republic of Cyprus, is an island country in the eastern Mediterranean Sea. Situated in West Asia, its cultural identity and geopolitical orientation are overwhelmingly Southeast European. Cyprus is the List of isl ...

, for which he reconstructs a

Linear B Linear B is a syllabary, syllabic script that was used for writing in Mycenaean Greek, the earliest Attested language, attested form of the Greek language. The script predates the Greek alphabet by several centuries, the earliest known examp ...

reading as *pu-ra-wa-tu/Pyla-wastu. Dressen suggests that the Peleset migration to the Levant could be linked with the occupation and abandonment of Pyla, which occurred around the time span described by the Medinet Habu reliefs.

References

Bibliography

* * {{Cite book , last=Masalha , first=Nur , url=https://books.google.com/books?id=eNvVAQAACAAJ , title=Palestine: A Four Thousand Year History , date=15 August 2018 , publisher=Zed Books, Limited , isbn=978-1-78699-273-4 Sea Peoples Ancient peoples Philistines Pelasgians

Records

Identity and origins

See also

References

Bibliography