The Sea-Peoples and Identity

Scripta Mediterranea. — 2006–2007. — Vol. XXVII–XXVIII. — pp. 5–32.Attention to the Peoples of the Sea tends to focus on the Philistines. Egyptian sources imply that these caused the collapse of empire in Canaan. More explicitly, they imply the overall onslaught precipitated the end of the Hittite empire and kingdoms, such as those of Ugarit and Alashiya, the kingdom at or near the site of Alassa (Biblical Elisha’), which commanded the territory between the mountain copper mines and the coast, especially at the port of Kourion, in the center of southern Cyprus. It is also often suggested that Sea-People movements caused the change from the Late Bronze Age city-state palace-temple economy to the localized, almost autarkic, economies that predominated in the Iron I period.