Šekeleš

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Šekeleš in hieroglyphics
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Z1 		M8 G1 T14 A1
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Š3krš3
Shekelesh
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E23 		M8 G1 T14 A1 Z2
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Š3krš3
jackalusha

Šekeleš or Scheklesch (also Schikalaju or Schakaluscha ) is the name of a people that is recorded in ancient Egyptian sources of the New Kingdom . It formed part of the so-called Sea Peoples who came to Egypt around 1177 BC. Attacked and by Pharaoh Ramses III. were defeated in the Nile Delta . Already mentioned in the inscriptions of Merenptah , they gave rise to far-reaching speculations .

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The Šekeleš are first documented in connection with the Libyan War in the fifth year of the reign of Pharaoh Merenptah ( 19th dynasty ) on the Athribis stele from Kom el-Ahmar and in the victory inscription in the courtyard behind the seventh pylon of the Karnak temple , the Cachettehof. There they act as auxiliary troops of the Libyan ruler Merje , who invaded Egypt and who were also joined by other sub- groups of the "sea peoples". In the inscriptions 200 (Athribis) and 222 (Karnak) killed Šekeleš are listed. The top row of hieroglyphs in the info box shows the representation of your name in the Karnak Temple.

Mention of the shekelesh in the mortuary temple of Ramses III. (central fifth of the middle column)

A slightly different arrangement of the hieroglyphs, the lower row in the info box, can be seen on the right front of the second pylon in the mortuary temple of Ramses III. recognize in Medinet Habu . The victory inscription there describes the fight of Ramses III. ( 20th Dynasty ) in his eighth year of reign against a coalition of peoples attacking over land and sea who had united in Amurru for an army campaign against Egypt:

“A camp has been set up in a place in the interior of Amurru. They destroyed his people and his country as if it had never been. Now, with the flame prepared before them, they advanced towards Egypt, their fortress (?). The plst , ṯkr , šklš, dnjn and wšš , allied countries, laid their hands on all countries until the end of the world; their hearts were confident and trusting: our plans will succeed. "

Medinet Habu Ramses III. Temple First Courtyard 11.jpg
Medinet Habu Ramses III. Temple First Court (Lepsius) 01.jpg
Mention of the shekelesh in the mortuary temple of Ramses III. , above and below the outstretched arm of Pharaoh Ramses III. (Original and redrawing after Richard Lepsius )

Another mention of the Šekeleš is made on the left front of the aforementioned pylon in Medinet Habu. The image shows Ramses III. at the presentation of prisoners to the gods Amun and Mut . In the third and fourth of the columns between Pharaoh and the gods it says:

"My strong arm has thrown down [those] who came to rise: the plst , the dnjn and the šklš ."

The defeated behind Ramses III., Lined up in three registers, without exception wear a "feather helmet" as headgear and an apron that reaches above the knee . While the middle group of prisoners is identified as dnjn by the inscription above them and the lower group as plst , this assignment is missing in the upper register. The inscription above the first group consists only of a general homage on the part of the "leaders of every country" to the victorious Pharaoh and the request for breath and life.

Interpretations

The Egyptologist and philologist Emmanuel de Rougé suspected in 1867 that the Šekeleš came from Sicily due to their phonetic similarity . Which concluded François Chabas at 1,872th This was questioned in 1873 by Gaston Maspero , who in his " Anatolian thesis" on the homeland of the sea peoples connected the Šekeleš with Sagalassos , an ancient city in Pisidia . The Egyptologist and historian Henry R. Hall took over the identification of Maspero and summarized the state of research on the Sea Peoples in 1922 in a commemorative publication for Jean-François Champollion .

In his History of Antiquity in 1928 , Eduard Meyer addressed the possibility as well as the uncertainty regarding the equation of the Šekeleš with the Sicilian Sikelern , who were still resident in southern Italy at the time of the Sea Peoples' Wars. Also Rainer Stadelmann sees a connection to the western Mediterranean when he assumes 1968 that the Sekeles there found a new home, where co-determined trade by sea to the east of it to the backward tribes, to him, the Phoenicians took over. The possible connection to Sicily is still in dispute, as it is not clear whether the Šekeleš lived there before the Sea Peoples' Wars or whether they immigrated there later.

Cultures on the eastern Mediterranean around 1220 BC Chr.

Referring to a thesis by Gustav A. Lehmann from the 1970s, who suspected the Adriatic areas to be the trigger for the sea peoples' migration , Fritz Schachermeyr assumed in 1982 that the Šekeleš could have come from Illyria and migrated from there to the Levant . For linguistic reasons, the Egyptologist and ancient historian Peter W. Haider did not rule out a localization on the Dalmatian coast in his dissertation Greece - North Africa , published in 1988, but referred to the material goods and the common occurrence with other Aegean tribes, which is an indication of the Šekeleš in the Aegean region, possibly on the coast of Asia Minor.

After the assumption made by Wolfgang Helck that the depictions of the horned helmet wearers in the relief of the sea battle of Medinet Habu around Šekeleš were concerned, Edward Noort tried in 1994 in his book The Sea Peoples in Palestine to work out the iconography of the individual sea peoples groups. He came to the conclusion that it is in both the horned helmet makers with Knauf (plate on the center of the helmet), as well as those without knob to Shardana must act. For the Šekeleš (šklš) he assumed the possibility that this could be in the upper register of the performance before the gods Amun and Mut on the second pylon of the mortuary temple of Ramses III. and thus wore a spring helmet like the dnjn, plst and ṯkr .

Sometimes the Šekeleš are equated with the Šikaläern ( cuneiform : ši-ka-la- (iu) -u = Šikalaju, "people of Šikala"), who in a letter from the last attested Hittite great king Šuppiluliuma II. To the governor of Ugarit ( so-called Lunadušu letter from Ras Shamra ) as "who live / dwell on ships" are mentioned. There the king demands the sending of a lunadūšu (also Ibnadūšu ), which the “people of Šikala” had captured. He wanted to ask this about Šikala, which suggests that Šikala was insufficiently known among the Hittites until then. The reference that the Šikaleans live on ships has often been interpreted to mean that it was a group of pirates . The historical linguist Paolo Poccetti sees the mention in the letter as a direct connection to Sicily (see above), the name of which also includes the name of the island (probably ši-ka-la ). Accordingly, Šekeleš or ši-ka-la- (iu) -u referred to people from Sicily. The Šikaläer are also equated with the sea people of the Tjeker (ṯkr) , who cannot be identical to the Šekeleš, as both are on the right side of the second pylon of the mortuary temple of Ramses III. are listed side by side in a list.

It is sometimes argued that the Šekeleš from the Egyptian sources were pirates from the Greek islands, Cyprus or mainland Greece. Mycenaean and Cypriot-Mycenaean finds in Palestine are more likely to be traced back to Mycenaean traders, although it cannot be ruled out that adventurers occasionally managed to usurp control of one or the other coastal city at short notice. In any case, there is no clear archaeological evidence of major population movements (“sea peoples storm”).

literature

  • Harry Reginald Holland Hall: The oldest civilization of Greece: studies of the Mycenaean Age. Nutt, London 1901 / Lippincott, Philadelphia 1901.
  • Heike Sternberg-el Hotabi : The struggle of the sea peoples against Pharaoh Ramses III. (=  Archeology, inscriptions and monuments of ancient Egypt . Volume 2 ). Leidorf, Rahden 2012, ISBN 978-3-86757-532-4 .
  • Abraham Malamat : The Egyptian decline in Canaan and the Sea-Peoples; The Period of the Judges. Massadah Publishing, Tel-Aviv 1971.
  • Edward Noort: The Sea Peoples in Palestine. (= Palaestina antiqua. New series, volume 8). Kok Pharos, Kampen 1994, ISBN 90-390-0012-3
  • NK Sandars: The sea peoples, warriors of the ancient Mediterranean 1250-1150 BC. Thames & Hudson, London 1985, ISBN 0-500-27387-1 .
  • Ephraim Stern: Dor: Ruler of the Seas: nineteen years of excavations in the Israelite-Phoenician Harbor Town of the Carmel coast. Israel Exploration Society, Jerusalem 2000, ISBN 965-221-042-0 .
  • Manfred Weippert : Historical text book on the Old Testament . Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2010, ISBN 978-3-525-51693-5 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ A b c Frederik Christiaan Woudhuizen : The Ethnicity of the Sea Peoples . Erasmus Universiteit, Rotterdam 2006, A Historiographic Outline, p. 36 ( digitized version [accessed on April 13, 2016]).
  2. ↑ Heike Sternberg-el Hotabi : The struggle of the sea peoples against Pharaoh Ramses III. Rahden 2012, p. 19-22 .
  3. ↑ a b c Heike Sternberg-el Hotabi: The struggle of the sea peoples against Pharaoh Ramses III. Rahden 2012, p. 49 .
  4. ↑ Edward Noort: The Sea Peoples in Palestine . Kampen 1994, p. 56–57 ( digitized version [accessed April 10, 2016]).
  5. ^ A b Edward Noort: The Sea Peoples in Palestine . Kampen 1994, p. 74-77 ( digitized [accessed April 14, 2016]).
  6. ↑ Heike Sternberg-el Hotabi: The struggle of the sea peoples against Pharaoh Ramses III. Rahden 2012, p. 37-38 .
  7. ^ Eduard Meyer : History of antiquity . 4th edition. Second volume. First section: The time of the great Egyptian power. . Darmstadt 1965, The great migrations. The end of the Mycenaean period, the end of the Chetite empire and the decline of Egypt: the sea peoples and the ethnographic problems. Tyrsener and Achaeer , S. 556–558 ( digitized [accessed April 14, 2016]).
  8. ^ Rainer Stadelmann : The defense of the sea peoples under Ramses III. (=  Saeculum . Band 19 ). Alber, 1968, ISSN  0080-5319 , p. 171 ( digitized version [PDF; accessed on April 14, 2016]).
  9. ^ Fritz Schachermeyr: The Levant in the Age of Migration: from the 13th to the 11th century BC Chr. Austrian Academy of Sciences, Vienna 1982.
  10. ↑ Heike Sternberg-el Hotabi: The struggle of the sea peoples against Pharaoh Ramses III. Rahden 2012, p. 39-41 .
  11. ^ Wolfgang Helck : Lexicon of Egyptology . tape V . Otto Harrassowitz, Wiesbaden 1984, ISBN 3-447-02489-5 , p. 818 ( online [accessed July 28, 2015]).
  12. ↑ Jürgen Osing: Notes on the sea peoples . In: Nicole Kloth, Karl Martin, Eva Pardey (eds.): It will be put down as a document: Festschrift for Hartwig Altenmüller on his 65th birthday . Buske, Hamburg 2003, ISBN 3-87548-341-3 , p. 319 ( digitized version [accessed April 14, 2016]).
  13. ↑ Edward Noort: The Sea Peoples in Palestine . Kampen 1994, p. 94 ( digitized version [accessed April 14, 2016]).
  14. ^ Manfred Weippert: Historical text book on the Old Testament. Göttingen 2010, p. 208, note 50.
  15. ^ A b c Edward Noort: The Sea Peoples in Palestine . Kampen 1994, p. 85 .
  16. ^ Manfred Weippert: Historical text book on the Old Testament . Göttingen 2010, Philistines and other "Sea Peoples", p. 208 ( digitized version [accessed April 15, 2016]).
  17. ↑ Paolo Pocetti: Language Relations in Sicily. Evidence for the speech of the Σικανοί, the ΣικΕλοί and others. In: Olga Tribulato (Ed.): Language and Linguistic Contact in Ancient Sicily. Cambridge University Press, p. 51.
  18. ↑ Edward Noort: The Sea Peoples in Palestine . Kampen 1994, p. 102 .