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FOLLOWING THE PATH OF THE SEA PERSONSTHE WOMEN IN THE MEDINET HABU RELIEFS

Deborah Sweeney and Asaf Yasur-Landau

Introduction

For many years the tradition of ancient Near Eastern scholarship wasandrocentric focusing on the men who built the cities made the laws went towar and traded with other men Women by contrast were seldom seen andrarely heard from mentioned only in the context of housekeeping childbearingand jewellery - even though wars legislation trade and building had seriousrepercussions for the lives of women as well as those of men

During the last twenty years however the perspective has changedScholars have begun to look at historical events and social processes fromwomens viewpoints piecing together the scattered evidence of womensactivity to discover interesting insights on how ancient society functioned(Conkey and Spector 1984 Lesko 1989 Robins 1990 1993 Gilchrist 1991Astrom 1992 Bolger 1994 Nixon 1994 Marinatos 1995 Nevett 1995Nelson 1997)

The same applies to the topic of our paper the immigration of the SeaPeoples Until now this immigration has been discussed mostly in terms ofmaterial culture assemblages and their similarity to ones in Greece WesternAnatolia and Cyprus This comparison was used as a means of ascertaining theorigin and migration routes of the immigrants (cf most recently Niemeier1998 Deger-Jalkotzy 1998 Dothan 1998) processes of assimilation andacculturation and issues of ancient technology economy demography andchronology (eg Stone 1995 Finkelstein 1995 1996 1998 Killebrew 19961998 Sherratt 1998) However surprisingly little was written about thepeople themselves - the human makeup of the migration in tenns of socialstratification and gender

Some scholars such as Brug (198441-42) and HeIck and Drenkhahn(1995 118) have remarked in passing that the Sea Peoples found partners inSyria This suggestion has never been investigated systematically howeverand it is a moot point whether all the Sea People found partners in Syria andCanaan or whether some of the Sea People brought their partners from homeThis paper attempts to shed some light on the origin of the female Sea Personsby a detailed case study of the Medinet Habu reliefs

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THE MEDINET HABU RELIEFS

The most important picture of the Sea Peoples wives and children duringthese early years of settlement comes not from Syria or Canaan but fromEgypt The Sea Peoples attempted to enter Egypt proper or the territories ofthe Egyptian empire 1 bringing their wives and children with them

On the southern outer wall of Ramses Ills mortuary temple at MedinetHabu Ramses commemorated his confrontation with the Sea People in a seriesof texts and heroic reliefs (University of Chicago 1930 PIs 29-46 49-53)He claims to have fought off an attack by the combined forces of the SeaPeoples in a land battle and a battle on land and sea in the eighth year of hisreign and to have won resounding victories in both cases2

The reliefs of the land battle include pictures of the women and childrenwhom the Sea People brought with them Five3 wagons with high sides andsturdy wheels are stranded amidst the melee (University of Chicago 1930 PI34) In these wagons stand a number of figures two of whom are hoistingchildren over the sides of the wagons These children are naked probably as aconventional indication that they are fairly young (Janssen amp Janssen199026-31 Feucht 1995497-498) On the other hand the youths who escortthe wagons are dressed as Philistines wearing the typical Philistine headdress

We will attempt to trace the origin of these women by looking for parallelsof them in Egyptian Canaanite and Aegean art We adopt the workinghypothesis that the depictions of the women are reasonably accurate as far asthe limitations of Egyptian art allow and are not mere artistic variants with nobasis in reality

The Sea Peoples are said to have come to attack Ramses Ills borders (Kitchen 1970-83(KRl V)40l5) However this phrase does not necessarily describe the north-easternDelta but may also refer to the borders of territory under Egyptian rule For exampleTuthmosis Ills campaign to Megiddo is said to be aimed at enlarging the borders of Egypt(Sethe 1961 (Urk IV)7407-9) as is Amenhotep ITs first campaign to Upper Retenu(Helck 1955-61 (Urk IV)129613-l6)Cifola points out that not only is the topography of the battles very vague (199151) butthere are a number of surprising omissions from the standard literary depiction ofEgyptian victories (1991) She therefore suggests that this indicates that the reality did notfit the literary stereotype of the royal Egyptian victory She suggests that instead of asingle decisive battle the king was faced with a general problem of Sea Peoplesinfiltrating over a long period a lengthy and complex process of infiltration (199419-20) These suggestions merit a detailed analysis which is beyond the scope of this paper

3 Mr AsafYasur-Landau observes that there is a second cart directly behind the first one

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We should note however that only the womens heads emerge from thewagon so no information can be gleaned from their clothing only from theirhairstyles4 and facial features

We should also keep in mind that the reliefs of Ramses III include a sceneof the siege of the city of Kadesh doubtless in imitation of his illustriouspredecessor Ramses II (Gardiner 1961288 Drenkhahn 1984 col 115 seealso Nims 1976) This flattering fiction casts a rather dubious light on thereliability of the Medinet Habu reliefs as a whole

The People in the Wagons

Five wagons are visible in this -relief we will refer to them in order fromright to left and from top to bottom as they appear in the relief

Wagon No 1 (Fig 11) contains a woman facing right (Image No1)raising her left hand to protect her face Her right hand holds a round object infront of the wagon This object is also held by a small child standing in frontof the wagon This child is naked and seems on the point of collapse Besidethe wagon we can see a Philistine lad who holds on to the womans upper annwith his right hand He will be of little help to her since an attackingspearman is about to run him through

Wagon NO2 immediately behind wagon No1 contains two women Thefirst (Image No2) faces right raising both hands in a gesture of surrender ordespair Just behind her the second woman (No3) faces left raising her lefthand With her right she grasps the foreann of a Sherden spearman who standswith his spear raised over her He is grasping her hair about to attack her

Wagon NO3 (Fig 12) contains a dead or dying woman (Image No4)collapsing to the right with her anus in front of her Her left hand has alreadybeen lopped off for the tally of the dead (Darnell 1991137) Beside her aright facing figure with both hands raised is visible (Image No5) This isprobably the driver of the wagon since he resembles the driver of Wagon No5 The third occupant of this wagon a Philistine soldier is being dragged fromit by an Egyptian soldier who is piercing him with a lance A further Philistineis standing either in or behind this wagon This warrior is still on his feet anddefending himself energetically with sword and shield

In Wagon No 4 (Fig 2 1) stands a large Philistine facing left who isreceiving the coup de grace from an Egyptian Innnediately in front of him wesee the face and arm of a woman (Image NO6) who is lifting a small childdown out of the wagon

4 Joanne Fletchers as yet unpublished doctoral thesis on Egyptian hairstyles which I havenot seen will doubtless have some bearing on this issue

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Image no 2

Image no 1

Image no 4

Image no S

Wagon no 3

Fig 1 11Wagons Nos 1 and 2 and 12 Wagon NO3 both from the Medinet Habu reliefs(after University of Chicago 1930 PI 34)

Wagon No5 (Fig 22) is at some distance from the other four presumably itwas cut off from the baggage train during the attack In the wagon we see aright-facing figure (Image NO7) helping another child down out of the cart To theleft of No 7 appears part of the face of another woman (Image NO8) This cart isescorted by another Philistine youth In contrast to the other four wagons thiscarts driver (Image No9) is still in action and urging the oxen onwards

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1Wagon no 4

Fig 2 21 Wagon NO4 and 22 Wagon NO5 both from the Medinet Habu reliefs (afterUniversity of Chicago 1930 PI 34)

Women Nos 12 and 4 wear their long hair in a plait or tapering lock (Wehave used the term plait although no markings are visible the women could havebound their hair with thread or ribbon at intervals) Woman 4s hair is a simpleplait Woman ls plait ends in a curl and Woman 2s plait is short and stubby

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with a rounded end (In the photograph [University of Chicago 1930 PI 50a]the end is a little more frayed) Whereas Woman NO4 clearly has a singleplait resting on the nape of her neck Woman No 1 is somewhat moreambivalent She might have only one single curl or there might be two curlsone on either side of her face although only one of them is visible Image No6 has short hair and wears a round earring Image No3 has a bag-shapedhairstyle and wears a fillet bound about her brow Image No 7s hair tapers toa point at the nape of her neck The hair of Image No 8 is not visible apartfrom the side of her face Images 5 and 9 are bald or have a veryclose-cropped haircut

Parallels to the women in the Medinet Habu Reliefs

Foreign women in Egyptian art

It may be possible for us to identify the origin of the women accompanyingthe Sea Peoples from depictions of foreign women in contemporary Egyptianart Women are depicted amongst the inhabitants of foreign cities besieged bythe Egyptian army in reliefs commemorating the victories of the Egyptianking They are shown in tombs of the elite as prisoners of war slaves or evenvisiting from abroad Foreign women are also occasionally depicted on ostracaor on omamental objects such as cosmetic vessels and decorated spoons (Theevidence from the latter group of objects is less helpful for our purposes sinceif these figures are not wearing distinctively foreign dress it is not clearwhether they were actually intended to be foreign women)

However there are problems with this type of evidence Unfortunately theEgyptians were not particularly precise in their depictions of foreigners (egDavies 1934191) They might depict one ethnic group and label the figureswith the name of another group (Pritchard 195141) or even concoct a hybridfigure dressed in garments from different countries (Wachsmaml 19876-9)We should also note that the Egyptian artists were not necessarily sensitive tochanges in foreign fashions (ibid 46)

Moreover not only do the Egyptians not necessarily name their depictionsof foreigners but when they do label them they often use general terms suchas Retenu which may indicate both Syria and Canaans It is therefore difficultto fine-tune regional differences within the major groupings of foreigners

S AH Gardiner asserts that in the New Kingdom the term Upper Retenu often abbreviatedRetenu tends to be used for Syria whereas the term Djahi refers to Palestine andLebanon However the term Retenu may mean not just specifically Syria but it may also

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One should note two further factors that mayor may not affect the accuracyof the depiction of foreign women of suspected Aegean origin by Egyptianartists

Firstly only Aegean men are depicted in Eighteenth Dynasty art This factmay minimize the possibility that the Twentieth Dynasty artists copied Aegeanwomens hairstyles from earlier reliefs

Secondly the interaction between the Aegean world and Egypt decreasedconsiderably during the twelfth century BCE (Weinstein 1998188-189)limiting the interactions between Aegean and Egyptian art in a way that mayinfluence the accuracy of an Egyptian artist depicting hairstyles completelyunfamiliar to him

Another possible source for the hairstyles of the women in the MedinetHabu reliefs is Aegean art The importance of the comparison with Aegeanhairstyles derives not only from the large variety of hairstyles known to usfrom various types of Aegean art (frescoes drawings on clay vessels figurinesand ivory carvings) but also because the great majority of scholars argue thatthe Sea Peoples originated in the Aegean Finding Aegean parallels to thehairstyles in Medinet Habu especially those to which no parallel is found inEgyptian art can confirm the theories of an Aegean origin for at least part ofthe Sea Peoples In this paper we will compare the hairstyles of the womenfrom Medinet Habu to hairstyles from the Aegean world from the fifteenth tothe twelfth centuries BCE preferably the hairstyles of real flesh-and-bloodwomen rather than goddesses (or priestesses who imitate the hairstyles ofgoddesses)

There is a certain methodological problem in comparing Egyptian andAegean art because of the difference in their iconographic preconceptions It isclear that parallels to the figures of Medinet Habu from Egyptian art will becloser than those from the Aegean But these are not adequate grounds toassert that this type of comparison is impossible The long-term mutualexchanges between the Aegean cultural sphere and Egypt also led tointerchanges and influences in the area of art (Cline 1995 Caubet 1998Rehak and Younger 1998) In many cases the depictions of Aegeans inEgyptian art (executed by Egyptian artists as distinct from those executed byAegean artists) are remarkably similar to the figures in Aegean art

be used in its more traditional sense to comprise both Syria and Palestine (Gardiner1947145-147)Recently Vandersleyen (199591) argues that Retenu begins at the eastern border of tileDelta He bases his argument on the participation of men from Retenu in tile MiddleKingdom mining expeditions at Serabit el-Khadem in the Sinai On tile otller hand it isnot clear that these men are indigenous to the Sinai Bietak (199619) argues that theycould well have been Syro-Palestinian mercenaries based at Tell el-Dablta

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The most important factor however may actually be the cultural differencethat dictates how foreigners are represented in contrast to oneself(Wachsmaltn 19874-26 Cline 1995 Leahy 1995226)

There is a great deal of variety in the hairstyles of the Aegean which canprobably be attributed to differences in ethnic background age social statusand period (Koehl 1986 Kontorli-Papadopoulou 199696)

Image No 1Woman No ls long curling lock of hair has various parallels amongst

Syrian or northern women represented in Egyptian art Examples are a womenin the harem at el-Amarna (Fig 31) a woman in a siege scene on the Karnaktalatat (Smith 1965 Fig 210) and also a northern female prisoner beingclubbed by Nefertiti on a relief in the Boston Museum (Aldred 1973 No 57)

In a variant of this hairstyle a single lock falls down the womans spine andcurls upwards at its tip This hairstyle is found on an ornamental ivory hornoffered as tribute by a Syrian in a tomb painting in the British Museum (Fig32)6 A woman in the scene of the siege of Ullaza at Medinet Habu is alsoportrayed with a curl falling behind her back (Fig 33) However thiswomans curl is much thinner than that of Woman No1

There are several other cases of figures whose hair is drawn into a longsingle curl but they are not necessarily foreign women (the woman in Fig 34wears a diaphanous Egyptian-style gown Roeder 1969 PI 177 PC 80 isprobably a Libyan man [ibid 187 199] the girl portrayed in Wenig 196785is probably wearing the sidelock of youth)

Two other hairstyles with dangling curls are known in ancient Egyptianportrayals of foreigners but their connection with Woman No 1 is moretenuous In the first instance the woman wears a curl or lock falling over herear and a narrow curl at the back of her head (Figs 35 and 36 Davies 1908PIs xvii xix maybe Hall 1931 PI XV2)

Dangling curls also appear in the New Kingdom iconography of femalesphinxes both in Egypt and in Canaan (eg in the Megiddo ivories) and oncertain ornamental vessels (Fig No 37) Bryan (199669-72) relates thesphinxes curls to the sidelock worn by Libyan males A connection betweenthe Sea Peoples and the Libyans is attested for the fifth year of Merneptahwhen a coalition of Libyans and various Sea Peoples attacked Egypt

6 Omamental vases and ivory tusks are common in Egyptian depictions of tribute from Syriaand Canaan during this period In his victory reliefs at Kamak Seti I presents omamentsof this type to the gods as thank-offerings after campaigns against several differentenemies - against the Shasu Hittites Syrians and Libyans - so the vases in these reliefscannot be identified as booty from any particular area

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However as Cifola (19943) points out these groups are not the same as thosewho came into contact with Ramses III with the exception of the Shekelesh Itshould be noted that the prototype here is male (we know very little about theappearan~e of female Libyans in this period) Most importantly the otherfeatures of the sphinxes hairstyle do not parallel the arrangement of WomanNOls hair The female sphinxes generally wear the remainder of their hairpiled upon their heads or concealed in a close-fitting low flat hat which isvery different from the flowing locks of Woman No1

Woman NO1 may have had two curling tresses one on each side of herface although only one is shown In the Medinet Habu relief of the siege ofUllaza a dying person is shown full face with two long narrow locks ofcurling hair one on each side of her face (Fig 3 8) This figure is probably awoman (Darnell 1991136) but not inevitably so since in the same relief thishairstyle is also worn by a warrior dying on the battlefield (Fig 4 1 cf alsoUniversity of Chicago 1936 PI 114)

These two narrow curling locks should not be confused with the scroll wig ofthe naked goddess common in Syro-Canaanite art and derived from the scroll wigof the goddess Hathor Scroll wig curls are generally very much tighter than thecurl of Woman NO1 and reach to the goddess shoulders Side views of the scrollwig in three dimensions can be seen on ivory heads found at Megiddo (Fig 42)

In Minoan and Mycenean culture where long hair is common(Kontorli-Papadopolou 199696-97) many parallels can be found for womenwith their hair tied back Two women from the House of the Ladies at Therafrom the LM IA are suitable parallels (Figs 4344) as are two women on achariot in the Boar Hunt fresco (Immerwahr 1990 PI 69) at Tiryns from theLH IIIB period (This illustration is a reconstruction but enough of theoriginal remains to illustrate our point) Good parallels to hair drawn back inlong plaits can be found in examples of goddesses with upraised arms withlong plaits on their backs from Postpalatial Crete These can be found in theShrine of the Double Axes at Knossos dated to the LM IlIB (Gesell 198542181 PI 46a) and the temple and cult rooms at Karphi (ibid45 182 PIs 48-49)dated to the LM mc period (Figs 45 46) Earlier parallels are from the LHI1IA1 painted pottery from Kition (Vermule and Karageorghis 198217-19Figs III1 0 III 12) A lesser parallel to the headdress ending with a curlinglock can be seen in the depiction in ivory of goddesses on the Minet el-Beidaivory pyxis and the ivory plaque from Tomb 49 at Mycenae (Rehak 199252-52 PI XVIc XVIIa) Since the curling lock in these depictions is a part of aseemingly more complex hairstyle than the one used by Woman NO1 and theorigin (Syro-Canaanite or Aegean) of this deity type (Rehak 199253) isunknown the contribution of these parallels is limited

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Fig 3 31 Syro-Canaanite woman from the royal harem El-Amarna (after Davies 1908 PIxvii) 32 Tribute bearer bringing ivory horn decorated with woman wearing long curl(after Keel 1975 Fig 8) 33 Woman from relief of the siege of Ullaza (afterUniversity of Chicago 1932 PI 87) 34 Woman wearing a single long curl (afterPage 1983 No 49) 35 Female captives from Syro-Canaan and Nubia (after Smithand Redford 1976 PI 27)36 Women in besieged Syrian city (after Ricke 1967P112)37 Ornamental vessels decorated with female heads (after University of Chicago1986 PI 8) 38 Woman from relief ofthe siege ofUllaza (after ibid 1932 PI 87)

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A partial parallel to the long curling hair of Woman NO1 can be found inthe Mykenaia figure from the cultic centre in Mycenae in the LH IIIB (Fig 47)as part of a more complex hairstyle which also includes a hair ribbon and curlson the forehead7 A closer parallel appears on the krater that was found inMinet el-Beida (Venneule and Karageorghis 198221 Fig IIIl9) from the LHIlIA In this scene appear two sword-bearing figures with similar hairstylesVenneule and Karageorghis suggest that these figures represent two captainsApart from their swords however these figures have no indications of genderand we should not rule out the possibility that they may be womens

In general the depictions of Syro-Canaanite women in Egyptian art arecloser to Image NO1 than the parallels from the Aegean This figure probablyrepresents a Syro-Canaanite woman although it is not impossible that itdepicts a woman from the Aegean

Image No 2

No exact parallels to Woman NO2 are known from Egyptian depictions offoreign women No close parallels to this figures hairstyle are found inAegean art either Does this mean that this woman came from outside the areaaccessible to the Egyptians (between Libya and Anatolia) and the Myceneansand Minoans (mainland Greece and the islands)

Alternatively Image NO2 might depict a special hairstyle for older womenfrom one of these areas One should note the age differentiation in hairstylesfor both males and females in the Aegean world (Davis 1986 Koehl 1986)By contrast older women are seldom represented in Egyptian art (Janssen ampJanssen 1996 14) they are unlikely to have been taken as prisoners of warunless they had some special skill

Image No 3

There are several parallels for Syro-Canaanite women wearing a filletaround their heads or hair-ribbons although it is by no means the norm

7 The Medinet Habu reliefs omit details such as curls on the forehead and so on whichappear frequently in the Aegean frescoes of women This phenomenon may originate fromthe difference in the artistic medium this type of detail is more difficult to represent inrelief than in fresco A similar phenomenon of generalization appears within Aegeanculture itself if we compare the hairstyles depicted in frescoes with those portrayed onceranlics (cf Vermeule amp Karageorghis 198217 for the parallel between the Kitionfragment and La Parisienne from Knossos)

8 Compare the sword-bearing figures on the Homage Krater (ibid23-24) which areidentical with the figures preceding them including the necklaces they wear

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Fig 4 41 Dying warrior from relief of the siege ofUllaza (after University of Chicago 1932PI 87) 42 Ivoryheads from Megiddo wearing scroll wigs (drawing after Loud 1939Nos 192-193)43 Woman from The House of the Ladies Thera (drawing afterhnmerwahr 1990 colour PI XI) 44 Woman from The House of the Ladies Thera(drawing after ibid colour PI XII) 45 Statuette of goddess from Karphi (drawingafter Buchholz amp Karageorghis 1973 Fig 1267) 46 Statuette of goddess fromKnossos (drawing after ibid Fig 1269) 47 The Mykenaia figure from Mycenae(drawing after hnmerwahr 1990 colour PI XX) 48 Women captives from the tombofHaremheb (after Martin 1989PI 105)

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Parallels include the women in the tomb of Haremheb (Fig 48) and in thetomb of Rekhmire (Fig 5 1) Another possible parallel are the women captiveson the Karnak talatat (Fig 35 above the ribbon does not appear on theoriginal relief blocks but is restored in the frontispiece of Redford 1984) aswell as those on three decorated spoons (Fig 52 Fechheimer 1921138Vandier d Abbadie 197220-21)

The women from the tomb of Reklullire are said to be serfs from the templeof Amun brought by Tuthmosis III as captives from his campaignsTuthmosis northern campaigns ranged from Canaan to the EuphratesTuthmosis declaration that he gave prisoners from the siege of Megiddo to thetemple of Amun (Sethe 1961 (Urk IV)74210-7438) may indicate that thesewomen were Canaanites but it is also possible that they are prisoners of warfrom Tuthmosis other campaigns to Lebanon or Syria

There are many parallels for both women and men wearing a fillet aroundtheir heads from the Aegean (Kontorli-Papadopoulou 199695) such as thehead of the Lady with the Lily from the LH lIlB cultic centre of Mycenae(Fig 53) and the pyxis-bearers from Tiryns (Fig 54) A parallel even closerin time may be the depiction of a woman with a hair ribbon on the LH IIICWarrior Vase from Mycenae (Venllule and Karageorghis 1982130-131Fig X142) Unfortunately only the frontal part of the womans head hassurvived leaving the rest of the headdress unknown to us

Nevertheless we know of no other instance of a Syrian woman with abag-shaped hairstyle like this one On the other hand the back of Image No3 s hairstyle is hidden by Image No2 she might conceivably have a hairstylelike Women Nos 12 or 7

It is most likely that this woman comes from the Aegean However if weassume that nothing is missing from the hairstyle then there is a more remotepossibility that this figure is a not a woman from Syria but a Syrian man aprisoner or a slave This bag-shaped hairstyle is characteristic of Syro-Canaanitemen in Egyptian art of this period although they are traditionally shown withbeards (HeIck 1962346) By contrast in Canaanite art there are manyinstances of clean-shaven men (Figs 71-3 below see also Loud 1939 Nos2 161 162) It is also extremely common for Syrian men to wear filletsaround their brows (Fig 61 Ricke 1967 PI 12 Martin 1989 PI 105)

Image No 4

Women with a single long plait of hair like No 4 appear in various NewKingdom contexts as representative of northerners or Syrians (HeIck 1962347)There are two variants of this hairstyle a single plait falling down the womansback and a plait falling to the side of her face which could be one of a pair

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Fig 5 51 Syro-Canaanite women from the tomb ofRekhmire (after Davies 1943 PI xxiii)52 Decorated spoon in the form of a Syro-Canaanite woman (after Wallert 1967PI24) 53 The Lady with the Lily from Mycenae (drawing afterKontorli-Papadopulou 1996 PI 94) 54 Pyxis-bearer from Tiryns (drawing afterImmerwahr 1990 PI 56)

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Women wearing a plait straight down their back appear in the tomb ofRekhmire (Fig 62 Davies 192840 followed by Feucht 1990a194 suggeststhat these women are Hittites) This hairstyle is also worn by a woman in SetiIs reliefs of his campaign against the Shasu (Fig 63) This woman is probablyone of the Shasu although since Setis battle against the Shasu takes place enroute to Gaza she might be a Canaanite taken captive by the Shasu This styleis also attested on an ivory figure from Megiddo (Loud 1939 No 175)

Women with a plait to one side appear on the throne of Queen Tiy in thetomb of Kheruef (Fig 64) and in the tombs of Menkheperresoneb (Fig 65)and Amenmose (Davies 1933 PI xxxiv)9 On the throne of Tiy such womenappear as typical northerners contrasted with Nubian captives in the tombs ofMenkheperresoneb and Amenmose their origin is not specified Plaits hangingto one side also appear on two decorated spoons (Fig 52 above and Vandierd Abbadie 197220-21) and on a servant girl from the tomb of Intef (althoughthis girl is not said explicitly to be a foreigner and the end of her plait isreconstructed) (Davies 193253)

Note incidentally that in Egyptian art this hairstyle is always worn bySyro-Canaanite slaves or captives and not by women from the same countrieswhen at home (with the possible exception of the Shasu or Canaanite womanin Fig 63) Presumably female slaves tied their long hair back to keep it outof the way whilst working and this practice became generic for theiconography of Syro-Canaanite captive women

Aegean art includes numerous examples of women with plaits Howevermost of these examples are more similar to the curling lock of Woman No1The best parallels to the straight plait of Woman NO4 are the simple plaitsworn by female statuettes However the latter may reflect the limitations ofworking in clay as opposed to paint rather than actually reproducing adifferent hairstyle (see note 7 above)

There may also be parallels in Hittite art for tIlis single long plait The InandikPithos (OzgUy 198883-92 Fig 64) dated to the Old Hittite Period (Fig 66Hoffner 1995558-559 Figs 1 and 2) depicts scenes of preparation for a weddingin a wealthy house Some women wear either a single plait or a waist-lengthheaddress whereas others wear all-enveloping shawls covering the head Asinlilar plait or headdress is worn by the queen in an orthostat from Alaca Hoyiik(Akurgal 1962 PI 92) dated before the 13th century BCE (Kohlmeyer19952647) and also under the crowns worn by the goddesses on the Yazilikayarock carvings (Fig 81 ibid2650 Fig 9) dated to the 13th century BCE

9 Gardiner Notebook 28819 is a photograph of a painting of the wall here we see that thewomens plaits are much the same colour as their garments which is why the-plait doesnot show up clearly in photographs (Meyer 1913721 Wreszinski 1923275)

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Fig 6 61 Syro-Canaanite men wearing fillets (after Davies 1947 PI viii) 62Syro-Canaanite women from the tomb of Reklunire (after Davies 1943 PI Ivii) 63Woman from the relief of Seti Is battle against the Shasu (after University ofChicago 1986 PI 12) 64 Syro-Canaanite and Nubian female captives decoratingQueen Tiys throne (after University of Chicago 1980 PI 47) 65 Syro-Canaanitewoman from the tomb of Menkheperresoneb (after Davies 1933 PI v) 66 Womenfrom the Inandik pithos (after Hoffner 1995Fig 2)

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Images No 5 and 9

Images NO5 and 9 are either bald or have their hair closely cropped Giventhat both heads are damaged however this observation is not entirely certain

Men with sho~t hair are very rare in Aegean art~ where only babies andyoung children wear their hair short (Koehl 1986100-101) On the otherhand men with close-cropped hair or close-fitting caps (Stern 1989) arecommon in Canaanite art (Figs 71-3 Loud 1939 Nos 2 162) Interestinglyenough these Canaanites are shown driving chariots (ibid Nos 2 159 161)which provides a good parallel to NO9 the driver of Wagon NO5 Image No5 may be the driver of Wagon No3 Unlike his colleague No9 who is stillgoading the oxen onwards NO5 has given up hope and raises his hands indespair

Image No 6

The upper rim of the chariot hides the back of Woman No 6s neck Itwould be possible to reconstruct her hairstyle with a long narrow plait like thewomen already described It would also be possible to envisage her as havingshort hair However it is unusual to find women from Syro-Palestineportrayed in this way A group of women depicted in the tomb of Reklunirehave short hair (Fig 82 Davies 192840 followed by Feucht 1990a195identifies the long wrap-around dresses of these women as Syrian in style)This short hairstyle may be adopted from the group of Nubian women whoprecede the Syrians in this picture A naked goddess mounted on a horse isalso portrayed wearing short hair and a large earring (Fig 83 Brunner-Traut197929-30 NO5 PI V Petersen 1973 No 31 However Petersen idemsuggests that the goddess is wearing a helmet) The Hittite princess bride ofRamses II is shown with short hair (Fig 84) but she has been dressed upEgyptian style for the celebrations so her hairstyle is not necessarilysignificant

In Egyptian art this short hairstyle is characteristic of Nubian women (Fig85 Davies amp Gardiner 1926 PI xxx University of Chicago 1930 PI 9Ricke 1967 PIs 89 Brack amp Brack 1980 PI 50 Dziobeck 1992 PI 1) Itis true that the front part of Woman No 6s hairstyle tapers back from herforehead whereas most Nubian women wear their hair in a thick fringeHowever Nubian women are depicted with this type of central parting in afew New Kingdom tombs such as those of Rekhmire (Davies 1943 PI xxii)and Haremheb (Brack amp Brack 1980 PI 50 see also University of Chicago1930 PI 9)

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Fig 7 71 Ivory from Megiddo (after Loud 1939 No 159) 72 Ivory from Megiddo (afteribid No 160)73 Bronze plaque from Hazor (after Redford 1992197 Fig 71)

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Image No 7

This person wears its hair tapering to the nape of the neck Syro-Canaanitewomen sometimes wear their hair tapering to a point (Muller 1906 PI 9)although usually their hair is somewhat longer than that of Image NO7 andthe pointed tip of their hairstyle falls farther back behind their shoulderslO

(Fig 86) A woman portrayed on one of the Megiddo ivories has the samehairstyle (Loud 1939 No 2b)

This image may represent another Syro-Canaanite woman A more remotepossibility is that this image represents a Hittite man Hittite men wore theirhair in a queue and had bald foreheads In the reliefs at Medinet Habu the linemarking the front of the Hittite mens bald pates is not necessarily drawn in(Fig 87) Hittite men generally wore their hair much longer but there are afew examples of Hittite men whose hair only reaches to the back of their necks(Figs 87-92 see also Kuentz 1928 PI xviii)

There is a small possibility that Hittite women may also have worn thisstyle but the evidence is ambiguous In the Ramesseum relief of the siege ofDapur a group of people are shown leaving the city bearing baskets ofprovisions and begging for peace (Fig 93) Their hair tapers to theirshoulders Wreszinski (1935 PI 109) and HeIck (1962343) suggest thatthese people are the ruler of the city and the women of his house On the otherhand some of the dead warriors lying on the battlefield have exactly the samehairstyle so the figures accompanying the ruler are not necessarily women Inany case their hair is too long to be compared to this figure

There is no parallel for this figure in Aegean art

Image No 8

So little is visible of Image NO8 that any discussion of her coiffure wouldbe inconclusive

10 Some of the figures in the siege of Ullaza (University of Chicago 1932 PI 87) have thishairstyle but they are not necessarily women A decorated spoon in the Rijksmuseum vonOudheiden at Leiden has a similar hairstyle but since the woman is naked it is difficult totell whether she represents a foreigner (Eggebrecht 1987 No 246) The same applies tothe decorated spoon Louvre N-I728 (Vandier dAbbadie 197214-15)

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Fig 8 81 Goddess on the Yazilikaya rock carvings (after Kohlmeyer 1995 Fig 9) 82Women from the tomb of Rekhmire (after Davies 1943 PI Ivii) 83 Goddess onhorseback (drawing after Brunner-Traut 1956 No 16 PI viii) 84 The Hittiteprincess from the Marriage Stele of Ramses IT(after Lepsius 1849-1859 PI 196) 85Nubian women (after Davies 1905 PI xxviii) 86 Syro-Canaanite woman from thetomb ofRekhmire (after Davies 1943 PI xxiii) 87-8 Hittite warriors from MedinetHabu (after University of Chicago 1932 PI 87)

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The Children of the Sea People

The child standing by Wagon NO5 (Fig 22) wears a single long lock of hairgrowing from the crown of his head 11 This hairstyle is characteristic ofSyro-Canaanite children of both sexes in New Kingdom reliefs12(Fig 94 Davies1905 PI xxxiX)13

Children often appear in New Kingdom scenes of siege or battle beinglifted over the walls of a besieged city in Syria or Canaan (Fig 95) It is notclear whether these children are being sacrificed to the gods to change thecourse of the battle presented to Pharaoh as hostages or helped to escape(Keel 1975 Spalinger 1977-8 Feucht 1990b33-39 Donohue 1992) In thisinstance we suggest that they are being helped to escape (Keel 1975456 Thechildren appear to be on the point of collapse and their chances of escape areprobably slim Keel suggests that fear of Pharaoh immobilizes the childrenwith terror and they sink to the ground unable to stir)

Donohue (199283) suggests that the women are scooping the children upinto the wagons before the advancing enemy but this is unlikely If they weretrying to clamber into the wagons they would be facing inwards and probablyusing their legs to get a purchase on the side of the wagon as they clamber upit (The same applies to children in scenes of besieged cities There are onlytwo examples of children who could conceivably be climbing into the city (thelittle girl on the left in Fig 95 see also Keel 1975 Fig 19)

The fact that the older children are dressed as Sea Peoples may suggestpatrilineal behaviour in the immigrant society - at least in regard to costume

Summary

The limitations of this type of source material preclude absolute conclusionsThe Aegean paintings and statuettes come from a different artistic traditionthan the Medinet Habu reliefs discrepancies between the two are inevitableEgyptian depictions of foreigners have their limitations and since the artists atMedinet Habu may have been unfamiliar with these hairstyles it is difficult to tellhow accurate these portrayals are We may however make a few suggestions

11 The second line emerging from the crown of his head in University of Chicago 1930 PI49D is probably a scratch rather than a second lock

12 See also Pritchard 1954 No 45 (the man presenting this child is said to be the ruler ofTunip and can therefore be located in Syria) Save Stiderbergh 1957 PI xxiii Martin1989PI 105 University of Chicago 1932PI 87Feucht 1990a198 n 82 points out that apart from the single plait children from Syriamay also sport two plaits a head of short hair or two clumps of hair There is quite avariety of hairstyles

13 The parallel to this scene in the tomb ofHuya describes this tribute as coming from Kharuand Kush (Sandman 193837 line 1)

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Fig 9 91 Hittite warrior from Medinet Habu (after University of Chicago 1932 PI 87) 92Hittite warriors from Abu Simbel (after Wreszinski 1935 PI 170) 93 Group ofHittites from the siege of Dapur (after ibid PI 109) 94 Syro-Canaanite women andchild (after Davies 1947 PI viii) 95 Girl being let down over the city wall relief ofthe siege of Ashkelon (after Keel 1975Fig 21)

Woman NO4 with her long straight plait conforms to Egyptian depictionsof Syro-Canaanite women although she also has parallels in Aegean artWoman No 1 has parallels in both the Egyptian tradition and the Aegeantradition although the Egyptian parallels are stronger and she is also probablya Syro-Canaanite woman Image NO7 if she is a woman is vaguely similarto certain Egyptian pictures of Syro-Canaanite women but her hair is rathershort to provide a good parallel it should fall to a point further down her back

No exact parallels are known for the hairstyle of No 2 in either Egyptian orAegean art It is not clear whether this hairstyle may represent an ethnic groupunknown to us Alternatively middotdifferent hairstyles may have been worn bywomen at different periods of their lives - married ~omen and maidens forexample or old women and young ones or pregnant women They may alsocharacterize different social standings or occupations

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In some cases the persons hairstyle is incomplete It is masked by overlappinglinages or by the edge of the wagon as in Images Nos 3 and 6If they had longer hair these people might have hairstyles like those of Women 12or 4 If Image No3 had long hair she would have excellent parallels in Aegeanart where hair ribbons are very common If the bag-shaped hairstyle of Image No3 is complete as it stands however then the best parallels are actually fomIdamongst Syrian men Woman No 6s short hair is occasionally paralleled amongstSyrian women it is much more characteristic of Nubian women however Notonly did themiddotEgyptians have Nubian servants and slaves but many Egyptians werethemselves of Nubian stock so that women of this type could be found throughoutthe territories under Egyptian rule

The Sea Peoples were accompanied by men from the areas they traversedThey may have been taken as slaves or prisoners or maybe they decided tojoin the Sea Peoples advance in order to seek their fortunes abroad Such arethe wagon drivers Nos 5 and 9 who are definitely Syro-Canaanites andperhaps Image No3 ifhe is a Syrian or Image No7 if he is a Hittite

This picture of a complex and highly diverse origin of the group of Sea Peoplesportrayed in the Medinet Habu reliefs (which mayor may not be a typical group)suggests that it is unlikely that the Philistines were 100 pure Mycenaean Greeks(Stager 1995337 following Mazar 1988255-6 260) Like Sherratt (1998307)we characterize the Sea Peoples as cosmopolitan although we still envisagemany of them as Aegeans Other groups or individuals would have joined the SeaPeoples in northern Syria and Canaan

Conclusions

In the Medinet Habu reliefs the Sea Peoples are accompanied by at leastone woman who is clearly Syro-Canaanite and also by women with parallelsin Aegean art A similar conclusion was also reached by an analysis ofmaterial culture assemblages from Syria and Palestine (Bunimovitz andYasur-Landau forthcoming a b) attributed to the first stages of Aegeansettlement at the beginning of the Iron Age In these studies evidence ofbehavioural patterns of Aegean origin such as weaving with a loom equippedwith round unperfonlted loomweights and cooking on a hearth with Aegeanstyle cooking-pots were found side by side with local textile manufacture andcooking methods These finds may be cautiously interpreted as evidence of thepresence of women of both Aegean and local origin at these sites

The evidence from the reliefs shows that the Sea Peoples were accompaniedby men and women from Syria andor Canaan and by children probably theSea Peoples offspring by these women This indicates that the Sea Peoplesspent time in Syria andor Canaan before they continued on their way to Egypt

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Rather than envisaging the Sea Peoples immigration as a rapid concerted attack ata number of points simultaneously (Stager 1995) we should consider it as acomplex situation of not necessarily coordinated movements by different groupsfrom different areas

The size of the children depicted in the Medinet Habu reliefs may give ussome indication of how long the Sea Peoples had been present in the areabefore they moved south to Egypt If the younger children are the offspring ofthese women and the Sea Peoples the latter must have reached the area someseven or six years earlier if the older children wearing Philistine headgearare also the offspring of these households then we should think in terms of aninterval of thirteen years or more A similar observation was made by Singer(1987418) on the basis of the tablets from Ugarit and Ras Ibn Hani Thismeans that the fall of Ugarit should have occurred some fifteen to twentyyears before Ramses Ills war with the Sea Peoples It is quite acceptablehowever to postulate a short period of consolidation before the Sea Peoplesattempted to surge down into Egypt 14

The group we see in the Medinet Habu reliefs with their families would thenbe a second wave of settlement

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank I Finkelstein I Singer S Bunimovitz and the lateP Beck for reading and commenting on earlier drafts of this paper We wouldalso like to thank the Griffith Institute Oxford for allowing us to quotematerial from the unpublished notebooks of Sir Alan Gardiner

REFERENCES

Akurgal E 1962 The Art of the Hittites LondonAldred C 1973 Akhenaten and Nefertiti New YorkAstrom P 1992 Approaches to the Study of Women in Ancient Cyprus In

Astrom P ed Acta Cypria Acts of an International Congress onCypriote Archaeology held in GOteborg on 22-24 August 1991 Part 2(Studies in Mediterranean Archaeology Pocket-Book 117) Jonsered 5-8

14 On the other hand the size of the children depicted in the reliefs may not necessarily haveany historical significance Nor are these children necessarily these womens offspring bythe Sea People they even may be these womens children by previous partners in whichcase this part of the argument is irrelevant The Philistine youths may even be youngPhilistines who have been assigned to guarding the women and children as a relativelysafe post in view of their youth and inexperience

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Bietak M 1996 Avaris The Capital othe Hyksos LondonBolger D 1994 Engendering Cypriot Archaeology Female Roles and

Statuses before the Bronze Age Opuscula Atheniensia XX 19-17Brack A and Brack A 1980 Das Grab des Haremheb Theben Nr 78

MainzBrug JF 1984 A Literary and Archaeological Study othe Philistines Vols

1 and 2 MichiganBrunner-Traut E 1956 Die altiigyptischen Scherbenbilder (Bildostraka) der

Deutschen Museen und Sammlungen WiesbadenBrunner-Traut E 1979 Egyptian Artists Sketches LondonBuchholz H-G and Karageorghis V 1973 Prehistoric Greece and Cyprus

LondonBunimovitz S and Yasur-Landau A 1996 Philistine and Israelite Pottery A

Comparative Approach to the Question of Pots and People Tel Aviv2388-101

Bunimovitz S and Yasur-Landau A Forthcominga Behavioural Aspects of12th Century BCE Aegean Immigrants in Palestine and Cyprus

Bunimovitz S and Yasur-Landau A Forthcominglb Women and AegeanImmigration to Cyprus in the 12th Century BCE

Caubert A 1998 The International Style A point of View from the Levantand Syria In Cline EH and Harris-Cline D eds The Aegean and theOrient in the Second Millennium (Aegaeum 18) Liege 105-111

Cifola B 1991 The Terminology of Ramses Ills Historical Records with aFormal Analysis of the War Scenes Orientalia 609-57

Cifola B 1994 The Role of the Sea Peoples at the end of the Late BronzeAge A Reassessment of Textual and Archaeological Evidence OriensAntiqui Miscellanea 11-23

Cline EH 1995 Tinker Tailor Soldier Sailor Minoans and MyceneansAbroad In Laffineur R and Niemeier W-D eds Politeia Societyand State in the Aegean Bronze Age (Aegaeum 12) Liege 265-287

Conkey MW and Spector J 1984 Archaeology and the Study of GenderAdvances in Archaeological Method and Theory 71-38

Darnell J C 1991 Supposed Depictions of the Hittites in the Amarna PeriodStudien zur Altiigyptischen Kultur 18 113-140

Davies N de Garis 1905 The Rock Tombs of El Amarna II LondonDavies N de Garis 1908 The Rock Tombs of El Amarna VI LondonDavies N de Garis 1928 The Work of the Graphic Branch of the

Expedition Bulletin othe Metropolitan Museum 0Art 23237-48Davies N de Garis 1932 The Work of the Graphic Branch of the

Expedition Bulletin of the Metropolitan Museum of Art 273 51-62

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THE MEDINET HABU RELIEFS

The most important picture of the Sea Peoples wives and children duringthese early years of settlement comes not from Syria or Canaan but fromEgypt The Sea Peoples attempted to enter Egypt proper or the territories ofthe Egyptian empire 1 bringing their wives and children with them

On the southern outer wall of Ramses Ills mortuary temple at MedinetHabu Ramses commemorated his confrontation with the Sea People in a seriesof texts and heroic reliefs (University of Chicago 1930 PIs 29-46 49-53)He claims to have fought off an attack by the combined forces of the SeaPeoples in a land battle and a battle on land and sea in the eighth year of hisreign and to have won resounding victories in both cases2

The reliefs of the land battle include pictures of the women and childrenwhom the Sea People brought with them Five3 wagons with high sides andsturdy wheels are stranded amidst the melee (University of Chicago 1930 PI34) In these wagons stand a number of figures two of whom are hoistingchildren over the sides of the wagons These children are naked probably as aconventional indication that they are fairly young (Janssen amp Janssen199026-31 Feucht 1995497-498) On the other hand the youths who escortthe wagons are dressed as Philistines wearing the typical Philistine headdress

We will attempt to trace the origin of these women by looking for parallelsof them in Egyptian Canaanite and Aegean art We adopt the workinghypothesis that the depictions of the women are reasonably accurate as far asthe limitations of Egyptian art allow and are not mere artistic variants with nobasis in reality

The Sea Peoples are said to have come to attack Ramses Ills borders (Kitchen 1970-83(KRl V)40l5) However this phrase does not necessarily describe the north-easternDelta but may also refer to the borders of territory under Egyptian rule For exampleTuthmosis Ills campaign to Megiddo is said to be aimed at enlarging the borders of Egypt(Sethe 1961 (Urk IV)7407-9) as is Amenhotep ITs first campaign to Upper Retenu(Helck 1955-61 (Urk IV)129613-l6)Cifola points out that not only is the topography of the battles very vague (199151) butthere are a number of surprising omissions from the standard literary depiction ofEgyptian victories (1991) She therefore suggests that this indicates that the reality did notfit the literary stereotype of the royal Egyptian victory She suggests that instead of asingle decisive battle the king was faced with a general problem of Sea Peoplesinfiltrating over a long period a lengthy and complex process of infiltration (199419-20) These suggestions merit a detailed analysis which is beyond the scope of this paper

3 Mr AsafYasur-Landau observes that there is a second cart directly behind the first one

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We should note however that only the womens heads emerge from thewagon so no information can be gleaned from their clothing only from theirhairstyles4 and facial features

We should also keep in mind that the reliefs of Ramses III include a sceneof the siege of the city of Kadesh doubtless in imitation of his illustriouspredecessor Ramses II (Gardiner 1961288 Drenkhahn 1984 col 115 seealso Nims 1976) This flattering fiction casts a rather dubious light on thereliability of the Medinet Habu reliefs as a whole

The People in the Wagons

Five wagons are visible in this -relief we will refer to them in order fromright to left and from top to bottom as they appear in the relief

Wagon No 1 (Fig 11) contains a woman facing right (Image No1)raising her left hand to protect her face Her right hand holds a round object infront of the wagon This object is also held by a small child standing in frontof the wagon This child is naked and seems on the point of collapse Besidethe wagon we can see a Philistine lad who holds on to the womans upper annwith his right hand He will be of little help to her since an attackingspearman is about to run him through

Wagon NO2 immediately behind wagon No1 contains two women Thefirst (Image No2) faces right raising both hands in a gesture of surrender ordespair Just behind her the second woman (No3) faces left raising her lefthand With her right she grasps the foreann of a Sherden spearman who standswith his spear raised over her He is grasping her hair about to attack her

Wagon NO3 (Fig 12) contains a dead or dying woman (Image No4)collapsing to the right with her anus in front of her Her left hand has alreadybeen lopped off for the tally of the dead (Darnell 1991137) Beside her aright facing figure with both hands raised is visible (Image No5) This isprobably the driver of the wagon since he resembles the driver of Wagon No5 The third occupant of this wagon a Philistine soldier is being dragged fromit by an Egyptian soldier who is piercing him with a lance A further Philistineis standing either in or behind this wagon This warrior is still on his feet anddefending himself energetically with sword and shield

In Wagon No 4 (Fig 2 1) stands a large Philistine facing left who isreceiving the coup de grace from an Egyptian Innnediately in front of him wesee the face and arm of a woman (Image NO6) who is lifting a small childdown out of the wagon

4 Joanne Fletchers as yet unpublished doctoral thesis on Egyptian hairstyles which I havenot seen will doubtless have some bearing on this issue

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Image no 2

Image no 1

Image no 4

Image no S

Wagon no 3

Fig 1 11Wagons Nos 1 and 2 and 12 Wagon NO3 both from the Medinet Habu reliefs(after University of Chicago 1930 PI 34)

Wagon No5 (Fig 22) is at some distance from the other four presumably itwas cut off from the baggage train during the attack In the wagon we see aright-facing figure (Image NO7) helping another child down out of the cart To theleft of No 7 appears part of the face of another woman (Image NO8) This cart isescorted by another Philistine youth In contrast to the other four wagons thiscarts driver (Image No9) is still in action and urging the oxen onwards

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1Wagon no 4

Fig 2 21 Wagon NO4 and 22 Wagon NO5 both from the Medinet Habu reliefs (afterUniversity of Chicago 1930 PI 34)

Women Nos 12 and 4 wear their long hair in a plait or tapering lock (Wehave used the term plait although no markings are visible the women could havebound their hair with thread or ribbon at intervals) Woman 4s hair is a simpleplait Woman ls plait ends in a curl and Woman 2s plait is short and stubby

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with a rounded end (In the photograph [University of Chicago 1930 PI 50a]the end is a little more frayed) Whereas Woman NO4 clearly has a singleplait resting on the nape of her neck Woman No 1 is somewhat moreambivalent She might have only one single curl or there might be two curlsone on either side of her face although only one of them is visible Image No6 has short hair and wears a round earring Image No3 has a bag-shapedhairstyle and wears a fillet bound about her brow Image No 7s hair tapers toa point at the nape of her neck The hair of Image No 8 is not visible apartfrom the side of her face Images 5 and 9 are bald or have a veryclose-cropped haircut

Parallels to the women in the Medinet Habu Reliefs

Foreign women in Egyptian art

It may be possible for us to identify the origin of the women accompanyingthe Sea Peoples from depictions of foreign women in contemporary Egyptianart Women are depicted amongst the inhabitants of foreign cities besieged bythe Egyptian army in reliefs commemorating the victories of the Egyptianking They are shown in tombs of the elite as prisoners of war slaves or evenvisiting from abroad Foreign women are also occasionally depicted on ostracaor on omamental objects such as cosmetic vessels and decorated spoons (Theevidence from the latter group of objects is less helpful for our purposes sinceif these figures are not wearing distinctively foreign dress it is not clearwhether they were actually intended to be foreign women)

However there are problems with this type of evidence Unfortunately theEgyptians were not particularly precise in their depictions of foreigners (egDavies 1934191) They might depict one ethnic group and label the figureswith the name of another group (Pritchard 195141) or even concoct a hybridfigure dressed in garments from different countries (Wachsmaml 19876-9)We should also note that the Egyptian artists were not necessarily sensitive tochanges in foreign fashions (ibid 46)

Moreover not only do the Egyptians not necessarily name their depictionsof foreigners but when they do label them they often use general terms suchas Retenu which may indicate both Syria and Canaans It is therefore difficultto fine-tune regional differences within the major groupings of foreigners

S AH Gardiner asserts that in the New Kingdom the term Upper Retenu often abbreviatedRetenu tends to be used for Syria whereas the term Djahi refers to Palestine andLebanon However the term Retenu may mean not just specifically Syria but it may also

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One should note two further factors that mayor may not affect the accuracyof the depiction of foreign women of suspected Aegean origin by Egyptianartists

Firstly only Aegean men are depicted in Eighteenth Dynasty art This factmay minimize the possibility that the Twentieth Dynasty artists copied Aegeanwomens hairstyles from earlier reliefs

Secondly the interaction between the Aegean world and Egypt decreasedconsiderably during the twelfth century BCE (Weinstein 1998188-189)limiting the interactions between Aegean and Egyptian art in a way that mayinfluence the accuracy of an Egyptian artist depicting hairstyles completelyunfamiliar to him

Another possible source for the hairstyles of the women in the MedinetHabu reliefs is Aegean art The importance of the comparison with Aegeanhairstyles derives not only from the large variety of hairstyles known to usfrom various types of Aegean art (frescoes drawings on clay vessels figurinesand ivory carvings) but also because the great majority of scholars argue thatthe Sea Peoples originated in the Aegean Finding Aegean parallels to thehairstyles in Medinet Habu especially those to which no parallel is found inEgyptian art can confirm the theories of an Aegean origin for at least part ofthe Sea Peoples In this paper we will compare the hairstyles of the womenfrom Medinet Habu to hairstyles from the Aegean world from the fifteenth tothe twelfth centuries BCE preferably the hairstyles of real flesh-and-bloodwomen rather than goddesses (or priestesses who imitate the hairstyles ofgoddesses)

There is a certain methodological problem in comparing Egyptian andAegean art because of the difference in their iconographic preconceptions It isclear that parallels to the figures of Medinet Habu from Egyptian art will becloser than those from the Aegean But these are not adequate grounds toassert that this type of comparison is impossible The long-term mutualexchanges between the Aegean cultural sphere and Egypt also led tointerchanges and influences in the area of art (Cline 1995 Caubet 1998Rehak and Younger 1998) In many cases the depictions of Aegeans inEgyptian art (executed by Egyptian artists as distinct from those executed byAegean artists) are remarkably similar to the figures in Aegean art

be used in its more traditional sense to comprise both Syria and Palestine (Gardiner1947145-147)Recently Vandersleyen (199591) argues that Retenu begins at the eastern border of tileDelta He bases his argument on the participation of men from Retenu in tile MiddleKingdom mining expeditions at Serabit el-Khadem in the Sinai On tile otller hand it isnot clear that these men are indigenous to the Sinai Bietak (199619) argues that theycould well have been Syro-Palestinian mercenaries based at Tell el-Dablta

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The most important factor however may actually be the cultural differencethat dictates how foreigners are represented in contrast to oneself(Wachsmaltn 19874-26 Cline 1995 Leahy 1995226)

There is a great deal of variety in the hairstyles of the Aegean which canprobably be attributed to differences in ethnic background age social statusand period (Koehl 1986 Kontorli-Papadopoulou 199696)

Image No 1Woman No ls long curling lock of hair has various parallels amongst

Syrian or northern women represented in Egyptian art Examples are a womenin the harem at el-Amarna (Fig 31) a woman in a siege scene on the Karnaktalatat (Smith 1965 Fig 210) and also a northern female prisoner beingclubbed by Nefertiti on a relief in the Boston Museum (Aldred 1973 No 57)

In a variant of this hairstyle a single lock falls down the womans spine andcurls upwards at its tip This hairstyle is found on an ornamental ivory hornoffered as tribute by a Syrian in a tomb painting in the British Museum (Fig32)6 A woman in the scene of the siege of Ullaza at Medinet Habu is alsoportrayed with a curl falling behind her back (Fig 33) However thiswomans curl is much thinner than that of Woman No1

There are several other cases of figures whose hair is drawn into a longsingle curl but they are not necessarily foreign women (the woman in Fig 34wears a diaphanous Egyptian-style gown Roeder 1969 PI 177 PC 80 isprobably a Libyan man [ibid 187 199] the girl portrayed in Wenig 196785is probably wearing the sidelock of youth)

Two other hairstyles with dangling curls are known in ancient Egyptianportrayals of foreigners but their connection with Woman No 1 is moretenuous In the first instance the woman wears a curl or lock falling over herear and a narrow curl at the back of her head (Figs 35 and 36 Davies 1908PIs xvii xix maybe Hall 1931 PI XV2)

Dangling curls also appear in the New Kingdom iconography of femalesphinxes both in Egypt and in Canaan (eg in the Megiddo ivories) and oncertain ornamental vessels (Fig No 37) Bryan (199669-72) relates thesphinxes curls to the sidelock worn by Libyan males A connection betweenthe Sea Peoples and the Libyans is attested for the fifth year of Merneptahwhen a coalition of Libyans and various Sea Peoples attacked Egypt

6 Omamental vases and ivory tusks are common in Egyptian depictions of tribute from Syriaand Canaan during this period In his victory reliefs at Kamak Seti I presents omamentsof this type to the gods as thank-offerings after campaigns against several differentenemies - against the Shasu Hittites Syrians and Libyans - so the vases in these reliefscannot be identified as booty from any particular area

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However as Cifola (19943) points out these groups are not the same as thosewho came into contact with Ramses III with the exception of the Shekelesh Itshould be noted that the prototype here is male (we know very little about theappearan~e of female Libyans in this period) Most importantly the otherfeatures of the sphinxes hairstyle do not parallel the arrangement of WomanNOls hair The female sphinxes generally wear the remainder of their hairpiled upon their heads or concealed in a close-fitting low flat hat which isvery different from the flowing locks of Woman No1

Woman NO1 may have had two curling tresses one on each side of herface although only one is shown In the Medinet Habu relief of the siege ofUllaza a dying person is shown full face with two long narrow locks ofcurling hair one on each side of her face (Fig 3 8) This figure is probably awoman (Darnell 1991136) but not inevitably so since in the same relief thishairstyle is also worn by a warrior dying on the battlefield (Fig 4 1 cf alsoUniversity of Chicago 1936 PI 114)

These two narrow curling locks should not be confused with the scroll wig ofthe naked goddess common in Syro-Canaanite art and derived from the scroll wigof the goddess Hathor Scroll wig curls are generally very much tighter than thecurl of Woman NO1 and reach to the goddess shoulders Side views of the scrollwig in three dimensions can be seen on ivory heads found at Megiddo (Fig 42)

In Minoan and Mycenean culture where long hair is common(Kontorli-Papadopolou 199696-97) many parallels can be found for womenwith their hair tied back Two women from the House of the Ladies at Therafrom the LM IA are suitable parallels (Figs 4344) as are two women on achariot in the Boar Hunt fresco (Immerwahr 1990 PI 69) at Tiryns from theLH IIIB period (This illustration is a reconstruction but enough of theoriginal remains to illustrate our point) Good parallels to hair drawn back inlong plaits can be found in examples of goddesses with upraised arms withlong plaits on their backs from Postpalatial Crete These can be found in theShrine of the Double Axes at Knossos dated to the LM IlIB (Gesell 198542181 PI 46a) and the temple and cult rooms at Karphi (ibid45 182 PIs 48-49)dated to the LM mc period (Figs 45 46) Earlier parallels are from the LHI1IA1 painted pottery from Kition (Vermule and Karageorghis 198217-19Figs III1 0 III 12) A lesser parallel to the headdress ending with a curlinglock can be seen in the depiction in ivory of goddesses on the Minet el-Beidaivory pyxis and the ivory plaque from Tomb 49 at Mycenae (Rehak 199252-52 PI XVIc XVIIa) Since the curling lock in these depictions is a part of aseemingly more complex hairstyle than the one used by Woman NO1 and theorigin (Syro-Canaanite or Aegean) of this deity type (Rehak 199253) isunknown the contribution of these parallels is limited

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Fig 3 31 Syro-Canaanite woman from the royal harem El-Amarna (after Davies 1908 PIxvii) 32 Tribute bearer bringing ivory horn decorated with woman wearing long curl(after Keel 1975 Fig 8) 33 Woman from relief of the siege of Ullaza (afterUniversity of Chicago 1932 PI 87) 34 Woman wearing a single long curl (afterPage 1983 No 49) 35 Female captives from Syro-Canaan and Nubia (after Smithand Redford 1976 PI 27)36 Women in besieged Syrian city (after Ricke 1967P112)37 Ornamental vessels decorated with female heads (after University of Chicago1986 PI 8) 38 Woman from relief ofthe siege ofUllaza (after ibid 1932 PI 87)

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A partial parallel to the long curling hair of Woman NO1 can be found inthe Mykenaia figure from the cultic centre in Mycenae in the LH IIIB (Fig 47)as part of a more complex hairstyle which also includes a hair ribbon and curlson the forehead7 A closer parallel appears on the krater that was found inMinet el-Beida (Venneule and Karageorghis 198221 Fig IIIl9) from the LHIlIA In this scene appear two sword-bearing figures with similar hairstylesVenneule and Karageorghis suggest that these figures represent two captainsApart from their swords however these figures have no indications of genderand we should not rule out the possibility that they may be womens

In general the depictions of Syro-Canaanite women in Egyptian art arecloser to Image NO1 than the parallels from the Aegean This figure probablyrepresents a Syro-Canaanite woman although it is not impossible that itdepicts a woman from the Aegean

Image No 2

No exact parallels to Woman NO2 are known from Egyptian depictions offoreign women No close parallels to this figures hairstyle are found inAegean art either Does this mean that this woman came from outside the areaaccessible to the Egyptians (between Libya and Anatolia) and the Myceneansand Minoans (mainland Greece and the islands)

Alternatively Image NO2 might depict a special hairstyle for older womenfrom one of these areas One should note the age differentiation in hairstylesfor both males and females in the Aegean world (Davis 1986 Koehl 1986)By contrast older women are seldom represented in Egyptian art (Janssen ampJanssen 1996 14) they are unlikely to have been taken as prisoners of warunless they had some special skill

Image No 3

There are several parallels for Syro-Canaanite women wearing a filletaround their heads or hair-ribbons although it is by no means the norm

7 The Medinet Habu reliefs omit details such as curls on the forehead and so on whichappear frequently in the Aegean frescoes of women This phenomenon may originate fromthe difference in the artistic medium this type of detail is more difficult to represent inrelief than in fresco A similar phenomenon of generalization appears within Aegeanculture itself if we compare the hairstyles depicted in frescoes with those portrayed onceranlics (cf Vermeule amp Karageorghis 198217 for the parallel between the Kitionfragment and La Parisienne from Knossos)

8 Compare the sword-bearing figures on the Homage Krater (ibid23-24) which areidentical with the figures preceding them including the necklaces they wear

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Fig 4 41 Dying warrior from relief of the siege ofUllaza (after University of Chicago 1932PI 87) 42 Ivoryheads from Megiddo wearing scroll wigs (drawing after Loud 1939Nos 192-193)43 Woman from The House of the Ladies Thera (drawing afterhnmerwahr 1990 colour PI XI) 44 Woman from The House of the Ladies Thera(drawing after ibid colour PI XII) 45 Statuette of goddess from Karphi (drawingafter Buchholz amp Karageorghis 1973 Fig 1267) 46 Statuette of goddess fromKnossos (drawing after ibid Fig 1269) 47 The Mykenaia figure from Mycenae(drawing after hnmerwahr 1990 colour PI XX) 48 Women captives from the tombofHaremheb (after Martin 1989PI 105)

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Parallels include the women in the tomb of Haremheb (Fig 48) and in thetomb of Rekhmire (Fig 5 1) Another possible parallel are the women captiveson the Karnak talatat (Fig 35 above the ribbon does not appear on theoriginal relief blocks but is restored in the frontispiece of Redford 1984) aswell as those on three decorated spoons (Fig 52 Fechheimer 1921138Vandier d Abbadie 197220-21)

The women from the tomb of Reklullire are said to be serfs from the templeof Amun brought by Tuthmosis III as captives from his campaignsTuthmosis northern campaigns ranged from Canaan to the EuphratesTuthmosis declaration that he gave prisoners from the siege of Megiddo to thetemple of Amun (Sethe 1961 (Urk IV)74210-7438) may indicate that thesewomen were Canaanites but it is also possible that they are prisoners of warfrom Tuthmosis other campaigns to Lebanon or Syria

There are many parallels for both women and men wearing a fillet aroundtheir heads from the Aegean (Kontorli-Papadopoulou 199695) such as thehead of the Lady with the Lily from the LH lIlB cultic centre of Mycenae(Fig 53) and the pyxis-bearers from Tiryns (Fig 54) A parallel even closerin time may be the depiction of a woman with a hair ribbon on the LH IIICWarrior Vase from Mycenae (Venllule and Karageorghis 1982130-131Fig X142) Unfortunately only the frontal part of the womans head hassurvived leaving the rest of the headdress unknown to us

Nevertheless we know of no other instance of a Syrian woman with abag-shaped hairstyle like this one On the other hand the back of Image No3 s hairstyle is hidden by Image No2 she might conceivably have a hairstylelike Women Nos 12 or 7

It is most likely that this woman comes from the Aegean However if weassume that nothing is missing from the hairstyle then there is a more remotepossibility that this figure is a not a woman from Syria but a Syrian man aprisoner or a slave This bag-shaped hairstyle is characteristic of Syro-Canaanitemen in Egyptian art of this period although they are traditionally shown withbeards (HeIck 1962346) By contrast in Canaanite art there are manyinstances of clean-shaven men (Figs 71-3 below see also Loud 1939 Nos2 161 162) It is also extremely common for Syrian men to wear filletsaround their brows (Fig 61 Ricke 1967 PI 12 Martin 1989 PI 105)

Image No 4

Women with a single long plait of hair like No 4 appear in various NewKingdom contexts as representative of northerners or Syrians (HeIck 1962347)There are two variants of this hairstyle a single plait falling down the womansback and a plait falling to the side of her face which could be one of a pair

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Fig 5 51 Syro-Canaanite women from the tomb ofRekhmire (after Davies 1943 PI xxiii)52 Decorated spoon in the form of a Syro-Canaanite woman (after Wallert 1967PI24) 53 The Lady with the Lily from Mycenae (drawing afterKontorli-Papadopulou 1996 PI 94) 54 Pyxis-bearer from Tiryns (drawing afterImmerwahr 1990 PI 56)

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Women wearing a plait straight down their back appear in the tomb ofRekhmire (Fig 62 Davies 192840 followed by Feucht 1990a194 suggeststhat these women are Hittites) This hairstyle is also worn by a woman in SetiIs reliefs of his campaign against the Shasu (Fig 63) This woman is probablyone of the Shasu although since Setis battle against the Shasu takes place enroute to Gaza she might be a Canaanite taken captive by the Shasu This styleis also attested on an ivory figure from Megiddo (Loud 1939 No 175)

Women with a plait to one side appear on the throne of Queen Tiy in thetomb of Kheruef (Fig 64) and in the tombs of Menkheperresoneb (Fig 65)and Amenmose (Davies 1933 PI xxxiv)9 On the throne of Tiy such womenappear as typical northerners contrasted with Nubian captives in the tombs ofMenkheperresoneb and Amenmose their origin is not specified Plaits hangingto one side also appear on two decorated spoons (Fig 52 above and Vandierd Abbadie 197220-21) and on a servant girl from the tomb of Intef (althoughthis girl is not said explicitly to be a foreigner and the end of her plait isreconstructed) (Davies 193253)

Note incidentally that in Egyptian art this hairstyle is always worn bySyro-Canaanite slaves or captives and not by women from the same countrieswhen at home (with the possible exception of the Shasu or Canaanite womanin Fig 63) Presumably female slaves tied their long hair back to keep it outof the way whilst working and this practice became generic for theiconography of Syro-Canaanite captive women

Aegean art includes numerous examples of women with plaits Howevermost of these examples are more similar to the curling lock of Woman No1The best parallels to the straight plait of Woman NO4 are the simple plaitsworn by female statuettes However the latter may reflect the limitations ofworking in clay as opposed to paint rather than actually reproducing adifferent hairstyle (see note 7 above)

There may also be parallels in Hittite art for tIlis single long plait The InandikPithos (OzgUy 198883-92 Fig 64) dated to the Old Hittite Period (Fig 66Hoffner 1995558-559 Figs 1 and 2) depicts scenes of preparation for a weddingin a wealthy house Some women wear either a single plait or a waist-lengthheaddress whereas others wear all-enveloping shawls covering the head Asinlilar plait or headdress is worn by the queen in an orthostat from Alaca Hoyiik(Akurgal 1962 PI 92) dated before the 13th century BCE (Kohlmeyer19952647) and also under the crowns worn by the goddesses on the Yazilikayarock carvings (Fig 81 ibid2650 Fig 9) dated to the 13th century BCE

9 Gardiner Notebook 28819 is a photograph of a painting of the wall here we see that thewomens plaits are much the same colour as their garments which is why the-plait doesnot show up clearly in photographs (Meyer 1913721 Wreszinski 1923275)

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Fig 6 61 Syro-Canaanite men wearing fillets (after Davies 1947 PI viii) 62Syro-Canaanite women from the tomb of Reklunire (after Davies 1943 PI Ivii) 63Woman from the relief of Seti Is battle against the Shasu (after University ofChicago 1986 PI 12) 64 Syro-Canaanite and Nubian female captives decoratingQueen Tiys throne (after University of Chicago 1980 PI 47) 65 Syro-Canaanitewoman from the tomb of Menkheperresoneb (after Davies 1933 PI v) 66 Womenfrom the Inandik pithos (after Hoffner 1995Fig 2)

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Images No 5 and 9

Images NO5 and 9 are either bald or have their hair closely cropped Giventhat both heads are damaged however this observation is not entirely certain

Men with sho~t hair are very rare in Aegean art~ where only babies andyoung children wear their hair short (Koehl 1986100-101) On the otherhand men with close-cropped hair or close-fitting caps (Stern 1989) arecommon in Canaanite art (Figs 71-3 Loud 1939 Nos 2 162) Interestinglyenough these Canaanites are shown driving chariots (ibid Nos 2 159 161)which provides a good parallel to NO9 the driver of Wagon NO5 Image No5 may be the driver of Wagon No3 Unlike his colleague No9 who is stillgoading the oxen onwards NO5 has given up hope and raises his hands indespair

Image No 6

The upper rim of the chariot hides the back of Woman No 6s neck Itwould be possible to reconstruct her hairstyle with a long narrow plait like thewomen already described It would also be possible to envisage her as havingshort hair However it is unusual to find women from Syro-Palestineportrayed in this way A group of women depicted in the tomb of Reklunirehave short hair (Fig 82 Davies 192840 followed by Feucht 1990a195identifies the long wrap-around dresses of these women as Syrian in style)This short hairstyle may be adopted from the group of Nubian women whoprecede the Syrians in this picture A naked goddess mounted on a horse isalso portrayed wearing short hair and a large earring (Fig 83 Brunner-Traut197929-30 NO5 PI V Petersen 1973 No 31 However Petersen idemsuggests that the goddess is wearing a helmet) The Hittite princess bride ofRamses II is shown with short hair (Fig 84) but she has been dressed upEgyptian style for the celebrations so her hairstyle is not necessarilysignificant

In Egyptian art this short hairstyle is characteristic of Nubian women (Fig85 Davies amp Gardiner 1926 PI xxx University of Chicago 1930 PI 9Ricke 1967 PIs 89 Brack amp Brack 1980 PI 50 Dziobeck 1992 PI 1) Itis true that the front part of Woman No 6s hairstyle tapers back from herforehead whereas most Nubian women wear their hair in a thick fringeHowever Nubian women are depicted with this type of central parting in afew New Kingdom tombs such as those of Rekhmire (Davies 1943 PI xxii)and Haremheb (Brack amp Brack 1980 PI 50 see also University of Chicago1930 PI 9)

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Fig 7 71 Ivory from Megiddo (after Loud 1939 No 159) 72 Ivory from Megiddo (afteribid No 160)73 Bronze plaque from Hazor (after Redford 1992197 Fig 71)

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Image No 7

This person wears its hair tapering to the nape of the neck Syro-Canaanitewomen sometimes wear their hair tapering to a point (Muller 1906 PI 9)although usually their hair is somewhat longer than that of Image NO7 andthe pointed tip of their hairstyle falls farther back behind their shoulderslO

(Fig 86) A woman portrayed on one of the Megiddo ivories has the samehairstyle (Loud 1939 No 2b)

This image may represent another Syro-Canaanite woman A more remotepossibility is that this image represents a Hittite man Hittite men wore theirhair in a queue and had bald foreheads In the reliefs at Medinet Habu the linemarking the front of the Hittite mens bald pates is not necessarily drawn in(Fig 87) Hittite men generally wore their hair much longer but there are afew examples of Hittite men whose hair only reaches to the back of their necks(Figs 87-92 see also Kuentz 1928 PI xviii)

There is a small possibility that Hittite women may also have worn thisstyle but the evidence is ambiguous In the Ramesseum relief of the siege ofDapur a group of people are shown leaving the city bearing baskets ofprovisions and begging for peace (Fig 93) Their hair tapers to theirshoulders Wreszinski (1935 PI 109) and HeIck (1962343) suggest thatthese people are the ruler of the city and the women of his house On the otherhand some of the dead warriors lying on the battlefield have exactly the samehairstyle so the figures accompanying the ruler are not necessarily women Inany case their hair is too long to be compared to this figure

There is no parallel for this figure in Aegean art

Image No 8

So little is visible of Image NO8 that any discussion of her coiffure wouldbe inconclusive

10 Some of the figures in the siege of Ullaza (University of Chicago 1932 PI 87) have thishairstyle but they are not necessarily women A decorated spoon in the Rijksmuseum vonOudheiden at Leiden has a similar hairstyle but since the woman is naked it is difficult totell whether she represents a foreigner (Eggebrecht 1987 No 246) The same applies tothe decorated spoon Louvre N-I728 (Vandier dAbbadie 197214-15)

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Fig 8 81 Goddess on the Yazilikaya rock carvings (after Kohlmeyer 1995 Fig 9) 82Women from the tomb of Rekhmire (after Davies 1943 PI Ivii) 83 Goddess onhorseback (drawing after Brunner-Traut 1956 No 16 PI viii) 84 The Hittiteprincess from the Marriage Stele of Ramses IT(after Lepsius 1849-1859 PI 196) 85Nubian women (after Davies 1905 PI xxviii) 86 Syro-Canaanite woman from thetomb ofRekhmire (after Davies 1943 PI xxiii) 87-8 Hittite warriors from MedinetHabu (after University of Chicago 1932 PI 87)

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The Children of the Sea People

The child standing by Wagon NO5 (Fig 22) wears a single long lock of hairgrowing from the crown of his head 11 This hairstyle is characteristic ofSyro-Canaanite children of both sexes in New Kingdom reliefs12(Fig 94 Davies1905 PI xxxiX)13

Children often appear in New Kingdom scenes of siege or battle beinglifted over the walls of a besieged city in Syria or Canaan (Fig 95) It is notclear whether these children are being sacrificed to the gods to change thecourse of the battle presented to Pharaoh as hostages or helped to escape(Keel 1975 Spalinger 1977-8 Feucht 1990b33-39 Donohue 1992) In thisinstance we suggest that they are being helped to escape (Keel 1975456 Thechildren appear to be on the point of collapse and their chances of escape areprobably slim Keel suggests that fear of Pharaoh immobilizes the childrenwith terror and they sink to the ground unable to stir)

Donohue (199283) suggests that the women are scooping the children upinto the wagons before the advancing enemy but this is unlikely If they weretrying to clamber into the wagons they would be facing inwards and probablyusing their legs to get a purchase on the side of the wagon as they clamber upit (The same applies to children in scenes of besieged cities There are onlytwo examples of children who could conceivably be climbing into the city (thelittle girl on the left in Fig 95 see also Keel 1975 Fig 19)

The fact that the older children are dressed as Sea Peoples may suggestpatrilineal behaviour in the immigrant society - at least in regard to costume

Summary

The limitations of this type of source material preclude absolute conclusionsThe Aegean paintings and statuettes come from a different artistic traditionthan the Medinet Habu reliefs discrepancies between the two are inevitableEgyptian depictions of foreigners have their limitations and since the artists atMedinet Habu may have been unfamiliar with these hairstyles it is difficult to tellhow accurate these portrayals are We may however make a few suggestions

11 The second line emerging from the crown of his head in University of Chicago 1930 PI49D is probably a scratch rather than a second lock

12 See also Pritchard 1954 No 45 (the man presenting this child is said to be the ruler ofTunip and can therefore be located in Syria) Save Stiderbergh 1957 PI xxiii Martin1989PI 105 University of Chicago 1932PI 87Feucht 1990a198 n 82 points out that apart from the single plait children from Syriamay also sport two plaits a head of short hair or two clumps of hair There is quite avariety of hairstyles

13 The parallel to this scene in the tomb ofHuya describes this tribute as coming from Kharuand Kush (Sandman 193837 line 1)

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1

2 3

4

5

Fig 9 91 Hittite warrior from Medinet Habu (after University of Chicago 1932 PI 87) 92Hittite warriors from Abu Simbel (after Wreszinski 1935 PI 170) 93 Group ofHittites from the siege of Dapur (after ibid PI 109) 94 Syro-Canaanite women andchild (after Davies 1947 PI viii) 95 Girl being let down over the city wall relief ofthe siege of Ashkelon (after Keel 1975Fig 21)

Woman NO4 with her long straight plait conforms to Egyptian depictionsof Syro-Canaanite women although she also has parallels in Aegean artWoman No 1 has parallels in both the Egyptian tradition and the Aegeantradition although the Egyptian parallels are stronger and she is also probablya Syro-Canaanite woman Image NO7 if she is a woman is vaguely similarto certain Egyptian pictures of Syro-Canaanite women but her hair is rathershort to provide a good parallel it should fall to a point further down her back

No exact parallels are known for the hairstyle of No 2 in either Egyptian orAegean art It is not clear whether this hairstyle may represent an ethnic groupunknown to us Alternatively middotdifferent hairstyles may have been worn bywomen at different periods of their lives - married ~omen and maidens forexample or old women and young ones or pregnant women They may alsocharacterize different social standings or occupations

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In some cases the persons hairstyle is incomplete It is masked by overlappinglinages or by the edge of the wagon as in Images Nos 3 and 6If they had longer hair these people might have hairstyles like those of Women 12or 4 If Image No3 had long hair she would have excellent parallels in Aegeanart where hair ribbons are very common If the bag-shaped hairstyle of Image No3 is complete as it stands however then the best parallels are actually fomIdamongst Syrian men Woman No 6s short hair is occasionally paralleled amongstSyrian women it is much more characteristic of Nubian women however Notonly did themiddotEgyptians have Nubian servants and slaves but many Egyptians werethemselves of Nubian stock so that women of this type could be found throughoutthe territories under Egyptian rule

The Sea Peoples were accompanied by men from the areas they traversedThey may have been taken as slaves or prisoners or maybe they decided tojoin the Sea Peoples advance in order to seek their fortunes abroad Such arethe wagon drivers Nos 5 and 9 who are definitely Syro-Canaanites andperhaps Image No3 ifhe is a Syrian or Image No7 if he is a Hittite

This picture of a complex and highly diverse origin of the group of Sea Peoplesportrayed in the Medinet Habu reliefs (which mayor may not be a typical group)suggests that it is unlikely that the Philistines were 100 pure Mycenaean Greeks(Stager 1995337 following Mazar 1988255-6 260) Like Sherratt (1998307)we characterize the Sea Peoples as cosmopolitan although we still envisagemany of them as Aegeans Other groups or individuals would have joined the SeaPeoples in northern Syria and Canaan

Conclusions

In the Medinet Habu reliefs the Sea Peoples are accompanied by at leastone woman who is clearly Syro-Canaanite and also by women with parallelsin Aegean art A similar conclusion was also reached by an analysis ofmaterial culture assemblages from Syria and Palestine (Bunimovitz andYasur-Landau forthcoming a b) attributed to the first stages of Aegeansettlement at the beginning of the Iron Age In these studies evidence ofbehavioural patterns of Aegean origin such as weaving with a loom equippedwith round unperfonlted loomweights and cooking on a hearth with Aegeanstyle cooking-pots were found side by side with local textile manufacture andcooking methods These finds may be cautiously interpreted as evidence of thepresence of women of both Aegean and local origin at these sites

The evidence from the reliefs shows that the Sea Peoples were accompaniedby men and women from Syria andor Canaan and by children probably theSea Peoples offspring by these women This indicates that the Sea Peoplesspent time in Syria andor Canaan before they continued on their way to Egypt

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Rather than envisaging the Sea Peoples immigration as a rapid concerted attack ata number of points simultaneously (Stager 1995) we should consider it as acomplex situation of not necessarily coordinated movements by different groupsfrom different areas

The size of the children depicted in the Medinet Habu reliefs may give ussome indication of how long the Sea Peoples had been present in the areabefore they moved south to Egypt If the younger children are the offspring ofthese women and the Sea Peoples the latter must have reached the area someseven or six years earlier if the older children wearing Philistine headgearare also the offspring of these households then we should think in terms of aninterval of thirteen years or more A similar observation was made by Singer(1987418) on the basis of the tablets from Ugarit and Ras Ibn Hani Thismeans that the fall of Ugarit should have occurred some fifteen to twentyyears before Ramses Ills war with the Sea Peoples It is quite acceptablehowever to postulate a short period of consolidation before the Sea Peoplesattempted to surge down into Egypt 14

The group we see in the Medinet Habu reliefs with their families would thenbe a second wave of settlement

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank I Finkelstein I Singer S Bunimovitz and the lateP Beck for reading and commenting on earlier drafts of this paper We wouldalso like to thank the Griffith Institute Oxford for allowing us to quotematerial from the unpublished notebooks of Sir Alan Gardiner

REFERENCES

Akurgal E 1962 The Art of the Hittites LondonAldred C 1973 Akhenaten and Nefertiti New YorkAstrom P 1992 Approaches to the Study of Women in Ancient Cyprus In

Astrom P ed Acta Cypria Acts of an International Congress onCypriote Archaeology held in GOteborg on 22-24 August 1991 Part 2(Studies in Mediterranean Archaeology Pocket-Book 117) Jonsered 5-8

14 On the other hand the size of the children depicted in the reliefs may not necessarily haveany historical significance Nor are these children necessarily these womens offspring bythe Sea People they even may be these womens children by previous partners in whichcase this part of the argument is irrelevant The Philistine youths may even be youngPhilistines who have been assigned to guarding the women and children as a relativelysafe post in view of their youth and inexperience

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Bietak M 1996 Avaris The Capital othe Hyksos LondonBolger D 1994 Engendering Cypriot Archaeology Female Roles and

Statuses before the Bronze Age Opuscula Atheniensia XX 19-17Brack A and Brack A 1980 Das Grab des Haremheb Theben Nr 78

MainzBrug JF 1984 A Literary and Archaeological Study othe Philistines Vols

1 and 2 MichiganBrunner-Traut E 1956 Die altiigyptischen Scherbenbilder (Bildostraka) der

Deutschen Museen und Sammlungen WiesbadenBrunner-Traut E 1979 Egyptian Artists Sketches LondonBuchholz H-G and Karageorghis V 1973 Prehistoric Greece and Cyprus

LondonBunimovitz S and Yasur-Landau A 1996 Philistine and Israelite Pottery A

Comparative Approach to the Question of Pots and People Tel Aviv2388-101

Bunimovitz S and Yasur-Landau A Forthcominga Behavioural Aspects of12th Century BCE Aegean Immigrants in Palestine and Cyprus

Bunimovitz S and Yasur-Landau A Forthcominglb Women and AegeanImmigration to Cyprus in the 12th Century BCE

Caubert A 1998 The International Style A point of View from the Levantand Syria In Cline EH and Harris-Cline D eds The Aegean and theOrient in the Second Millennium (Aegaeum 18) Liege 105-111

Cifola B 1991 The Terminology of Ramses Ills Historical Records with aFormal Analysis of the War Scenes Orientalia 609-57

Cifola B 1994 The Role of the Sea Peoples at the end of the Late BronzeAge A Reassessment of Textual and Archaeological Evidence OriensAntiqui Miscellanea 11-23

Cline EH 1995 Tinker Tailor Soldier Sailor Minoans and MyceneansAbroad In Laffineur R and Niemeier W-D eds Politeia Societyand State in the Aegean Bronze Age (Aegaeum 12) Liege 265-287

Conkey MW and Spector J 1984 Archaeology and the Study of GenderAdvances in Archaeological Method and Theory 71-38

Darnell J C 1991 Supposed Depictions of the Hittites in the Amarna PeriodStudien zur Altiigyptischen Kultur 18 113-140

Davies N de Garis 1905 The Rock Tombs of El Amarna II LondonDavies N de Garis 1908 The Rock Tombs of El Amarna VI LondonDavies N de Garis 1928 The Work of the Graphic Branch of the

Expedition Bulletin othe Metropolitan Museum 0Art 23237-48Davies N de Garis 1932 The Work of the Graphic Branch of the

Expedition Bulletin of the Metropolitan Museum of Art 273 51-62

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We should note however that only the womens heads emerge from thewagon so no information can be gleaned from their clothing only from theirhairstyles4 and facial features

We should also keep in mind that the reliefs of Ramses III include a sceneof the siege of the city of Kadesh doubtless in imitation of his illustriouspredecessor Ramses II (Gardiner 1961288 Drenkhahn 1984 col 115 seealso Nims 1976) This flattering fiction casts a rather dubious light on thereliability of the Medinet Habu reliefs as a whole

The People in the Wagons

Five wagons are visible in this -relief we will refer to them in order fromright to left and from top to bottom as they appear in the relief

Wagon No 1 (Fig 11) contains a woman facing right (Image No1)raising her left hand to protect her face Her right hand holds a round object infront of the wagon This object is also held by a small child standing in frontof the wagon This child is naked and seems on the point of collapse Besidethe wagon we can see a Philistine lad who holds on to the womans upper annwith his right hand He will be of little help to her since an attackingspearman is about to run him through

Wagon NO2 immediately behind wagon No1 contains two women Thefirst (Image No2) faces right raising both hands in a gesture of surrender ordespair Just behind her the second woman (No3) faces left raising her lefthand With her right she grasps the foreann of a Sherden spearman who standswith his spear raised over her He is grasping her hair about to attack her

Wagon NO3 (Fig 12) contains a dead or dying woman (Image No4)collapsing to the right with her anus in front of her Her left hand has alreadybeen lopped off for the tally of the dead (Darnell 1991137) Beside her aright facing figure with both hands raised is visible (Image No5) This isprobably the driver of the wagon since he resembles the driver of Wagon No5 The third occupant of this wagon a Philistine soldier is being dragged fromit by an Egyptian soldier who is piercing him with a lance A further Philistineis standing either in or behind this wagon This warrior is still on his feet anddefending himself energetically with sword and shield

In Wagon No 4 (Fig 2 1) stands a large Philistine facing left who isreceiving the coup de grace from an Egyptian Innnediately in front of him wesee the face and arm of a woman (Image NO6) who is lifting a small childdown out of the wagon

4 Joanne Fletchers as yet unpublished doctoral thesis on Egyptian hairstyles which I havenot seen will doubtless have some bearing on this issue

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Image no 2

Image no 1

Image no 4

Image no S

Wagon no 3

Fig 1 11Wagons Nos 1 and 2 and 12 Wagon NO3 both from the Medinet Habu reliefs(after University of Chicago 1930 PI 34)

Wagon No5 (Fig 22) is at some distance from the other four presumably itwas cut off from the baggage train during the attack In the wagon we see aright-facing figure (Image NO7) helping another child down out of the cart To theleft of No 7 appears part of the face of another woman (Image NO8) This cart isescorted by another Philistine youth In contrast to the other four wagons thiscarts driver (Image No9) is still in action and urging the oxen onwards

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1Wagon no 4

Fig 2 21 Wagon NO4 and 22 Wagon NO5 both from the Medinet Habu reliefs (afterUniversity of Chicago 1930 PI 34)

Women Nos 12 and 4 wear their long hair in a plait or tapering lock (Wehave used the term plait although no markings are visible the women could havebound their hair with thread or ribbon at intervals) Woman 4s hair is a simpleplait Woman ls plait ends in a curl and Woman 2s plait is short and stubby

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with a rounded end (In the photograph [University of Chicago 1930 PI 50a]the end is a little more frayed) Whereas Woman NO4 clearly has a singleplait resting on the nape of her neck Woman No 1 is somewhat moreambivalent She might have only one single curl or there might be two curlsone on either side of her face although only one of them is visible Image No6 has short hair and wears a round earring Image No3 has a bag-shapedhairstyle and wears a fillet bound about her brow Image No 7s hair tapers toa point at the nape of her neck The hair of Image No 8 is not visible apartfrom the side of her face Images 5 and 9 are bald or have a veryclose-cropped haircut

Parallels to the women in the Medinet Habu Reliefs

Foreign women in Egyptian art

It may be possible for us to identify the origin of the women accompanyingthe Sea Peoples from depictions of foreign women in contemporary Egyptianart Women are depicted amongst the inhabitants of foreign cities besieged bythe Egyptian army in reliefs commemorating the victories of the Egyptianking They are shown in tombs of the elite as prisoners of war slaves or evenvisiting from abroad Foreign women are also occasionally depicted on ostracaor on omamental objects such as cosmetic vessels and decorated spoons (Theevidence from the latter group of objects is less helpful for our purposes sinceif these figures are not wearing distinctively foreign dress it is not clearwhether they were actually intended to be foreign women)

However there are problems with this type of evidence Unfortunately theEgyptians were not particularly precise in their depictions of foreigners (egDavies 1934191) They might depict one ethnic group and label the figureswith the name of another group (Pritchard 195141) or even concoct a hybridfigure dressed in garments from different countries (Wachsmaml 19876-9)We should also note that the Egyptian artists were not necessarily sensitive tochanges in foreign fashions (ibid 46)

Moreover not only do the Egyptians not necessarily name their depictionsof foreigners but when they do label them they often use general terms suchas Retenu which may indicate both Syria and Canaans It is therefore difficultto fine-tune regional differences within the major groupings of foreigners

S AH Gardiner asserts that in the New Kingdom the term Upper Retenu often abbreviatedRetenu tends to be used for Syria whereas the term Djahi refers to Palestine andLebanon However the term Retenu may mean not just specifically Syria but it may also

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One should note two further factors that mayor may not affect the accuracyof the depiction of foreign women of suspected Aegean origin by Egyptianartists

Firstly only Aegean men are depicted in Eighteenth Dynasty art This factmay minimize the possibility that the Twentieth Dynasty artists copied Aegeanwomens hairstyles from earlier reliefs

Secondly the interaction between the Aegean world and Egypt decreasedconsiderably during the twelfth century BCE (Weinstein 1998188-189)limiting the interactions between Aegean and Egyptian art in a way that mayinfluence the accuracy of an Egyptian artist depicting hairstyles completelyunfamiliar to him

Another possible source for the hairstyles of the women in the MedinetHabu reliefs is Aegean art The importance of the comparison with Aegeanhairstyles derives not only from the large variety of hairstyles known to usfrom various types of Aegean art (frescoes drawings on clay vessels figurinesand ivory carvings) but also because the great majority of scholars argue thatthe Sea Peoples originated in the Aegean Finding Aegean parallels to thehairstyles in Medinet Habu especially those to which no parallel is found inEgyptian art can confirm the theories of an Aegean origin for at least part ofthe Sea Peoples In this paper we will compare the hairstyles of the womenfrom Medinet Habu to hairstyles from the Aegean world from the fifteenth tothe twelfth centuries BCE preferably the hairstyles of real flesh-and-bloodwomen rather than goddesses (or priestesses who imitate the hairstyles ofgoddesses)

There is a certain methodological problem in comparing Egyptian andAegean art because of the difference in their iconographic preconceptions It isclear that parallels to the figures of Medinet Habu from Egyptian art will becloser than those from the Aegean But these are not adequate grounds toassert that this type of comparison is impossible The long-term mutualexchanges between the Aegean cultural sphere and Egypt also led tointerchanges and influences in the area of art (Cline 1995 Caubet 1998Rehak and Younger 1998) In many cases the depictions of Aegeans inEgyptian art (executed by Egyptian artists as distinct from those executed byAegean artists) are remarkably similar to the figures in Aegean art

be used in its more traditional sense to comprise both Syria and Palestine (Gardiner1947145-147)Recently Vandersleyen (199591) argues that Retenu begins at the eastern border of tileDelta He bases his argument on the participation of men from Retenu in tile MiddleKingdom mining expeditions at Serabit el-Khadem in the Sinai On tile otller hand it isnot clear that these men are indigenous to the Sinai Bietak (199619) argues that theycould well have been Syro-Palestinian mercenaries based at Tell el-Dablta

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The most important factor however may actually be the cultural differencethat dictates how foreigners are represented in contrast to oneself(Wachsmaltn 19874-26 Cline 1995 Leahy 1995226)

There is a great deal of variety in the hairstyles of the Aegean which canprobably be attributed to differences in ethnic background age social statusand period (Koehl 1986 Kontorli-Papadopoulou 199696)

Image No 1Woman No ls long curling lock of hair has various parallels amongst

Syrian or northern women represented in Egyptian art Examples are a womenin the harem at el-Amarna (Fig 31) a woman in a siege scene on the Karnaktalatat (Smith 1965 Fig 210) and also a northern female prisoner beingclubbed by Nefertiti on a relief in the Boston Museum (Aldred 1973 No 57)

In a variant of this hairstyle a single lock falls down the womans spine andcurls upwards at its tip This hairstyle is found on an ornamental ivory hornoffered as tribute by a Syrian in a tomb painting in the British Museum (Fig32)6 A woman in the scene of the siege of Ullaza at Medinet Habu is alsoportrayed with a curl falling behind her back (Fig 33) However thiswomans curl is much thinner than that of Woman No1

There are several other cases of figures whose hair is drawn into a longsingle curl but they are not necessarily foreign women (the woman in Fig 34wears a diaphanous Egyptian-style gown Roeder 1969 PI 177 PC 80 isprobably a Libyan man [ibid 187 199] the girl portrayed in Wenig 196785is probably wearing the sidelock of youth)

Two other hairstyles with dangling curls are known in ancient Egyptianportrayals of foreigners but their connection with Woman No 1 is moretenuous In the first instance the woman wears a curl or lock falling over herear and a narrow curl at the back of her head (Figs 35 and 36 Davies 1908PIs xvii xix maybe Hall 1931 PI XV2)

Dangling curls also appear in the New Kingdom iconography of femalesphinxes both in Egypt and in Canaan (eg in the Megiddo ivories) and oncertain ornamental vessels (Fig No 37) Bryan (199669-72) relates thesphinxes curls to the sidelock worn by Libyan males A connection betweenthe Sea Peoples and the Libyans is attested for the fifth year of Merneptahwhen a coalition of Libyans and various Sea Peoples attacked Egypt

6 Omamental vases and ivory tusks are common in Egyptian depictions of tribute from Syriaand Canaan during this period In his victory reliefs at Kamak Seti I presents omamentsof this type to the gods as thank-offerings after campaigns against several differentenemies - against the Shasu Hittites Syrians and Libyans - so the vases in these reliefscannot be identified as booty from any particular area

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However as Cifola (19943) points out these groups are not the same as thosewho came into contact with Ramses III with the exception of the Shekelesh Itshould be noted that the prototype here is male (we know very little about theappearan~e of female Libyans in this period) Most importantly the otherfeatures of the sphinxes hairstyle do not parallel the arrangement of WomanNOls hair The female sphinxes generally wear the remainder of their hairpiled upon their heads or concealed in a close-fitting low flat hat which isvery different from the flowing locks of Woman No1

Woman NO1 may have had two curling tresses one on each side of herface although only one is shown In the Medinet Habu relief of the siege ofUllaza a dying person is shown full face with two long narrow locks ofcurling hair one on each side of her face (Fig 3 8) This figure is probably awoman (Darnell 1991136) but not inevitably so since in the same relief thishairstyle is also worn by a warrior dying on the battlefield (Fig 4 1 cf alsoUniversity of Chicago 1936 PI 114)

These two narrow curling locks should not be confused with the scroll wig ofthe naked goddess common in Syro-Canaanite art and derived from the scroll wigof the goddess Hathor Scroll wig curls are generally very much tighter than thecurl of Woman NO1 and reach to the goddess shoulders Side views of the scrollwig in three dimensions can be seen on ivory heads found at Megiddo (Fig 42)

In Minoan and Mycenean culture where long hair is common(Kontorli-Papadopolou 199696-97) many parallels can be found for womenwith their hair tied back Two women from the House of the Ladies at Therafrom the LM IA are suitable parallels (Figs 4344) as are two women on achariot in the Boar Hunt fresco (Immerwahr 1990 PI 69) at Tiryns from theLH IIIB period (This illustration is a reconstruction but enough of theoriginal remains to illustrate our point) Good parallels to hair drawn back inlong plaits can be found in examples of goddesses with upraised arms withlong plaits on their backs from Postpalatial Crete These can be found in theShrine of the Double Axes at Knossos dated to the LM IlIB (Gesell 198542181 PI 46a) and the temple and cult rooms at Karphi (ibid45 182 PIs 48-49)dated to the LM mc period (Figs 45 46) Earlier parallels are from the LHI1IA1 painted pottery from Kition (Vermule and Karageorghis 198217-19Figs III1 0 III 12) A lesser parallel to the headdress ending with a curlinglock can be seen in the depiction in ivory of goddesses on the Minet el-Beidaivory pyxis and the ivory plaque from Tomb 49 at Mycenae (Rehak 199252-52 PI XVIc XVIIa) Since the curling lock in these depictions is a part of aseemingly more complex hairstyle than the one used by Woman NO1 and theorigin (Syro-Canaanite or Aegean) of this deity type (Rehak 199253) isunknown the contribution of these parallels is limited

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Sweeney and Yasur-Landau Women Sea Peoples

10 -~LC-~~~

1

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Fig 3 31 Syro-Canaanite woman from the royal harem El-Amarna (after Davies 1908 PIxvii) 32 Tribute bearer bringing ivory horn decorated with woman wearing long curl(after Keel 1975 Fig 8) 33 Woman from relief of the siege of Ullaza (afterUniversity of Chicago 1932 PI 87) 34 Woman wearing a single long curl (afterPage 1983 No 49) 35 Female captives from Syro-Canaan and Nubia (after Smithand Redford 1976 PI 27)36 Women in besieged Syrian city (after Ricke 1967P112)37 Ornamental vessels decorated with female heads (after University of Chicago1986 PI 8) 38 Woman from relief ofthe siege ofUllaza (after ibid 1932 PI 87)

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A partial parallel to the long curling hair of Woman NO1 can be found inthe Mykenaia figure from the cultic centre in Mycenae in the LH IIIB (Fig 47)as part of a more complex hairstyle which also includes a hair ribbon and curlson the forehead7 A closer parallel appears on the krater that was found inMinet el-Beida (Venneule and Karageorghis 198221 Fig IIIl9) from the LHIlIA In this scene appear two sword-bearing figures with similar hairstylesVenneule and Karageorghis suggest that these figures represent two captainsApart from their swords however these figures have no indications of genderand we should not rule out the possibility that they may be womens

In general the depictions of Syro-Canaanite women in Egyptian art arecloser to Image NO1 than the parallels from the Aegean This figure probablyrepresents a Syro-Canaanite woman although it is not impossible that itdepicts a woman from the Aegean

Image No 2

No exact parallels to Woman NO2 are known from Egyptian depictions offoreign women No close parallels to this figures hairstyle are found inAegean art either Does this mean that this woman came from outside the areaaccessible to the Egyptians (between Libya and Anatolia) and the Myceneansand Minoans (mainland Greece and the islands)

Alternatively Image NO2 might depict a special hairstyle for older womenfrom one of these areas One should note the age differentiation in hairstylesfor both males and females in the Aegean world (Davis 1986 Koehl 1986)By contrast older women are seldom represented in Egyptian art (Janssen ampJanssen 1996 14) they are unlikely to have been taken as prisoners of warunless they had some special skill

Image No 3

There are several parallels for Syro-Canaanite women wearing a filletaround their heads or hair-ribbons although it is by no means the norm

7 The Medinet Habu reliefs omit details such as curls on the forehead and so on whichappear frequently in the Aegean frescoes of women This phenomenon may originate fromthe difference in the artistic medium this type of detail is more difficult to represent inrelief than in fresco A similar phenomenon of generalization appears within Aegeanculture itself if we compare the hairstyles depicted in frescoes with those portrayed onceranlics (cf Vermeule amp Karageorghis 198217 for the parallel between the Kitionfragment and La Parisienne from Knossos)

8 Compare the sword-bearing figures on the Homage Krater (ibid23-24) which areidentical with the figures preceding them including the necklaces they wear

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Fig 4 41 Dying warrior from relief of the siege ofUllaza (after University of Chicago 1932PI 87) 42 Ivoryheads from Megiddo wearing scroll wigs (drawing after Loud 1939Nos 192-193)43 Woman from The House of the Ladies Thera (drawing afterhnmerwahr 1990 colour PI XI) 44 Woman from The House of the Ladies Thera(drawing after ibid colour PI XII) 45 Statuette of goddess from Karphi (drawingafter Buchholz amp Karageorghis 1973 Fig 1267) 46 Statuette of goddess fromKnossos (drawing after ibid Fig 1269) 47 The Mykenaia figure from Mycenae(drawing after hnmerwahr 1990 colour PI XX) 48 Women captives from the tombofHaremheb (after Martin 1989PI 105)

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Parallels include the women in the tomb of Haremheb (Fig 48) and in thetomb of Rekhmire (Fig 5 1) Another possible parallel are the women captiveson the Karnak talatat (Fig 35 above the ribbon does not appear on theoriginal relief blocks but is restored in the frontispiece of Redford 1984) aswell as those on three decorated spoons (Fig 52 Fechheimer 1921138Vandier d Abbadie 197220-21)

The women from the tomb of Reklullire are said to be serfs from the templeof Amun brought by Tuthmosis III as captives from his campaignsTuthmosis northern campaigns ranged from Canaan to the EuphratesTuthmosis declaration that he gave prisoners from the siege of Megiddo to thetemple of Amun (Sethe 1961 (Urk IV)74210-7438) may indicate that thesewomen were Canaanites but it is also possible that they are prisoners of warfrom Tuthmosis other campaigns to Lebanon or Syria

There are many parallels for both women and men wearing a fillet aroundtheir heads from the Aegean (Kontorli-Papadopoulou 199695) such as thehead of the Lady with the Lily from the LH lIlB cultic centre of Mycenae(Fig 53) and the pyxis-bearers from Tiryns (Fig 54) A parallel even closerin time may be the depiction of a woman with a hair ribbon on the LH IIICWarrior Vase from Mycenae (Venllule and Karageorghis 1982130-131Fig X142) Unfortunately only the frontal part of the womans head hassurvived leaving the rest of the headdress unknown to us

Nevertheless we know of no other instance of a Syrian woman with abag-shaped hairstyle like this one On the other hand the back of Image No3 s hairstyle is hidden by Image No2 she might conceivably have a hairstylelike Women Nos 12 or 7

It is most likely that this woman comes from the Aegean However if weassume that nothing is missing from the hairstyle then there is a more remotepossibility that this figure is a not a woman from Syria but a Syrian man aprisoner or a slave This bag-shaped hairstyle is characteristic of Syro-Canaanitemen in Egyptian art of this period although they are traditionally shown withbeards (HeIck 1962346) By contrast in Canaanite art there are manyinstances of clean-shaven men (Figs 71-3 below see also Loud 1939 Nos2 161 162) It is also extremely common for Syrian men to wear filletsaround their brows (Fig 61 Ricke 1967 PI 12 Martin 1989 PI 105)

Image No 4

Women with a single long plait of hair like No 4 appear in various NewKingdom contexts as representative of northerners or Syrians (HeIck 1962347)There are two variants of this hairstyle a single plait falling down the womansback and a plait falling to the side of her face which could be one of a pair

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Fig 5 51 Syro-Canaanite women from the tomb ofRekhmire (after Davies 1943 PI xxiii)52 Decorated spoon in the form of a Syro-Canaanite woman (after Wallert 1967PI24) 53 The Lady with the Lily from Mycenae (drawing afterKontorli-Papadopulou 1996 PI 94) 54 Pyxis-bearer from Tiryns (drawing afterImmerwahr 1990 PI 56)

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Women wearing a plait straight down their back appear in the tomb ofRekhmire (Fig 62 Davies 192840 followed by Feucht 1990a194 suggeststhat these women are Hittites) This hairstyle is also worn by a woman in SetiIs reliefs of his campaign against the Shasu (Fig 63) This woman is probablyone of the Shasu although since Setis battle against the Shasu takes place enroute to Gaza she might be a Canaanite taken captive by the Shasu This styleis also attested on an ivory figure from Megiddo (Loud 1939 No 175)

Women with a plait to one side appear on the throne of Queen Tiy in thetomb of Kheruef (Fig 64) and in the tombs of Menkheperresoneb (Fig 65)and Amenmose (Davies 1933 PI xxxiv)9 On the throne of Tiy such womenappear as typical northerners contrasted with Nubian captives in the tombs ofMenkheperresoneb and Amenmose their origin is not specified Plaits hangingto one side also appear on two decorated spoons (Fig 52 above and Vandierd Abbadie 197220-21) and on a servant girl from the tomb of Intef (althoughthis girl is not said explicitly to be a foreigner and the end of her plait isreconstructed) (Davies 193253)

Note incidentally that in Egyptian art this hairstyle is always worn bySyro-Canaanite slaves or captives and not by women from the same countrieswhen at home (with the possible exception of the Shasu or Canaanite womanin Fig 63) Presumably female slaves tied their long hair back to keep it outof the way whilst working and this practice became generic for theiconography of Syro-Canaanite captive women

Aegean art includes numerous examples of women with plaits Howevermost of these examples are more similar to the curling lock of Woman No1The best parallels to the straight plait of Woman NO4 are the simple plaitsworn by female statuettes However the latter may reflect the limitations ofworking in clay as opposed to paint rather than actually reproducing adifferent hairstyle (see note 7 above)

There may also be parallels in Hittite art for tIlis single long plait The InandikPithos (OzgUy 198883-92 Fig 64) dated to the Old Hittite Period (Fig 66Hoffner 1995558-559 Figs 1 and 2) depicts scenes of preparation for a weddingin a wealthy house Some women wear either a single plait or a waist-lengthheaddress whereas others wear all-enveloping shawls covering the head Asinlilar plait or headdress is worn by the queen in an orthostat from Alaca Hoyiik(Akurgal 1962 PI 92) dated before the 13th century BCE (Kohlmeyer19952647) and also under the crowns worn by the goddesses on the Yazilikayarock carvings (Fig 81 ibid2650 Fig 9) dated to the 13th century BCE

9 Gardiner Notebook 28819 is a photograph of a painting of the wall here we see that thewomens plaits are much the same colour as their garments which is why the-plait doesnot show up clearly in photographs (Meyer 1913721 Wreszinski 1923275)

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Fig 6 61 Syro-Canaanite men wearing fillets (after Davies 1947 PI viii) 62Syro-Canaanite women from the tomb of Reklunire (after Davies 1943 PI Ivii) 63Woman from the relief of Seti Is battle against the Shasu (after University ofChicago 1986 PI 12) 64 Syro-Canaanite and Nubian female captives decoratingQueen Tiys throne (after University of Chicago 1980 PI 47) 65 Syro-Canaanitewoman from the tomb of Menkheperresoneb (after Davies 1933 PI v) 66 Womenfrom the Inandik pithos (after Hoffner 1995Fig 2)

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Images No 5 and 9

Images NO5 and 9 are either bald or have their hair closely cropped Giventhat both heads are damaged however this observation is not entirely certain

Men with sho~t hair are very rare in Aegean art~ where only babies andyoung children wear their hair short (Koehl 1986100-101) On the otherhand men with close-cropped hair or close-fitting caps (Stern 1989) arecommon in Canaanite art (Figs 71-3 Loud 1939 Nos 2 162) Interestinglyenough these Canaanites are shown driving chariots (ibid Nos 2 159 161)which provides a good parallel to NO9 the driver of Wagon NO5 Image No5 may be the driver of Wagon No3 Unlike his colleague No9 who is stillgoading the oxen onwards NO5 has given up hope and raises his hands indespair

Image No 6

The upper rim of the chariot hides the back of Woman No 6s neck Itwould be possible to reconstruct her hairstyle with a long narrow plait like thewomen already described It would also be possible to envisage her as havingshort hair However it is unusual to find women from Syro-Palestineportrayed in this way A group of women depicted in the tomb of Reklunirehave short hair (Fig 82 Davies 192840 followed by Feucht 1990a195identifies the long wrap-around dresses of these women as Syrian in style)This short hairstyle may be adopted from the group of Nubian women whoprecede the Syrians in this picture A naked goddess mounted on a horse isalso portrayed wearing short hair and a large earring (Fig 83 Brunner-Traut197929-30 NO5 PI V Petersen 1973 No 31 However Petersen idemsuggests that the goddess is wearing a helmet) The Hittite princess bride ofRamses II is shown with short hair (Fig 84) but she has been dressed upEgyptian style for the celebrations so her hairstyle is not necessarilysignificant

In Egyptian art this short hairstyle is characteristic of Nubian women (Fig85 Davies amp Gardiner 1926 PI xxx University of Chicago 1930 PI 9Ricke 1967 PIs 89 Brack amp Brack 1980 PI 50 Dziobeck 1992 PI 1) Itis true that the front part of Woman No 6s hairstyle tapers back from herforehead whereas most Nubian women wear their hair in a thick fringeHowever Nubian women are depicted with this type of central parting in afew New Kingdom tombs such as those of Rekhmire (Davies 1943 PI xxii)and Haremheb (Brack amp Brack 1980 PI 50 see also University of Chicago1930 PI 9)

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Fig 7 71 Ivory from Megiddo (after Loud 1939 No 159) 72 Ivory from Megiddo (afteribid No 160)73 Bronze plaque from Hazor (after Redford 1992197 Fig 71)

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Image No 7

This person wears its hair tapering to the nape of the neck Syro-Canaanitewomen sometimes wear their hair tapering to a point (Muller 1906 PI 9)although usually their hair is somewhat longer than that of Image NO7 andthe pointed tip of their hairstyle falls farther back behind their shoulderslO

(Fig 86) A woman portrayed on one of the Megiddo ivories has the samehairstyle (Loud 1939 No 2b)

This image may represent another Syro-Canaanite woman A more remotepossibility is that this image represents a Hittite man Hittite men wore theirhair in a queue and had bald foreheads In the reliefs at Medinet Habu the linemarking the front of the Hittite mens bald pates is not necessarily drawn in(Fig 87) Hittite men generally wore their hair much longer but there are afew examples of Hittite men whose hair only reaches to the back of their necks(Figs 87-92 see also Kuentz 1928 PI xviii)

There is a small possibility that Hittite women may also have worn thisstyle but the evidence is ambiguous In the Ramesseum relief of the siege ofDapur a group of people are shown leaving the city bearing baskets ofprovisions and begging for peace (Fig 93) Their hair tapers to theirshoulders Wreszinski (1935 PI 109) and HeIck (1962343) suggest thatthese people are the ruler of the city and the women of his house On the otherhand some of the dead warriors lying on the battlefield have exactly the samehairstyle so the figures accompanying the ruler are not necessarily women Inany case their hair is too long to be compared to this figure

There is no parallel for this figure in Aegean art

Image No 8

So little is visible of Image NO8 that any discussion of her coiffure wouldbe inconclusive

10 Some of the figures in the siege of Ullaza (University of Chicago 1932 PI 87) have thishairstyle but they are not necessarily women A decorated spoon in the Rijksmuseum vonOudheiden at Leiden has a similar hairstyle but since the woman is naked it is difficult totell whether she represents a foreigner (Eggebrecht 1987 No 246) The same applies tothe decorated spoon Louvre N-I728 (Vandier dAbbadie 197214-15)

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Fig 8 81 Goddess on the Yazilikaya rock carvings (after Kohlmeyer 1995 Fig 9) 82Women from the tomb of Rekhmire (after Davies 1943 PI Ivii) 83 Goddess onhorseback (drawing after Brunner-Traut 1956 No 16 PI viii) 84 The Hittiteprincess from the Marriage Stele of Ramses IT(after Lepsius 1849-1859 PI 196) 85Nubian women (after Davies 1905 PI xxviii) 86 Syro-Canaanite woman from thetomb ofRekhmire (after Davies 1943 PI xxiii) 87-8 Hittite warriors from MedinetHabu (after University of Chicago 1932 PI 87)

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The Children of the Sea People

The child standing by Wagon NO5 (Fig 22) wears a single long lock of hairgrowing from the crown of his head 11 This hairstyle is characteristic ofSyro-Canaanite children of both sexes in New Kingdom reliefs12(Fig 94 Davies1905 PI xxxiX)13

Children often appear in New Kingdom scenes of siege or battle beinglifted over the walls of a besieged city in Syria or Canaan (Fig 95) It is notclear whether these children are being sacrificed to the gods to change thecourse of the battle presented to Pharaoh as hostages or helped to escape(Keel 1975 Spalinger 1977-8 Feucht 1990b33-39 Donohue 1992) In thisinstance we suggest that they are being helped to escape (Keel 1975456 Thechildren appear to be on the point of collapse and their chances of escape areprobably slim Keel suggests that fear of Pharaoh immobilizes the childrenwith terror and they sink to the ground unable to stir)

Donohue (199283) suggests that the women are scooping the children upinto the wagons before the advancing enemy but this is unlikely If they weretrying to clamber into the wagons they would be facing inwards and probablyusing their legs to get a purchase on the side of the wagon as they clamber upit (The same applies to children in scenes of besieged cities There are onlytwo examples of children who could conceivably be climbing into the city (thelittle girl on the left in Fig 95 see also Keel 1975 Fig 19)

The fact that the older children are dressed as Sea Peoples may suggestpatrilineal behaviour in the immigrant society - at least in regard to costume

Summary

The limitations of this type of source material preclude absolute conclusionsThe Aegean paintings and statuettes come from a different artistic traditionthan the Medinet Habu reliefs discrepancies between the two are inevitableEgyptian depictions of foreigners have their limitations and since the artists atMedinet Habu may have been unfamiliar with these hairstyles it is difficult to tellhow accurate these portrayals are We may however make a few suggestions

11 The second line emerging from the crown of his head in University of Chicago 1930 PI49D is probably a scratch rather than a second lock

12 See also Pritchard 1954 No 45 (the man presenting this child is said to be the ruler ofTunip and can therefore be located in Syria) Save Stiderbergh 1957 PI xxiii Martin1989PI 105 University of Chicago 1932PI 87Feucht 1990a198 n 82 points out that apart from the single plait children from Syriamay also sport two plaits a head of short hair or two clumps of hair There is quite avariety of hairstyles

13 The parallel to this scene in the tomb ofHuya describes this tribute as coming from Kharuand Kush (Sandman 193837 line 1)

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Fig 9 91 Hittite warrior from Medinet Habu (after University of Chicago 1932 PI 87) 92Hittite warriors from Abu Simbel (after Wreszinski 1935 PI 170) 93 Group ofHittites from the siege of Dapur (after ibid PI 109) 94 Syro-Canaanite women andchild (after Davies 1947 PI viii) 95 Girl being let down over the city wall relief ofthe siege of Ashkelon (after Keel 1975Fig 21)

Woman NO4 with her long straight plait conforms to Egyptian depictionsof Syro-Canaanite women although she also has parallels in Aegean artWoman No 1 has parallels in both the Egyptian tradition and the Aegeantradition although the Egyptian parallels are stronger and she is also probablya Syro-Canaanite woman Image NO7 if she is a woman is vaguely similarto certain Egyptian pictures of Syro-Canaanite women but her hair is rathershort to provide a good parallel it should fall to a point further down her back

No exact parallels are known for the hairstyle of No 2 in either Egyptian orAegean art It is not clear whether this hairstyle may represent an ethnic groupunknown to us Alternatively middotdifferent hairstyles may have been worn bywomen at different periods of their lives - married ~omen and maidens forexample or old women and young ones or pregnant women They may alsocharacterize different social standings or occupations

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In some cases the persons hairstyle is incomplete It is masked by overlappinglinages or by the edge of the wagon as in Images Nos 3 and 6If they had longer hair these people might have hairstyles like those of Women 12or 4 If Image No3 had long hair she would have excellent parallels in Aegeanart where hair ribbons are very common If the bag-shaped hairstyle of Image No3 is complete as it stands however then the best parallels are actually fomIdamongst Syrian men Woman No 6s short hair is occasionally paralleled amongstSyrian women it is much more characteristic of Nubian women however Notonly did themiddotEgyptians have Nubian servants and slaves but many Egyptians werethemselves of Nubian stock so that women of this type could be found throughoutthe territories under Egyptian rule

The Sea Peoples were accompanied by men from the areas they traversedThey may have been taken as slaves or prisoners or maybe they decided tojoin the Sea Peoples advance in order to seek their fortunes abroad Such arethe wagon drivers Nos 5 and 9 who are definitely Syro-Canaanites andperhaps Image No3 ifhe is a Syrian or Image No7 if he is a Hittite

This picture of a complex and highly diverse origin of the group of Sea Peoplesportrayed in the Medinet Habu reliefs (which mayor may not be a typical group)suggests that it is unlikely that the Philistines were 100 pure Mycenaean Greeks(Stager 1995337 following Mazar 1988255-6 260) Like Sherratt (1998307)we characterize the Sea Peoples as cosmopolitan although we still envisagemany of them as Aegeans Other groups or individuals would have joined the SeaPeoples in northern Syria and Canaan

Conclusions

In the Medinet Habu reliefs the Sea Peoples are accompanied by at leastone woman who is clearly Syro-Canaanite and also by women with parallelsin Aegean art A similar conclusion was also reached by an analysis ofmaterial culture assemblages from Syria and Palestine (Bunimovitz andYasur-Landau forthcoming a b) attributed to the first stages of Aegeansettlement at the beginning of the Iron Age In these studies evidence ofbehavioural patterns of Aegean origin such as weaving with a loom equippedwith round unperfonlted loomweights and cooking on a hearth with Aegeanstyle cooking-pots were found side by side with local textile manufacture andcooking methods These finds may be cautiously interpreted as evidence of thepresence of women of both Aegean and local origin at these sites

The evidence from the reliefs shows that the Sea Peoples were accompaniedby men and women from Syria andor Canaan and by children probably theSea Peoples offspring by these women This indicates that the Sea Peoplesspent time in Syria andor Canaan before they continued on their way to Egypt

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Rather than envisaging the Sea Peoples immigration as a rapid concerted attack ata number of points simultaneously (Stager 1995) we should consider it as acomplex situation of not necessarily coordinated movements by different groupsfrom different areas

The size of the children depicted in the Medinet Habu reliefs may give ussome indication of how long the Sea Peoples had been present in the areabefore they moved south to Egypt If the younger children are the offspring ofthese women and the Sea Peoples the latter must have reached the area someseven or six years earlier if the older children wearing Philistine headgearare also the offspring of these households then we should think in terms of aninterval of thirteen years or more A similar observation was made by Singer(1987418) on the basis of the tablets from Ugarit and Ras Ibn Hani Thismeans that the fall of Ugarit should have occurred some fifteen to twentyyears before Ramses Ills war with the Sea Peoples It is quite acceptablehowever to postulate a short period of consolidation before the Sea Peoplesattempted to surge down into Egypt 14

The group we see in the Medinet Habu reliefs with their families would thenbe a second wave of settlement

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank I Finkelstein I Singer S Bunimovitz and the lateP Beck for reading and commenting on earlier drafts of this paper We wouldalso like to thank the Griffith Institute Oxford for allowing us to quotematerial from the unpublished notebooks of Sir Alan Gardiner

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Akurgal E 1962 The Art of the Hittites LondonAldred C 1973 Akhenaten and Nefertiti New YorkAstrom P 1992 Approaches to the Study of Women in Ancient Cyprus In

Astrom P ed Acta Cypria Acts of an International Congress onCypriote Archaeology held in GOteborg on 22-24 August 1991 Part 2(Studies in Mediterranean Archaeology Pocket-Book 117) Jonsered 5-8

14 On the other hand the size of the children depicted in the reliefs may not necessarily haveany historical significance Nor are these children necessarily these womens offspring bythe Sea People they even may be these womens children by previous partners in whichcase this part of the argument is irrelevant The Philistine youths may even be youngPhilistines who have been assigned to guarding the women and children as a relativelysafe post in view of their youth and inexperience

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Statuses before the Bronze Age Opuscula Atheniensia XX 19-17Brack A and Brack A 1980 Das Grab des Haremheb Theben Nr 78

MainzBrug JF 1984 A Literary and Archaeological Study othe Philistines Vols

1 and 2 MichiganBrunner-Traut E 1956 Die altiigyptischen Scherbenbilder (Bildostraka) der

Deutschen Museen und Sammlungen WiesbadenBrunner-Traut E 1979 Egyptian Artists Sketches LondonBuchholz H-G and Karageorghis V 1973 Prehistoric Greece and Cyprus

LondonBunimovitz S and Yasur-Landau A 1996 Philistine and Israelite Pottery A

Comparative Approach to the Question of Pots and People Tel Aviv2388-101

Bunimovitz S and Yasur-Landau A Forthcominga Behavioural Aspects of12th Century BCE Aegean Immigrants in Palestine and Cyprus

Bunimovitz S and Yasur-Landau A Forthcominglb Women and AegeanImmigration to Cyprus in the 12th Century BCE

Caubert A 1998 The International Style A point of View from the Levantand Syria In Cline EH and Harris-Cline D eds The Aegean and theOrient in the Second Millennium (Aegaeum 18) Liege 105-111

Cifola B 1991 The Terminology of Ramses Ills Historical Records with aFormal Analysis of the War Scenes Orientalia 609-57

Cifola B 1994 The Role of the Sea Peoples at the end of the Late BronzeAge A Reassessment of Textual and Archaeological Evidence OriensAntiqui Miscellanea 11-23

Cline EH 1995 Tinker Tailor Soldier Sailor Minoans and MyceneansAbroad In Laffineur R and Niemeier W-D eds Politeia Societyand State in the Aegean Bronze Age (Aegaeum 12) Liege 265-287

Conkey MW and Spector J 1984 Archaeology and the Study of GenderAdvances in Archaeological Method and Theory 71-38

Darnell J C 1991 Supposed Depictions of the Hittites in the Amarna PeriodStudien zur Altiigyptischen Kultur 18 113-140

Davies N de Garis 1905 The Rock Tombs of El Amarna II LondonDavies N de Garis 1908 The Rock Tombs of El Amarna VI LondonDavies N de Garis 1928 The Work of the Graphic Branch of the

Expedition Bulletin othe Metropolitan Museum 0Art 23237-48Davies N de Garis 1932 The Work of the Graphic Branch of the

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Image no 2

Image no 1

Image no 4

Image no S

Wagon no 3

Fig 1 11Wagons Nos 1 and 2 and 12 Wagon NO3 both from the Medinet Habu reliefs(after University of Chicago 1930 PI 34)

Wagon No5 (Fig 22) is at some distance from the other four presumably itwas cut off from the baggage train during the attack In the wagon we see aright-facing figure (Image NO7) helping another child down out of the cart To theleft of No 7 appears part of the face of another woman (Image NO8) This cart isescorted by another Philistine youth In contrast to the other four wagons thiscarts driver (Image No9) is still in action and urging the oxen onwards

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1Wagon no 4

Fig 2 21 Wagon NO4 and 22 Wagon NO5 both from the Medinet Habu reliefs (afterUniversity of Chicago 1930 PI 34)

Women Nos 12 and 4 wear their long hair in a plait or tapering lock (Wehave used the term plait although no markings are visible the women could havebound their hair with thread or ribbon at intervals) Woman 4s hair is a simpleplait Woman ls plait ends in a curl and Woman 2s plait is short and stubby

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with a rounded end (In the photograph [University of Chicago 1930 PI 50a]the end is a little more frayed) Whereas Woman NO4 clearly has a singleplait resting on the nape of her neck Woman No 1 is somewhat moreambivalent She might have only one single curl or there might be two curlsone on either side of her face although only one of them is visible Image No6 has short hair and wears a round earring Image No3 has a bag-shapedhairstyle and wears a fillet bound about her brow Image No 7s hair tapers toa point at the nape of her neck The hair of Image No 8 is not visible apartfrom the side of her face Images 5 and 9 are bald or have a veryclose-cropped haircut

Parallels to the women in the Medinet Habu Reliefs

Foreign women in Egyptian art

It may be possible for us to identify the origin of the women accompanyingthe Sea Peoples from depictions of foreign women in contemporary Egyptianart Women are depicted amongst the inhabitants of foreign cities besieged bythe Egyptian army in reliefs commemorating the victories of the Egyptianking They are shown in tombs of the elite as prisoners of war slaves or evenvisiting from abroad Foreign women are also occasionally depicted on ostracaor on omamental objects such as cosmetic vessels and decorated spoons (Theevidence from the latter group of objects is less helpful for our purposes sinceif these figures are not wearing distinctively foreign dress it is not clearwhether they were actually intended to be foreign women)

However there are problems with this type of evidence Unfortunately theEgyptians were not particularly precise in their depictions of foreigners (egDavies 1934191) They might depict one ethnic group and label the figureswith the name of another group (Pritchard 195141) or even concoct a hybridfigure dressed in garments from different countries (Wachsmaml 19876-9)We should also note that the Egyptian artists were not necessarily sensitive tochanges in foreign fashions (ibid 46)

Moreover not only do the Egyptians not necessarily name their depictionsof foreigners but when they do label them they often use general terms suchas Retenu which may indicate both Syria and Canaans It is therefore difficultto fine-tune regional differences within the major groupings of foreigners

S AH Gardiner asserts that in the New Kingdom the term Upper Retenu often abbreviatedRetenu tends to be used for Syria whereas the term Djahi refers to Palestine andLebanon However the term Retenu may mean not just specifically Syria but it may also

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One should note two further factors that mayor may not affect the accuracyof the depiction of foreign women of suspected Aegean origin by Egyptianartists

Firstly only Aegean men are depicted in Eighteenth Dynasty art This factmay minimize the possibility that the Twentieth Dynasty artists copied Aegeanwomens hairstyles from earlier reliefs

Secondly the interaction between the Aegean world and Egypt decreasedconsiderably during the twelfth century BCE (Weinstein 1998188-189)limiting the interactions between Aegean and Egyptian art in a way that mayinfluence the accuracy of an Egyptian artist depicting hairstyles completelyunfamiliar to him

Another possible source for the hairstyles of the women in the MedinetHabu reliefs is Aegean art The importance of the comparison with Aegeanhairstyles derives not only from the large variety of hairstyles known to usfrom various types of Aegean art (frescoes drawings on clay vessels figurinesand ivory carvings) but also because the great majority of scholars argue thatthe Sea Peoples originated in the Aegean Finding Aegean parallels to thehairstyles in Medinet Habu especially those to which no parallel is found inEgyptian art can confirm the theories of an Aegean origin for at least part ofthe Sea Peoples In this paper we will compare the hairstyles of the womenfrom Medinet Habu to hairstyles from the Aegean world from the fifteenth tothe twelfth centuries BCE preferably the hairstyles of real flesh-and-bloodwomen rather than goddesses (or priestesses who imitate the hairstyles ofgoddesses)

There is a certain methodological problem in comparing Egyptian andAegean art because of the difference in their iconographic preconceptions It isclear that parallels to the figures of Medinet Habu from Egyptian art will becloser than those from the Aegean But these are not adequate grounds toassert that this type of comparison is impossible The long-term mutualexchanges between the Aegean cultural sphere and Egypt also led tointerchanges and influences in the area of art (Cline 1995 Caubet 1998Rehak and Younger 1998) In many cases the depictions of Aegeans inEgyptian art (executed by Egyptian artists as distinct from those executed byAegean artists) are remarkably similar to the figures in Aegean art

be used in its more traditional sense to comprise both Syria and Palestine (Gardiner1947145-147)Recently Vandersleyen (199591) argues that Retenu begins at the eastern border of tileDelta He bases his argument on the participation of men from Retenu in tile MiddleKingdom mining expeditions at Serabit el-Khadem in the Sinai On tile otller hand it isnot clear that these men are indigenous to the Sinai Bietak (199619) argues that theycould well have been Syro-Palestinian mercenaries based at Tell el-Dablta

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The most important factor however may actually be the cultural differencethat dictates how foreigners are represented in contrast to oneself(Wachsmaltn 19874-26 Cline 1995 Leahy 1995226)

There is a great deal of variety in the hairstyles of the Aegean which canprobably be attributed to differences in ethnic background age social statusand period (Koehl 1986 Kontorli-Papadopoulou 199696)

Image No 1Woman No ls long curling lock of hair has various parallels amongst

Syrian or northern women represented in Egyptian art Examples are a womenin the harem at el-Amarna (Fig 31) a woman in a siege scene on the Karnaktalatat (Smith 1965 Fig 210) and also a northern female prisoner beingclubbed by Nefertiti on a relief in the Boston Museum (Aldred 1973 No 57)

In a variant of this hairstyle a single lock falls down the womans spine andcurls upwards at its tip This hairstyle is found on an ornamental ivory hornoffered as tribute by a Syrian in a tomb painting in the British Museum (Fig32)6 A woman in the scene of the siege of Ullaza at Medinet Habu is alsoportrayed with a curl falling behind her back (Fig 33) However thiswomans curl is much thinner than that of Woman No1

There are several other cases of figures whose hair is drawn into a longsingle curl but they are not necessarily foreign women (the woman in Fig 34wears a diaphanous Egyptian-style gown Roeder 1969 PI 177 PC 80 isprobably a Libyan man [ibid 187 199] the girl portrayed in Wenig 196785is probably wearing the sidelock of youth)

Two other hairstyles with dangling curls are known in ancient Egyptianportrayals of foreigners but their connection with Woman No 1 is moretenuous In the first instance the woman wears a curl or lock falling over herear and a narrow curl at the back of her head (Figs 35 and 36 Davies 1908PIs xvii xix maybe Hall 1931 PI XV2)

Dangling curls also appear in the New Kingdom iconography of femalesphinxes both in Egypt and in Canaan (eg in the Megiddo ivories) and oncertain ornamental vessels (Fig No 37) Bryan (199669-72) relates thesphinxes curls to the sidelock worn by Libyan males A connection betweenthe Sea Peoples and the Libyans is attested for the fifth year of Merneptahwhen a coalition of Libyans and various Sea Peoples attacked Egypt

6 Omamental vases and ivory tusks are common in Egyptian depictions of tribute from Syriaand Canaan during this period In his victory reliefs at Kamak Seti I presents omamentsof this type to the gods as thank-offerings after campaigns against several differentenemies - against the Shasu Hittites Syrians and Libyans - so the vases in these reliefscannot be identified as booty from any particular area

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However as Cifola (19943) points out these groups are not the same as thosewho came into contact with Ramses III with the exception of the Shekelesh Itshould be noted that the prototype here is male (we know very little about theappearan~e of female Libyans in this period) Most importantly the otherfeatures of the sphinxes hairstyle do not parallel the arrangement of WomanNOls hair The female sphinxes generally wear the remainder of their hairpiled upon their heads or concealed in a close-fitting low flat hat which isvery different from the flowing locks of Woman No1

Woman NO1 may have had two curling tresses one on each side of herface although only one is shown In the Medinet Habu relief of the siege ofUllaza a dying person is shown full face with two long narrow locks ofcurling hair one on each side of her face (Fig 3 8) This figure is probably awoman (Darnell 1991136) but not inevitably so since in the same relief thishairstyle is also worn by a warrior dying on the battlefield (Fig 4 1 cf alsoUniversity of Chicago 1936 PI 114)

These two narrow curling locks should not be confused with the scroll wig ofthe naked goddess common in Syro-Canaanite art and derived from the scroll wigof the goddess Hathor Scroll wig curls are generally very much tighter than thecurl of Woman NO1 and reach to the goddess shoulders Side views of the scrollwig in three dimensions can be seen on ivory heads found at Megiddo (Fig 42)

In Minoan and Mycenean culture where long hair is common(Kontorli-Papadopolou 199696-97) many parallels can be found for womenwith their hair tied back Two women from the House of the Ladies at Therafrom the LM IA are suitable parallels (Figs 4344) as are two women on achariot in the Boar Hunt fresco (Immerwahr 1990 PI 69) at Tiryns from theLH IIIB period (This illustration is a reconstruction but enough of theoriginal remains to illustrate our point) Good parallels to hair drawn back inlong plaits can be found in examples of goddesses with upraised arms withlong plaits on their backs from Postpalatial Crete These can be found in theShrine of the Double Axes at Knossos dated to the LM IlIB (Gesell 198542181 PI 46a) and the temple and cult rooms at Karphi (ibid45 182 PIs 48-49)dated to the LM mc period (Figs 45 46) Earlier parallels are from the LHI1IA1 painted pottery from Kition (Vermule and Karageorghis 198217-19Figs III1 0 III 12) A lesser parallel to the headdress ending with a curlinglock can be seen in the depiction in ivory of goddesses on the Minet el-Beidaivory pyxis and the ivory plaque from Tomb 49 at Mycenae (Rehak 199252-52 PI XVIc XVIIa) Since the curling lock in these depictions is a part of aseemingly more complex hairstyle than the one used by Woman NO1 and theorigin (Syro-Canaanite or Aegean) of this deity type (Rehak 199253) isunknown the contribution of these parallels is limited

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Fig 3 31 Syro-Canaanite woman from the royal harem El-Amarna (after Davies 1908 PIxvii) 32 Tribute bearer bringing ivory horn decorated with woman wearing long curl(after Keel 1975 Fig 8) 33 Woman from relief of the siege of Ullaza (afterUniversity of Chicago 1932 PI 87) 34 Woman wearing a single long curl (afterPage 1983 No 49) 35 Female captives from Syro-Canaan and Nubia (after Smithand Redford 1976 PI 27)36 Women in besieged Syrian city (after Ricke 1967P112)37 Ornamental vessels decorated with female heads (after University of Chicago1986 PI 8) 38 Woman from relief ofthe siege ofUllaza (after ibid 1932 PI 87)

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A partial parallel to the long curling hair of Woman NO1 can be found inthe Mykenaia figure from the cultic centre in Mycenae in the LH IIIB (Fig 47)as part of a more complex hairstyle which also includes a hair ribbon and curlson the forehead7 A closer parallel appears on the krater that was found inMinet el-Beida (Venneule and Karageorghis 198221 Fig IIIl9) from the LHIlIA In this scene appear two sword-bearing figures with similar hairstylesVenneule and Karageorghis suggest that these figures represent two captainsApart from their swords however these figures have no indications of genderand we should not rule out the possibility that they may be womens

In general the depictions of Syro-Canaanite women in Egyptian art arecloser to Image NO1 than the parallels from the Aegean This figure probablyrepresents a Syro-Canaanite woman although it is not impossible that itdepicts a woman from the Aegean

Image No 2

No exact parallels to Woman NO2 are known from Egyptian depictions offoreign women No close parallels to this figures hairstyle are found inAegean art either Does this mean that this woman came from outside the areaaccessible to the Egyptians (between Libya and Anatolia) and the Myceneansand Minoans (mainland Greece and the islands)

Alternatively Image NO2 might depict a special hairstyle for older womenfrom one of these areas One should note the age differentiation in hairstylesfor both males and females in the Aegean world (Davis 1986 Koehl 1986)By contrast older women are seldom represented in Egyptian art (Janssen ampJanssen 1996 14) they are unlikely to have been taken as prisoners of warunless they had some special skill

Image No 3

There are several parallels for Syro-Canaanite women wearing a filletaround their heads or hair-ribbons although it is by no means the norm

7 The Medinet Habu reliefs omit details such as curls on the forehead and so on whichappear frequently in the Aegean frescoes of women This phenomenon may originate fromthe difference in the artistic medium this type of detail is more difficult to represent inrelief than in fresco A similar phenomenon of generalization appears within Aegeanculture itself if we compare the hairstyles depicted in frescoes with those portrayed onceranlics (cf Vermeule amp Karageorghis 198217 for the parallel between the Kitionfragment and La Parisienne from Knossos)

8 Compare the sword-bearing figures on the Homage Krater (ibid23-24) which areidentical with the figures preceding them including the necklaces they wear

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Fig 4 41 Dying warrior from relief of the siege ofUllaza (after University of Chicago 1932PI 87) 42 Ivoryheads from Megiddo wearing scroll wigs (drawing after Loud 1939Nos 192-193)43 Woman from The House of the Ladies Thera (drawing afterhnmerwahr 1990 colour PI XI) 44 Woman from The House of the Ladies Thera(drawing after ibid colour PI XII) 45 Statuette of goddess from Karphi (drawingafter Buchholz amp Karageorghis 1973 Fig 1267) 46 Statuette of goddess fromKnossos (drawing after ibid Fig 1269) 47 The Mykenaia figure from Mycenae(drawing after hnmerwahr 1990 colour PI XX) 48 Women captives from the tombofHaremheb (after Martin 1989PI 105)

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Parallels include the women in the tomb of Haremheb (Fig 48) and in thetomb of Rekhmire (Fig 5 1) Another possible parallel are the women captiveson the Karnak talatat (Fig 35 above the ribbon does not appear on theoriginal relief blocks but is restored in the frontispiece of Redford 1984) aswell as those on three decorated spoons (Fig 52 Fechheimer 1921138Vandier d Abbadie 197220-21)

The women from the tomb of Reklullire are said to be serfs from the templeof Amun brought by Tuthmosis III as captives from his campaignsTuthmosis northern campaigns ranged from Canaan to the EuphratesTuthmosis declaration that he gave prisoners from the siege of Megiddo to thetemple of Amun (Sethe 1961 (Urk IV)74210-7438) may indicate that thesewomen were Canaanites but it is also possible that they are prisoners of warfrom Tuthmosis other campaigns to Lebanon or Syria

There are many parallels for both women and men wearing a fillet aroundtheir heads from the Aegean (Kontorli-Papadopoulou 199695) such as thehead of the Lady with the Lily from the LH lIlB cultic centre of Mycenae(Fig 53) and the pyxis-bearers from Tiryns (Fig 54) A parallel even closerin time may be the depiction of a woman with a hair ribbon on the LH IIICWarrior Vase from Mycenae (Venllule and Karageorghis 1982130-131Fig X142) Unfortunately only the frontal part of the womans head hassurvived leaving the rest of the headdress unknown to us

Nevertheless we know of no other instance of a Syrian woman with abag-shaped hairstyle like this one On the other hand the back of Image No3 s hairstyle is hidden by Image No2 she might conceivably have a hairstylelike Women Nos 12 or 7

It is most likely that this woman comes from the Aegean However if weassume that nothing is missing from the hairstyle then there is a more remotepossibility that this figure is a not a woman from Syria but a Syrian man aprisoner or a slave This bag-shaped hairstyle is characteristic of Syro-Canaanitemen in Egyptian art of this period although they are traditionally shown withbeards (HeIck 1962346) By contrast in Canaanite art there are manyinstances of clean-shaven men (Figs 71-3 below see also Loud 1939 Nos2 161 162) It is also extremely common for Syrian men to wear filletsaround their brows (Fig 61 Ricke 1967 PI 12 Martin 1989 PI 105)

Image No 4

Women with a single long plait of hair like No 4 appear in various NewKingdom contexts as representative of northerners or Syrians (HeIck 1962347)There are two variants of this hairstyle a single plait falling down the womansback and a plait falling to the side of her face which could be one of a pair

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Fig 5 51 Syro-Canaanite women from the tomb ofRekhmire (after Davies 1943 PI xxiii)52 Decorated spoon in the form of a Syro-Canaanite woman (after Wallert 1967PI24) 53 The Lady with the Lily from Mycenae (drawing afterKontorli-Papadopulou 1996 PI 94) 54 Pyxis-bearer from Tiryns (drawing afterImmerwahr 1990 PI 56)

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Women wearing a plait straight down their back appear in the tomb ofRekhmire (Fig 62 Davies 192840 followed by Feucht 1990a194 suggeststhat these women are Hittites) This hairstyle is also worn by a woman in SetiIs reliefs of his campaign against the Shasu (Fig 63) This woman is probablyone of the Shasu although since Setis battle against the Shasu takes place enroute to Gaza she might be a Canaanite taken captive by the Shasu This styleis also attested on an ivory figure from Megiddo (Loud 1939 No 175)

Women with a plait to one side appear on the throne of Queen Tiy in thetomb of Kheruef (Fig 64) and in the tombs of Menkheperresoneb (Fig 65)and Amenmose (Davies 1933 PI xxxiv)9 On the throne of Tiy such womenappear as typical northerners contrasted with Nubian captives in the tombs ofMenkheperresoneb and Amenmose their origin is not specified Plaits hangingto one side also appear on two decorated spoons (Fig 52 above and Vandierd Abbadie 197220-21) and on a servant girl from the tomb of Intef (althoughthis girl is not said explicitly to be a foreigner and the end of her plait isreconstructed) (Davies 193253)

Note incidentally that in Egyptian art this hairstyle is always worn bySyro-Canaanite slaves or captives and not by women from the same countrieswhen at home (with the possible exception of the Shasu or Canaanite womanin Fig 63) Presumably female slaves tied their long hair back to keep it outof the way whilst working and this practice became generic for theiconography of Syro-Canaanite captive women

Aegean art includes numerous examples of women with plaits Howevermost of these examples are more similar to the curling lock of Woman No1The best parallels to the straight plait of Woman NO4 are the simple plaitsworn by female statuettes However the latter may reflect the limitations ofworking in clay as opposed to paint rather than actually reproducing adifferent hairstyle (see note 7 above)

There may also be parallels in Hittite art for tIlis single long plait The InandikPithos (OzgUy 198883-92 Fig 64) dated to the Old Hittite Period (Fig 66Hoffner 1995558-559 Figs 1 and 2) depicts scenes of preparation for a weddingin a wealthy house Some women wear either a single plait or a waist-lengthheaddress whereas others wear all-enveloping shawls covering the head Asinlilar plait or headdress is worn by the queen in an orthostat from Alaca Hoyiik(Akurgal 1962 PI 92) dated before the 13th century BCE (Kohlmeyer19952647) and also under the crowns worn by the goddesses on the Yazilikayarock carvings (Fig 81 ibid2650 Fig 9) dated to the 13th century BCE

9 Gardiner Notebook 28819 is a photograph of a painting of the wall here we see that thewomens plaits are much the same colour as their garments which is why the-plait doesnot show up clearly in photographs (Meyer 1913721 Wreszinski 1923275)

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Fig 6 61 Syro-Canaanite men wearing fillets (after Davies 1947 PI viii) 62Syro-Canaanite women from the tomb of Reklunire (after Davies 1943 PI Ivii) 63Woman from the relief of Seti Is battle against the Shasu (after University ofChicago 1986 PI 12) 64 Syro-Canaanite and Nubian female captives decoratingQueen Tiys throne (after University of Chicago 1980 PI 47) 65 Syro-Canaanitewoman from the tomb of Menkheperresoneb (after Davies 1933 PI v) 66 Womenfrom the Inandik pithos (after Hoffner 1995Fig 2)

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Images No 5 and 9

Images NO5 and 9 are either bald or have their hair closely cropped Giventhat both heads are damaged however this observation is not entirely certain

Men with sho~t hair are very rare in Aegean art~ where only babies andyoung children wear their hair short (Koehl 1986100-101) On the otherhand men with close-cropped hair or close-fitting caps (Stern 1989) arecommon in Canaanite art (Figs 71-3 Loud 1939 Nos 2 162) Interestinglyenough these Canaanites are shown driving chariots (ibid Nos 2 159 161)which provides a good parallel to NO9 the driver of Wagon NO5 Image No5 may be the driver of Wagon No3 Unlike his colleague No9 who is stillgoading the oxen onwards NO5 has given up hope and raises his hands indespair

Image No 6

The upper rim of the chariot hides the back of Woman No 6s neck Itwould be possible to reconstruct her hairstyle with a long narrow plait like thewomen already described It would also be possible to envisage her as havingshort hair However it is unusual to find women from Syro-Palestineportrayed in this way A group of women depicted in the tomb of Reklunirehave short hair (Fig 82 Davies 192840 followed by Feucht 1990a195identifies the long wrap-around dresses of these women as Syrian in style)This short hairstyle may be adopted from the group of Nubian women whoprecede the Syrians in this picture A naked goddess mounted on a horse isalso portrayed wearing short hair and a large earring (Fig 83 Brunner-Traut197929-30 NO5 PI V Petersen 1973 No 31 However Petersen idemsuggests that the goddess is wearing a helmet) The Hittite princess bride ofRamses II is shown with short hair (Fig 84) but she has been dressed upEgyptian style for the celebrations so her hairstyle is not necessarilysignificant

In Egyptian art this short hairstyle is characteristic of Nubian women (Fig85 Davies amp Gardiner 1926 PI xxx University of Chicago 1930 PI 9Ricke 1967 PIs 89 Brack amp Brack 1980 PI 50 Dziobeck 1992 PI 1) Itis true that the front part of Woman No 6s hairstyle tapers back from herforehead whereas most Nubian women wear their hair in a thick fringeHowever Nubian women are depicted with this type of central parting in afew New Kingdom tombs such as those of Rekhmire (Davies 1943 PI xxii)and Haremheb (Brack amp Brack 1980 PI 50 see also University of Chicago1930 PI 9)

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Fig 7 71 Ivory from Megiddo (after Loud 1939 No 159) 72 Ivory from Megiddo (afteribid No 160)73 Bronze plaque from Hazor (after Redford 1992197 Fig 71)

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Image No 7

This person wears its hair tapering to the nape of the neck Syro-Canaanitewomen sometimes wear their hair tapering to a point (Muller 1906 PI 9)although usually their hair is somewhat longer than that of Image NO7 andthe pointed tip of their hairstyle falls farther back behind their shoulderslO

(Fig 86) A woman portrayed on one of the Megiddo ivories has the samehairstyle (Loud 1939 No 2b)

This image may represent another Syro-Canaanite woman A more remotepossibility is that this image represents a Hittite man Hittite men wore theirhair in a queue and had bald foreheads In the reliefs at Medinet Habu the linemarking the front of the Hittite mens bald pates is not necessarily drawn in(Fig 87) Hittite men generally wore their hair much longer but there are afew examples of Hittite men whose hair only reaches to the back of their necks(Figs 87-92 see also Kuentz 1928 PI xviii)

There is a small possibility that Hittite women may also have worn thisstyle but the evidence is ambiguous In the Ramesseum relief of the siege ofDapur a group of people are shown leaving the city bearing baskets ofprovisions and begging for peace (Fig 93) Their hair tapers to theirshoulders Wreszinski (1935 PI 109) and HeIck (1962343) suggest thatthese people are the ruler of the city and the women of his house On the otherhand some of the dead warriors lying on the battlefield have exactly the samehairstyle so the figures accompanying the ruler are not necessarily women Inany case their hair is too long to be compared to this figure

There is no parallel for this figure in Aegean art

Image No 8

So little is visible of Image NO8 that any discussion of her coiffure wouldbe inconclusive

10 Some of the figures in the siege of Ullaza (University of Chicago 1932 PI 87) have thishairstyle but they are not necessarily women A decorated spoon in the Rijksmuseum vonOudheiden at Leiden has a similar hairstyle but since the woman is naked it is difficult totell whether she represents a foreigner (Eggebrecht 1987 No 246) The same applies tothe decorated spoon Louvre N-I728 (Vandier dAbbadie 197214-15)

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Fig 8 81 Goddess on the Yazilikaya rock carvings (after Kohlmeyer 1995 Fig 9) 82Women from the tomb of Rekhmire (after Davies 1943 PI Ivii) 83 Goddess onhorseback (drawing after Brunner-Traut 1956 No 16 PI viii) 84 The Hittiteprincess from the Marriage Stele of Ramses IT(after Lepsius 1849-1859 PI 196) 85Nubian women (after Davies 1905 PI xxviii) 86 Syro-Canaanite woman from thetomb ofRekhmire (after Davies 1943 PI xxiii) 87-8 Hittite warriors from MedinetHabu (after University of Chicago 1932 PI 87)

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The Children of the Sea People

The child standing by Wagon NO5 (Fig 22) wears a single long lock of hairgrowing from the crown of his head 11 This hairstyle is characteristic ofSyro-Canaanite children of both sexes in New Kingdom reliefs12(Fig 94 Davies1905 PI xxxiX)13

Children often appear in New Kingdom scenes of siege or battle beinglifted over the walls of a besieged city in Syria or Canaan (Fig 95) It is notclear whether these children are being sacrificed to the gods to change thecourse of the battle presented to Pharaoh as hostages or helped to escape(Keel 1975 Spalinger 1977-8 Feucht 1990b33-39 Donohue 1992) In thisinstance we suggest that they are being helped to escape (Keel 1975456 Thechildren appear to be on the point of collapse and their chances of escape areprobably slim Keel suggests that fear of Pharaoh immobilizes the childrenwith terror and they sink to the ground unable to stir)

Donohue (199283) suggests that the women are scooping the children upinto the wagons before the advancing enemy but this is unlikely If they weretrying to clamber into the wagons they would be facing inwards and probablyusing their legs to get a purchase on the side of the wagon as they clamber upit (The same applies to children in scenes of besieged cities There are onlytwo examples of children who could conceivably be climbing into the city (thelittle girl on the left in Fig 95 see also Keel 1975 Fig 19)

The fact that the older children are dressed as Sea Peoples may suggestpatrilineal behaviour in the immigrant society - at least in regard to costume

Summary

The limitations of this type of source material preclude absolute conclusionsThe Aegean paintings and statuettes come from a different artistic traditionthan the Medinet Habu reliefs discrepancies between the two are inevitableEgyptian depictions of foreigners have their limitations and since the artists atMedinet Habu may have been unfamiliar with these hairstyles it is difficult to tellhow accurate these portrayals are We may however make a few suggestions

11 The second line emerging from the crown of his head in University of Chicago 1930 PI49D is probably a scratch rather than a second lock

12 See also Pritchard 1954 No 45 (the man presenting this child is said to be the ruler ofTunip and can therefore be located in Syria) Save Stiderbergh 1957 PI xxiii Martin1989PI 105 University of Chicago 1932PI 87Feucht 1990a198 n 82 points out that apart from the single plait children from Syriamay also sport two plaits a head of short hair or two clumps of hair There is quite avariety of hairstyles

13 The parallel to this scene in the tomb ofHuya describes this tribute as coming from Kharuand Kush (Sandman 193837 line 1)

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Fig 9 91 Hittite warrior from Medinet Habu (after University of Chicago 1932 PI 87) 92Hittite warriors from Abu Simbel (after Wreszinski 1935 PI 170) 93 Group ofHittites from the siege of Dapur (after ibid PI 109) 94 Syro-Canaanite women andchild (after Davies 1947 PI viii) 95 Girl being let down over the city wall relief ofthe siege of Ashkelon (after Keel 1975Fig 21)

Woman NO4 with her long straight plait conforms to Egyptian depictionsof Syro-Canaanite women although she also has parallels in Aegean artWoman No 1 has parallels in both the Egyptian tradition and the Aegeantradition although the Egyptian parallels are stronger and she is also probablya Syro-Canaanite woman Image NO7 if she is a woman is vaguely similarto certain Egyptian pictures of Syro-Canaanite women but her hair is rathershort to provide a good parallel it should fall to a point further down her back

No exact parallels are known for the hairstyle of No 2 in either Egyptian orAegean art It is not clear whether this hairstyle may represent an ethnic groupunknown to us Alternatively middotdifferent hairstyles may have been worn bywomen at different periods of their lives - married ~omen and maidens forexample or old women and young ones or pregnant women They may alsocharacterize different social standings or occupations

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In some cases the persons hairstyle is incomplete It is masked by overlappinglinages or by the edge of the wagon as in Images Nos 3 and 6If they had longer hair these people might have hairstyles like those of Women 12or 4 If Image No3 had long hair she would have excellent parallels in Aegeanart where hair ribbons are very common If the bag-shaped hairstyle of Image No3 is complete as it stands however then the best parallels are actually fomIdamongst Syrian men Woman No 6s short hair is occasionally paralleled amongstSyrian women it is much more characteristic of Nubian women however Notonly did themiddotEgyptians have Nubian servants and slaves but many Egyptians werethemselves of Nubian stock so that women of this type could be found throughoutthe territories under Egyptian rule

The Sea Peoples were accompanied by men from the areas they traversedThey may have been taken as slaves or prisoners or maybe they decided tojoin the Sea Peoples advance in order to seek their fortunes abroad Such arethe wagon drivers Nos 5 and 9 who are definitely Syro-Canaanites andperhaps Image No3 ifhe is a Syrian or Image No7 if he is a Hittite

This picture of a complex and highly diverse origin of the group of Sea Peoplesportrayed in the Medinet Habu reliefs (which mayor may not be a typical group)suggests that it is unlikely that the Philistines were 100 pure Mycenaean Greeks(Stager 1995337 following Mazar 1988255-6 260) Like Sherratt (1998307)we characterize the Sea Peoples as cosmopolitan although we still envisagemany of them as Aegeans Other groups or individuals would have joined the SeaPeoples in northern Syria and Canaan

Conclusions

In the Medinet Habu reliefs the Sea Peoples are accompanied by at leastone woman who is clearly Syro-Canaanite and also by women with parallelsin Aegean art A similar conclusion was also reached by an analysis ofmaterial culture assemblages from Syria and Palestine (Bunimovitz andYasur-Landau forthcoming a b) attributed to the first stages of Aegeansettlement at the beginning of the Iron Age In these studies evidence ofbehavioural patterns of Aegean origin such as weaving with a loom equippedwith round unperfonlted loomweights and cooking on a hearth with Aegeanstyle cooking-pots were found side by side with local textile manufacture andcooking methods These finds may be cautiously interpreted as evidence of thepresence of women of both Aegean and local origin at these sites

The evidence from the reliefs shows that the Sea Peoples were accompaniedby men and women from Syria andor Canaan and by children probably theSea Peoples offspring by these women This indicates that the Sea Peoplesspent time in Syria andor Canaan before they continued on their way to Egypt

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Rather than envisaging the Sea Peoples immigration as a rapid concerted attack ata number of points simultaneously (Stager 1995) we should consider it as acomplex situation of not necessarily coordinated movements by different groupsfrom different areas

The size of the children depicted in the Medinet Habu reliefs may give ussome indication of how long the Sea Peoples had been present in the areabefore they moved south to Egypt If the younger children are the offspring ofthese women and the Sea Peoples the latter must have reached the area someseven or six years earlier if the older children wearing Philistine headgearare also the offspring of these households then we should think in terms of aninterval of thirteen years or more A similar observation was made by Singer(1987418) on the basis of the tablets from Ugarit and Ras Ibn Hani Thismeans that the fall of Ugarit should have occurred some fifteen to twentyyears before Ramses Ills war with the Sea Peoples It is quite acceptablehowever to postulate a short period of consolidation before the Sea Peoplesattempted to surge down into Egypt 14

The group we see in the Medinet Habu reliefs with their families would thenbe a second wave of settlement

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank I Finkelstein I Singer S Bunimovitz and the lateP Beck for reading and commenting on earlier drafts of this paper We wouldalso like to thank the Griffith Institute Oxford for allowing us to quotematerial from the unpublished notebooks of Sir Alan Gardiner

REFERENCES

Akurgal E 1962 The Art of the Hittites LondonAldred C 1973 Akhenaten and Nefertiti New YorkAstrom P 1992 Approaches to the Study of Women in Ancient Cyprus In

Astrom P ed Acta Cypria Acts of an International Congress onCypriote Archaeology held in GOteborg on 22-24 August 1991 Part 2(Studies in Mediterranean Archaeology Pocket-Book 117) Jonsered 5-8

14 On the other hand the size of the children depicted in the reliefs may not necessarily haveany historical significance Nor are these children necessarily these womens offspring bythe Sea People they even may be these womens children by previous partners in whichcase this part of the argument is irrelevant The Philistine youths may even be youngPhilistines who have been assigned to guarding the women and children as a relativelysafe post in view of their youth and inexperience

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Bietak M 1996 Avaris The Capital othe Hyksos LondonBolger D 1994 Engendering Cypriot Archaeology Female Roles and

Statuses before the Bronze Age Opuscula Atheniensia XX 19-17Brack A and Brack A 1980 Das Grab des Haremheb Theben Nr 78

MainzBrug JF 1984 A Literary and Archaeological Study othe Philistines Vols

1 and 2 MichiganBrunner-Traut E 1956 Die altiigyptischen Scherbenbilder (Bildostraka) der

Deutschen Museen und Sammlungen WiesbadenBrunner-Traut E 1979 Egyptian Artists Sketches LondonBuchholz H-G and Karageorghis V 1973 Prehistoric Greece and Cyprus

LondonBunimovitz S and Yasur-Landau A 1996 Philistine and Israelite Pottery A

Comparative Approach to the Question of Pots and People Tel Aviv2388-101

Bunimovitz S and Yasur-Landau A Forthcominga Behavioural Aspects of12th Century BCE Aegean Immigrants in Palestine and Cyprus

Bunimovitz S and Yasur-Landau A Forthcominglb Women and AegeanImmigration to Cyprus in the 12th Century BCE

Caubert A 1998 The International Style A point of View from the Levantand Syria In Cline EH and Harris-Cline D eds The Aegean and theOrient in the Second Millennium (Aegaeum 18) Liege 105-111

Cifola B 1991 The Terminology of Ramses Ills Historical Records with aFormal Analysis of the War Scenes Orientalia 609-57

Cifola B 1994 The Role of the Sea Peoples at the end of the Late BronzeAge A Reassessment of Textual and Archaeological Evidence OriensAntiqui Miscellanea 11-23

Cline EH 1995 Tinker Tailor Soldier Sailor Minoans and MyceneansAbroad In Laffineur R and Niemeier W-D eds Politeia Societyand State in the Aegean Bronze Age (Aegaeum 12) Liege 265-287

Conkey MW and Spector J 1984 Archaeology and the Study of GenderAdvances in Archaeological Method and Theory 71-38

Darnell J C 1991 Supposed Depictions of the Hittites in the Amarna PeriodStudien zur Altiigyptischen Kultur 18 113-140

Davies N de Garis 1905 The Rock Tombs of El Amarna II LondonDavies N de Garis 1908 The Rock Tombs of El Amarna VI LondonDavies N de Garis 1928 The Work of the Graphic Branch of the

Expedition Bulletin othe Metropolitan Museum 0Art 23237-48Davies N de Garis 1932 The Work of the Graphic Branch of the

Expedition Bulletin of the Metropolitan Museum of Art 273 51-62

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1Wagon no 4

Fig 2 21 Wagon NO4 and 22 Wagon NO5 both from the Medinet Habu reliefs (afterUniversity of Chicago 1930 PI 34)

Women Nos 12 and 4 wear their long hair in a plait or tapering lock (Wehave used the term plait although no markings are visible the women could havebound their hair with thread or ribbon at intervals) Woman 4s hair is a simpleplait Woman ls plait ends in a curl and Woman 2s plait is short and stubby

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with a rounded end (In the photograph [University of Chicago 1930 PI 50a]the end is a little more frayed) Whereas Woman NO4 clearly has a singleplait resting on the nape of her neck Woman No 1 is somewhat moreambivalent She might have only one single curl or there might be two curlsone on either side of her face although only one of them is visible Image No6 has short hair and wears a round earring Image No3 has a bag-shapedhairstyle and wears a fillet bound about her brow Image No 7s hair tapers toa point at the nape of her neck The hair of Image No 8 is not visible apartfrom the side of her face Images 5 and 9 are bald or have a veryclose-cropped haircut

Parallels to the women in the Medinet Habu Reliefs

Foreign women in Egyptian art

It may be possible for us to identify the origin of the women accompanyingthe Sea Peoples from depictions of foreign women in contemporary Egyptianart Women are depicted amongst the inhabitants of foreign cities besieged bythe Egyptian army in reliefs commemorating the victories of the Egyptianking They are shown in tombs of the elite as prisoners of war slaves or evenvisiting from abroad Foreign women are also occasionally depicted on ostracaor on omamental objects such as cosmetic vessels and decorated spoons (Theevidence from the latter group of objects is less helpful for our purposes sinceif these figures are not wearing distinctively foreign dress it is not clearwhether they were actually intended to be foreign women)

However there are problems with this type of evidence Unfortunately theEgyptians were not particularly precise in their depictions of foreigners (egDavies 1934191) They might depict one ethnic group and label the figureswith the name of another group (Pritchard 195141) or even concoct a hybridfigure dressed in garments from different countries (Wachsmaml 19876-9)We should also note that the Egyptian artists were not necessarily sensitive tochanges in foreign fashions (ibid 46)

Moreover not only do the Egyptians not necessarily name their depictionsof foreigners but when they do label them they often use general terms suchas Retenu which may indicate both Syria and Canaans It is therefore difficultto fine-tune regional differences within the major groupings of foreigners

S AH Gardiner asserts that in the New Kingdom the term Upper Retenu often abbreviatedRetenu tends to be used for Syria whereas the term Djahi refers to Palestine andLebanon However the term Retenu may mean not just specifically Syria but it may also

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One should note two further factors that mayor may not affect the accuracyof the depiction of foreign women of suspected Aegean origin by Egyptianartists

Firstly only Aegean men are depicted in Eighteenth Dynasty art This factmay minimize the possibility that the Twentieth Dynasty artists copied Aegeanwomens hairstyles from earlier reliefs

Secondly the interaction between the Aegean world and Egypt decreasedconsiderably during the twelfth century BCE (Weinstein 1998188-189)limiting the interactions between Aegean and Egyptian art in a way that mayinfluence the accuracy of an Egyptian artist depicting hairstyles completelyunfamiliar to him

Another possible source for the hairstyles of the women in the MedinetHabu reliefs is Aegean art The importance of the comparison with Aegeanhairstyles derives not only from the large variety of hairstyles known to usfrom various types of Aegean art (frescoes drawings on clay vessels figurinesand ivory carvings) but also because the great majority of scholars argue thatthe Sea Peoples originated in the Aegean Finding Aegean parallels to thehairstyles in Medinet Habu especially those to which no parallel is found inEgyptian art can confirm the theories of an Aegean origin for at least part ofthe Sea Peoples In this paper we will compare the hairstyles of the womenfrom Medinet Habu to hairstyles from the Aegean world from the fifteenth tothe twelfth centuries BCE preferably the hairstyles of real flesh-and-bloodwomen rather than goddesses (or priestesses who imitate the hairstyles ofgoddesses)

There is a certain methodological problem in comparing Egyptian andAegean art because of the difference in their iconographic preconceptions It isclear that parallels to the figures of Medinet Habu from Egyptian art will becloser than those from the Aegean But these are not adequate grounds toassert that this type of comparison is impossible The long-term mutualexchanges between the Aegean cultural sphere and Egypt also led tointerchanges and influences in the area of art (Cline 1995 Caubet 1998Rehak and Younger 1998) In many cases the depictions of Aegeans inEgyptian art (executed by Egyptian artists as distinct from those executed byAegean artists) are remarkably similar to the figures in Aegean art

be used in its more traditional sense to comprise both Syria and Palestine (Gardiner1947145-147)Recently Vandersleyen (199591) argues that Retenu begins at the eastern border of tileDelta He bases his argument on the participation of men from Retenu in tile MiddleKingdom mining expeditions at Serabit el-Khadem in the Sinai On tile otller hand it isnot clear that these men are indigenous to the Sinai Bietak (199619) argues that theycould well have been Syro-Palestinian mercenaries based at Tell el-Dablta

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The most important factor however may actually be the cultural differencethat dictates how foreigners are represented in contrast to oneself(Wachsmaltn 19874-26 Cline 1995 Leahy 1995226)

There is a great deal of variety in the hairstyles of the Aegean which canprobably be attributed to differences in ethnic background age social statusand period (Koehl 1986 Kontorli-Papadopoulou 199696)

Image No 1Woman No ls long curling lock of hair has various parallels amongst

Syrian or northern women represented in Egyptian art Examples are a womenin the harem at el-Amarna (Fig 31) a woman in a siege scene on the Karnaktalatat (Smith 1965 Fig 210) and also a northern female prisoner beingclubbed by Nefertiti on a relief in the Boston Museum (Aldred 1973 No 57)

In a variant of this hairstyle a single lock falls down the womans spine andcurls upwards at its tip This hairstyle is found on an ornamental ivory hornoffered as tribute by a Syrian in a tomb painting in the British Museum (Fig32)6 A woman in the scene of the siege of Ullaza at Medinet Habu is alsoportrayed with a curl falling behind her back (Fig 33) However thiswomans curl is much thinner than that of Woman No1

There are several other cases of figures whose hair is drawn into a longsingle curl but they are not necessarily foreign women (the woman in Fig 34wears a diaphanous Egyptian-style gown Roeder 1969 PI 177 PC 80 isprobably a Libyan man [ibid 187 199] the girl portrayed in Wenig 196785is probably wearing the sidelock of youth)

Two other hairstyles with dangling curls are known in ancient Egyptianportrayals of foreigners but their connection with Woman No 1 is moretenuous In the first instance the woman wears a curl or lock falling over herear and a narrow curl at the back of her head (Figs 35 and 36 Davies 1908PIs xvii xix maybe Hall 1931 PI XV2)

Dangling curls also appear in the New Kingdom iconography of femalesphinxes both in Egypt and in Canaan (eg in the Megiddo ivories) and oncertain ornamental vessels (Fig No 37) Bryan (199669-72) relates thesphinxes curls to the sidelock worn by Libyan males A connection betweenthe Sea Peoples and the Libyans is attested for the fifth year of Merneptahwhen a coalition of Libyans and various Sea Peoples attacked Egypt

6 Omamental vases and ivory tusks are common in Egyptian depictions of tribute from Syriaand Canaan during this period In his victory reliefs at Kamak Seti I presents omamentsof this type to the gods as thank-offerings after campaigns against several differentenemies - against the Shasu Hittites Syrians and Libyans - so the vases in these reliefscannot be identified as booty from any particular area

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However as Cifola (19943) points out these groups are not the same as thosewho came into contact with Ramses III with the exception of the Shekelesh Itshould be noted that the prototype here is male (we know very little about theappearan~e of female Libyans in this period) Most importantly the otherfeatures of the sphinxes hairstyle do not parallel the arrangement of WomanNOls hair The female sphinxes generally wear the remainder of their hairpiled upon their heads or concealed in a close-fitting low flat hat which isvery different from the flowing locks of Woman No1

Woman NO1 may have had two curling tresses one on each side of herface although only one is shown In the Medinet Habu relief of the siege ofUllaza a dying person is shown full face with two long narrow locks ofcurling hair one on each side of her face (Fig 3 8) This figure is probably awoman (Darnell 1991136) but not inevitably so since in the same relief thishairstyle is also worn by a warrior dying on the battlefield (Fig 4 1 cf alsoUniversity of Chicago 1936 PI 114)

These two narrow curling locks should not be confused with the scroll wig ofthe naked goddess common in Syro-Canaanite art and derived from the scroll wigof the goddess Hathor Scroll wig curls are generally very much tighter than thecurl of Woman NO1 and reach to the goddess shoulders Side views of the scrollwig in three dimensions can be seen on ivory heads found at Megiddo (Fig 42)

In Minoan and Mycenean culture where long hair is common(Kontorli-Papadopolou 199696-97) many parallels can be found for womenwith their hair tied back Two women from the House of the Ladies at Therafrom the LM IA are suitable parallels (Figs 4344) as are two women on achariot in the Boar Hunt fresco (Immerwahr 1990 PI 69) at Tiryns from theLH IIIB period (This illustration is a reconstruction but enough of theoriginal remains to illustrate our point) Good parallels to hair drawn back inlong plaits can be found in examples of goddesses with upraised arms withlong plaits on their backs from Postpalatial Crete These can be found in theShrine of the Double Axes at Knossos dated to the LM IlIB (Gesell 198542181 PI 46a) and the temple and cult rooms at Karphi (ibid45 182 PIs 48-49)dated to the LM mc period (Figs 45 46) Earlier parallels are from the LHI1IA1 painted pottery from Kition (Vermule and Karageorghis 198217-19Figs III1 0 III 12) A lesser parallel to the headdress ending with a curlinglock can be seen in the depiction in ivory of goddesses on the Minet el-Beidaivory pyxis and the ivory plaque from Tomb 49 at Mycenae (Rehak 199252-52 PI XVIc XVIIa) Since the curling lock in these depictions is a part of aseemingly more complex hairstyle than the one used by Woman NO1 and theorigin (Syro-Canaanite or Aegean) of this deity type (Rehak 199253) isunknown the contribution of these parallels is limited

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Fig 3 31 Syro-Canaanite woman from the royal harem El-Amarna (after Davies 1908 PIxvii) 32 Tribute bearer bringing ivory horn decorated with woman wearing long curl(after Keel 1975 Fig 8) 33 Woman from relief of the siege of Ullaza (afterUniversity of Chicago 1932 PI 87) 34 Woman wearing a single long curl (afterPage 1983 No 49) 35 Female captives from Syro-Canaan and Nubia (after Smithand Redford 1976 PI 27)36 Women in besieged Syrian city (after Ricke 1967P112)37 Ornamental vessels decorated with female heads (after University of Chicago1986 PI 8) 38 Woman from relief ofthe siege ofUllaza (after ibid 1932 PI 87)

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A partial parallel to the long curling hair of Woman NO1 can be found inthe Mykenaia figure from the cultic centre in Mycenae in the LH IIIB (Fig 47)as part of a more complex hairstyle which also includes a hair ribbon and curlson the forehead7 A closer parallel appears on the krater that was found inMinet el-Beida (Venneule and Karageorghis 198221 Fig IIIl9) from the LHIlIA In this scene appear two sword-bearing figures with similar hairstylesVenneule and Karageorghis suggest that these figures represent two captainsApart from their swords however these figures have no indications of genderand we should not rule out the possibility that they may be womens

In general the depictions of Syro-Canaanite women in Egyptian art arecloser to Image NO1 than the parallels from the Aegean This figure probablyrepresents a Syro-Canaanite woman although it is not impossible that itdepicts a woman from the Aegean

Image No 2

No exact parallels to Woman NO2 are known from Egyptian depictions offoreign women No close parallels to this figures hairstyle are found inAegean art either Does this mean that this woman came from outside the areaaccessible to the Egyptians (between Libya and Anatolia) and the Myceneansand Minoans (mainland Greece and the islands)

Alternatively Image NO2 might depict a special hairstyle for older womenfrom one of these areas One should note the age differentiation in hairstylesfor both males and females in the Aegean world (Davis 1986 Koehl 1986)By contrast older women are seldom represented in Egyptian art (Janssen ampJanssen 1996 14) they are unlikely to have been taken as prisoners of warunless they had some special skill

Image No 3

There are several parallels for Syro-Canaanite women wearing a filletaround their heads or hair-ribbons although it is by no means the norm

7 The Medinet Habu reliefs omit details such as curls on the forehead and so on whichappear frequently in the Aegean frescoes of women This phenomenon may originate fromthe difference in the artistic medium this type of detail is more difficult to represent inrelief than in fresco A similar phenomenon of generalization appears within Aegeanculture itself if we compare the hairstyles depicted in frescoes with those portrayed onceranlics (cf Vermeule amp Karageorghis 198217 for the parallel between the Kitionfragment and La Parisienne from Knossos)

8 Compare the sword-bearing figures on the Homage Krater (ibid23-24) which areidentical with the figures preceding them including the necklaces they wear

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Fig 4 41 Dying warrior from relief of the siege ofUllaza (after University of Chicago 1932PI 87) 42 Ivoryheads from Megiddo wearing scroll wigs (drawing after Loud 1939Nos 192-193)43 Woman from The House of the Ladies Thera (drawing afterhnmerwahr 1990 colour PI XI) 44 Woman from The House of the Ladies Thera(drawing after ibid colour PI XII) 45 Statuette of goddess from Karphi (drawingafter Buchholz amp Karageorghis 1973 Fig 1267) 46 Statuette of goddess fromKnossos (drawing after ibid Fig 1269) 47 The Mykenaia figure from Mycenae(drawing after hnmerwahr 1990 colour PI XX) 48 Women captives from the tombofHaremheb (after Martin 1989PI 105)

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Parallels include the women in the tomb of Haremheb (Fig 48) and in thetomb of Rekhmire (Fig 5 1) Another possible parallel are the women captiveson the Karnak talatat (Fig 35 above the ribbon does not appear on theoriginal relief blocks but is restored in the frontispiece of Redford 1984) aswell as those on three decorated spoons (Fig 52 Fechheimer 1921138Vandier d Abbadie 197220-21)

The women from the tomb of Reklullire are said to be serfs from the templeof Amun brought by Tuthmosis III as captives from his campaignsTuthmosis northern campaigns ranged from Canaan to the EuphratesTuthmosis declaration that he gave prisoners from the siege of Megiddo to thetemple of Amun (Sethe 1961 (Urk IV)74210-7438) may indicate that thesewomen were Canaanites but it is also possible that they are prisoners of warfrom Tuthmosis other campaigns to Lebanon or Syria

There are many parallels for both women and men wearing a fillet aroundtheir heads from the Aegean (Kontorli-Papadopoulou 199695) such as thehead of the Lady with the Lily from the LH lIlB cultic centre of Mycenae(Fig 53) and the pyxis-bearers from Tiryns (Fig 54) A parallel even closerin time may be the depiction of a woman with a hair ribbon on the LH IIICWarrior Vase from Mycenae (Venllule and Karageorghis 1982130-131Fig X142) Unfortunately only the frontal part of the womans head hassurvived leaving the rest of the headdress unknown to us

Nevertheless we know of no other instance of a Syrian woman with abag-shaped hairstyle like this one On the other hand the back of Image No3 s hairstyle is hidden by Image No2 she might conceivably have a hairstylelike Women Nos 12 or 7

It is most likely that this woman comes from the Aegean However if weassume that nothing is missing from the hairstyle then there is a more remotepossibility that this figure is a not a woman from Syria but a Syrian man aprisoner or a slave This bag-shaped hairstyle is characteristic of Syro-Canaanitemen in Egyptian art of this period although they are traditionally shown withbeards (HeIck 1962346) By contrast in Canaanite art there are manyinstances of clean-shaven men (Figs 71-3 below see also Loud 1939 Nos2 161 162) It is also extremely common for Syrian men to wear filletsaround their brows (Fig 61 Ricke 1967 PI 12 Martin 1989 PI 105)

Image No 4

Women with a single long plait of hair like No 4 appear in various NewKingdom contexts as representative of northerners or Syrians (HeIck 1962347)There are two variants of this hairstyle a single plait falling down the womansback and a plait falling to the side of her face which could be one of a pair

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Fig 5 51 Syro-Canaanite women from the tomb ofRekhmire (after Davies 1943 PI xxiii)52 Decorated spoon in the form of a Syro-Canaanite woman (after Wallert 1967PI24) 53 The Lady with the Lily from Mycenae (drawing afterKontorli-Papadopulou 1996 PI 94) 54 Pyxis-bearer from Tiryns (drawing afterImmerwahr 1990 PI 56)

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Women wearing a plait straight down their back appear in the tomb ofRekhmire (Fig 62 Davies 192840 followed by Feucht 1990a194 suggeststhat these women are Hittites) This hairstyle is also worn by a woman in SetiIs reliefs of his campaign against the Shasu (Fig 63) This woman is probablyone of the Shasu although since Setis battle against the Shasu takes place enroute to Gaza she might be a Canaanite taken captive by the Shasu This styleis also attested on an ivory figure from Megiddo (Loud 1939 No 175)

Women with a plait to one side appear on the throne of Queen Tiy in thetomb of Kheruef (Fig 64) and in the tombs of Menkheperresoneb (Fig 65)and Amenmose (Davies 1933 PI xxxiv)9 On the throne of Tiy such womenappear as typical northerners contrasted with Nubian captives in the tombs ofMenkheperresoneb and Amenmose their origin is not specified Plaits hangingto one side also appear on two decorated spoons (Fig 52 above and Vandierd Abbadie 197220-21) and on a servant girl from the tomb of Intef (althoughthis girl is not said explicitly to be a foreigner and the end of her plait isreconstructed) (Davies 193253)

Note incidentally that in Egyptian art this hairstyle is always worn bySyro-Canaanite slaves or captives and not by women from the same countrieswhen at home (with the possible exception of the Shasu or Canaanite womanin Fig 63) Presumably female slaves tied their long hair back to keep it outof the way whilst working and this practice became generic for theiconography of Syro-Canaanite captive women

Aegean art includes numerous examples of women with plaits Howevermost of these examples are more similar to the curling lock of Woman No1The best parallels to the straight plait of Woman NO4 are the simple plaitsworn by female statuettes However the latter may reflect the limitations ofworking in clay as opposed to paint rather than actually reproducing adifferent hairstyle (see note 7 above)

There may also be parallels in Hittite art for tIlis single long plait The InandikPithos (OzgUy 198883-92 Fig 64) dated to the Old Hittite Period (Fig 66Hoffner 1995558-559 Figs 1 and 2) depicts scenes of preparation for a weddingin a wealthy house Some women wear either a single plait or a waist-lengthheaddress whereas others wear all-enveloping shawls covering the head Asinlilar plait or headdress is worn by the queen in an orthostat from Alaca Hoyiik(Akurgal 1962 PI 92) dated before the 13th century BCE (Kohlmeyer19952647) and also under the crowns worn by the goddesses on the Yazilikayarock carvings (Fig 81 ibid2650 Fig 9) dated to the 13th century BCE

9 Gardiner Notebook 28819 is a photograph of a painting of the wall here we see that thewomens plaits are much the same colour as their garments which is why the-plait doesnot show up clearly in photographs (Meyer 1913721 Wreszinski 1923275)

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Fig 6 61 Syro-Canaanite men wearing fillets (after Davies 1947 PI viii) 62Syro-Canaanite women from the tomb of Reklunire (after Davies 1943 PI Ivii) 63Woman from the relief of Seti Is battle against the Shasu (after University ofChicago 1986 PI 12) 64 Syro-Canaanite and Nubian female captives decoratingQueen Tiys throne (after University of Chicago 1980 PI 47) 65 Syro-Canaanitewoman from the tomb of Menkheperresoneb (after Davies 1933 PI v) 66 Womenfrom the Inandik pithos (after Hoffner 1995Fig 2)

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Images No 5 and 9

Images NO5 and 9 are either bald or have their hair closely cropped Giventhat both heads are damaged however this observation is not entirely certain

Men with sho~t hair are very rare in Aegean art~ where only babies andyoung children wear their hair short (Koehl 1986100-101) On the otherhand men with close-cropped hair or close-fitting caps (Stern 1989) arecommon in Canaanite art (Figs 71-3 Loud 1939 Nos 2 162) Interestinglyenough these Canaanites are shown driving chariots (ibid Nos 2 159 161)which provides a good parallel to NO9 the driver of Wagon NO5 Image No5 may be the driver of Wagon No3 Unlike his colleague No9 who is stillgoading the oxen onwards NO5 has given up hope and raises his hands indespair

Image No 6

The upper rim of the chariot hides the back of Woman No 6s neck Itwould be possible to reconstruct her hairstyle with a long narrow plait like thewomen already described It would also be possible to envisage her as havingshort hair However it is unusual to find women from Syro-Palestineportrayed in this way A group of women depicted in the tomb of Reklunirehave short hair (Fig 82 Davies 192840 followed by Feucht 1990a195identifies the long wrap-around dresses of these women as Syrian in style)This short hairstyle may be adopted from the group of Nubian women whoprecede the Syrians in this picture A naked goddess mounted on a horse isalso portrayed wearing short hair and a large earring (Fig 83 Brunner-Traut197929-30 NO5 PI V Petersen 1973 No 31 However Petersen idemsuggests that the goddess is wearing a helmet) The Hittite princess bride ofRamses II is shown with short hair (Fig 84) but she has been dressed upEgyptian style for the celebrations so her hairstyle is not necessarilysignificant

In Egyptian art this short hairstyle is characteristic of Nubian women (Fig85 Davies amp Gardiner 1926 PI xxx University of Chicago 1930 PI 9Ricke 1967 PIs 89 Brack amp Brack 1980 PI 50 Dziobeck 1992 PI 1) Itis true that the front part of Woman No 6s hairstyle tapers back from herforehead whereas most Nubian women wear their hair in a thick fringeHowever Nubian women are depicted with this type of central parting in afew New Kingdom tombs such as those of Rekhmire (Davies 1943 PI xxii)and Haremheb (Brack amp Brack 1980 PI 50 see also University of Chicago1930 PI 9)

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Fig 7 71 Ivory from Megiddo (after Loud 1939 No 159) 72 Ivory from Megiddo (afteribid No 160)73 Bronze plaque from Hazor (after Redford 1992197 Fig 71)

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Image No 7

This person wears its hair tapering to the nape of the neck Syro-Canaanitewomen sometimes wear their hair tapering to a point (Muller 1906 PI 9)although usually their hair is somewhat longer than that of Image NO7 andthe pointed tip of their hairstyle falls farther back behind their shoulderslO

(Fig 86) A woman portrayed on one of the Megiddo ivories has the samehairstyle (Loud 1939 No 2b)

This image may represent another Syro-Canaanite woman A more remotepossibility is that this image represents a Hittite man Hittite men wore theirhair in a queue and had bald foreheads In the reliefs at Medinet Habu the linemarking the front of the Hittite mens bald pates is not necessarily drawn in(Fig 87) Hittite men generally wore their hair much longer but there are afew examples of Hittite men whose hair only reaches to the back of their necks(Figs 87-92 see also Kuentz 1928 PI xviii)

There is a small possibility that Hittite women may also have worn thisstyle but the evidence is ambiguous In the Ramesseum relief of the siege ofDapur a group of people are shown leaving the city bearing baskets ofprovisions and begging for peace (Fig 93) Their hair tapers to theirshoulders Wreszinski (1935 PI 109) and HeIck (1962343) suggest thatthese people are the ruler of the city and the women of his house On the otherhand some of the dead warriors lying on the battlefield have exactly the samehairstyle so the figures accompanying the ruler are not necessarily women Inany case their hair is too long to be compared to this figure

There is no parallel for this figure in Aegean art

Image No 8

So little is visible of Image NO8 that any discussion of her coiffure wouldbe inconclusive

10 Some of the figures in the siege of Ullaza (University of Chicago 1932 PI 87) have thishairstyle but they are not necessarily women A decorated spoon in the Rijksmuseum vonOudheiden at Leiden has a similar hairstyle but since the woman is naked it is difficult totell whether she represents a foreigner (Eggebrecht 1987 No 246) The same applies tothe decorated spoon Louvre N-I728 (Vandier dAbbadie 197214-15)

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Fig 8 81 Goddess on the Yazilikaya rock carvings (after Kohlmeyer 1995 Fig 9) 82Women from the tomb of Rekhmire (after Davies 1943 PI Ivii) 83 Goddess onhorseback (drawing after Brunner-Traut 1956 No 16 PI viii) 84 The Hittiteprincess from the Marriage Stele of Ramses IT(after Lepsius 1849-1859 PI 196) 85Nubian women (after Davies 1905 PI xxviii) 86 Syro-Canaanite woman from thetomb ofRekhmire (after Davies 1943 PI xxiii) 87-8 Hittite warriors from MedinetHabu (after University of Chicago 1932 PI 87)

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The Children of the Sea People

The child standing by Wagon NO5 (Fig 22) wears a single long lock of hairgrowing from the crown of his head 11 This hairstyle is characteristic ofSyro-Canaanite children of both sexes in New Kingdom reliefs12(Fig 94 Davies1905 PI xxxiX)13

Children often appear in New Kingdom scenes of siege or battle beinglifted over the walls of a besieged city in Syria or Canaan (Fig 95) It is notclear whether these children are being sacrificed to the gods to change thecourse of the battle presented to Pharaoh as hostages or helped to escape(Keel 1975 Spalinger 1977-8 Feucht 1990b33-39 Donohue 1992) In thisinstance we suggest that they are being helped to escape (Keel 1975456 Thechildren appear to be on the point of collapse and their chances of escape areprobably slim Keel suggests that fear of Pharaoh immobilizes the childrenwith terror and they sink to the ground unable to stir)

Donohue (199283) suggests that the women are scooping the children upinto the wagons before the advancing enemy but this is unlikely If they weretrying to clamber into the wagons they would be facing inwards and probablyusing their legs to get a purchase on the side of the wagon as they clamber upit (The same applies to children in scenes of besieged cities There are onlytwo examples of children who could conceivably be climbing into the city (thelittle girl on the left in Fig 95 see also Keel 1975 Fig 19)

The fact that the older children are dressed as Sea Peoples may suggestpatrilineal behaviour in the immigrant society - at least in regard to costume

Summary

The limitations of this type of source material preclude absolute conclusionsThe Aegean paintings and statuettes come from a different artistic traditionthan the Medinet Habu reliefs discrepancies between the two are inevitableEgyptian depictions of foreigners have their limitations and since the artists atMedinet Habu may have been unfamiliar with these hairstyles it is difficult to tellhow accurate these portrayals are We may however make a few suggestions

11 The second line emerging from the crown of his head in University of Chicago 1930 PI49D is probably a scratch rather than a second lock

12 See also Pritchard 1954 No 45 (the man presenting this child is said to be the ruler ofTunip and can therefore be located in Syria) Save Stiderbergh 1957 PI xxiii Martin1989PI 105 University of Chicago 1932PI 87Feucht 1990a198 n 82 points out that apart from the single plait children from Syriamay also sport two plaits a head of short hair or two clumps of hair There is quite avariety of hairstyles

13 The parallel to this scene in the tomb ofHuya describes this tribute as coming from Kharuand Kush (Sandman 193837 line 1)

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Fig 9 91 Hittite warrior from Medinet Habu (after University of Chicago 1932 PI 87) 92Hittite warriors from Abu Simbel (after Wreszinski 1935 PI 170) 93 Group ofHittites from the siege of Dapur (after ibid PI 109) 94 Syro-Canaanite women andchild (after Davies 1947 PI viii) 95 Girl being let down over the city wall relief ofthe siege of Ashkelon (after Keel 1975Fig 21)

Woman NO4 with her long straight plait conforms to Egyptian depictionsof Syro-Canaanite women although she also has parallels in Aegean artWoman No 1 has parallels in both the Egyptian tradition and the Aegeantradition although the Egyptian parallels are stronger and she is also probablya Syro-Canaanite woman Image NO7 if she is a woman is vaguely similarto certain Egyptian pictures of Syro-Canaanite women but her hair is rathershort to provide a good parallel it should fall to a point further down her back

No exact parallels are known for the hairstyle of No 2 in either Egyptian orAegean art It is not clear whether this hairstyle may represent an ethnic groupunknown to us Alternatively middotdifferent hairstyles may have been worn bywomen at different periods of their lives - married ~omen and maidens forexample or old women and young ones or pregnant women They may alsocharacterize different social standings or occupations

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In some cases the persons hairstyle is incomplete It is masked by overlappinglinages or by the edge of the wagon as in Images Nos 3 and 6If they had longer hair these people might have hairstyles like those of Women 12or 4 If Image No3 had long hair she would have excellent parallels in Aegeanart where hair ribbons are very common If the bag-shaped hairstyle of Image No3 is complete as it stands however then the best parallels are actually fomIdamongst Syrian men Woman No 6s short hair is occasionally paralleled amongstSyrian women it is much more characteristic of Nubian women however Notonly did themiddotEgyptians have Nubian servants and slaves but many Egyptians werethemselves of Nubian stock so that women of this type could be found throughoutthe territories under Egyptian rule

The Sea Peoples were accompanied by men from the areas they traversedThey may have been taken as slaves or prisoners or maybe they decided tojoin the Sea Peoples advance in order to seek their fortunes abroad Such arethe wagon drivers Nos 5 and 9 who are definitely Syro-Canaanites andperhaps Image No3 ifhe is a Syrian or Image No7 if he is a Hittite

This picture of a complex and highly diverse origin of the group of Sea Peoplesportrayed in the Medinet Habu reliefs (which mayor may not be a typical group)suggests that it is unlikely that the Philistines were 100 pure Mycenaean Greeks(Stager 1995337 following Mazar 1988255-6 260) Like Sherratt (1998307)we characterize the Sea Peoples as cosmopolitan although we still envisagemany of them as Aegeans Other groups or individuals would have joined the SeaPeoples in northern Syria and Canaan

Conclusions

In the Medinet Habu reliefs the Sea Peoples are accompanied by at leastone woman who is clearly Syro-Canaanite and also by women with parallelsin Aegean art A similar conclusion was also reached by an analysis ofmaterial culture assemblages from Syria and Palestine (Bunimovitz andYasur-Landau forthcoming a b) attributed to the first stages of Aegeansettlement at the beginning of the Iron Age In these studies evidence ofbehavioural patterns of Aegean origin such as weaving with a loom equippedwith round unperfonlted loomweights and cooking on a hearth with Aegeanstyle cooking-pots were found side by side with local textile manufacture andcooking methods These finds may be cautiously interpreted as evidence of thepresence of women of both Aegean and local origin at these sites

The evidence from the reliefs shows that the Sea Peoples were accompaniedby men and women from Syria andor Canaan and by children probably theSea Peoples offspring by these women This indicates that the Sea Peoplesspent time in Syria andor Canaan before they continued on their way to Egypt

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Rather than envisaging the Sea Peoples immigration as a rapid concerted attack ata number of points simultaneously (Stager 1995) we should consider it as acomplex situation of not necessarily coordinated movements by different groupsfrom different areas

The size of the children depicted in the Medinet Habu reliefs may give ussome indication of how long the Sea Peoples had been present in the areabefore they moved south to Egypt If the younger children are the offspring ofthese women and the Sea Peoples the latter must have reached the area someseven or six years earlier if the older children wearing Philistine headgearare also the offspring of these households then we should think in terms of aninterval of thirteen years or more A similar observation was made by Singer(1987418) on the basis of the tablets from Ugarit and Ras Ibn Hani Thismeans that the fall of Ugarit should have occurred some fifteen to twentyyears before Ramses Ills war with the Sea Peoples It is quite acceptablehowever to postulate a short period of consolidation before the Sea Peoplesattempted to surge down into Egypt 14

The group we see in the Medinet Habu reliefs with their families would thenbe a second wave of settlement

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank I Finkelstein I Singer S Bunimovitz and the lateP Beck for reading and commenting on earlier drafts of this paper We wouldalso like to thank the Griffith Institute Oxford for allowing us to quotematerial from the unpublished notebooks of Sir Alan Gardiner

REFERENCES

Akurgal E 1962 The Art of the Hittites LondonAldred C 1973 Akhenaten and Nefertiti New YorkAstrom P 1992 Approaches to the Study of Women in Ancient Cyprus In

Astrom P ed Acta Cypria Acts of an International Congress onCypriote Archaeology held in GOteborg on 22-24 August 1991 Part 2(Studies in Mediterranean Archaeology Pocket-Book 117) Jonsered 5-8

14 On the other hand the size of the children depicted in the reliefs may not necessarily haveany historical significance Nor are these children necessarily these womens offspring bythe Sea People they even may be these womens children by previous partners in whichcase this part of the argument is irrelevant The Philistine youths may even be youngPhilistines who have been assigned to guarding the women and children as a relativelysafe post in view of their youth and inexperience

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Bietak M 1996 Avaris The Capital othe Hyksos LondonBolger D 1994 Engendering Cypriot Archaeology Female Roles and

Statuses before the Bronze Age Opuscula Atheniensia XX 19-17Brack A and Brack A 1980 Das Grab des Haremheb Theben Nr 78

MainzBrug JF 1984 A Literary and Archaeological Study othe Philistines Vols

1 and 2 MichiganBrunner-Traut E 1956 Die altiigyptischen Scherbenbilder (Bildostraka) der

Deutschen Museen und Sammlungen WiesbadenBrunner-Traut E 1979 Egyptian Artists Sketches LondonBuchholz H-G and Karageorghis V 1973 Prehistoric Greece and Cyprus

LondonBunimovitz S and Yasur-Landau A 1996 Philistine and Israelite Pottery A

Comparative Approach to the Question of Pots and People Tel Aviv2388-101

Bunimovitz S and Yasur-Landau A Forthcominga Behavioural Aspects of12th Century BCE Aegean Immigrants in Palestine and Cyprus

Bunimovitz S and Yasur-Landau A Forthcominglb Women and AegeanImmigration to Cyprus in the 12th Century BCE

Caubert A 1998 The International Style A point of View from the Levantand Syria In Cline EH and Harris-Cline D eds The Aegean and theOrient in the Second Millennium (Aegaeum 18) Liege 105-111

Cifola B 1991 The Terminology of Ramses Ills Historical Records with aFormal Analysis of the War Scenes Orientalia 609-57

Cifola B 1994 The Role of the Sea Peoples at the end of the Late BronzeAge A Reassessment of Textual and Archaeological Evidence OriensAntiqui Miscellanea 11-23

Cline EH 1995 Tinker Tailor Soldier Sailor Minoans and MyceneansAbroad In Laffineur R and Niemeier W-D eds Politeia Societyand State in the Aegean Bronze Age (Aegaeum 12) Liege 265-287

Conkey MW and Spector J 1984 Archaeology and the Study of GenderAdvances in Archaeological Method and Theory 71-38

Darnell J C 1991 Supposed Depictions of the Hittites in the Amarna PeriodStudien zur Altiigyptischen Kultur 18 113-140

Davies N de Garis 1905 The Rock Tombs of El Amarna II LondonDavies N de Garis 1908 The Rock Tombs of El Amarna VI LondonDavies N de Garis 1928 The Work of the Graphic Branch of the

Expedition Bulletin othe Metropolitan Museum 0Art 23237-48Davies N de Garis 1932 The Work of the Graphic Branch of the

Expedition Bulletin of the Metropolitan Museum of Art 273 51-62

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with a rounded end (In the photograph [University of Chicago 1930 PI 50a]the end is a little more frayed) Whereas Woman NO4 clearly has a singleplait resting on the nape of her neck Woman No 1 is somewhat moreambivalent She might have only one single curl or there might be two curlsone on either side of her face although only one of them is visible Image No6 has short hair and wears a round earring Image No3 has a bag-shapedhairstyle and wears a fillet bound about her brow Image No 7s hair tapers toa point at the nape of her neck The hair of Image No 8 is not visible apartfrom the side of her face Images 5 and 9 are bald or have a veryclose-cropped haircut

Parallels to the women in the Medinet Habu Reliefs

Foreign women in Egyptian art

It may be possible for us to identify the origin of the women accompanyingthe Sea Peoples from depictions of foreign women in contemporary Egyptianart Women are depicted amongst the inhabitants of foreign cities besieged bythe Egyptian army in reliefs commemorating the victories of the Egyptianking They are shown in tombs of the elite as prisoners of war slaves or evenvisiting from abroad Foreign women are also occasionally depicted on ostracaor on omamental objects such as cosmetic vessels and decorated spoons (Theevidence from the latter group of objects is less helpful for our purposes sinceif these figures are not wearing distinctively foreign dress it is not clearwhether they were actually intended to be foreign women)

However there are problems with this type of evidence Unfortunately theEgyptians were not particularly precise in their depictions of foreigners (egDavies 1934191) They might depict one ethnic group and label the figureswith the name of another group (Pritchard 195141) or even concoct a hybridfigure dressed in garments from different countries (Wachsmaml 19876-9)We should also note that the Egyptian artists were not necessarily sensitive tochanges in foreign fashions (ibid 46)

Moreover not only do the Egyptians not necessarily name their depictionsof foreigners but when they do label them they often use general terms suchas Retenu which may indicate both Syria and Canaans It is therefore difficultto fine-tune regional differences within the major groupings of foreigners

S AH Gardiner asserts that in the New Kingdom the term Upper Retenu often abbreviatedRetenu tends to be used for Syria whereas the term Djahi refers to Palestine andLebanon However the term Retenu may mean not just specifically Syria but it may also

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One should note two further factors that mayor may not affect the accuracyof the depiction of foreign women of suspected Aegean origin by Egyptianartists

Firstly only Aegean men are depicted in Eighteenth Dynasty art This factmay minimize the possibility that the Twentieth Dynasty artists copied Aegeanwomens hairstyles from earlier reliefs

Secondly the interaction between the Aegean world and Egypt decreasedconsiderably during the twelfth century BCE (Weinstein 1998188-189)limiting the interactions between Aegean and Egyptian art in a way that mayinfluence the accuracy of an Egyptian artist depicting hairstyles completelyunfamiliar to him

Another possible source for the hairstyles of the women in the MedinetHabu reliefs is Aegean art The importance of the comparison with Aegeanhairstyles derives not only from the large variety of hairstyles known to usfrom various types of Aegean art (frescoes drawings on clay vessels figurinesand ivory carvings) but also because the great majority of scholars argue thatthe Sea Peoples originated in the Aegean Finding Aegean parallels to thehairstyles in Medinet Habu especially those to which no parallel is found inEgyptian art can confirm the theories of an Aegean origin for at least part ofthe Sea Peoples In this paper we will compare the hairstyles of the womenfrom Medinet Habu to hairstyles from the Aegean world from the fifteenth tothe twelfth centuries BCE preferably the hairstyles of real flesh-and-bloodwomen rather than goddesses (or priestesses who imitate the hairstyles ofgoddesses)

There is a certain methodological problem in comparing Egyptian andAegean art because of the difference in their iconographic preconceptions It isclear that parallels to the figures of Medinet Habu from Egyptian art will becloser than those from the Aegean But these are not adequate grounds toassert that this type of comparison is impossible The long-term mutualexchanges between the Aegean cultural sphere and Egypt also led tointerchanges and influences in the area of art (Cline 1995 Caubet 1998Rehak and Younger 1998) In many cases the depictions of Aegeans inEgyptian art (executed by Egyptian artists as distinct from those executed byAegean artists) are remarkably similar to the figures in Aegean art

be used in its more traditional sense to comprise both Syria and Palestine (Gardiner1947145-147)Recently Vandersleyen (199591) argues that Retenu begins at the eastern border of tileDelta He bases his argument on the participation of men from Retenu in tile MiddleKingdom mining expeditions at Serabit el-Khadem in the Sinai On tile otller hand it isnot clear that these men are indigenous to the Sinai Bietak (199619) argues that theycould well have been Syro-Palestinian mercenaries based at Tell el-Dablta

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The most important factor however may actually be the cultural differencethat dictates how foreigners are represented in contrast to oneself(Wachsmaltn 19874-26 Cline 1995 Leahy 1995226)

There is a great deal of variety in the hairstyles of the Aegean which canprobably be attributed to differences in ethnic background age social statusand period (Koehl 1986 Kontorli-Papadopoulou 199696)

Image No 1Woman No ls long curling lock of hair has various parallels amongst

Syrian or northern women represented in Egyptian art Examples are a womenin the harem at el-Amarna (Fig 31) a woman in a siege scene on the Karnaktalatat (Smith 1965 Fig 210) and also a northern female prisoner beingclubbed by Nefertiti on a relief in the Boston Museum (Aldred 1973 No 57)

In a variant of this hairstyle a single lock falls down the womans spine andcurls upwards at its tip This hairstyle is found on an ornamental ivory hornoffered as tribute by a Syrian in a tomb painting in the British Museum (Fig32)6 A woman in the scene of the siege of Ullaza at Medinet Habu is alsoportrayed with a curl falling behind her back (Fig 33) However thiswomans curl is much thinner than that of Woman No1

There are several other cases of figures whose hair is drawn into a longsingle curl but they are not necessarily foreign women (the woman in Fig 34wears a diaphanous Egyptian-style gown Roeder 1969 PI 177 PC 80 isprobably a Libyan man [ibid 187 199] the girl portrayed in Wenig 196785is probably wearing the sidelock of youth)

Two other hairstyles with dangling curls are known in ancient Egyptianportrayals of foreigners but their connection with Woman No 1 is moretenuous In the first instance the woman wears a curl or lock falling over herear and a narrow curl at the back of her head (Figs 35 and 36 Davies 1908PIs xvii xix maybe Hall 1931 PI XV2)

Dangling curls also appear in the New Kingdom iconography of femalesphinxes both in Egypt and in Canaan (eg in the Megiddo ivories) and oncertain ornamental vessels (Fig No 37) Bryan (199669-72) relates thesphinxes curls to the sidelock worn by Libyan males A connection betweenthe Sea Peoples and the Libyans is attested for the fifth year of Merneptahwhen a coalition of Libyans and various Sea Peoples attacked Egypt

6 Omamental vases and ivory tusks are common in Egyptian depictions of tribute from Syriaand Canaan during this period In his victory reliefs at Kamak Seti I presents omamentsof this type to the gods as thank-offerings after campaigns against several differentenemies - against the Shasu Hittites Syrians and Libyans - so the vases in these reliefscannot be identified as booty from any particular area

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However as Cifola (19943) points out these groups are not the same as thosewho came into contact with Ramses III with the exception of the Shekelesh Itshould be noted that the prototype here is male (we know very little about theappearan~e of female Libyans in this period) Most importantly the otherfeatures of the sphinxes hairstyle do not parallel the arrangement of WomanNOls hair The female sphinxes generally wear the remainder of their hairpiled upon their heads or concealed in a close-fitting low flat hat which isvery different from the flowing locks of Woman No1

Woman NO1 may have had two curling tresses one on each side of herface although only one is shown In the Medinet Habu relief of the siege ofUllaza a dying person is shown full face with two long narrow locks ofcurling hair one on each side of her face (Fig 3 8) This figure is probably awoman (Darnell 1991136) but not inevitably so since in the same relief thishairstyle is also worn by a warrior dying on the battlefield (Fig 4 1 cf alsoUniversity of Chicago 1936 PI 114)

These two narrow curling locks should not be confused with the scroll wig ofthe naked goddess common in Syro-Canaanite art and derived from the scroll wigof the goddess Hathor Scroll wig curls are generally very much tighter than thecurl of Woman NO1 and reach to the goddess shoulders Side views of the scrollwig in three dimensions can be seen on ivory heads found at Megiddo (Fig 42)

In Minoan and Mycenean culture where long hair is common(Kontorli-Papadopolou 199696-97) many parallels can be found for womenwith their hair tied back Two women from the House of the Ladies at Therafrom the LM IA are suitable parallels (Figs 4344) as are two women on achariot in the Boar Hunt fresco (Immerwahr 1990 PI 69) at Tiryns from theLH IIIB period (This illustration is a reconstruction but enough of theoriginal remains to illustrate our point) Good parallels to hair drawn back inlong plaits can be found in examples of goddesses with upraised arms withlong plaits on their backs from Postpalatial Crete These can be found in theShrine of the Double Axes at Knossos dated to the LM IlIB (Gesell 198542181 PI 46a) and the temple and cult rooms at Karphi (ibid45 182 PIs 48-49)dated to the LM mc period (Figs 45 46) Earlier parallels are from the LHI1IA1 painted pottery from Kition (Vermule and Karageorghis 198217-19Figs III1 0 III 12) A lesser parallel to the headdress ending with a curlinglock can be seen in the depiction in ivory of goddesses on the Minet el-Beidaivory pyxis and the ivory plaque from Tomb 49 at Mycenae (Rehak 199252-52 PI XVIc XVIIa) Since the curling lock in these depictions is a part of aseemingly more complex hairstyle than the one used by Woman NO1 and theorigin (Syro-Canaanite or Aegean) of this deity type (Rehak 199253) isunknown the contribution of these parallels is limited

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Fig 3 31 Syro-Canaanite woman from the royal harem El-Amarna (after Davies 1908 PIxvii) 32 Tribute bearer bringing ivory horn decorated with woman wearing long curl(after Keel 1975 Fig 8) 33 Woman from relief of the siege of Ullaza (afterUniversity of Chicago 1932 PI 87) 34 Woman wearing a single long curl (afterPage 1983 No 49) 35 Female captives from Syro-Canaan and Nubia (after Smithand Redford 1976 PI 27)36 Women in besieged Syrian city (after Ricke 1967P112)37 Ornamental vessels decorated with female heads (after University of Chicago1986 PI 8) 38 Woman from relief ofthe siege ofUllaza (after ibid 1932 PI 87)

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A partial parallel to the long curling hair of Woman NO1 can be found inthe Mykenaia figure from the cultic centre in Mycenae in the LH IIIB (Fig 47)as part of a more complex hairstyle which also includes a hair ribbon and curlson the forehead7 A closer parallel appears on the krater that was found inMinet el-Beida (Venneule and Karageorghis 198221 Fig IIIl9) from the LHIlIA In this scene appear two sword-bearing figures with similar hairstylesVenneule and Karageorghis suggest that these figures represent two captainsApart from their swords however these figures have no indications of genderand we should not rule out the possibility that they may be womens

In general the depictions of Syro-Canaanite women in Egyptian art arecloser to Image NO1 than the parallels from the Aegean This figure probablyrepresents a Syro-Canaanite woman although it is not impossible that itdepicts a woman from the Aegean

Image No 2

No exact parallels to Woman NO2 are known from Egyptian depictions offoreign women No close parallels to this figures hairstyle are found inAegean art either Does this mean that this woman came from outside the areaaccessible to the Egyptians (between Libya and Anatolia) and the Myceneansand Minoans (mainland Greece and the islands)

Alternatively Image NO2 might depict a special hairstyle for older womenfrom one of these areas One should note the age differentiation in hairstylesfor both males and females in the Aegean world (Davis 1986 Koehl 1986)By contrast older women are seldom represented in Egyptian art (Janssen ampJanssen 1996 14) they are unlikely to have been taken as prisoners of warunless they had some special skill

Image No 3

There are several parallels for Syro-Canaanite women wearing a filletaround their heads or hair-ribbons although it is by no means the norm

7 The Medinet Habu reliefs omit details such as curls on the forehead and so on whichappear frequently in the Aegean frescoes of women This phenomenon may originate fromthe difference in the artistic medium this type of detail is more difficult to represent inrelief than in fresco A similar phenomenon of generalization appears within Aegeanculture itself if we compare the hairstyles depicted in frescoes with those portrayed onceranlics (cf Vermeule amp Karageorghis 198217 for the parallel between the Kitionfragment and La Parisienne from Knossos)

8 Compare the sword-bearing figures on the Homage Krater (ibid23-24) which areidentical with the figures preceding them including the necklaces they wear

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Fig 4 41 Dying warrior from relief of the siege ofUllaza (after University of Chicago 1932PI 87) 42 Ivoryheads from Megiddo wearing scroll wigs (drawing after Loud 1939Nos 192-193)43 Woman from The House of the Ladies Thera (drawing afterhnmerwahr 1990 colour PI XI) 44 Woman from The House of the Ladies Thera(drawing after ibid colour PI XII) 45 Statuette of goddess from Karphi (drawingafter Buchholz amp Karageorghis 1973 Fig 1267) 46 Statuette of goddess fromKnossos (drawing after ibid Fig 1269) 47 The Mykenaia figure from Mycenae(drawing after hnmerwahr 1990 colour PI XX) 48 Women captives from the tombofHaremheb (after Martin 1989PI 105)

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Parallels include the women in the tomb of Haremheb (Fig 48) and in thetomb of Rekhmire (Fig 5 1) Another possible parallel are the women captiveson the Karnak talatat (Fig 35 above the ribbon does not appear on theoriginal relief blocks but is restored in the frontispiece of Redford 1984) aswell as those on three decorated spoons (Fig 52 Fechheimer 1921138Vandier d Abbadie 197220-21)

The women from the tomb of Reklullire are said to be serfs from the templeof Amun brought by Tuthmosis III as captives from his campaignsTuthmosis northern campaigns ranged from Canaan to the EuphratesTuthmosis declaration that he gave prisoners from the siege of Megiddo to thetemple of Amun (Sethe 1961 (Urk IV)74210-7438) may indicate that thesewomen were Canaanites but it is also possible that they are prisoners of warfrom Tuthmosis other campaigns to Lebanon or Syria

There are many parallels for both women and men wearing a fillet aroundtheir heads from the Aegean (Kontorli-Papadopoulou 199695) such as thehead of the Lady with the Lily from the LH lIlB cultic centre of Mycenae(Fig 53) and the pyxis-bearers from Tiryns (Fig 54) A parallel even closerin time may be the depiction of a woman with a hair ribbon on the LH IIICWarrior Vase from Mycenae (Venllule and Karageorghis 1982130-131Fig X142) Unfortunately only the frontal part of the womans head hassurvived leaving the rest of the headdress unknown to us

Nevertheless we know of no other instance of a Syrian woman with abag-shaped hairstyle like this one On the other hand the back of Image No3 s hairstyle is hidden by Image No2 she might conceivably have a hairstylelike Women Nos 12 or 7

It is most likely that this woman comes from the Aegean However if weassume that nothing is missing from the hairstyle then there is a more remotepossibility that this figure is a not a woman from Syria but a Syrian man aprisoner or a slave This bag-shaped hairstyle is characteristic of Syro-Canaanitemen in Egyptian art of this period although they are traditionally shown withbeards (HeIck 1962346) By contrast in Canaanite art there are manyinstances of clean-shaven men (Figs 71-3 below see also Loud 1939 Nos2 161 162) It is also extremely common for Syrian men to wear filletsaround their brows (Fig 61 Ricke 1967 PI 12 Martin 1989 PI 105)

Image No 4

Women with a single long plait of hair like No 4 appear in various NewKingdom contexts as representative of northerners or Syrians (HeIck 1962347)There are two variants of this hairstyle a single plait falling down the womansback and a plait falling to the side of her face which could be one of a pair

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Fig 5 51 Syro-Canaanite women from the tomb ofRekhmire (after Davies 1943 PI xxiii)52 Decorated spoon in the form of a Syro-Canaanite woman (after Wallert 1967PI24) 53 The Lady with the Lily from Mycenae (drawing afterKontorli-Papadopulou 1996 PI 94) 54 Pyxis-bearer from Tiryns (drawing afterImmerwahr 1990 PI 56)

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Women wearing a plait straight down their back appear in the tomb ofRekhmire (Fig 62 Davies 192840 followed by Feucht 1990a194 suggeststhat these women are Hittites) This hairstyle is also worn by a woman in SetiIs reliefs of his campaign against the Shasu (Fig 63) This woman is probablyone of the Shasu although since Setis battle against the Shasu takes place enroute to Gaza she might be a Canaanite taken captive by the Shasu This styleis also attested on an ivory figure from Megiddo (Loud 1939 No 175)

Women with a plait to one side appear on the throne of Queen Tiy in thetomb of Kheruef (Fig 64) and in the tombs of Menkheperresoneb (Fig 65)and Amenmose (Davies 1933 PI xxxiv)9 On the throne of Tiy such womenappear as typical northerners contrasted with Nubian captives in the tombs ofMenkheperresoneb and Amenmose their origin is not specified Plaits hangingto one side also appear on two decorated spoons (Fig 52 above and Vandierd Abbadie 197220-21) and on a servant girl from the tomb of Intef (althoughthis girl is not said explicitly to be a foreigner and the end of her plait isreconstructed) (Davies 193253)

Note incidentally that in Egyptian art this hairstyle is always worn bySyro-Canaanite slaves or captives and not by women from the same countrieswhen at home (with the possible exception of the Shasu or Canaanite womanin Fig 63) Presumably female slaves tied their long hair back to keep it outof the way whilst working and this practice became generic for theiconography of Syro-Canaanite captive women

Aegean art includes numerous examples of women with plaits Howevermost of these examples are more similar to the curling lock of Woman No1The best parallels to the straight plait of Woman NO4 are the simple plaitsworn by female statuettes However the latter may reflect the limitations ofworking in clay as opposed to paint rather than actually reproducing adifferent hairstyle (see note 7 above)

There may also be parallels in Hittite art for tIlis single long plait The InandikPithos (OzgUy 198883-92 Fig 64) dated to the Old Hittite Period (Fig 66Hoffner 1995558-559 Figs 1 and 2) depicts scenes of preparation for a weddingin a wealthy house Some women wear either a single plait or a waist-lengthheaddress whereas others wear all-enveloping shawls covering the head Asinlilar plait or headdress is worn by the queen in an orthostat from Alaca Hoyiik(Akurgal 1962 PI 92) dated before the 13th century BCE (Kohlmeyer19952647) and also under the crowns worn by the goddesses on the Yazilikayarock carvings (Fig 81 ibid2650 Fig 9) dated to the 13th century BCE

9 Gardiner Notebook 28819 is a photograph of a painting of the wall here we see that thewomens plaits are much the same colour as their garments which is why the-plait doesnot show up clearly in photographs (Meyer 1913721 Wreszinski 1923275)

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Fig 6 61 Syro-Canaanite men wearing fillets (after Davies 1947 PI viii) 62Syro-Canaanite women from the tomb of Reklunire (after Davies 1943 PI Ivii) 63Woman from the relief of Seti Is battle against the Shasu (after University ofChicago 1986 PI 12) 64 Syro-Canaanite and Nubian female captives decoratingQueen Tiys throne (after University of Chicago 1980 PI 47) 65 Syro-Canaanitewoman from the tomb of Menkheperresoneb (after Davies 1933 PI v) 66 Womenfrom the Inandik pithos (after Hoffner 1995Fig 2)

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Images No 5 and 9

Images NO5 and 9 are either bald or have their hair closely cropped Giventhat both heads are damaged however this observation is not entirely certain

Men with sho~t hair are very rare in Aegean art~ where only babies andyoung children wear their hair short (Koehl 1986100-101) On the otherhand men with close-cropped hair or close-fitting caps (Stern 1989) arecommon in Canaanite art (Figs 71-3 Loud 1939 Nos 2 162) Interestinglyenough these Canaanites are shown driving chariots (ibid Nos 2 159 161)which provides a good parallel to NO9 the driver of Wagon NO5 Image No5 may be the driver of Wagon No3 Unlike his colleague No9 who is stillgoading the oxen onwards NO5 has given up hope and raises his hands indespair

Image No 6

The upper rim of the chariot hides the back of Woman No 6s neck Itwould be possible to reconstruct her hairstyle with a long narrow plait like thewomen already described It would also be possible to envisage her as havingshort hair However it is unusual to find women from Syro-Palestineportrayed in this way A group of women depicted in the tomb of Reklunirehave short hair (Fig 82 Davies 192840 followed by Feucht 1990a195identifies the long wrap-around dresses of these women as Syrian in style)This short hairstyle may be adopted from the group of Nubian women whoprecede the Syrians in this picture A naked goddess mounted on a horse isalso portrayed wearing short hair and a large earring (Fig 83 Brunner-Traut197929-30 NO5 PI V Petersen 1973 No 31 However Petersen idemsuggests that the goddess is wearing a helmet) The Hittite princess bride ofRamses II is shown with short hair (Fig 84) but she has been dressed upEgyptian style for the celebrations so her hairstyle is not necessarilysignificant

In Egyptian art this short hairstyle is characteristic of Nubian women (Fig85 Davies amp Gardiner 1926 PI xxx University of Chicago 1930 PI 9Ricke 1967 PIs 89 Brack amp Brack 1980 PI 50 Dziobeck 1992 PI 1) Itis true that the front part of Woman No 6s hairstyle tapers back from herforehead whereas most Nubian women wear their hair in a thick fringeHowever Nubian women are depicted with this type of central parting in afew New Kingdom tombs such as those of Rekhmire (Davies 1943 PI xxii)and Haremheb (Brack amp Brack 1980 PI 50 see also University of Chicago1930 PI 9)

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Fig 7 71 Ivory from Megiddo (after Loud 1939 No 159) 72 Ivory from Megiddo (afteribid No 160)73 Bronze plaque from Hazor (after Redford 1992197 Fig 71)

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Image No 7

This person wears its hair tapering to the nape of the neck Syro-Canaanitewomen sometimes wear their hair tapering to a point (Muller 1906 PI 9)although usually their hair is somewhat longer than that of Image NO7 andthe pointed tip of their hairstyle falls farther back behind their shoulderslO

(Fig 86) A woman portrayed on one of the Megiddo ivories has the samehairstyle (Loud 1939 No 2b)

This image may represent another Syro-Canaanite woman A more remotepossibility is that this image represents a Hittite man Hittite men wore theirhair in a queue and had bald foreheads In the reliefs at Medinet Habu the linemarking the front of the Hittite mens bald pates is not necessarily drawn in(Fig 87) Hittite men generally wore their hair much longer but there are afew examples of Hittite men whose hair only reaches to the back of their necks(Figs 87-92 see also Kuentz 1928 PI xviii)

There is a small possibility that Hittite women may also have worn thisstyle but the evidence is ambiguous In the Ramesseum relief of the siege ofDapur a group of people are shown leaving the city bearing baskets ofprovisions and begging for peace (Fig 93) Their hair tapers to theirshoulders Wreszinski (1935 PI 109) and HeIck (1962343) suggest thatthese people are the ruler of the city and the women of his house On the otherhand some of the dead warriors lying on the battlefield have exactly the samehairstyle so the figures accompanying the ruler are not necessarily women Inany case their hair is too long to be compared to this figure

There is no parallel for this figure in Aegean art

Image No 8

So little is visible of Image NO8 that any discussion of her coiffure wouldbe inconclusive

10 Some of the figures in the siege of Ullaza (University of Chicago 1932 PI 87) have thishairstyle but they are not necessarily women A decorated spoon in the Rijksmuseum vonOudheiden at Leiden has a similar hairstyle but since the woman is naked it is difficult totell whether she represents a foreigner (Eggebrecht 1987 No 246) The same applies tothe decorated spoon Louvre N-I728 (Vandier dAbbadie 197214-15)

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Fig 8 81 Goddess on the Yazilikaya rock carvings (after Kohlmeyer 1995 Fig 9) 82Women from the tomb of Rekhmire (after Davies 1943 PI Ivii) 83 Goddess onhorseback (drawing after Brunner-Traut 1956 No 16 PI viii) 84 The Hittiteprincess from the Marriage Stele of Ramses IT(after Lepsius 1849-1859 PI 196) 85Nubian women (after Davies 1905 PI xxviii) 86 Syro-Canaanite woman from thetomb ofRekhmire (after Davies 1943 PI xxiii) 87-8 Hittite warriors from MedinetHabu (after University of Chicago 1932 PI 87)

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The Children of the Sea People

The child standing by Wagon NO5 (Fig 22) wears a single long lock of hairgrowing from the crown of his head 11 This hairstyle is characteristic ofSyro-Canaanite children of both sexes in New Kingdom reliefs12(Fig 94 Davies1905 PI xxxiX)13

Children often appear in New Kingdom scenes of siege or battle beinglifted over the walls of a besieged city in Syria or Canaan (Fig 95) It is notclear whether these children are being sacrificed to the gods to change thecourse of the battle presented to Pharaoh as hostages or helped to escape(Keel 1975 Spalinger 1977-8 Feucht 1990b33-39 Donohue 1992) In thisinstance we suggest that they are being helped to escape (Keel 1975456 Thechildren appear to be on the point of collapse and their chances of escape areprobably slim Keel suggests that fear of Pharaoh immobilizes the childrenwith terror and they sink to the ground unable to stir)

Donohue (199283) suggests that the women are scooping the children upinto the wagons before the advancing enemy but this is unlikely If they weretrying to clamber into the wagons they would be facing inwards and probablyusing their legs to get a purchase on the side of the wagon as they clamber upit (The same applies to children in scenes of besieged cities There are onlytwo examples of children who could conceivably be climbing into the city (thelittle girl on the left in Fig 95 see also Keel 1975 Fig 19)

The fact that the older children are dressed as Sea Peoples may suggestpatrilineal behaviour in the immigrant society - at least in regard to costume

Summary

The limitations of this type of source material preclude absolute conclusionsThe Aegean paintings and statuettes come from a different artistic traditionthan the Medinet Habu reliefs discrepancies between the two are inevitableEgyptian depictions of foreigners have their limitations and since the artists atMedinet Habu may have been unfamiliar with these hairstyles it is difficult to tellhow accurate these portrayals are We may however make a few suggestions

11 The second line emerging from the crown of his head in University of Chicago 1930 PI49D is probably a scratch rather than a second lock

12 See also Pritchard 1954 No 45 (the man presenting this child is said to be the ruler ofTunip and can therefore be located in Syria) Save Stiderbergh 1957 PI xxiii Martin1989PI 105 University of Chicago 1932PI 87Feucht 1990a198 n 82 points out that apart from the single plait children from Syriamay also sport two plaits a head of short hair or two clumps of hair There is quite avariety of hairstyles

13 The parallel to this scene in the tomb ofHuya describes this tribute as coming from Kharuand Kush (Sandman 193837 line 1)

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Fig 9 91 Hittite warrior from Medinet Habu (after University of Chicago 1932 PI 87) 92Hittite warriors from Abu Simbel (after Wreszinski 1935 PI 170) 93 Group ofHittites from the siege of Dapur (after ibid PI 109) 94 Syro-Canaanite women andchild (after Davies 1947 PI viii) 95 Girl being let down over the city wall relief ofthe siege of Ashkelon (after Keel 1975Fig 21)

Woman NO4 with her long straight plait conforms to Egyptian depictionsof Syro-Canaanite women although she also has parallels in Aegean artWoman No 1 has parallels in both the Egyptian tradition and the Aegeantradition although the Egyptian parallels are stronger and she is also probablya Syro-Canaanite woman Image NO7 if she is a woman is vaguely similarto certain Egyptian pictures of Syro-Canaanite women but her hair is rathershort to provide a good parallel it should fall to a point further down her back

No exact parallels are known for the hairstyle of No 2 in either Egyptian orAegean art It is not clear whether this hairstyle may represent an ethnic groupunknown to us Alternatively middotdifferent hairstyles may have been worn bywomen at different periods of their lives - married ~omen and maidens forexample or old women and young ones or pregnant women They may alsocharacterize different social standings or occupations

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In some cases the persons hairstyle is incomplete It is masked by overlappinglinages or by the edge of the wagon as in Images Nos 3 and 6If they had longer hair these people might have hairstyles like those of Women 12or 4 If Image No3 had long hair she would have excellent parallels in Aegeanart where hair ribbons are very common If the bag-shaped hairstyle of Image No3 is complete as it stands however then the best parallels are actually fomIdamongst Syrian men Woman No 6s short hair is occasionally paralleled amongstSyrian women it is much more characteristic of Nubian women however Notonly did themiddotEgyptians have Nubian servants and slaves but many Egyptians werethemselves of Nubian stock so that women of this type could be found throughoutthe territories under Egyptian rule

The Sea Peoples were accompanied by men from the areas they traversedThey may have been taken as slaves or prisoners or maybe they decided tojoin the Sea Peoples advance in order to seek their fortunes abroad Such arethe wagon drivers Nos 5 and 9 who are definitely Syro-Canaanites andperhaps Image No3 ifhe is a Syrian or Image No7 if he is a Hittite

This picture of a complex and highly diverse origin of the group of Sea Peoplesportrayed in the Medinet Habu reliefs (which mayor may not be a typical group)suggests that it is unlikely that the Philistines were 100 pure Mycenaean Greeks(Stager 1995337 following Mazar 1988255-6 260) Like Sherratt (1998307)we characterize the Sea Peoples as cosmopolitan although we still envisagemany of them as Aegeans Other groups or individuals would have joined the SeaPeoples in northern Syria and Canaan

Conclusions

In the Medinet Habu reliefs the Sea Peoples are accompanied by at leastone woman who is clearly Syro-Canaanite and also by women with parallelsin Aegean art A similar conclusion was also reached by an analysis ofmaterial culture assemblages from Syria and Palestine (Bunimovitz andYasur-Landau forthcoming a b) attributed to the first stages of Aegeansettlement at the beginning of the Iron Age In these studies evidence ofbehavioural patterns of Aegean origin such as weaving with a loom equippedwith round unperfonlted loomweights and cooking on a hearth with Aegeanstyle cooking-pots were found side by side with local textile manufacture andcooking methods These finds may be cautiously interpreted as evidence of thepresence of women of both Aegean and local origin at these sites

The evidence from the reliefs shows that the Sea Peoples were accompaniedby men and women from Syria andor Canaan and by children probably theSea Peoples offspring by these women This indicates that the Sea Peoplesspent time in Syria andor Canaan before they continued on their way to Egypt

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Rather than envisaging the Sea Peoples immigration as a rapid concerted attack ata number of points simultaneously (Stager 1995) we should consider it as acomplex situation of not necessarily coordinated movements by different groupsfrom different areas

The size of the children depicted in the Medinet Habu reliefs may give ussome indication of how long the Sea Peoples had been present in the areabefore they moved south to Egypt If the younger children are the offspring ofthese women and the Sea Peoples the latter must have reached the area someseven or six years earlier if the older children wearing Philistine headgearare also the offspring of these households then we should think in terms of aninterval of thirteen years or more A similar observation was made by Singer(1987418) on the basis of the tablets from Ugarit and Ras Ibn Hani Thismeans that the fall of Ugarit should have occurred some fifteen to twentyyears before Ramses Ills war with the Sea Peoples It is quite acceptablehowever to postulate a short period of consolidation before the Sea Peoplesattempted to surge down into Egypt 14

The group we see in the Medinet Habu reliefs with their families would thenbe a second wave of settlement

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank I Finkelstein I Singer S Bunimovitz and the lateP Beck for reading and commenting on earlier drafts of this paper We wouldalso like to thank the Griffith Institute Oxford for allowing us to quotematerial from the unpublished notebooks of Sir Alan Gardiner

REFERENCES

Akurgal E 1962 The Art of the Hittites LondonAldred C 1973 Akhenaten and Nefertiti New YorkAstrom P 1992 Approaches to the Study of Women in Ancient Cyprus In

Astrom P ed Acta Cypria Acts of an International Congress onCypriote Archaeology held in GOteborg on 22-24 August 1991 Part 2(Studies in Mediterranean Archaeology Pocket-Book 117) Jonsered 5-8

14 On the other hand the size of the children depicted in the reliefs may not necessarily haveany historical significance Nor are these children necessarily these womens offspring bythe Sea People they even may be these womens children by previous partners in whichcase this part of the argument is irrelevant The Philistine youths may even be youngPhilistines who have been assigned to guarding the women and children as a relativelysafe post in view of their youth and inexperience

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Bietak M 1996 Avaris The Capital othe Hyksos LondonBolger D 1994 Engendering Cypriot Archaeology Female Roles and

Statuses before the Bronze Age Opuscula Atheniensia XX 19-17Brack A and Brack A 1980 Das Grab des Haremheb Theben Nr 78

MainzBrug JF 1984 A Literary and Archaeological Study othe Philistines Vols

1 and 2 MichiganBrunner-Traut E 1956 Die altiigyptischen Scherbenbilder (Bildostraka) der

Deutschen Museen und Sammlungen WiesbadenBrunner-Traut E 1979 Egyptian Artists Sketches LondonBuchholz H-G and Karageorghis V 1973 Prehistoric Greece and Cyprus

LondonBunimovitz S and Yasur-Landau A 1996 Philistine and Israelite Pottery A

Comparative Approach to the Question of Pots and People Tel Aviv2388-101

Bunimovitz S and Yasur-Landau A Forthcominga Behavioural Aspects of12th Century BCE Aegean Immigrants in Palestine and Cyprus

Bunimovitz S and Yasur-Landau A Forthcominglb Women and AegeanImmigration to Cyprus in the 12th Century BCE

Caubert A 1998 The International Style A point of View from the Levantand Syria In Cline EH and Harris-Cline D eds The Aegean and theOrient in the Second Millennium (Aegaeum 18) Liege 105-111

Cifola B 1991 The Terminology of Ramses Ills Historical Records with aFormal Analysis of the War Scenes Orientalia 609-57

Cifola B 1994 The Role of the Sea Peoples at the end of the Late BronzeAge A Reassessment of Textual and Archaeological Evidence OriensAntiqui Miscellanea 11-23

Cline EH 1995 Tinker Tailor Soldier Sailor Minoans and MyceneansAbroad In Laffineur R and Niemeier W-D eds Politeia Societyand State in the Aegean Bronze Age (Aegaeum 12) Liege 265-287

Conkey MW and Spector J 1984 Archaeology and the Study of GenderAdvances in Archaeological Method and Theory 71-38

Darnell J C 1991 Supposed Depictions of the Hittites in the Amarna PeriodStudien zur Altiigyptischen Kultur 18 113-140

Davies N de Garis 1905 The Rock Tombs of El Amarna II LondonDavies N de Garis 1908 The Rock Tombs of El Amarna VI LondonDavies N de Garis 1928 The Work of the Graphic Branch of the

Expedition Bulletin othe Metropolitan Museum 0Art 23237-48Davies N de Garis 1932 The Work of the Graphic Branch of the

Expedition Bulletin of the Metropolitan Museum of Art 273 51-62

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One should note two further factors that mayor may not affect the accuracyof the depiction of foreign women of suspected Aegean origin by Egyptianartists

Firstly only Aegean men are depicted in Eighteenth Dynasty art This factmay minimize the possibility that the Twentieth Dynasty artists copied Aegeanwomens hairstyles from earlier reliefs

Secondly the interaction between the Aegean world and Egypt decreasedconsiderably during the twelfth century BCE (Weinstein 1998188-189)limiting the interactions between Aegean and Egyptian art in a way that mayinfluence the accuracy of an Egyptian artist depicting hairstyles completelyunfamiliar to him

Another possible source for the hairstyles of the women in the MedinetHabu reliefs is Aegean art The importance of the comparison with Aegeanhairstyles derives not only from the large variety of hairstyles known to usfrom various types of Aegean art (frescoes drawings on clay vessels figurinesand ivory carvings) but also because the great majority of scholars argue thatthe Sea Peoples originated in the Aegean Finding Aegean parallels to thehairstyles in Medinet Habu especially those to which no parallel is found inEgyptian art can confirm the theories of an Aegean origin for at least part ofthe Sea Peoples In this paper we will compare the hairstyles of the womenfrom Medinet Habu to hairstyles from the Aegean world from the fifteenth tothe twelfth centuries BCE preferably the hairstyles of real flesh-and-bloodwomen rather than goddesses (or priestesses who imitate the hairstyles ofgoddesses)

There is a certain methodological problem in comparing Egyptian andAegean art because of the difference in their iconographic preconceptions It isclear that parallels to the figures of Medinet Habu from Egyptian art will becloser than those from the Aegean But these are not adequate grounds toassert that this type of comparison is impossible The long-term mutualexchanges between the Aegean cultural sphere and Egypt also led tointerchanges and influences in the area of art (Cline 1995 Caubet 1998Rehak and Younger 1998) In many cases the depictions of Aegeans inEgyptian art (executed by Egyptian artists as distinct from those executed byAegean artists) are remarkably similar to the figures in Aegean art

be used in its more traditional sense to comprise both Syria and Palestine (Gardiner1947145-147)Recently Vandersleyen (199591) argues that Retenu begins at the eastern border of tileDelta He bases his argument on the participation of men from Retenu in tile MiddleKingdom mining expeditions at Serabit el-Khadem in the Sinai On tile otller hand it isnot clear that these men are indigenous to the Sinai Bietak (199619) argues that theycould well have been Syro-Palestinian mercenaries based at Tell el-Dablta

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The most important factor however may actually be the cultural differencethat dictates how foreigners are represented in contrast to oneself(Wachsmaltn 19874-26 Cline 1995 Leahy 1995226)

There is a great deal of variety in the hairstyles of the Aegean which canprobably be attributed to differences in ethnic background age social statusand period (Koehl 1986 Kontorli-Papadopoulou 199696)

Image No 1Woman No ls long curling lock of hair has various parallels amongst

Syrian or northern women represented in Egyptian art Examples are a womenin the harem at el-Amarna (Fig 31) a woman in a siege scene on the Karnaktalatat (Smith 1965 Fig 210) and also a northern female prisoner beingclubbed by Nefertiti on a relief in the Boston Museum (Aldred 1973 No 57)

In a variant of this hairstyle a single lock falls down the womans spine andcurls upwards at its tip This hairstyle is found on an ornamental ivory hornoffered as tribute by a Syrian in a tomb painting in the British Museum (Fig32)6 A woman in the scene of the siege of Ullaza at Medinet Habu is alsoportrayed with a curl falling behind her back (Fig 33) However thiswomans curl is much thinner than that of Woman No1

There are several other cases of figures whose hair is drawn into a longsingle curl but they are not necessarily foreign women (the woman in Fig 34wears a diaphanous Egyptian-style gown Roeder 1969 PI 177 PC 80 isprobably a Libyan man [ibid 187 199] the girl portrayed in Wenig 196785is probably wearing the sidelock of youth)

Two other hairstyles with dangling curls are known in ancient Egyptianportrayals of foreigners but their connection with Woman No 1 is moretenuous In the first instance the woman wears a curl or lock falling over herear and a narrow curl at the back of her head (Figs 35 and 36 Davies 1908PIs xvii xix maybe Hall 1931 PI XV2)

Dangling curls also appear in the New Kingdom iconography of femalesphinxes both in Egypt and in Canaan (eg in the Megiddo ivories) and oncertain ornamental vessels (Fig No 37) Bryan (199669-72) relates thesphinxes curls to the sidelock worn by Libyan males A connection betweenthe Sea Peoples and the Libyans is attested for the fifth year of Merneptahwhen a coalition of Libyans and various Sea Peoples attacked Egypt

6 Omamental vases and ivory tusks are common in Egyptian depictions of tribute from Syriaand Canaan during this period In his victory reliefs at Kamak Seti I presents omamentsof this type to the gods as thank-offerings after campaigns against several differentenemies - against the Shasu Hittites Syrians and Libyans - so the vases in these reliefscannot be identified as booty from any particular area

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However as Cifola (19943) points out these groups are not the same as thosewho came into contact with Ramses III with the exception of the Shekelesh Itshould be noted that the prototype here is male (we know very little about theappearan~e of female Libyans in this period) Most importantly the otherfeatures of the sphinxes hairstyle do not parallel the arrangement of WomanNOls hair The female sphinxes generally wear the remainder of their hairpiled upon their heads or concealed in a close-fitting low flat hat which isvery different from the flowing locks of Woman No1

Woman NO1 may have had two curling tresses one on each side of herface although only one is shown In the Medinet Habu relief of the siege ofUllaza a dying person is shown full face with two long narrow locks ofcurling hair one on each side of her face (Fig 3 8) This figure is probably awoman (Darnell 1991136) but not inevitably so since in the same relief thishairstyle is also worn by a warrior dying on the battlefield (Fig 4 1 cf alsoUniversity of Chicago 1936 PI 114)

These two narrow curling locks should not be confused with the scroll wig ofthe naked goddess common in Syro-Canaanite art and derived from the scroll wigof the goddess Hathor Scroll wig curls are generally very much tighter than thecurl of Woman NO1 and reach to the goddess shoulders Side views of the scrollwig in three dimensions can be seen on ivory heads found at Megiddo (Fig 42)

In Minoan and Mycenean culture where long hair is common(Kontorli-Papadopolou 199696-97) many parallels can be found for womenwith their hair tied back Two women from the House of the Ladies at Therafrom the LM IA are suitable parallels (Figs 4344) as are two women on achariot in the Boar Hunt fresco (Immerwahr 1990 PI 69) at Tiryns from theLH IIIB period (This illustration is a reconstruction but enough of theoriginal remains to illustrate our point) Good parallels to hair drawn back inlong plaits can be found in examples of goddesses with upraised arms withlong plaits on their backs from Postpalatial Crete These can be found in theShrine of the Double Axes at Knossos dated to the LM IlIB (Gesell 198542181 PI 46a) and the temple and cult rooms at Karphi (ibid45 182 PIs 48-49)dated to the LM mc period (Figs 45 46) Earlier parallels are from the LHI1IA1 painted pottery from Kition (Vermule and Karageorghis 198217-19Figs III1 0 III 12) A lesser parallel to the headdress ending with a curlinglock can be seen in the depiction in ivory of goddesses on the Minet el-Beidaivory pyxis and the ivory plaque from Tomb 49 at Mycenae (Rehak 199252-52 PI XVIc XVIIa) Since the curling lock in these depictions is a part of aseemingly more complex hairstyle than the one used by Woman NO1 and theorigin (Syro-Canaanite or Aegean) of this deity type (Rehak 199253) isunknown the contribution of these parallels is limited

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Fig 3 31 Syro-Canaanite woman from the royal harem El-Amarna (after Davies 1908 PIxvii) 32 Tribute bearer bringing ivory horn decorated with woman wearing long curl(after Keel 1975 Fig 8) 33 Woman from relief of the siege of Ullaza (afterUniversity of Chicago 1932 PI 87) 34 Woman wearing a single long curl (afterPage 1983 No 49) 35 Female captives from Syro-Canaan and Nubia (after Smithand Redford 1976 PI 27)36 Women in besieged Syrian city (after Ricke 1967P112)37 Ornamental vessels decorated with female heads (after University of Chicago1986 PI 8) 38 Woman from relief ofthe siege ofUllaza (after ibid 1932 PI 87)

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A partial parallel to the long curling hair of Woman NO1 can be found inthe Mykenaia figure from the cultic centre in Mycenae in the LH IIIB (Fig 47)as part of a more complex hairstyle which also includes a hair ribbon and curlson the forehead7 A closer parallel appears on the krater that was found inMinet el-Beida (Venneule and Karageorghis 198221 Fig IIIl9) from the LHIlIA In this scene appear two sword-bearing figures with similar hairstylesVenneule and Karageorghis suggest that these figures represent two captainsApart from their swords however these figures have no indications of genderand we should not rule out the possibility that they may be womens

In general the depictions of Syro-Canaanite women in Egyptian art arecloser to Image NO1 than the parallels from the Aegean This figure probablyrepresents a Syro-Canaanite woman although it is not impossible that itdepicts a woman from the Aegean

Image No 2

No exact parallels to Woman NO2 are known from Egyptian depictions offoreign women No close parallels to this figures hairstyle are found inAegean art either Does this mean that this woman came from outside the areaaccessible to the Egyptians (between Libya and Anatolia) and the Myceneansand Minoans (mainland Greece and the islands)

Alternatively Image NO2 might depict a special hairstyle for older womenfrom one of these areas One should note the age differentiation in hairstylesfor both males and females in the Aegean world (Davis 1986 Koehl 1986)By contrast older women are seldom represented in Egyptian art (Janssen ampJanssen 1996 14) they are unlikely to have been taken as prisoners of warunless they had some special skill

Image No 3

There are several parallels for Syro-Canaanite women wearing a filletaround their heads or hair-ribbons although it is by no means the norm

7 The Medinet Habu reliefs omit details such as curls on the forehead and so on whichappear frequently in the Aegean frescoes of women This phenomenon may originate fromthe difference in the artistic medium this type of detail is more difficult to represent inrelief than in fresco A similar phenomenon of generalization appears within Aegeanculture itself if we compare the hairstyles depicted in frescoes with those portrayed onceranlics (cf Vermeule amp Karageorghis 198217 for the parallel between the Kitionfragment and La Parisienne from Knossos)

8 Compare the sword-bearing figures on the Homage Krater (ibid23-24) which areidentical with the figures preceding them including the necklaces they wear

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Fig 4 41 Dying warrior from relief of the siege ofUllaza (after University of Chicago 1932PI 87) 42 Ivoryheads from Megiddo wearing scroll wigs (drawing after Loud 1939Nos 192-193)43 Woman from The House of the Ladies Thera (drawing afterhnmerwahr 1990 colour PI XI) 44 Woman from The House of the Ladies Thera(drawing after ibid colour PI XII) 45 Statuette of goddess from Karphi (drawingafter Buchholz amp Karageorghis 1973 Fig 1267) 46 Statuette of goddess fromKnossos (drawing after ibid Fig 1269) 47 The Mykenaia figure from Mycenae(drawing after hnmerwahr 1990 colour PI XX) 48 Women captives from the tombofHaremheb (after Martin 1989PI 105)

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Parallels include the women in the tomb of Haremheb (Fig 48) and in thetomb of Rekhmire (Fig 5 1) Another possible parallel are the women captiveson the Karnak talatat (Fig 35 above the ribbon does not appear on theoriginal relief blocks but is restored in the frontispiece of Redford 1984) aswell as those on three decorated spoons (Fig 52 Fechheimer 1921138Vandier d Abbadie 197220-21)

The women from the tomb of Reklullire are said to be serfs from the templeof Amun brought by Tuthmosis III as captives from his campaignsTuthmosis northern campaigns ranged from Canaan to the EuphratesTuthmosis declaration that he gave prisoners from the siege of Megiddo to thetemple of Amun (Sethe 1961 (Urk IV)74210-7438) may indicate that thesewomen were Canaanites but it is also possible that they are prisoners of warfrom Tuthmosis other campaigns to Lebanon or Syria

There are many parallels for both women and men wearing a fillet aroundtheir heads from the Aegean (Kontorli-Papadopoulou 199695) such as thehead of the Lady with the Lily from the LH lIlB cultic centre of Mycenae(Fig 53) and the pyxis-bearers from Tiryns (Fig 54) A parallel even closerin time may be the depiction of a woman with a hair ribbon on the LH IIICWarrior Vase from Mycenae (Venllule and Karageorghis 1982130-131Fig X142) Unfortunately only the frontal part of the womans head hassurvived leaving the rest of the headdress unknown to us

Nevertheless we know of no other instance of a Syrian woman with abag-shaped hairstyle like this one On the other hand the back of Image No3 s hairstyle is hidden by Image No2 she might conceivably have a hairstylelike Women Nos 12 or 7

It is most likely that this woman comes from the Aegean However if weassume that nothing is missing from the hairstyle then there is a more remotepossibility that this figure is a not a woman from Syria but a Syrian man aprisoner or a slave This bag-shaped hairstyle is characteristic of Syro-Canaanitemen in Egyptian art of this period although they are traditionally shown withbeards (HeIck 1962346) By contrast in Canaanite art there are manyinstances of clean-shaven men (Figs 71-3 below see also Loud 1939 Nos2 161 162) It is also extremely common for Syrian men to wear filletsaround their brows (Fig 61 Ricke 1967 PI 12 Martin 1989 PI 105)

Image No 4

Women with a single long plait of hair like No 4 appear in various NewKingdom contexts as representative of northerners or Syrians (HeIck 1962347)There are two variants of this hairstyle a single plait falling down the womansback and a plait falling to the side of her face which could be one of a pair

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Fig 5 51 Syro-Canaanite women from the tomb ofRekhmire (after Davies 1943 PI xxiii)52 Decorated spoon in the form of a Syro-Canaanite woman (after Wallert 1967PI24) 53 The Lady with the Lily from Mycenae (drawing afterKontorli-Papadopulou 1996 PI 94) 54 Pyxis-bearer from Tiryns (drawing afterImmerwahr 1990 PI 56)

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Women wearing a plait straight down their back appear in the tomb ofRekhmire (Fig 62 Davies 192840 followed by Feucht 1990a194 suggeststhat these women are Hittites) This hairstyle is also worn by a woman in SetiIs reliefs of his campaign against the Shasu (Fig 63) This woman is probablyone of the Shasu although since Setis battle against the Shasu takes place enroute to Gaza she might be a Canaanite taken captive by the Shasu This styleis also attested on an ivory figure from Megiddo (Loud 1939 No 175)

Women with a plait to one side appear on the throne of Queen Tiy in thetomb of Kheruef (Fig 64) and in the tombs of Menkheperresoneb (Fig 65)and Amenmose (Davies 1933 PI xxxiv)9 On the throne of Tiy such womenappear as typical northerners contrasted with Nubian captives in the tombs ofMenkheperresoneb and Amenmose their origin is not specified Plaits hangingto one side also appear on two decorated spoons (Fig 52 above and Vandierd Abbadie 197220-21) and on a servant girl from the tomb of Intef (althoughthis girl is not said explicitly to be a foreigner and the end of her plait isreconstructed) (Davies 193253)

Note incidentally that in Egyptian art this hairstyle is always worn bySyro-Canaanite slaves or captives and not by women from the same countrieswhen at home (with the possible exception of the Shasu or Canaanite womanin Fig 63) Presumably female slaves tied their long hair back to keep it outof the way whilst working and this practice became generic for theiconography of Syro-Canaanite captive women

Aegean art includes numerous examples of women with plaits Howevermost of these examples are more similar to the curling lock of Woman No1The best parallels to the straight plait of Woman NO4 are the simple plaitsworn by female statuettes However the latter may reflect the limitations ofworking in clay as opposed to paint rather than actually reproducing adifferent hairstyle (see note 7 above)

There may also be parallels in Hittite art for tIlis single long plait The InandikPithos (OzgUy 198883-92 Fig 64) dated to the Old Hittite Period (Fig 66Hoffner 1995558-559 Figs 1 and 2) depicts scenes of preparation for a weddingin a wealthy house Some women wear either a single plait or a waist-lengthheaddress whereas others wear all-enveloping shawls covering the head Asinlilar plait or headdress is worn by the queen in an orthostat from Alaca Hoyiik(Akurgal 1962 PI 92) dated before the 13th century BCE (Kohlmeyer19952647) and also under the crowns worn by the goddesses on the Yazilikayarock carvings (Fig 81 ibid2650 Fig 9) dated to the 13th century BCE

9 Gardiner Notebook 28819 is a photograph of a painting of the wall here we see that thewomens plaits are much the same colour as their garments which is why the-plait doesnot show up clearly in photographs (Meyer 1913721 Wreszinski 1923275)

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Fig 6 61 Syro-Canaanite men wearing fillets (after Davies 1947 PI viii) 62Syro-Canaanite women from the tomb of Reklunire (after Davies 1943 PI Ivii) 63Woman from the relief of Seti Is battle against the Shasu (after University ofChicago 1986 PI 12) 64 Syro-Canaanite and Nubian female captives decoratingQueen Tiys throne (after University of Chicago 1980 PI 47) 65 Syro-Canaanitewoman from the tomb of Menkheperresoneb (after Davies 1933 PI v) 66 Womenfrom the Inandik pithos (after Hoffner 1995Fig 2)

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Images No 5 and 9

Images NO5 and 9 are either bald or have their hair closely cropped Giventhat both heads are damaged however this observation is not entirely certain

Men with sho~t hair are very rare in Aegean art~ where only babies andyoung children wear their hair short (Koehl 1986100-101) On the otherhand men with close-cropped hair or close-fitting caps (Stern 1989) arecommon in Canaanite art (Figs 71-3 Loud 1939 Nos 2 162) Interestinglyenough these Canaanites are shown driving chariots (ibid Nos 2 159 161)which provides a good parallel to NO9 the driver of Wagon NO5 Image No5 may be the driver of Wagon No3 Unlike his colleague No9 who is stillgoading the oxen onwards NO5 has given up hope and raises his hands indespair

Image No 6

The upper rim of the chariot hides the back of Woman No 6s neck Itwould be possible to reconstruct her hairstyle with a long narrow plait like thewomen already described It would also be possible to envisage her as havingshort hair However it is unusual to find women from Syro-Palestineportrayed in this way A group of women depicted in the tomb of Reklunirehave short hair (Fig 82 Davies 192840 followed by Feucht 1990a195identifies the long wrap-around dresses of these women as Syrian in style)This short hairstyle may be adopted from the group of Nubian women whoprecede the Syrians in this picture A naked goddess mounted on a horse isalso portrayed wearing short hair and a large earring (Fig 83 Brunner-Traut197929-30 NO5 PI V Petersen 1973 No 31 However Petersen idemsuggests that the goddess is wearing a helmet) The Hittite princess bride ofRamses II is shown with short hair (Fig 84) but she has been dressed upEgyptian style for the celebrations so her hairstyle is not necessarilysignificant

In Egyptian art this short hairstyle is characteristic of Nubian women (Fig85 Davies amp Gardiner 1926 PI xxx University of Chicago 1930 PI 9Ricke 1967 PIs 89 Brack amp Brack 1980 PI 50 Dziobeck 1992 PI 1) Itis true that the front part of Woman No 6s hairstyle tapers back from herforehead whereas most Nubian women wear their hair in a thick fringeHowever Nubian women are depicted with this type of central parting in afew New Kingdom tombs such as those of Rekhmire (Davies 1943 PI xxii)and Haremheb (Brack amp Brack 1980 PI 50 see also University of Chicago1930 PI 9)

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Fig 7 71 Ivory from Megiddo (after Loud 1939 No 159) 72 Ivory from Megiddo (afteribid No 160)73 Bronze plaque from Hazor (after Redford 1992197 Fig 71)

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Image No 7

This person wears its hair tapering to the nape of the neck Syro-Canaanitewomen sometimes wear their hair tapering to a point (Muller 1906 PI 9)although usually their hair is somewhat longer than that of Image NO7 andthe pointed tip of their hairstyle falls farther back behind their shoulderslO

(Fig 86) A woman portrayed on one of the Megiddo ivories has the samehairstyle (Loud 1939 No 2b)

This image may represent another Syro-Canaanite woman A more remotepossibility is that this image represents a Hittite man Hittite men wore theirhair in a queue and had bald foreheads In the reliefs at Medinet Habu the linemarking the front of the Hittite mens bald pates is not necessarily drawn in(Fig 87) Hittite men generally wore their hair much longer but there are afew examples of Hittite men whose hair only reaches to the back of their necks(Figs 87-92 see also Kuentz 1928 PI xviii)

There is a small possibility that Hittite women may also have worn thisstyle but the evidence is ambiguous In the Ramesseum relief of the siege ofDapur a group of people are shown leaving the city bearing baskets ofprovisions and begging for peace (Fig 93) Their hair tapers to theirshoulders Wreszinski (1935 PI 109) and HeIck (1962343) suggest thatthese people are the ruler of the city and the women of his house On the otherhand some of the dead warriors lying on the battlefield have exactly the samehairstyle so the figures accompanying the ruler are not necessarily women Inany case their hair is too long to be compared to this figure

There is no parallel for this figure in Aegean art

Image No 8

So little is visible of Image NO8 that any discussion of her coiffure wouldbe inconclusive

10 Some of the figures in the siege of Ullaza (University of Chicago 1932 PI 87) have thishairstyle but they are not necessarily women A decorated spoon in the Rijksmuseum vonOudheiden at Leiden has a similar hairstyle but since the woman is naked it is difficult totell whether she represents a foreigner (Eggebrecht 1987 No 246) The same applies tothe decorated spoon Louvre N-I728 (Vandier dAbbadie 197214-15)

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Fig 8 81 Goddess on the Yazilikaya rock carvings (after Kohlmeyer 1995 Fig 9) 82Women from the tomb of Rekhmire (after Davies 1943 PI Ivii) 83 Goddess onhorseback (drawing after Brunner-Traut 1956 No 16 PI viii) 84 The Hittiteprincess from the Marriage Stele of Ramses IT(after Lepsius 1849-1859 PI 196) 85Nubian women (after Davies 1905 PI xxviii) 86 Syro-Canaanite woman from thetomb ofRekhmire (after Davies 1943 PI xxiii) 87-8 Hittite warriors from MedinetHabu (after University of Chicago 1932 PI 87)

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The Children of the Sea People

The child standing by Wagon NO5 (Fig 22) wears a single long lock of hairgrowing from the crown of his head 11 This hairstyle is characteristic ofSyro-Canaanite children of both sexes in New Kingdom reliefs12(Fig 94 Davies1905 PI xxxiX)13

Children often appear in New Kingdom scenes of siege or battle beinglifted over the walls of a besieged city in Syria or Canaan (Fig 95) It is notclear whether these children are being sacrificed to the gods to change thecourse of the battle presented to Pharaoh as hostages or helped to escape(Keel 1975 Spalinger 1977-8 Feucht 1990b33-39 Donohue 1992) In thisinstance we suggest that they are being helped to escape (Keel 1975456 Thechildren appear to be on the point of collapse and their chances of escape areprobably slim Keel suggests that fear of Pharaoh immobilizes the childrenwith terror and they sink to the ground unable to stir)

Donohue (199283) suggests that the women are scooping the children upinto the wagons before the advancing enemy but this is unlikely If they weretrying to clamber into the wagons they would be facing inwards and probablyusing their legs to get a purchase on the side of the wagon as they clamber upit (The same applies to children in scenes of besieged cities There are onlytwo examples of children who could conceivably be climbing into the city (thelittle girl on the left in Fig 95 see also Keel 1975 Fig 19)

The fact that the older children are dressed as Sea Peoples may suggestpatrilineal behaviour in the immigrant society - at least in regard to costume

Summary

The limitations of this type of source material preclude absolute conclusionsThe Aegean paintings and statuettes come from a different artistic traditionthan the Medinet Habu reliefs discrepancies between the two are inevitableEgyptian depictions of foreigners have their limitations and since the artists atMedinet Habu may have been unfamiliar with these hairstyles it is difficult to tellhow accurate these portrayals are We may however make a few suggestions

11 The second line emerging from the crown of his head in University of Chicago 1930 PI49D is probably a scratch rather than a second lock

12 See also Pritchard 1954 No 45 (the man presenting this child is said to be the ruler ofTunip and can therefore be located in Syria) Save Stiderbergh 1957 PI xxiii Martin1989PI 105 University of Chicago 1932PI 87Feucht 1990a198 n 82 points out that apart from the single plait children from Syriamay also sport two plaits a head of short hair or two clumps of hair There is quite avariety of hairstyles

13 The parallel to this scene in the tomb ofHuya describes this tribute as coming from Kharuand Kush (Sandman 193837 line 1)

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Fig 9 91 Hittite warrior from Medinet Habu (after University of Chicago 1932 PI 87) 92Hittite warriors from Abu Simbel (after Wreszinski 1935 PI 170) 93 Group ofHittites from the siege of Dapur (after ibid PI 109) 94 Syro-Canaanite women andchild (after Davies 1947 PI viii) 95 Girl being let down over the city wall relief ofthe siege of Ashkelon (after Keel 1975Fig 21)

Woman NO4 with her long straight plait conforms to Egyptian depictionsof Syro-Canaanite women although she also has parallels in Aegean artWoman No 1 has parallels in both the Egyptian tradition and the Aegeantradition although the Egyptian parallels are stronger and she is also probablya Syro-Canaanite woman Image NO7 if she is a woman is vaguely similarto certain Egyptian pictures of Syro-Canaanite women but her hair is rathershort to provide a good parallel it should fall to a point further down her back

No exact parallels are known for the hairstyle of No 2 in either Egyptian orAegean art It is not clear whether this hairstyle may represent an ethnic groupunknown to us Alternatively middotdifferent hairstyles may have been worn bywomen at different periods of their lives - married ~omen and maidens forexample or old women and young ones or pregnant women They may alsocharacterize different social standings or occupations

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In some cases the persons hairstyle is incomplete It is masked by overlappinglinages or by the edge of the wagon as in Images Nos 3 and 6If they had longer hair these people might have hairstyles like those of Women 12or 4 If Image No3 had long hair she would have excellent parallels in Aegeanart where hair ribbons are very common If the bag-shaped hairstyle of Image No3 is complete as it stands however then the best parallels are actually fomIdamongst Syrian men Woman No 6s short hair is occasionally paralleled amongstSyrian women it is much more characteristic of Nubian women however Notonly did themiddotEgyptians have Nubian servants and slaves but many Egyptians werethemselves of Nubian stock so that women of this type could be found throughoutthe territories under Egyptian rule

The Sea Peoples were accompanied by men from the areas they traversedThey may have been taken as slaves or prisoners or maybe they decided tojoin the Sea Peoples advance in order to seek their fortunes abroad Such arethe wagon drivers Nos 5 and 9 who are definitely Syro-Canaanites andperhaps Image No3 ifhe is a Syrian or Image No7 if he is a Hittite

This picture of a complex and highly diverse origin of the group of Sea Peoplesportrayed in the Medinet Habu reliefs (which mayor may not be a typical group)suggests that it is unlikely that the Philistines were 100 pure Mycenaean Greeks(Stager 1995337 following Mazar 1988255-6 260) Like Sherratt (1998307)we characterize the Sea Peoples as cosmopolitan although we still envisagemany of them as Aegeans Other groups or individuals would have joined the SeaPeoples in northern Syria and Canaan

Conclusions

In the Medinet Habu reliefs the Sea Peoples are accompanied by at leastone woman who is clearly Syro-Canaanite and also by women with parallelsin Aegean art A similar conclusion was also reached by an analysis ofmaterial culture assemblages from Syria and Palestine (Bunimovitz andYasur-Landau forthcoming a b) attributed to the first stages of Aegeansettlement at the beginning of the Iron Age In these studies evidence ofbehavioural patterns of Aegean origin such as weaving with a loom equippedwith round unperfonlted loomweights and cooking on a hearth with Aegeanstyle cooking-pots were found side by side with local textile manufacture andcooking methods These finds may be cautiously interpreted as evidence of thepresence of women of both Aegean and local origin at these sites

The evidence from the reliefs shows that the Sea Peoples were accompaniedby men and women from Syria andor Canaan and by children probably theSea Peoples offspring by these women This indicates that the Sea Peoplesspent time in Syria andor Canaan before they continued on their way to Egypt

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Rather than envisaging the Sea Peoples immigration as a rapid concerted attack ata number of points simultaneously (Stager 1995) we should consider it as acomplex situation of not necessarily coordinated movements by different groupsfrom different areas

The size of the children depicted in the Medinet Habu reliefs may give ussome indication of how long the Sea Peoples had been present in the areabefore they moved south to Egypt If the younger children are the offspring ofthese women and the Sea Peoples the latter must have reached the area someseven or six years earlier if the older children wearing Philistine headgearare also the offspring of these households then we should think in terms of aninterval of thirteen years or more A similar observation was made by Singer(1987418) on the basis of the tablets from Ugarit and Ras Ibn Hani Thismeans that the fall of Ugarit should have occurred some fifteen to twentyyears before Ramses Ills war with the Sea Peoples It is quite acceptablehowever to postulate a short period of consolidation before the Sea Peoplesattempted to surge down into Egypt 14

The group we see in the Medinet Habu reliefs with their families would thenbe a second wave of settlement

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank I Finkelstein I Singer S Bunimovitz and the lateP Beck for reading and commenting on earlier drafts of this paper We wouldalso like to thank the Griffith Institute Oxford for allowing us to quotematerial from the unpublished notebooks of Sir Alan Gardiner

REFERENCES

Akurgal E 1962 The Art of the Hittites LondonAldred C 1973 Akhenaten and Nefertiti New YorkAstrom P 1992 Approaches to the Study of Women in Ancient Cyprus In

Astrom P ed Acta Cypria Acts of an International Congress onCypriote Archaeology held in GOteborg on 22-24 August 1991 Part 2(Studies in Mediterranean Archaeology Pocket-Book 117) Jonsered 5-8

14 On the other hand the size of the children depicted in the reliefs may not necessarily haveany historical significance Nor are these children necessarily these womens offspring bythe Sea People they even may be these womens children by previous partners in whichcase this part of the argument is irrelevant The Philistine youths may even be youngPhilistines who have been assigned to guarding the women and children as a relativelysafe post in view of their youth and inexperience

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Bietak M 1996 Avaris The Capital othe Hyksos LondonBolger D 1994 Engendering Cypriot Archaeology Female Roles and

Statuses before the Bronze Age Opuscula Atheniensia XX 19-17Brack A and Brack A 1980 Das Grab des Haremheb Theben Nr 78

MainzBrug JF 1984 A Literary and Archaeological Study othe Philistines Vols

1 and 2 MichiganBrunner-Traut E 1956 Die altiigyptischen Scherbenbilder (Bildostraka) der

Deutschen Museen und Sammlungen WiesbadenBrunner-Traut E 1979 Egyptian Artists Sketches LondonBuchholz H-G and Karageorghis V 1973 Prehistoric Greece and Cyprus

LondonBunimovitz S and Yasur-Landau A 1996 Philistine and Israelite Pottery A

Comparative Approach to the Question of Pots and People Tel Aviv2388-101

Bunimovitz S and Yasur-Landau A Forthcominga Behavioural Aspects of12th Century BCE Aegean Immigrants in Palestine and Cyprus

Bunimovitz S and Yasur-Landau A Forthcominglb Women and AegeanImmigration to Cyprus in the 12th Century BCE

Caubert A 1998 The International Style A point of View from the Levantand Syria In Cline EH and Harris-Cline D eds The Aegean and theOrient in the Second Millennium (Aegaeum 18) Liege 105-111

Cifola B 1991 The Terminology of Ramses Ills Historical Records with aFormal Analysis of the War Scenes Orientalia 609-57

Cifola B 1994 The Role of the Sea Peoples at the end of the Late BronzeAge A Reassessment of Textual and Archaeological Evidence OriensAntiqui Miscellanea 11-23

Cline EH 1995 Tinker Tailor Soldier Sailor Minoans and MyceneansAbroad In Laffineur R and Niemeier W-D eds Politeia Societyand State in the Aegean Bronze Age (Aegaeum 12) Liege 265-287

Conkey MW and Spector J 1984 Archaeology and the Study of GenderAdvances in Archaeological Method and Theory 71-38

Darnell J C 1991 Supposed Depictions of the Hittites in the Amarna PeriodStudien zur Altiigyptischen Kultur 18 113-140

Davies N de Garis 1905 The Rock Tombs of El Amarna II LondonDavies N de Garis 1908 The Rock Tombs of El Amarna VI LondonDavies N de Garis 1928 The Work of the Graphic Branch of the

Expedition Bulletin othe Metropolitan Museum 0Art 23237-48Davies N de Garis 1932 The Work of the Graphic Branch of the

Expedition Bulletin of the Metropolitan Museum of Art 273 51-62

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The most important factor however may actually be the cultural differencethat dictates how foreigners are represented in contrast to oneself(Wachsmaltn 19874-26 Cline 1995 Leahy 1995226)

There is a great deal of variety in the hairstyles of the Aegean which canprobably be attributed to differences in ethnic background age social statusand period (Koehl 1986 Kontorli-Papadopoulou 199696)

Image No 1Woman No ls long curling lock of hair has various parallels amongst

Syrian or northern women represented in Egyptian art Examples are a womenin the harem at el-Amarna (Fig 31) a woman in a siege scene on the Karnaktalatat (Smith 1965 Fig 210) and also a northern female prisoner beingclubbed by Nefertiti on a relief in the Boston Museum (Aldred 1973 No 57)

In a variant of this hairstyle a single lock falls down the womans spine andcurls upwards at its tip This hairstyle is found on an ornamental ivory hornoffered as tribute by a Syrian in a tomb painting in the British Museum (Fig32)6 A woman in the scene of the siege of Ullaza at Medinet Habu is alsoportrayed with a curl falling behind her back (Fig 33) However thiswomans curl is much thinner than that of Woman No1

There are several other cases of figures whose hair is drawn into a longsingle curl but they are not necessarily foreign women (the woman in Fig 34wears a diaphanous Egyptian-style gown Roeder 1969 PI 177 PC 80 isprobably a Libyan man [ibid 187 199] the girl portrayed in Wenig 196785is probably wearing the sidelock of youth)

Two other hairstyles with dangling curls are known in ancient Egyptianportrayals of foreigners but their connection with Woman No 1 is moretenuous In the first instance the woman wears a curl or lock falling over herear and a narrow curl at the back of her head (Figs 35 and 36 Davies 1908PIs xvii xix maybe Hall 1931 PI XV2)

Dangling curls also appear in the New Kingdom iconography of femalesphinxes both in Egypt and in Canaan (eg in the Megiddo ivories) and oncertain ornamental vessels (Fig No 37) Bryan (199669-72) relates thesphinxes curls to the sidelock worn by Libyan males A connection betweenthe Sea Peoples and the Libyans is attested for the fifth year of Merneptahwhen a coalition of Libyans and various Sea Peoples attacked Egypt

6 Omamental vases and ivory tusks are common in Egyptian depictions of tribute from Syriaand Canaan during this period In his victory reliefs at Kamak Seti I presents omamentsof this type to the gods as thank-offerings after campaigns against several differentenemies - against the Shasu Hittites Syrians and Libyans - so the vases in these reliefscannot be identified as booty from any particular area

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However as Cifola (19943) points out these groups are not the same as thosewho came into contact with Ramses III with the exception of the Shekelesh Itshould be noted that the prototype here is male (we know very little about theappearan~e of female Libyans in this period) Most importantly the otherfeatures of the sphinxes hairstyle do not parallel the arrangement of WomanNOls hair The female sphinxes generally wear the remainder of their hairpiled upon their heads or concealed in a close-fitting low flat hat which isvery different from the flowing locks of Woman No1

Woman NO1 may have had two curling tresses one on each side of herface although only one is shown In the Medinet Habu relief of the siege ofUllaza a dying person is shown full face with two long narrow locks ofcurling hair one on each side of her face (Fig 3 8) This figure is probably awoman (Darnell 1991136) but not inevitably so since in the same relief thishairstyle is also worn by a warrior dying on the battlefield (Fig 4 1 cf alsoUniversity of Chicago 1936 PI 114)

These two narrow curling locks should not be confused with the scroll wig ofthe naked goddess common in Syro-Canaanite art and derived from the scroll wigof the goddess Hathor Scroll wig curls are generally very much tighter than thecurl of Woman NO1 and reach to the goddess shoulders Side views of the scrollwig in three dimensions can be seen on ivory heads found at Megiddo (Fig 42)

In Minoan and Mycenean culture where long hair is common(Kontorli-Papadopolou 199696-97) many parallels can be found for womenwith their hair tied back Two women from the House of the Ladies at Therafrom the LM IA are suitable parallels (Figs 4344) as are two women on achariot in the Boar Hunt fresco (Immerwahr 1990 PI 69) at Tiryns from theLH IIIB period (This illustration is a reconstruction but enough of theoriginal remains to illustrate our point) Good parallels to hair drawn back inlong plaits can be found in examples of goddesses with upraised arms withlong plaits on their backs from Postpalatial Crete These can be found in theShrine of the Double Axes at Knossos dated to the LM IlIB (Gesell 198542181 PI 46a) and the temple and cult rooms at Karphi (ibid45 182 PIs 48-49)dated to the LM mc period (Figs 45 46) Earlier parallels are from the LHI1IA1 painted pottery from Kition (Vermule and Karageorghis 198217-19Figs III1 0 III 12) A lesser parallel to the headdress ending with a curlinglock can be seen in the depiction in ivory of goddesses on the Minet el-Beidaivory pyxis and the ivory plaque from Tomb 49 at Mycenae (Rehak 199252-52 PI XVIc XVIIa) Since the curling lock in these depictions is a part of aseemingly more complex hairstyle than the one used by Woman NO1 and theorigin (Syro-Canaanite or Aegean) of this deity type (Rehak 199253) isunknown the contribution of these parallels is limited

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Fig 3 31 Syro-Canaanite woman from the royal harem El-Amarna (after Davies 1908 PIxvii) 32 Tribute bearer bringing ivory horn decorated with woman wearing long curl(after Keel 1975 Fig 8) 33 Woman from relief of the siege of Ullaza (afterUniversity of Chicago 1932 PI 87) 34 Woman wearing a single long curl (afterPage 1983 No 49) 35 Female captives from Syro-Canaan and Nubia (after Smithand Redford 1976 PI 27)36 Women in besieged Syrian city (after Ricke 1967P112)37 Ornamental vessels decorated with female heads (after University of Chicago1986 PI 8) 38 Woman from relief ofthe siege ofUllaza (after ibid 1932 PI 87)

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A partial parallel to the long curling hair of Woman NO1 can be found inthe Mykenaia figure from the cultic centre in Mycenae in the LH IIIB (Fig 47)as part of a more complex hairstyle which also includes a hair ribbon and curlson the forehead7 A closer parallel appears on the krater that was found inMinet el-Beida (Venneule and Karageorghis 198221 Fig IIIl9) from the LHIlIA In this scene appear two sword-bearing figures with similar hairstylesVenneule and Karageorghis suggest that these figures represent two captainsApart from their swords however these figures have no indications of genderand we should not rule out the possibility that they may be womens

In general the depictions of Syro-Canaanite women in Egyptian art arecloser to Image NO1 than the parallels from the Aegean This figure probablyrepresents a Syro-Canaanite woman although it is not impossible that itdepicts a woman from the Aegean

Image No 2

No exact parallels to Woman NO2 are known from Egyptian depictions offoreign women No close parallels to this figures hairstyle are found inAegean art either Does this mean that this woman came from outside the areaaccessible to the Egyptians (between Libya and Anatolia) and the Myceneansand Minoans (mainland Greece and the islands)

Alternatively Image NO2 might depict a special hairstyle for older womenfrom one of these areas One should note the age differentiation in hairstylesfor both males and females in the Aegean world (Davis 1986 Koehl 1986)By contrast older women are seldom represented in Egyptian art (Janssen ampJanssen 1996 14) they are unlikely to have been taken as prisoners of warunless they had some special skill

Image No 3

There are several parallels for Syro-Canaanite women wearing a filletaround their heads or hair-ribbons although it is by no means the norm

7 The Medinet Habu reliefs omit details such as curls on the forehead and so on whichappear frequently in the Aegean frescoes of women This phenomenon may originate fromthe difference in the artistic medium this type of detail is more difficult to represent inrelief than in fresco A similar phenomenon of generalization appears within Aegeanculture itself if we compare the hairstyles depicted in frescoes with those portrayed onceranlics (cf Vermeule amp Karageorghis 198217 for the parallel between the Kitionfragment and La Parisienne from Knossos)

8 Compare the sword-bearing figures on the Homage Krater (ibid23-24) which areidentical with the figures preceding them including the necklaces they wear

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Fig 4 41 Dying warrior from relief of the siege ofUllaza (after University of Chicago 1932PI 87) 42 Ivoryheads from Megiddo wearing scroll wigs (drawing after Loud 1939Nos 192-193)43 Woman from The House of the Ladies Thera (drawing afterhnmerwahr 1990 colour PI XI) 44 Woman from The House of the Ladies Thera(drawing after ibid colour PI XII) 45 Statuette of goddess from Karphi (drawingafter Buchholz amp Karageorghis 1973 Fig 1267) 46 Statuette of goddess fromKnossos (drawing after ibid Fig 1269) 47 The Mykenaia figure from Mycenae(drawing after hnmerwahr 1990 colour PI XX) 48 Women captives from the tombofHaremheb (after Martin 1989PI 105)

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Parallels include the women in the tomb of Haremheb (Fig 48) and in thetomb of Rekhmire (Fig 5 1) Another possible parallel are the women captiveson the Karnak talatat (Fig 35 above the ribbon does not appear on theoriginal relief blocks but is restored in the frontispiece of Redford 1984) aswell as those on three decorated spoons (Fig 52 Fechheimer 1921138Vandier d Abbadie 197220-21)

The women from the tomb of Reklullire are said to be serfs from the templeof Amun brought by Tuthmosis III as captives from his campaignsTuthmosis northern campaigns ranged from Canaan to the EuphratesTuthmosis declaration that he gave prisoners from the siege of Megiddo to thetemple of Amun (Sethe 1961 (Urk IV)74210-7438) may indicate that thesewomen were Canaanites but it is also possible that they are prisoners of warfrom Tuthmosis other campaigns to Lebanon or Syria

There are many parallels for both women and men wearing a fillet aroundtheir heads from the Aegean (Kontorli-Papadopoulou 199695) such as thehead of the Lady with the Lily from the LH lIlB cultic centre of Mycenae(Fig 53) and the pyxis-bearers from Tiryns (Fig 54) A parallel even closerin time may be the depiction of a woman with a hair ribbon on the LH IIICWarrior Vase from Mycenae (Venllule and Karageorghis 1982130-131Fig X142) Unfortunately only the frontal part of the womans head hassurvived leaving the rest of the headdress unknown to us

Nevertheless we know of no other instance of a Syrian woman with abag-shaped hairstyle like this one On the other hand the back of Image No3 s hairstyle is hidden by Image No2 she might conceivably have a hairstylelike Women Nos 12 or 7

It is most likely that this woman comes from the Aegean However if weassume that nothing is missing from the hairstyle then there is a more remotepossibility that this figure is a not a woman from Syria but a Syrian man aprisoner or a slave This bag-shaped hairstyle is characteristic of Syro-Canaanitemen in Egyptian art of this period although they are traditionally shown withbeards (HeIck 1962346) By contrast in Canaanite art there are manyinstances of clean-shaven men (Figs 71-3 below see also Loud 1939 Nos2 161 162) It is also extremely common for Syrian men to wear filletsaround their brows (Fig 61 Ricke 1967 PI 12 Martin 1989 PI 105)

Image No 4

Women with a single long plait of hair like No 4 appear in various NewKingdom contexts as representative of northerners or Syrians (HeIck 1962347)There are two variants of this hairstyle a single plait falling down the womansback and a plait falling to the side of her face which could be one of a pair

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Fig 5 51 Syro-Canaanite women from the tomb ofRekhmire (after Davies 1943 PI xxiii)52 Decorated spoon in the form of a Syro-Canaanite woman (after Wallert 1967PI24) 53 The Lady with the Lily from Mycenae (drawing afterKontorli-Papadopulou 1996 PI 94) 54 Pyxis-bearer from Tiryns (drawing afterImmerwahr 1990 PI 56)

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Women wearing a plait straight down their back appear in the tomb ofRekhmire (Fig 62 Davies 192840 followed by Feucht 1990a194 suggeststhat these women are Hittites) This hairstyle is also worn by a woman in SetiIs reliefs of his campaign against the Shasu (Fig 63) This woman is probablyone of the Shasu although since Setis battle against the Shasu takes place enroute to Gaza she might be a Canaanite taken captive by the Shasu This styleis also attested on an ivory figure from Megiddo (Loud 1939 No 175)

Women with a plait to one side appear on the throne of Queen Tiy in thetomb of Kheruef (Fig 64) and in the tombs of Menkheperresoneb (Fig 65)and Amenmose (Davies 1933 PI xxxiv)9 On the throne of Tiy such womenappear as typical northerners contrasted with Nubian captives in the tombs ofMenkheperresoneb and Amenmose their origin is not specified Plaits hangingto one side also appear on two decorated spoons (Fig 52 above and Vandierd Abbadie 197220-21) and on a servant girl from the tomb of Intef (althoughthis girl is not said explicitly to be a foreigner and the end of her plait isreconstructed) (Davies 193253)

Note incidentally that in Egyptian art this hairstyle is always worn bySyro-Canaanite slaves or captives and not by women from the same countrieswhen at home (with the possible exception of the Shasu or Canaanite womanin Fig 63) Presumably female slaves tied their long hair back to keep it outof the way whilst working and this practice became generic for theiconography of Syro-Canaanite captive women

Aegean art includes numerous examples of women with plaits Howevermost of these examples are more similar to the curling lock of Woman No1The best parallels to the straight plait of Woman NO4 are the simple plaitsworn by female statuettes However the latter may reflect the limitations ofworking in clay as opposed to paint rather than actually reproducing adifferent hairstyle (see note 7 above)

There may also be parallels in Hittite art for tIlis single long plait The InandikPithos (OzgUy 198883-92 Fig 64) dated to the Old Hittite Period (Fig 66Hoffner 1995558-559 Figs 1 and 2) depicts scenes of preparation for a weddingin a wealthy house Some women wear either a single plait or a waist-lengthheaddress whereas others wear all-enveloping shawls covering the head Asinlilar plait or headdress is worn by the queen in an orthostat from Alaca Hoyiik(Akurgal 1962 PI 92) dated before the 13th century BCE (Kohlmeyer19952647) and also under the crowns worn by the goddesses on the Yazilikayarock carvings (Fig 81 ibid2650 Fig 9) dated to the 13th century BCE

9 Gardiner Notebook 28819 is a photograph of a painting of the wall here we see that thewomens plaits are much the same colour as their garments which is why the-plait doesnot show up clearly in photographs (Meyer 1913721 Wreszinski 1923275)

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Fig 6 61 Syro-Canaanite men wearing fillets (after Davies 1947 PI viii) 62Syro-Canaanite women from the tomb of Reklunire (after Davies 1943 PI Ivii) 63Woman from the relief of Seti Is battle against the Shasu (after University ofChicago 1986 PI 12) 64 Syro-Canaanite and Nubian female captives decoratingQueen Tiys throne (after University of Chicago 1980 PI 47) 65 Syro-Canaanitewoman from the tomb of Menkheperresoneb (after Davies 1933 PI v) 66 Womenfrom the Inandik pithos (after Hoffner 1995Fig 2)

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Images No 5 and 9

Images NO5 and 9 are either bald or have their hair closely cropped Giventhat both heads are damaged however this observation is not entirely certain

Men with sho~t hair are very rare in Aegean art~ where only babies andyoung children wear their hair short (Koehl 1986100-101) On the otherhand men with close-cropped hair or close-fitting caps (Stern 1989) arecommon in Canaanite art (Figs 71-3 Loud 1939 Nos 2 162) Interestinglyenough these Canaanites are shown driving chariots (ibid Nos 2 159 161)which provides a good parallel to NO9 the driver of Wagon NO5 Image No5 may be the driver of Wagon No3 Unlike his colleague No9 who is stillgoading the oxen onwards NO5 has given up hope and raises his hands indespair

Image No 6

The upper rim of the chariot hides the back of Woman No 6s neck Itwould be possible to reconstruct her hairstyle with a long narrow plait like thewomen already described It would also be possible to envisage her as havingshort hair However it is unusual to find women from Syro-Palestineportrayed in this way A group of women depicted in the tomb of Reklunirehave short hair (Fig 82 Davies 192840 followed by Feucht 1990a195identifies the long wrap-around dresses of these women as Syrian in style)This short hairstyle may be adopted from the group of Nubian women whoprecede the Syrians in this picture A naked goddess mounted on a horse isalso portrayed wearing short hair and a large earring (Fig 83 Brunner-Traut197929-30 NO5 PI V Petersen 1973 No 31 However Petersen idemsuggests that the goddess is wearing a helmet) The Hittite princess bride ofRamses II is shown with short hair (Fig 84) but she has been dressed upEgyptian style for the celebrations so her hairstyle is not necessarilysignificant

In Egyptian art this short hairstyle is characteristic of Nubian women (Fig85 Davies amp Gardiner 1926 PI xxx University of Chicago 1930 PI 9Ricke 1967 PIs 89 Brack amp Brack 1980 PI 50 Dziobeck 1992 PI 1) Itis true that the front part of Woman No 6s hairstyle tapers back from herforehead whereas most Nubian women wear their hair in a thick fringeHowever Nubian women are depicted with this type of central parting in afew New Kingdom tombs such as those of Rekhmire (Davies 1943 PI xxii)and Haremheb (Brack amp Brack 1980 PI 50 see also University of Chicago1930 PI 9)

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Fig 7 71 Ivory from Megiddo (after Loud 1939 No 159) 72 Ivory from Megiddo (afteribid No 160)73 Bronze plaque from Hazor (after Redford 1992197 Fig 71)

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Image No 7

This person wears its hair tapering to the nape of the neck Syro-Canaanitewomen sometimes wear their hair tapering to a point (Muller 1906 PI 9)although usually their hair is somewhat longer than that of Image NO7 andthe pointed tip of their hairstyle falls farther back behind their shoulderslO

(Fig 86) A woman portrayed on one of the Megiddo ivories has the samehairstyle (Loud 1939 No 2b)

This image may represent another Syro-Canaanite woman A more remotepossibility is that this image represents a Hittite man Hittite men wore theirhair in a queue and had bald foreheads In the reliefs at Medinet Habu the linemarking the front of the Hittite mens bald pates is not necessarily drawn in(Fig 87) Hittite men generally wore their hair much longer but there are afew examples of Hittite men whose hair only reaches to the back of their necks(Figs 87-92 see also Kuentz 1928 PI xviii)

There is a small possibility that Hittite women may also have worn thisstyle but the evidence is ambiguous In the Ramesseum relief of the siege ofDapur a group of people are shown leaving the city bearing baskets ofprovisions and begging for peace (Fig 93) Their hair tapers to theirshoulders Wreszinski (1935 PI 109) and HeIck (1962343) suggest thatthese people are the ruler of the city and the women of his house On the otherhand some of the dead warriors lying on the battlefield have exactly the samehairstyle so the figures accompanying the ruler are not necessarily women Inany case their hair is too long to be compared to this figure

There is no parallel for this figure in Aegean art

Image No 8

So little is visible of Image NO8 that any discussion of her coiffure wouldbe inconclusive

10 Some of the figures in the siege of Ullaza (University of Chicago 1932 PI 87) have thishairstyle but they are not necessarily women A decorated spoon in the Rijksmuseum vonOudheiden at Leiden has a similar hairstyle but since the woman is naked it is difficult totell whether she represents a foreigner (Eggebrecht 1987 No 246) The same applies tothe decorated spoon Louvre N-I728 (Vandier dAbbadie 197214-15)

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Fig 8 81 Goddess on the Yazilikaya rock carvings (after Kohlmeyer 1995 Fig 9) 82Women from the tomb of Rekhmire (after Davies 1943 PI Ivii) 83 Goddess onhorseback (drawing after Brunner-Traut 1956 No 16 PI viii) 84 The Hittiteprincess from the Marriage Stele of Ramses IT(after Lepsius 1849-1859 PI 196) 85Nubian women (after Davies 1905 PI xxviii) 86 Syro-Canaanite woman from thetomb ofRekhmire (after Davies 1943 PI xxiii) 87-8 Hittite warriors from MedinetHabu (after University of Chicago 1932 PI 87)

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The Children of the Sea People

The child standing by Wagon NO5 (Fig 22) wears a single long lock of hairgrowing from the crown of his head 11 This hairstyle is characteristic ofSyro-Canaanite children of both sexes in New Kingdom reliefs12(Fig 94 Davies1905 PI xxxiX)13

Children often appear in New Kingdom scenes of siege or battle beinglifted over the walls of a besieged city in Syria or Canaan (Fig 95) It is notclear whether these children are being sacrificed to the gods to change thecourse of the battle presented to Pharaoh as hostages or helped to escape(Keel 1975 Spalinger 1977-8 Feucht 1990b33-39 Donohue 1992) In thisinstance we suggest that they are being helped to escape (Keel 1975456 Thechildren appear to be on the point of collapse and their chances of escape areprobably slim Keel suggests that fear of Pharaoh immobilizes the childrenwith terror and they sink to the ground unable to stir)

Donohue (199283) suggests that the women are scooping the children upinto the wagons before the advancing enemy but this is unlikely If they weretrying to clamber into the wagons they would be facing inwards and probablyusing their legs to get a purchase on the side of the wagon as they clamber upit (The same applies to children in scenes of besieged cities There are onlytwo examples of children who could conceivably be climbing into the city (thelittle girl on the left in Fig 95 see also Keel 1975 Fig 19)

The fact that the older children are dressed as Sea Peoples may suggestpatrilineal behaviour in the immigrant society - at least in regard to costume

Summary

The limitations of this type of source material preclude absolute conclusionsThe Aegean paintings and statuettes come from a different artistic traditionthan the Medinet Habu reliefs discrepancies between the two are inevitableEgyptian depictions of foreigners have their limitations and since the artists atMedinet Habu may have been unfamiliar with these hairstyles it is difficult to tellhow accurate these portrayals are We may however make a few suggestions

11 The second line emerging from the crown of his head in University of Chicago 1930 PI49D is probably a scratch rather than a second lock

12 See also Pritchard 1954 No 45 (the man presenting this child is said to be the ruler ofTunip and can therefore be located in Syria) Save Stiderbergh 1957 PI xxiii Martin1989PI 105 University of Chicago 1932PI 87Feucht 1990a198 n 82 points out that apart from the single plait children from Syriamay also sport two plaits a head of short hair or two clumps of hair There is quite avariety of hairstyles

13 The parallel to this scene in the tomb ofHuya describes this tribute as coming from Kharuand Kush (Sandman 193837 line 1)

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Fig 9 91 Hittite warrior from Medinet Habu (after University of Chicago 1932 PI 87) 92Hittite warriors from Abu Simbel (after Wreszinski 1935 PI 170) 93 Group ofHittites from the siege of Dapur (after ibid PI 109) 94 Syro-Canaanite women andchild (after Davies 1947 PI viii) 95 Girl being let down over the city wall relief ofthe siege of Ashkelon (after Keel 1975Fig 21)

Woman NO4 with her long straight plait conforms to Egyptian depictionsof Syro-Canaanite women although she also has parallels in Aegean artWoman No 1 has parallels in both the Egyptian tradition and the Aegeantradition although the Egyptian parallels are stronger and she is also probablya Syro-Canaanite woman Image NO7 if she is a woman is vaguely similarto certain Egyptian pictures of Syro-Canaanite women but her hair is rathershort to provide a good parallel it should fall to a point further down her back

No exact parallels are known for the hairstyle of No 2 in either Egyptian orAegean art It is not clear whether this hairstyle may represent an ethnic groupunknown to us Alternatively middotdifferent hairstyles may have been worn bywomen at different periods of their lives - married ~omen and maidens forexample or old women and young ones or pregnant women They may alsocharacterize different social standings or occupations

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In some cases the persons hairstyle is incomplete It is masked by overlappinglinages or by the edge of the wagon as in Images Nos 3 and 6If they had longer hair these people might have hairstyles like those of Women 12or 4 If Image No3 had long hair she would have excellent parallels in Aegeanart where hair ribbons are very common If the bag-shaped hairstyle of Image No3 is complete as it stands however then the best parallels are actually fomIdamongst Syrian men Woman No 6s short hair is occasionally paralleled amongstSyrian women it is much more characteristic of Nubian women however Notonly did themiddotEgyptians have Nubian servants and slaves but many Egyptians werethemselves of Nubian stock so that women of this type could be found throughoutthe territories under Egyptian rule

The Sea Peoples were accompanied by men from the areas they traversedThey may have been taken as slaves or prisoners or maybe they decided tojoin the Sea Peoples advance in order to seek their fortunes abroad Such arethe wagon drivers Nos 5 and 9 who are definitely Syro-Canaanites andperhaps Image No3 ifhe is a Syrian or Image No7 if he is a Hittite

This picture of a complex and highly diverse origin of the group of Sea Peoplesportrayed in the Medinet Habu reliefs (which mayor may not be a typical group)suggests that it is unlikely that the Philistines were 100 pure Mycenaean Greeks(Stager 1995337 following Mazar 1988255-6 260) Like Sherratt (1998307)we characterize the Sea Peoples as cosmopolitan although we still envisagemany of them as Aegeans Other groups or individuals would have joined the SeaPeoples in northern Syria and Canaan

Conclusions

In the Medinet Habu reliefs the Sea Peoples are accompanied by at leastone woman who is clearly Syro-Canaanite and also by women with parallelsin Aegean art A similar conclusion was also reached by an analysis ofmaterial culture assemblages from Syria and Palestine (Bunimovitz andYasur-Landau forthcoming a b) attributed to the first stages of Aegeansettlement at the beginning of the Iron Age In these studies evidence ofbehavioural patterns of Aegean origin such as weaving with a loom equippedwith round unperfonlted loomweights and cooking on a hearth with Aegeanstyle cooking-pots were found side by side with local textile manufacture andcooking methods These finds may be cautiously interpreted as evidence of thepresence of women of both Aegean and local origin at these sites

The evidence from the reliefs shows that the Sea Peoples were accompaniedby men and women from Syria andor Canaan and by children probably theSea Peoples offspring by these women This indicates that the Sea Peoplesspent time in Syria andor Canaan before they continued on their way to Egypt

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Rather than envisaging the Sea Peoples immigration as a rapid concerted attack ata number of points simultaneously (Stager 1995) we should consider it as acomplex situation of not necessarily coordinated movements by different groupsfrom different areas

The size of the children depicted in the Medinet Habu reliefs may give ussome indication of how long the Sea Peoples had been present in the areabefore they moved south to Egypt If the younger children are the offspring ofthese women and the Sea Peoples the latter must have reached the area someseven or six years earlier if the older children wearing Philistine headgearare also the offspring of these households then we should think in terms of aninterval of thirteen years or more A similar observation was made by Singer(1987418) on the basis of the tablets from Ugarit and Ras Ibn Hani Thismeans that the fall of Ugarit should have occurred some fifteen to twentyyears before Ramses Ills war with the Sea Peoples It is quite acceptablehowever to postulate a short period of consolidation before the Sea Peoplesattempted to surge down into Egypt 14

The group we see in the Medinet Habu reliefs with their families would thenbe a second wave of settlement

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank I Finkelstein I Singer S Bunimovitz and the lateP Beck for reading and commenting on earlier drafts of this paper We wouldalso like to thank the Griffith Institute Oxford for allowing us to quotematerial from the unpublished notebooks of Sir Alan Gardiner

REFERENCES

Akurgal E 1962 The Art of the Hittites LondonAldred C 1973 Akhenaten and Nefertiti New YorkAstrom P 1992 Approaches to the Study of Women in Ancient Cyprus In

Astrom P ed Acta Cypria Acts of an International Congress onCypriote Archaeology held in GOteborg on 22-24 August 1991 Part 2(Studies in Mediterranean Archaeology Pocket-Book 117) Jonsered 5-8

14 On the other hand the size of the children depicted in the reliefs may not necessarily haveany historical significance Nor are these children necessarily these womens offspring bythe Sea People they even may be these womens children by previous partners in whichcase this part of the argument is irrelevant The Philistine youths may even be youngPhilistines who have been assigned to guarding the women and children as a relativelysafe post in view of their youth and inexperience

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Bietak M 1996 Avaris The Capital othe Hyksos LondonBolger D 1994 Engendering Cypriot Archaeology Female Roles and

Statuses before the Bronze Age Opuscula Atheniensia XX 19-17Brack A and Brack A 1980 Das Grab des Haremheb Theben Nr 78

MainzBrug JF 1984 A Literary and Archaeological Study othe Philistines Vols

1 and 2 MichiganBrunner-Traut E 1956 Die altiigyptischen Scherbenbilder (Bildostraka) der

Deutschen Museen und Sammlungen WiesbadenBrunner-Traut E 1979 Egyptian Artists Sketches LondonBuchholz H-G and Karageorghis V 1973 Prehistoric Greece and Cyprus

LondonBunimovitz S and Yasur-Landau A 1996 Philistine and Israelite Pottery A

Comparative Approach to the Question of Pots and People Tel Aviv2388-101

Bunimovitz S and Yasur-Landau A Forthcominga Behavioural Aspects of12th Century BCE Aegean Immigrants in Palestine and Cyprus

Bunimovitz S and Yasur-Landau A Forthcominglb Women and AegeanImmigration to Cyprus in the 12th Century BCE

Caubert A 1998 The International Style A point of View from the Levantand Syria In Cline EH and Harris-Cline D eds The Aegean and theOrient in the Second Millennium (Aegaeum 18) Liege 105-111

Cifola B 1991 The Terminology of Ramses Ills Historical Records with aFormal Analysis of the War Scenes Orientalia 609-57

Cifola B 1994 The Role of the Sea Peoples at the end of the Late BronzeAge A Reassessment of Textual and Archaeological Evidence OriensAntiqui Miscellanea 11-23

Cline EH 1995 Tinker Tailor Soldier Sailor Minoans and MyceneansAbroad In Laffineur R and Niemeier W-D eds Politeia Societyand State in the Aegean Bronze Age (Aegaeum 12) Liege 265-287

Conkey MW and Spector J 1984 Archaeology and the Study of GenderAdvances in Archaeological Method and Theory 71-38

Darnell J C 1991 Supposed Depictions of the Hittites in the Amarna PeriodStudien zur Altiigyptischen Kultur 18 113-140

Davies N de Garis 1905 The Rock Tombs of El Amarna II LondonDavies N de Garis 1908 The Rock Tombs of El Amarna VI LondonDavies N de Garis 1928 The Work of the Graphic Branch of the

Expedition Bulletin othe Metropolitan Museum 0Art 23237-48Davies N de Garis 1932 The Work of the Graphic Branch of the

Expedition Bulletin of the Metropolitan Museum of Art 273 51-62

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However as Cifola (19943) points out these groups are not the same as thosewho came into contact with Ramses III with the exception of the Shekelesh Itshould be noted that the prototype here is male (we know very little about theappearan~e of female Libyans in this period) Most importantly the otherfeatures of the sphinxes hairstyle do not parallel the arrangement of WomanNOls hair The female sphinxes generally wear the remainder of their hairpiled upon their heads or concealed in a close-fitting low flat hat which isvery different from the flowing locks of Woman No1

Woman NO1 may have had two curling tresses one on each side of herface although only one is shown In the Medinet Habu relief of the siege ofUllaza a dying person is shown full face with two long narrow locks ofcurling hair one on each side of her face (Fig 3 8) This figure is probably awoman (Darnell 1991136) but not inevitably so since in the same relief thishairstyle is also worn by a warrior dying on the battlefield (Fig 4 1 cf alsoUniversity of Chicago 1936 PI 114)

These two narrow curling locks should not be confused with the scroll wig ofthe naked goddess common in Syro-Canaanite art and derived from the scroll wigof the goddess Hathor Scroll wig curls are generally very much tighter than thecurl of Woman NO1 and reach to the goddess shoulders Side views of the scrollwig in three dimensions can be seen on ivory heads found at Megiddo (Fig 42)

In Minoan and Mycenean culture where long hair is common(Kontorli-Papadopolou 199696-97) many parallels can be found for womenwith their hair tied back Two women from the House of the Ladies at Therafrom the LM IA are suitable parallels (Figs 4344) as are two women on achariot in the Boar Hunt fresco (Immerwahr 1990 PI 69) at Tiryns from theLH IIIB period (This illustration is a reconstruction but enough of theoriginal remains to illustrate our point) Good parallels to hair drawn back inlong plaits can be found in examples of goddesses with upraised arms withlong plaits on their backs from Postpalatial Crete These can be found in theShrine of the Double Axes at Knossos dated to the LM IlIB (Gesell 198542181 PI 46a) and the temple and cult rooms at Karphi (ibid45 182 PIs 48-49)dated to the LM mc period (Figs 45 46) Earlier parallels are from the LHI1IA1 painted pottery from Kition (Vermule and Karageorghis 198217-19Figs III1 0 III 12) A lesser parallel to the headdress ending with a curlinglock can be seen in the depiction in ivory of goddesses on the Minet el-Beidaivory pyxis and the ivory plaque from Tomb 49 at Mycenae (Rehak 199252-52 PI XVIc XVIIa) Since the curling lock in these depictions is a part of aseemingly more complex hairstyle than the one used by Woman NO1 and theorigin (Syro-Canaanite or Aegean) of this deity type (Rehak 199253) isunknown the contribution of these parallels is limited

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Fig 3 31 Syro-Canaanite woman from the royal harem El-Amarna (after Davies 1908 PIxvii) 32 Tribute bearer bringing ivory horn decorated with woman wearing long curl(after Keel 1975 Fig 8) 33 Woman from relief of the siege of Ullaza (afterUniversity of Chicago 1932 PI 87) 34 Woman wearing a single long curl (afterPage 1983 No 49) 35 Female captives from Syro-Canaan and Nubia (after Smithand Redford 1976 PI 27)36 Women in besieged Syrian city (after Ricke 1967P112)37 Ornamental vessels decorated with female heads (after University of Chicago1986 PI 8) 38 Woman from relief ofthe siege ofUllaza (after ibid 1932 PI 87)

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A partial parallel to the long curling hair of Woman NO1 can be found inthe Mykenaia figure from the cultic centre in Mycenae in the LH IIIB (Fig 47)as part of a more complex hairstyle which also includes a hair ribbon and curlson the forehead7 A closer parallel appears on the krater that was found inMinet el-Beida (Venneule and Karageorghis 198221 Fig IIIl9) from the LHIlIA In this scene appear two sword-bearing figures with similar hairstylesVenneule and Karageorghis suggest that these figures represent two captainsApart from their swords however these figures have no indications of genderand we should not rule out the possibility that they may be womens

In general the depictions of Syro-Canaanite women in Egyptian art arecloser to Image NO1 than the parallels from the Aegean This figure probablyrepresents a Syro-Canaanite woman although it is not impossible that itdepicts a woman from the Aegean

Image No 2

No exact parallels to Woman NO2 are known from Egyptian depictions offoreign women No close parallels to this figures hairstyle are found inAegean art either Does this mean that this woman came from outside the areaaccessible to the Egyptians (between Libya and Anatolia) and the Myceneansand Minoans (mainland Greece and the islands)

Alternatively Image NO2 might depict a special hairstyle for older womenfrom one of these areas One should note the age differentiation in hairstylesfor both males and females in the Aegean world (Davis 1986 Koehl 1986)By contrast older women are seldom represented in Egyptian art (Janssen ampJanssen 1996 14) they are unlikely to have been taken as prisoners of warunless they had some special skill

Image No 3

There are several parallels for Syro-Canaanite women wearing a filletaround their heads or hair-ribbons although it is by no means the norm

7 The Medinet Habu reliefs omit details such as curls on the forehead and so on whichappear frequently in the Aegean frescoes of women This phenomenon may originate fromthe difference in the artistic medium this type of detail is more difficult to represent inrelief than in fresco A similar phenomenon of generalization appears within Aegeanculture itself if we compare the hairstyles depicted in frescoes with those portrayed onceranlics (cf Vermeule amp Karageorghis 198217 for the parallel between the Kitionfragment and La Parisienne from Knossos)

8 Compare the sword-bearing figures on the Homage Krater (ibid23-24) which areidentical with the figures preceding them including the necklaces they wear

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Fig 4 41 Dying warrior from relief of the siege ofUllaza (after University of Chicago 1932PI 87) 42 Ivoryheads from Megiddo wearing scroll wigs (drawing after Loud 1939Nos 192-193)43 Woman from The House of the Ladies Thera (drawing afterhnmerwahr 1990 colour PI XI) 44 Woman from The House of the Ladies Thera(drawing after ibid colour PI XII) 45 Statuette of goddess from Karphi (drawingafter Buchholz amp Karageorghis 1973 Fig 1267) 46 Statuette of goddess fromKnossos (drawing after ibid Fig 1269) 47 The Mykenaia figure from Mycenae(drawing after hnmerwahr 1990 colour PI XX) 48 Women captives from the tombofHaremheb (after Martin 1989PI 105)

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Parallels include the women in the tomb of Haremheb (Fig 48) and in thetomb of Rekhmire (Fig 5 1) Another possible parallel are the women captiveson the Karnak talatat (Fig 35 above the ribbon does not appear on theoriginal relief blocks but is restored in the frontispiece of Redford 1984) aswell as those on three decorated spoons (Fig 52 Fechheimer 1921138Vandier d Abbadie 197220-21)

The women from the tomb of Reklullire are said to be serfs from the templeof Amun brought by Tuthmosis III as captives from his campaignsTuthmosis northern campaigns ranged from Canaan to the EuphratesTuthmosis declaration that he gave prisoners from the siege of Megiddo to thetemple of Amun (Sethe 1961 (Urk IV)74210-7438) may indicate that thesewomen were Canaanites but it is also possible that they are prisoners of warfrom Tuthmosis other campaigns to Lebanon or Syria

There are many parallels for both women and men wearing a fillet aroundtheir heads from the Aegean (Kontorli-Papadopoulou 199695) such as thehead of the Lady with the Lily from the LH lIlB cultic centre of Mycenae(Fig 53) and the pyxis-bearers from Tiryns (Fig 54) A parallel even closerin time may be the depiction of a woman with a hair ribbon on the LH IIICWarrior Vase from Mycenae (Venllule and Karageorghis 1982130-131Fig X142) Unfortunately only the frontal part of the womans head hassurvived leaving the rest of the headdress unknown to us

Nevertheless we know of no other instance of a Syrian woman with abag-shaped hairstyle like this one On the other hand the back of Image No3 s hairstyle is hidden by Image No2 she might conceivably have a hairstylelike Women Nos 12 or 7

It is most likely that this woman comes from the Aegean However if weassume that nothing is missing from the hairstyle then there is a more remotepossibility that this figure is a not a woman from Syria but a Syrian man aprisoner or a slave This bag-shaped hairstyle is characteristic of Syro-Canaanitemen in Egyptian art of this period although they are traditionally shown withbeards (HeIck 1962346) By contrast in Canaanite art there are manyinstances of clean-shaven men (Figs 71-3 below see also Loud 1939 Nos2 161 162) It is also extremely common for Syrian men to wear filletsaround their brows (Fig 61 Ricke 1967 PI 12 Martin 1989 PI 105)

Image No 4

Women with a single long plait of hair like No 4 appear in various NewKingdom contexts as representative of northerners or Syrians (HeIck 1962347)There are two variants of this hairstyle a single plait falling down the womansback and a plait falling to the side of her face which could be one of a pair

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Fig 5 51 Syro-Canaanite women from the tomb ofRekhmire (after Davies 1943 PI xxiii)52 Decorated spoon in the form of a Syro-Canaanite woman (after Wallert 1967PI24) 53 The Lady with the Lily from Mycenae (drawing afterKontorli-Papadopulou 1996 PI 94) 54 Pyxis-bearer from Tiryns (drawing afterImmerwahr 1990 PI 56)

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Women wearing a plait straight down their back appear in the tomb ofRekhmire (Fig 62 Davies 192840 followed by Feucht 1990a194 suggeststhat these women are Hittites) This hairstyle is also worn by a woman in SetiIs reliefs of his campaign against the Shasu (Fig 63) This woman is probablyone of the Shasu although since Setis battle against the Shasu takes place enroute to Gaza she might be a Canaanite taken captive by the Shasu This styleis also attested on an ivory figure from Megiddo (Loud 1939 No 175)

Women with a plait to one side appear on the throne of Queen Tiy in thetomb of Kheruef (Fig 64) and in the tombs of Menkheperresoneb (Fig 65)and Amenmose (Davies 1933 PI xxxiv)9 On the throne of Tiy such womenappear as typical northerners contrasted with Nubian captives in the tombs ofMenkheperresoneb and Amenmose their origin is not specified Plaits hangingto one side also appear on two decorated spoons (Fig 52 above and Vandierd Abbadie 197220-21) and on a servant girl from the tomb of Intef (althoughthis girl is not said explicitly to be a foreigner and the end of her plait isreconstructed) (Davies 193253)

Note incidentally that in Egyptian art this hairstyle is always worn bySyro-Canaanite slaves or captives and not by women from the same countrieswhen at home (with the possible exception of the Shasu or Canaanite womanin Fig 63) Presumably female slaves tied their long hair back to keep it outof the way whilst working and this practice became generic for theiconography of Syro-Canaanite captive women

Aegean art includes numerous examples of women with plaits Howevermost of these examples are more similar to the curling lock of Woman No1The best parallels to the straight plait of Woman NO4 are the simple plaitsworn by female statuettes However the latter may reflect the limitations ofworking in clay as opposed to paint rather than actually reproducing adifferent hairstyle (see note 7 above)

There may also be parallels in Hittite art for tIlis single long plait The InandikPithos (OzgUy 198883-92 Fig 64) dated to the Old Hittite Period (Fig 66Hoffner 1995558-559 Figs 1 and 2) depicts scenes of preparation for a weddingin a wealthy house Some women wear either a single plait or a waist-lengthheaddress whereas others wear all-enveloping shawls covering the head Asinlilar plait or headdress is worn by the queen in an orthostat from Alaca Hoyiik(Akurgal 1962 PI 92) dated before the 13th century BCE (Kohlmeyer19952647) and also under the crowns worn by the goddesses on the Yazilikayarock carvings (Fig 81 ibid2650 Fig 9) dated to the 13th century BCE

9 Gardiner Notebook 28819 is a photograph of a painting of the wall here we see that thewomens plaits are much the same colour as their garments which is why the-plait doesnot show up clearly in photographs (Meyer 1913721 Wreszinski 1923275)

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Fig 6 61 Syro-Canaanite men wearing fillets (after Davies 1947 PI viii) 62Syro-Canaanite women from the tomb of Reklunire (after Davies 1943 PI Ivii) 63Woman from the relief of Seti Is battle against the Shasu (after University ofChicago 1986 PI 12) 64 Syro-Canaanite and Nubian female captives decoratingQueen Tiys throne (after University of Chicago 1980 PI 47) 65 Syro-Canaanitewoman from the tomb of Menkheperresoneb (after Davies 1933 PI v) 66 Womenfrom the Inandik pithos (after Hoffner 1995Fig 2)

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Images No 5 and 9

Images NO5 and 9 are either bald or have their hair closely cropped Giventhat both heads are damaged however this observation is not entirely certain

Men with sho~t hair are very rare in Aegean art~ where only babies andyoung children wear their hair short (Koehl 1986100-101) On the otherhand men with close-cropped hair or close-fitting caps (Stern 1989) arecommon in Canaanite art (Figs 71-3 Loud 1939 Nos 2 162) Interestinglyenough these Canaanites are shown driving chariots (ibid Nos 2 159 161)which provides a good parallel to NO9 the driver of Wagon NO5 Image No5 may be the driver of Wagon No3 Unlike his colleague No9 who is stillgoading the oxen onwards NO5 has given up hope and raises his hands indespair

Image No 6

The upper rim of the chariot hides the back of Woman No 6s neck Itwould be possible to reconstruct her hairstyle with a long narrow plait like thewomen already described It would also be possible to envisage her as havingshort hair However it is unusual to find women from Syro-Palestineportrayed in this way A group of women depicted in the tomb of Reklunirehave short hair (Fig 82 Davies 192840 followed by Feucht 1990a195identifies the long wrap-around dresses of these women as Syrian in style)This short hairstyle may be adopted from the group of Nubian women whoprecede the Syrians in this picture A naked goddess mounted on a horse isalso portrayed wearing short hair and a large earring (Fig 83 Brunner-Traut197929-30 NO5 PI V Petersen 1973 No 31 However Petersen idemsuggests that the goddess is wearing a helmet) The Hittite princess bride ofRamses II is shown with short hair (Fig 84) but she has been dressed upEgyptian style for the celebrations so her hairstyle is not necessarilysignificant

In Egyptian art this short hairstyle is characteristic of Nubian women (Fig85 Davies amp Gardiner 1926 PI xxx University of Chicago 1930 PI 9Ricke 1967 PIs 89 Brack amp Brack 1980 PI 50 Dziobeck 1992 PI 1) Itis true that the front part of Woman No 6s hairstyle tapers back from herforehead whereas most Nubian women wear their hair in a thick fringeHowever Nubian women are depicted with this type of central parting in afew New Kingdom tombs such as those of Rekhmire (Davies 1943 PI xxii)and Haremheb (Brack amp Brack 1980 PI 50 see also University of Chicago1930 PI 9)

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Fig 7 71 Ivory from Megiddo (after Loud 1939 No 159) 72 Ivory from Megiddo (afteribid No 160)73 Bronze plaque from Hazor (after Redford 1992197 Fig 71)

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Image No 7

This person wears its hair tapering to the nape of the neck Syro-Canaanitewomen sometimes wear their hair tapering to a point (Muller 1906 PI 9)although usually their hair is somewhat longer than that of Image NO7 andthe pointed tip of their hairstyle falls farther back behind their shoulderslO

(Fig 86) A woman portrayed on one of the Megiddo ivories has the samehairstyle (Loud 1939 No 2b)

This image may represent another Syro-Canaanite woman A more remotepossibility is that this image represents a Hittite man Hittite men wore theirhair in a queue and had bald foreheads In the reliefs at Medinet Habu the linemarking the front of the Hittite mens bald pates is not necessarily drawn in(Fig 87) Hittite men generally wore their hair much longer but there are afew examples of Hittite men whose hair only reaches to the back of their necks(Figs 87-92 see also Kuentz 1928 PI xviii)

There is a small possibility that Hittite women may also have worn thisstyle but the evidence is ambiguous In the Ramesseum relief of the siege ofDapur a group of people are shown leaving the city bearing baskets ofprovisions and begging for peace (Fig 93) Their hair tapers to theirshoulders Wreszinski (1935 PI 109) and HeIck (1962343) suggest thatthese people are the ruler of the city and the women of his house On the otherhand some of the dead warriors lying on the battlefield have exactly the samehairstyle so the figures accompanying the ruler are not necessarily women Inany case their hair is too long to be compared to this figure

There is no parallel for this figure in Aegean art

Image No 8

So little is visible of Image NO8 that any discussion of her coiffure wouldbe inconclusive

10 Some of the figures in the siege of Ullaza (University of Chicago 1932 PI 87) have thishairstyle but they are not necessarily women A decorated spoon in the Rijksmuseum vonOudheiden at Leiden has a similar hairstyle but since the woman is naked it is difficult totell whether she represents a foreigner (Eggebrecht 1987 No 246) The same applies tothe decorated spoon Louvre N-I728 (Vandier dAbbadie 197214-15)

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Fig 8 81 Goddess on the Yazilikaya rock carvings (after Kohlmeyer 1995 Fig 9) 82Women from the tomb of Rekhmire (after Davies 1943 PI Ivii) 83 Goddess onhorseback (drawing after Brunner-Traut 1956 No 16 PI viii) 84 The Hittiteprincess from the Marriage Stele of Ramses IT(after Lepsius 1849-1859 PI 196) 85Nubian women (after Davies 1905 PI xxviii) 86 Syro-Canaanite woman from thetomb ofRekhmire (after Davies 1943 PI xxiii) 87-8 Hittite warriors from MedinetHabu (after University of Chicago 1932 PI 87)

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The Children of the Sea People

The child standing by Wagon NO5 (Fig 22) wears a single long lock of hairgrowing from the crown of his head 11 This hairstyle is characteristic ofSyro-Canaanite children of both sexes in New Kingdom reliefs12(Fig 94 Davies1905 PI xxxiX)13

Children often appear in New Kingdom scenes of siege or battle beinglifted over the walls of a besieged city in Syria or Canaan (Fig 95) It is notclear whether these children are being sacrificed to the gods to change thecourse of the battle presented to Pharaoh as hostages or helped to escape(Keel 1975 Spalinger 1977-8 Feucht 1990b33-39 Donohue 1992) In thisinstance we suggest that they are being helped to escape (Keel 1975456 Thechildren appear to be on the point of collapse and their chances of escape areprobably slim Keel suggests that fear of Pharaoh immobilizes the childrenwith terror and they sink to the ground unable to stir)

Donohue (199283) suggests that the women are scooping the children upinto the wagons before the advancing enemy but this is unlikely If they weretrying to clamber into the wagons they would be facing inwards and probablyusing their legs to get a purchase on the side of the wagon as they clamber upit (The same applies to children in scenes of besieged cities There are onlytwo examples of children who could conceivably be climbing into the city (thelittle girl on the left in Fig 95 see also Keel 1975 Fig 19)

The fact that the older children are dressed as Sea Peoples may suggestpatrilineal behaviour in the immigrant society - at least in regard to costume

Summary

The limitations of this type of source material preclude absolute conclusionsThe Aegean paintings and statuettes come from a different artistic traditionthan the Medinet Habu reliefs discrepancies between the two are inevitableEgyptian depictions of foreigners have their limitations and since the artists atMedinet Habu may have been unfamiliar with these hairstyles it is difficult to tellhow accurate these portrayals are We may however make a few suggestions

11 The second line emerging from the crown of his head in University of Chicago 1930 PI49D is probably a scratch rather than a second lock

12 See also Pritchard 1954 No 45 (the man presenting this child is said to be the ruler ofTunip and can therefore be located in Syria) Save Stiderbergh 1957 PI xxiii Martin1989PI 105 University of Chicago 1932PI 87Feucht 1990a198 n 82 points out that apart from the single plait children from Syriamay also sport two plaits a head of short hair or two clumps of hair There is quite avariety of hairstyles

13 The parallel to this scene in the tomb ofHuya describes this tribute as coming from Kharuand Kush (Sandman 193837 line 1)

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Fig 9 91 Hittite warrior from Medinet Habu (after University of Chicago 1932 PI 87) 92Hittite warriors from Abu Simbel (after Wreszinski 1935 PI 170) 93 Group ofHittites from the siege of Dapur (after ibid PI 109) 94 Syro-Canaanite women andchild (after Davies 1947 PI viii) 95 Girl being let down over the city wall relief ofthe siege of Ashkelon (after Keel 1975Fig 21)

Woman NO4 with her long straight plait conforms to Egyptian depictionsof Syro-Canaanite women although she also has parallels in Aegean artWoman No 1 has parallels in both the Egyptian tradition and the Aegeantradition although the Egyptian parallels are stronger and she is also probablya Syro-Canaanite woman Image NO7 if she is a woman is vaguely similarto certain Egyptian pictures of Syro-Canaanite women but her hair is rathershort to provide a good parallel it should fall to a point further down her back

No exact parallels are known for the hairstyle of No 2 in either Egyptian orAegean art It is not clear whether this hairstyle may represent an ethnic groupunknown to us Alternatively middotdifferent hairstyles may have been worn bywomen at different periods of their lives - married ~omen and maidens forexample or old women and young ones or pregnant women They may alsocharacterize different social standings or occupations

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In some cases the persons hairstyle is incomplete It is masked by overlappinglinages or by the edge of the wagon as in Images Nos 3 and 6If they had longer hair these people might have hairstyles like those of Women 12or 4 If Image No3 had long hair she would have excellent parallels in Aegeanart where hair ribbons are very common If the bag-shaped hairstyle of Image No3 is complete as it stands however then the best parallels are actually fomIdamongst Syrian men Woman No 6s short hair is occasionally paralleled amongstSyrian women it is much more characteristic of Nubian women however Notonly did themiddotEgyptians have Nubian servants and slaves but many Egyptians werethemselves of Nubian stock so that women of this type could be found throughoutthe territories under Egyptian rule

The Sea Peoples were accompanied by men from the areas they traversedThey may have been taken as slaves or prisoners or maybe they decided tojoin the Sea Peoples advance in order to seek their fortunes abroad Such arethe wagon drivers Nos 5 and 9 who are definitely Syro-Canaanites andperhaps Image No3 ifhe is a Syrian or Image No7 if he is a Hittite

This picture of a complex and highly diverse origin of the group of Sea Peoplesportrayed in the Medinet Habu reliefs (which mayor may not be a typical group)suggests that it is unlikely that the Philistines were 100 pure Mycenaean Greeks(Stager 1995337 following Mazar 1988255-6 260) Like Sherratt (1998307)we characterize the Sea Peoples as cosmopolitan although we still envisagemany of them as Aegeans Other groups or individuals would have joined the SeaPeoples in northern Syria and Canaan

Conclusions

In the Medinet Habu reliefs the Sea Peoples are accompanied by at leastone woman who is clearly Syro-Canaanite and also by women with parallelsin Aegean art A similar conclusion was also reached by an analysis ofmaterial culture assemblages from Syria and Palestine (Bunimovitz andYasur-Landau forthcoming a b) attributed to the first stages of Aegeansettlement at the beginning of the Iron Age In these studies evidence ofbehavioural patterns of Aegean origin such as weaving with a loom equippedwith round unperfonlted loomweights and cooking on a hearth with Aegeanstyle cooking-pots were found side by side with local textile manufacture andcooking methods These finds may be cautiously interpreted as evidence of thepresence of women of both Aegean and local origin at these sites

The evidence from the reliefs shows that the Sea Peoples were accompaniedby men and women from Syria andor Canaan and by children probably theSea Peoples offspring by these women This indicates that the Sea Peoplesspent time in Syria andor Canaan before they continued on their way to Egypt

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Rather than envisaging the Sea Peoples immigration as a rapid concerted attack ata number of points simultaneously (Stager 1995) we should consider it as acomplex situation of not necessarily coordinated movements by different groupsfrom different areas

The size of the children depicted in the Medinet Habu reliefs may give ussome indication of how long the Sea Peoples had been present in the areabefore they moved south to Egypt If the younger children are the offspring ofthese women and the Sea Peoples the latter must have reached the area someseven or six years earlier if the older children wearing Philistine headgearare also the offspring of these households then we should think in terms of aninterval of thirteen years or more A similar observation was made by Singer(1987418) on the basis of the tablets from Ugarit and Ras Ibn Hani Thismeans that the fall of Ugarit should have occurred some fifteen to twentyyears before Ramses Ills war with the Sea Peoples It is quite acceptablehowever to postulate a short period of consolidation before the Sea Peoplesattempted to surge down into Egypt 14

The group we see in the Medinet Habu reliefs with their families would thenbe a second wave of settlement

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank I Finkelstein I Singer S Bunimovitz and the lateP Beck for reading and commenting on earlier drafts of this paper We wouldalso like to thank the Griffith Institute Oxford for allowing us to quotematerial from the unpublished notebooks of Sir Alan Gardiner

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14 On the other hand the size of the children depicted in the reliefs may not necessarily haveany historical significance Nor are these children necessarily these womens offspring bythe Sea People they even may be these womens children by previous partners in whichcase this part of the argument is irrelevant The Philistine youths may even be youngPhilistines who have been assigned to guarding the women and children as a relativelysafe post in view of their youth and inexperience

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Cifola B 1994 The Role of the Sea Peoples at the end of the Late BronzeAge A Reassessment of Textual and Archaeological Evidence OriensAntiqui Miscellanea 11-23

Cline EH 1995 Tinker Tailor Soldier Sailor Minoans and MyceneansAbroad In Laffineur R and Niemeier W-D eds Politeia Societyand State in the Aegean Bronze Age (Aegaeum 12) Liege 265-287

Conkey MW and Spector J 1984 Archaeology and the Study of GenderAdvances in Archaeological Method and Theory 71-38

Darnell J C 1991 Supposed Depictions of the Hittites in the Amarna PeriodStudien zur Altiigyptischen Kultur 18 113-140

Davies N de Garis 1905 The Rock Tombs of El Amarna II LondonDavies N de Garis 1908 The Rock Tombs of El Amarna VI LondonDavies N de Garis 1928 The Work of the Graphic Branch of the

Expedition Bulletin othe Metropolitan Museum 0Art 23237-48Davies N de Garis 1932 The Work of the Graphic Branch of the

Expedition Bulletin of the Metropolitan Museum of Art 273 51-62

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Fig 3 31 Syro-Canaanite woman from the royal harem El-Amarna (after Davies 1908 PIxvii) 32 Tribute bearer bringing ivory horn decorated with woman wearing long curl(after Keel 1975 Fig 8) 33 Woman from relief of the siege of Ullaza (afterUniversity of Chicago 1932 PI 87) 34 Woman wearing a single long curl (afterPage 1983 No 49) 35 Female captives from Syro-Canaan and Nubia (after Smithand Redford 1976 PI 27)36 Women in besieged Syrian city (after Ricke 1967P112)37 Ornamental vessels decorated with female heads (after University of Chicago1986 PI 8) 38 Woman from relief ofthe siege ofUllaza (after ibid 1932 PI 87)

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A partial parallel to the long curling hair of Woman NO1 can be found inthe Mykenaia figure from the cultic centre in Mycenae in the LH IIIB (Fig 47)as part of a more complex hairstyle which also includes a hair ribbon and curlson the forehead7 A closer parallel appears on the krater that was found inMinet el-Beida (Venneule and Karageorghis 198221 Fig IIIl9) from the LHIlIA In this scene appear two sword-bearing figures with similar hairstylesVenneule and Karageorghis suggest that these figures represent two captainsApart from their swords however these figures have no indications of genderand we should not rule out the possibility that they may be womens

In general the depictions of Syro-Canaanite women in Egyptian art arecloser to Image NO1 than the parallels from the Aegean This figure probablyrepresents a Syro-Canaanite woman although it is not impossible that itdepicts a woman from the Aegean

Image No 2

No exact parallels to Woman NO2 are known from Egyptian depictions offoreign women No close parallels to this figures hairstyle are found inAegean art either Does this mean that this woman came from outside the areaaccessible to the Egyptians (between Libya and Anatolia) and the Myceneansand Minoans (mainland Greece and the islands)

Alternatively Image NO2 might depict a special hairstyle for older womenfrom one of these areas One should note the age differentiation in hairstylesfor both males and females in the Aegean world (Davis 1986 Koehl 1986)By contrast older women are seldom represented in Egyptian art (Janssen ampJanssen 1996 14) they are unlikely to have been taken as prisoners of warunless they had some special skill

Image No 3

There are several parallels for Syro-Canaanite women wearing a filletaround their heads or hair-ribbons although it is by no means the norm

7 The Medinet Habu reliefs omit details such as curls on the forehead and so on whichappear frequently in the Aegean frescoes of women This phenomenon may originate fromthe difference in the artistic medium this type of detail is more difficult to represent inrelief than in fresco A similar phenomenon of generalization appears within Aegeanculture itself if we compare the hairstyles depicted in frescoes with those portrayed onceranlics (cf Vermeule amp Karageorghis 198217 for the parallel between the Kitionfragment and La Parisienne from Knossos)

8 Compare the sword-bearing figures on the Homage Krater (ibid23-24) which areidentical with the figures preceding them including the necklaces they wear

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Fig 4 41 Dying warrior from relief of the siege ofUllaza (after University of Chicago 1932PI 87) 42 Ivoryheads from Megiddo wearing scroll wigs (drawing after Loud 1939Nos 192-193)43 Woman from The House of the Ladies Thera (drawing afterhnmerwahr 1990 colour PI XI) 44 Woman from The House of the Ladies Thera(drawing after ibid colour PI XII) 45 Statuette of goddess from Karphi (drawingafter Buchholz amp Karageorghis 1973 Fig 1267) 46 Statuette of goddess fromKnossos (drawing after ibid Fig 1269) 47 The Mykenaia figure from Mycenae(drawing after hnmerwahr 1990 colour PI XX) 48 Women captives from the tombofHaremheb (after Martin 1989PI 105)

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Parallels include the women in the tomb of Haremheb (Fig 48) and in thetomb of Rekhmire (Fig 5 1) Another possible parallel are the women captiveson the Karnak talatat (Fig 35 above the ribbon does not appear on theoriginal relief blocks but is restored in the frontispiece of Redford 1984) aswell as those on three decorated spoons (Fig 52 Fechheimer 1921138Vandier d Abbadie 197220-21)

The women from the tomb of Reklullire are said to be serfs from the templeof Amun brought by Tuthmosis III as captives from his campaignsTuthmosis northern campaigns ranged from Canaan to the EuphratesTuthmosis declaration that he gave prisoners from the siege of Megiddo to thetemple of Amun (Sethe 1961 (Urk IV)74210-7438) may indicate that thesewomen were Canaanites but it is also possible that they are prisoners of warfrom Tuthmosis other campaigns to Lebanon or Syria

There are many parallels for both women and men wearing a fillet aroundtheir heads from the Aegean (Kontorli-Papadopoulou 199695) such as thehead of the Lady with the Lily from the LH lIlB cultic centre of Mycenae(Fig 53) and the pyxis-bearers from Tiryns (Fig 54) A parallel even closerin time may be the depiction of a woman with a hair ribbon on the LH IIICWarrior Vase from Mycenae (Venllule and Karageorghis 1982130-131Fig X142) Unfortunately only the frontal part of the womans head hassurvived leaving the rest of the headdress unknown to us

Nevertheless we know of no other instance of a Syrian woman with abag-shaped hairstyle like this one On the other hand the back of Image No3 s hairstyle is hidden by Image No2 she might conceivably have a hairstylelike Women Nos 12 or 7

It is most likely that this woman comes from the Aegean However if weassume that nothing is missing from the hairstyle then there is a more remotepossibility that this figure is a not a woman from Syria but a Syrian man aprisoner or a slave This bag-shaped hairstyle is characteristic of Syro-Canaanitemen in Egyptian art of this period although they are traditionally shown withbeards (HeIck 1962346) By contrast in Canaanite art there are manyinstances of clean-shaven men (Figs 71-3 below see also Loud 1939 Nos2 161 162) It is also extremely common for Syrian men to wear filletsaround their brows (Fig 61 Ricke 1967 PI 12 Martin 1989 PI 105)

Image No 4

Women with a single long plait of hair like No 4 appear in various NewKingdom contexts as representative of northerners or Syrians (HeIck 1962347)There are two variants of this hairstyle a single plait falling down the womansback and a plait falling to the side of her face which could be one of a pair

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Fig 5 51 Syro-Canaanite women from the tomb ofRekhmire (after Davies 1943 PI xxiii)52 Decorated spoon in the form of a Syro-Canaanite woman (after Wallert 1967PI24) 53 The Lady with the Lily from Mycenae (drawing afterKontorli-Papadopulou 1996 PI 94) 54 Pyxis-bearer from Tiryns (drawing afterImmerwahr 1990 PI 56)

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Women wearing a plait straight down their back appear in the tomb ofRekhmire (Fig 62 Davies 192840 followed by Feucht 1990a194 suggeststhat these women are Hittites) This hairstyle is also worn by a woman in SetiIs reliefs of his campaign against the Shasu (Fig 63) This woman is probablyone of the Shasu although since Setis battle against the Shasu takes place enroute to Gaza she might be a Canaanite taken captive by the Shasu This styleis also attested on an ivory figure from Megiddo (Loud 1939 No 175)

Women with a plait to one side appear on the throne of Queen Tiy in thetomb of Kheruef (Fig 64) and in the tombs of Menkheperresoneb (Fig 65)and Amenmose (Davies 1933 PI xxxiv)9 On the throne of Tiy such womenappear as typical northerners contrasted with Nubian captives in the tombs ofMenkheperresoneb and Amenmose their origin is not specified Plaits hangingto one side also appear on two decorated spoons (Fig 52 above and Vandierd Abbadie 197220-21) and on a servant girl from the tomb of Intef (althoughthis girl is not said explicitly to be a foreigner and the end of her plait isreconstructed) (Davies 193253)

Note incidentally that in Egyptian art this hairstyle is always worn bySyro-Canaanite slaves or captives and not by women from the same countrieswhen at home (with the possible exception of the Shasu or Canaanite womanin Fig 63) Presumably female slaves tied their long hair back to keep it outof the way whilst working and this practice became generic for theiconography of Syro-Canaanite captive women

Aegean art includes numerous examples of women with plaits Howevermost of these examples are more similar to the curling lock of Woman No1The best parallels to the straight plait of Woman NO4 are the simple plaitsworn by female statuettes However the latter may reflect the limitations ofworking in clay as opposed to paint rather than actually reproducing adifferent hairstyle (see note 7 above)

There may also be parallels in Hittite art for tIlis single long plait The InandikPithos (OzgUy 198883-92 Fig 64) dated to the Old Hittite Period (Fig 66Hoffner 1995558-559 Figs 1 and 2) depicts scenes of preparation for a weddingin a wealthy house Some women wear either a single plait or a waist-lengthheaddress whereas others wear all-enveloping shawls covering the head Asinlilar plait or headdress is worn by the queen in an orthostat from Alaca Hoyiik(Akurgal 1962 PI 92) dated before the 13th century BCE (Kohlmeyer19952647) and also under the crowns worn by the goddesses on the Yazilikayarock carvings (Fig 81 ibid2650 Fig 9) dated to the 13th century BCE

9 Gardiner Notebook 28819 is a photograph of a painting of the wall here we see that thewomens plaits are much the same colour as their garments which is why the-plait doesnot show up clearly in photographs (Meyer 1913721 Wreszinski 1923275)

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Fig 6 61 Syro-Canaanite men wearing fillets (after Davies 1947 PI viii) 62Syro-Canaanite women from the tomb of Reklunire (after Davies 1943 PI Ivii) 63Woman from the relief of Seti Is battle against the Shasu (after University ofChicago 1986 PI 12) 64 Syro-Canaanite and Nubian female captives decoratingQueen Tiys throne (after University of Chicago 1980 PI 47) 65 Syro-Canaanitewoman from the tomb of Menkheperresoneb (after Davies 1933 PI v) 66 Womenfrom the Inandik pithos (after Hoffner 1995Fig 2)

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Images No 5 and 9

Images NO5 and 9 are either bald or have their hair closely cropped Giventhat both heads are damaged however this observation is not entirely certain

Men with sho~t hair are very rare in Aegean art~ where only babies andyoung children wear their hair short (Koehl 1986100-101) On the otherhand men with close-cropped hair or close-fitting caps (Stern 1989) arecommon in Canaanite art (Figs 71-3 Loud 1939 Nos 2 162) Interestinglyenough these Canaanites are shown driving chariots (ibid Nos 2 159 161)which provides a good parallel to NO9 the driver of Wagon NO5 Image No5 may be the driver of Wagon No3 Unlike his colleague No9 who is stillgoading the oxen onwards NO5 has given up hope and raises his hands indespair

Image No 6

The upper rim of the chariot hides the back of Woman No 6s neck Itwould be possible to reconstruct her hairstyle with a long narrow plait like thewomen already described It would also be possible to envisage her as havingshort hair However it is unusual to find women from Syro-Palestineportrayed in this way A group of women depicted in the tomb of Reklunirehave short hair (Fig 82 Davies 192840 followed by Feucht 1990a195identifies the long wrap-around dresses of these women as Syrian in style)This short hairstyle may be adopted from the group of Nubian women whoprecede the Syrians in this picture A naked goddess mounted on a horse isalso portrayed wearing short hair and a large earring (Fig 83 Brunner-Traut197929-30 NO5 PI V Petersen 1973 No 31 However Petersen idemsuggests that the goddess is wearing a helmet) The Hittite princess bride ofRamses II is shown with short hair (Fig 84) but she has been dressed upEgyptian style for the celebrations so her hairstyle is not necessarilysignificant

In Egyptian art this short hairstyle is characteristic of Nubian women (Fig85 Davies amp Gardiner 1926 PI xxx University of Chicago 1930 PI 9Ricke 1967 PIs 89 Brack amp Brack 1980 PI 50 Dziobeck 1992 PI 1) Itis true that the front part of Woman No 6s hairstyle tapers back from herforehead whereas most Nubian women wear their hair in a thick fringeHowever Nubian women are depicted with this type of central parting in afew New Kingdom tombs such as those of Rekhmire (Davies 1943 PI xxii)and Haremheb (Brack amp Brack 1980 PI 50 see also University of Chicago1930 PI 9)

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Fig 7 71 Ivory from Megiddo (after Loud 1939 No 159) 72 Ivory from Megiddo (afteribid No 160)73 Bronze plaque from Hazor (after Redford 1992197 Fig 71)

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Image No 7

This person wears its hair tapering to the nape of the neck Syro-Canaanitewomen sometimes wear their hair tapering to a point (Muller 1906 PI 9)although usually their hair is somewhat longer than that of Image NO7 andthe pointed tip of their hairstyle falls farther back behind their shoulderslO

(Fig 86) A woman portrayed on one of the Megiddo ivories has the samehairstyle (Loud 1939 No 2b)

This image may represent another Syro-Canaanite woman A more remotepossibility is that this image represents a Hittite man Hittite men wore theirhair in a queue and had bald foreheads In the reliefs at Medinet Habu the linemarking the front of the Hittite mens bald pates is not necessarily drawn in(Fig 87) Hittite men generally wore their hair much longer but there are afew examples of Hittite men whose hair only reaches to the back of their necks(Figs 87-92 see also Kuentz 1928 PI xviii)

There is a small possibility that Hittite women may also have worn thisstyle but the evidence is ambiguous In the Ramesseum relief of the siege ofDapur a group of people are shown leaving the city bearing baskets ofprovisions and begging for peace (Fig 93) Their hair tapers to theirshoulders Wreszinski (1935 PI 109) and HeIck (1962343) suggest thatthese people are the ruler of the city and the women of his house On the otherhand some of the dead warriors lying on the battlefield have exactly the samehairstyle so the figures accompanying the ruler are not necessarily women Inany case their hair is too long to be compared to this figure

There is no parallel for this figure in Aegean art

Image No 8

So little is visible of Image NO8 that any discussion of her coiffure wouldbe inconclusive

10 Some of the figures in the siege of Ullaza (University of Chicago 1932 PI 87) have thishairstyle but they are not necessarily women A decorated spoon in the Rijksmuseum vonOudheiden at Leiden has a similar hairstyle but since the woman is naked it is difficult totell whether she represents a foreigner (Eggebrecht 1987 No 246) The same applies tothe decorated spoon Louvre N-I728 (Vandier dAbbadie 197214-15)

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Fig 8 81 Goddess on the Yazilikaya rock carvings (after Kohlmeyer 1995 Fig 9) 82Women from the tomb of Rekhmire (after Davies 1943 PI Ivii) 83 Goddess onhorseback (drawing after Brunner-Traut 1956 No 16 PI viii) 84 The Hittiteprincess from the Marriage Stele of Ramses IT(after Lepsius 1849-1859 PI 196) 85Nubian women (after Davies 1905 PI xxviii) 86 Syro-Canaanite woman from thetomb ofRekhmire (after Davies 1943 PI xxiii) 87-8 Hittite warriors from MedinetHabu (after University of Chicago 1932 PI 87)

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The Children of the Sea People

The child standing by Wagon NO5 (Fig 22) wears a single long lock of hairgrowing from the crown of his head 11 This hairstyle is characteristic ofSyro-Canaanite children of both sexes in New Kingdom reliefs12(Fig 94 Davies1905 PI xxxiX)13

Children often appear in New Kingdom scenes of siege or battle beinglifted over the walls of a besieged city in Syria or Canaan (Fig 95) It is notclear whether these children are being sacrificed to the gods to change thecourse of the battle presented to Pharaoh as hostages or helped to escape(Keel 1975 Spalinger 1977-8 Feucht 1990b33-39 Donohue 1992) In thisinstance we suggest that they are being helped to escape (Keel 1975456 Thechildren appear to be on the point of collapse and their chances of escape areprobably slim Keel suggests that fear of Pharaoh immobilizes the childrenwith terror and they sink to the ground unable to stir)

Donohue (199283) suggests that the women are scooping the children upinto the wagons before the advancing enemy but this is unlikely If they weretrying to clamber into the wagons they would be facing inwards and probablyusing their legs to get a purchase on the side of the wagon as they clamber upit (The same applies to children in scenes of besieged cities There are onlytwo examples of children who could conceivably be climbing into the city (thelittle girl on the left in Fig 95 see also Keel 1975 Fig 19)

The fact that the older children are dressed as Sea Peoples may suggestpatrilineal behaviour in the immigrant society - at least in regard to costume

Summary

The limitations of this type of source material preclude absolute conclusionsThe Aegean paintings and statuettes come from a different artistic traditionthan the Medinet Habu reliefs discrepancies between the two are inevitableEgyptian depictions of foreigners have their limitations and since the artists atMedinet Habu may have been unfamiliar with these hairstyles it is difficult to tellhow accurate these portrayals are We may however make a few suggestions

11 The second line emerging from the crown of his head in University of Chicago 1930 PI49D is probably a scratch rather than a second lock

12 See also Pritchard 1954 No 45 (the man presenting this child is said to be the ruler ofTunip and can therefore be located in Syria) Save Stiderbergh 1957 PI xxiii Martin1989PI 105 University of Chicago 1932PI 87Feucht 1990a198 n 82 points out that apart from the single plait children from Syriamay also sport two plaits a head of short hair or two clumps of hair There is quite avariety of hairstyles

13 The parallel to this scene in the tomb ofHuya describes this tribute as coming from Kharuand Kush (Sandman 193837 line 1)

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Fig 9 91 Hittite warrior from Medinet Habu (after University of Chicago 1932 PI 87) 92Hittite warriors from Abu Simbel (after Wreszinski 1935 PI 170) 93 Group ofHittites from the siege of Dapur (after ibid PI 109) 94 Syro-Canaanite women andchild (after Davies 1947 PI viii) 95 Girl being let down over the city wall relief ofthe siege of Ashkelon (after Keel 1975Fig 21)

Woman NO4 with her long straight plait conforms to Egyptian depictionsof Syro-Canaanite women although she also has parallels in Aegean artWoman No 1 has parallels in both the Egyptian tradition and the Aegeantradition although the Egyptian parallels are stronger and she is also probablya Syro-Canaanite woman Image NO7 if she is a woman is vaguely similarto certain Egyptian pictures of Syro-Canaanite women but her hair is rathershort to provide a good parallel it should fall to a point further down her back

No exact parallels are known for the hairstyle of No 2 in either Egyptian orAegean art It is not clear whether this hairstyle may represent an ethnic groupunknown to us Alternatively middotdifferent hairstyles may have been worn bywomen at different periods of their lives - married ~omen and maidens forexample or old women and young ones or pregnant women They may alsocharacterize different social standings or occupations

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In some cases the persons hairstyle is incomplete It is masked by overlappinglinages or by the edge of the wagon as in Images Nos 3 and 6If they had longer hair these people might have hairstyles like those of Women 12or 4 If Image No3 had long hair she would have excellent parallels in Aegeanart where hair ribbons are very common If the bag-shaped hairstyle of Image No3 is complete as it stands however then the best parallels are actually fomIdamongst Syrian men Woman No 6s short hair is occasionally paralleled amongstSyrian women it is much more characteristic of Nubian women however Notonly did themiddotEgyptians have Nubian servants and slaves but many Egyptians werethemselves of Nubian stock so that women of this type could be found throughoutthe territories under Egyptian rule

The Sea Peoples were accompanied by men from the areas they traversedThey may have been taken as slaves or prisoners or maybe they decided tojoin the Sea Peoples advance in order to seek their fortunes abroad Such arethe wagon drivers Nos 5 and 9 who are definitely Syro-Canaanites andperhaps Image No3 ifhe is a Syrian or Image No7 if he is a Hittite

This picture of a complex and highly diverse origin of the group of Sea Peoplesportrayed in the Medinet Habu reliefs (which mayor may not be a typical group)suggests that it is unlikely that the Philistines were 100 pure Mycenaean Greeks(Stager 1995337 following Mazar 1988255-6 260) Like Sherratt (1998307)we characterize the Sea Peoples as cosmopolitan although we still envisagemany of them as Aegeans Other groups or individuals would have joined the SeaPeoples in northern Syria and Canaan

Conclusions

In the Medinet Habu reliefs the Sea Peoples are accompanied by at leastone woman who is clearly Syro-Canaanite and also by women with parallelsin Aegean art A similar conclusion was also reached by an analysis ofmaterial culture assemblages from Syria and Palestine (Bunimovitz andYasur-Landau forthcoming a b) attributed to the first stages of Aegeansettlement at the beginning of the Iron Age In these studies evidence ofbehavioural patterns of Aegean origin such as weaving with a loom equippedwith round unperfonlted loomweights and cooking on a hearth with Aegeanstyle cooking-pots were found side by side with local textile manufacture andcooking methods These finds may be cautiously interpreted as evidence of thepresence of women of both Aegean and local origin at these sites

The evidence from the reliefs shows that the Sea Peoples were accompaniedby men and women from Syria andor Canaan and by children probably theSea Peoples offspring by these women This indicates that the Sea Peoplesspent time in Syria andor Canaan before they continued on their way to Egypt

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Rather than envisaging the Sea Peoples immigration as a rapid concerted attack ata number of points simultaneously (Stager 1995) we should consider it as acomplex situation of not necessarily coordinated movements by different groupsfrom different areas

The size of the children depicted in the Medinet Habu reliefs may give ussome indication of how long the Sea Peoples had been present in the areabefore they moved south to Egypt If the younger children are the offspring ofthese women and the Sea Peoples the latter must have reached the area someseven or six years earlier if the older children wearing Philistine headgearare also the offspring of these households then we should think in terms of aninterval of thirteen years or more A similar observation was made by Singer(1987418) on the basis of the tablets from Ugarit and Ras Ibn Hani Thismeans that the fall of Ugarit should have occurred some fifteen to twentyyears before Ramses Ills war with the Sea Peoples It is quite acceptablehowever to postulate a short period of consolidation before the Sea Peoplesattempted to surge down into Egypt 14

The group we see in the Medinet Habu reliefs with their families would thenbe a second wave of settlement

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank I Finkelstein I Singer S Bunimovitz and the lateP Beck for reading and commenting on earlier drafts of this paper We wouldalso like to thank the Griffith Institute Oxford for allowing us to quotematerial from the unpublished notebooks of Sir Alan Gardiner

REFERENCES

Akurgal E 1962 The Art of the Hittites LondonAldred C 1973 Akhenaten and Nefertiti New YorkAstrom P 1992 Approaches to the Study of Women in Ancient Cyprus In

Astrom P ed Acta Cypria Acts of an International Congress onCypriote Archaeology held in GOteborg on 22-24 August 1991 Part 2(Studies in Mediterranean Archaeology Pocket-Book 117) Jonsered 5-8

14 On the other hand the size of the children depicted in the reliefs may not necessarily haveany historical significance Nor are these children necessarily these womens offspring bythe Sea People they even may be these womens children by previous partners in whichcase this part of the argument is irrelevant The Philistine youths may even be youngPhilistines who have been assigned to guarding the women and children as a relativelysafe post in view of their youth and inexperience

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Bietak M 1996 Avaris The Capital othe Hyksos LondonBolger D 1994 Engendering Cypriot Archaeology Female Roles and

Statuses before the Bronze Age Opuscula Atheniensia XX 19-17Brack A and Brack A 1980 Das Grab des Haremheb Theben Nr 78

MainzBrug JF 1984 A Literary and Archaeological Study othe Philistines Vols

1 and 2 MichiganBrunner-Traut E 1956 Die altiigyptischen Scherbenbilder (Bildostraka) der

Deutschen Museen und Sammlungen WiesbadenBrunner-Traut E 1979 Egyptian Artists Sketches LondonBuchholz H-G and Karageorghis V 1973 Prehistoric Greece and Cyprus

LondonBunimovitz S and Yasur-Landau A 1996 Philistine and Israelite Pottery A

Comparative Approach to the Question of Pots and People Tel Aviv2388-101

Bunimovitz S and Yasur-Landau A Forthcominga Behavioural Aspects of12th Century BCE Aegean Immigrants in Palestine and Cyprus

Bunimovitz S and Yasur-Landau A Forthcominglb Women and AegeanImmigration to Cyprus in the 12th Century BCE

Caubert A 1998 The International Style A point of View from the Levantand Syria In Cline EH and Harris-Cline D eds The Aegean and theOrient in the Second Millennium (Aegaeum 18) Liege 105-111

Cifola B 1991 The Terminology of Ramses Ills Historical Records with aFormal Analysis of the War Scenes Orientalia 609-57

Cifola B 1994 The Role of the Sea Peoples at the end of the Late BronzeAge A Reassessment of Textual and Archaeological Evidence OriensAntiqui Miscellanea 11-23

Cline EH 1995 Tinker Tailor Soldier Sailor Minoans and MyceneansAbroad In Laffineur R and Niemeier W-D eds Politeia Societyand State in the Aegean Bronze Age (Aegaeum 12) Liege 265-287

Conkey MW and Spector J 1984 Archaeology and the Study of GenderAdvances in Archaeological Method and Theory 71-38

Darnell J C 1991 Supposed Depictions of the Hittites in the Amarna PeriodStudien zur Altiigyptischen Kultur 18 113-140

Davies N de Garis 1905 The Rock Tombs of El Amarna II LondonDavies N de Garis 1908 The Rock Tombs of El Amarna VI LondonDavies N de Garis 1928 The Work of the Graphic Branch of the

Expedition Bulletin othe Metropolitan Museum 0Art 23237-48Davies N de Garis 1932 The Work of the Graphic Branch of the

Expedition Bulletin of the Metropolitan Museum of Art 273 51-62

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A partial parallel to the long curling hair of Woman NO1 can be found inthe Mykenaia figure from the cultic centre in Mycenae in the LH IIIB (Fig 47)as part of a more complex hairstyle which also includes a hair ribbon and curlson the forehead7 A closer parallel appears on the krater that was found inMinet el-Beida (Venneule and Karageorghis 198221 Fig IIIl9) from the LHIlIA In this scene appear two sword-bearing figures with similar hairstylesVenneule and Karageorghis suggest that these figures represent two captainsApart from their swords however these figures have no indications of genderand we should not rule out the possibility that they may be womens

In general the depictions of Syro-Canaanite women in Egyptian art arecloser to Image NO1 than the parallels from the Aegean This figure probablyrepresents a Syro-Canaanite woman although it is not impossible that itdepicts a woman from the Aegean

Image No 2

No exact parallels to Woman NO2 are known from Egyptian depictions offoreign women No close parallels to this figures hairstyle are found inAegean art either Does this mean that this woman came from outside the areaaccessible to the Egyptians (between Libya and Anatolia) and the Myceneansand Minoans (mainland Greece and the islands)

Alternatively Image NO2 might depict a special hairstyle for older womenfrom one of these areas One should note the age differentiation in hairstylesfor both males and females in the Aegean world (Davis 1986 Koehl 1986)By contrast older women are seldom represented in Egyptian art (Janssen ampJanssen 1996 14) they are unlikely to have been taken as prisoners of warunless they had some special skill

Image No 3

There are several parallels for Syro-Canaanite women wearing a filletaround their heads or hair-ribbons although it is by no means the norm

7 The Medinet Habu reliefs omit details such as curls on the forehead and so on whichappear frequently in the Aegean frescoes of women This phenomenon may originate fromthe difference in the artistic medium this type of detail is more difficult to represent inrelief than in fresco A similar phenomenon of generalization appears within Aegeanculture itself if we compare the hairstyles depicted in frescoes with those portrayed onceranlics (cf Vermeule amp Karageorghis 198217 for the parallel between the Kitionfragment and La Parisienne from Knossos)

8 Compare the sword-bearing figures on the Homage Krater (ibid23-24) which areidentical with the figures preceding them including the necklaces they wear

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Fig 4 41 Dying warrior from relief of the siege ofUllaza (after University of Chicago 1932PI 87) 42 Ivoryheads from Megiddo wearing scroll wigs (drawing after Loud 1939Nos 192-193)43 Woman from The House of the Ladies Thera (drawing afterhnmerwahr 1990 colour PI XI) 44 Woman from The House of the Ladies Thera(drawing after ibid colour PI XII) 45 Statuette of goddess from Karphi (drawingafter Buchholz amp Karageorghis 1973 Fig 1267) 46 Statuette of goddess fromKnossos (drawing after ibid Fig 1269) 47 The Mykenaia figure from Mycenae(drawing after hnmerwahr 1990 colour PI XX) 48 Women captives from the tombofHaremheb (after Martin 1989PI 105)

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Parallels include the women in the tomb of Haremheb (Fig 48) and in thetomb of Rekhmire (Fig 5 1) Another possible parallel are the women captiveson the Karnak talatat (Fig 35 above the ribbon does not appear on theoriginal relief blocks but is restored in the frontispiece of Redford 1984) aswell as those on three decorated spoons (Fig 52 Fechheimer 1921138Vandier d Abbadie 197220-21)

The women from the tomb of Reklullire are said to be serfs from the templeof Amun brought by Tuthmosis III as captives from his campaignsTuthmosis northern campaigns ranged from Canaan to the EuphratesTuthmosis declaration that he gave prisoners from the siege of Megiddo to thetemple of Amun (Sethe 1961 (Urk IV)74210-7438) may indicate that thesewomen were Canaanites but it is also possible that they are prisoners of warfrom Tuthmosis other campaigns to Lebanon or Syria

There are many parallels for both women and men wearing a fillet aroundtheir heads from the Aegean (Kontorli-Papadopoulou 199695) such as thehead of the Lady with the Lily from the LH lIlB cultic centre of Mycenae(Fig 53) and the pyxis-bearers from Tiryns (Fig 54) A parallel even closerin time may be the depiction of a woman with a hair ribbon on the LH IIICWarrior Vase from Mycenae (Venllule and Karageorghis 1982130-131Fig X142) Unfortunately only the frontal part of the womans head hassurvived leaving the rest of the headdress unknown to us

Nevertheless we know of no other instance of a Syrian woman with abag-shaped hairstyle like this one On the other hand the back of Image No3 s hairstyle is hidden by Image No2 she might conceivably have a hairstylelike Women Nos 12 or 7

It is most likely that this woman comes from the Aegean However if weassume that nothing is missing from the hairstyle then there is a more remotepossibility that this figure is a not a woman from Syria but a Syrian man aprisoner or a slave This bag-shaped hairstyle is characteristic of Syro-Canaanitemen in Egyptian art of this period although they are traditionally shown withbeards (HeIck 1962346) By contrast in Canaanite art there are manyinstances of clean-shaven men (Figs 71-3 below see also Loud 1939 Nos2 161 162) It is also extremely common for Syrian men to wear filletsaround their brows (Fig 61 Ricke 1967 PI 12 Martin 1989 PI 105)

Image No 4

Women with a single long plait of hair like No 4 appear in various NewKingdom contexts as representative of northerners or Syrians (HeIck 1962347)There are two variants of this hairstyle a single plait falling down the womansback and a plait falling to the side of her face which could be one of a pair

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Fig 5 51 Syro-Canaanite women from the tomb ofRekhmire (after Davies 1943 PI xxiii)52 Decorated spoon in the form of a Syro-Canaanite woman (after Wallert 1967PI24) 53 The Lady with the Lily from Mycenae (drawing afterKontorli-Papadopulou 1996 PI 94) 54 Pyxis-bearer from Tiryns (drawing afterImmerwahr 1990 PI 56)

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Women wearing a plait straight down their back appear in the tomb ofRekhmire (Fig 62 Davies 192840 followed by Feucht 1990a194 suggeststhat these women are Hittites) This hairstyle is also worn by a woman in SetiIs reliefs of his campaign against the Shasu (Fig 63) This woman is probablyone of the Shasu although since Setis battle against the Shasu takes place enroute to Gaza she might be a Canaanite taken captive by the Shasu This styleis also attested on an ivory figure from Megiddo (Loud 1939 No 175)

Women with a plait to one side appear on the throne of Queen Tiy in thetomb of Kheruef (Fig 64) and in the tombs of Menkheperresoneb (Fig 65)and Amenmose (Davies 1933 PI xxxiv)9 On the throne of Tiy such womenappear as typical northerners contrasted with Nubian captives in the tombs ofMenkheperresoneb and Amenmose their origin is not specified Plaits hangingto one side also appear on two decorated spoons (Fig 52 above and Vandierd Abbadie 197220-21) and on a servant girl from the tomb of Intef (althoughthis girl is not said explicitly to be a foreigner and the end of her plait isreconstructed) (Davies 193253)

Note incidentally that in Egyptian art this hairstyle is always worn bySyro-Canaanite slaves or captives and not by women from the same countrieswhen at home (with the possible exception of the Shasu or Canaanite womanin Fig 63) Presumably female slaves tied their long hair back to keep it outof the way whilst working and this practice became generic for theiconography of Syro-Canaanite captive women

Aegean art includes numerous examples of women with plaits Howevermost of these examples are more similar to the curling lock of Woman No1The best parallels to the straight plait of Woman NO4 are the simple plaitsworn by female statuettes However the latter may reflect the limitations ofworking in clay as opposed to paint rather than actually reproducing adifferent hairstyle (see note 7 above)

There may also be parallels in Hittite art for tIlis single long plait The InandikPithos (OzgUy 198883-92 Fig 64) dated to the Old Hittite Period (Fig 66Hoffner 1995558-559 Figs 1 and 2) depicts scenes of preparation for a weddingin a wealthy house Some women wear either a single plait or a waist-lengthheaddress whereas others wear all-enveloping shawls covering the head Asinlilar plait or headdress is worn by the queen in an orthostat from Alaca Hoyiik(Akurgal 1962 PI 92) dated before the 13th century BCE (Kohlmeyer19952647) and also under the crowns worn by the goddesses on the Yazilikayarock carvings (Fig 81 ibid2650 Fig 9) dated to the 13th century BCE

9 Gardiner Notebook 28819 is a photograph of a painting of the wall here we see that thewomens plaits are much the same colour as their garments which is why the-plait doesnot show up clearly in photographs (Meyer 1913721 Wreszinski 1923275)

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Fig 6 61 Syro-Canaanite men wearing fillets (after Davies 1947 PI viii) 62Syro-Canaanite women from the tomb of Reklunire (after Davies 1943 PI Ivii) 63Woman from the relief of Seti Is battle against the Shasu (after University ofChicago 1986 PI 12) 64 Syro-Canaanite and Nubian female captives decoratingQueen Tiys throne (after University of Chicago 1980 PI 47) 65 Syro-Canaanitewoman from the tomb of Menkheperresoneb (after Davies 1933 PI v) 66 Womenfrom the Inandik pithos (after Hoffner 1995Fig 2)

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Images No 5 and 9

Images NO5 and 9 are either bald or have their hair closely cropped Giventhat both heads are damaged however this observation is not entirely certain

Men with sho~t hair are very rare in Aegean art~ where only babies andyoung children wear their hair short (Koehl 1986100-101) On the otherhand men with close-cropped hair or close-fitting caps (Stern 1989) arecommon in Canaanite art (Figs 71-3 Loud 1939 Nos 2 162) Interestinglyenough these Canaanites are shown driving chariots (ibid Nos 2 159 161)which provides a good parallel to NO9 the driver of Wagon NO5 Image No5 may be the driver of Wagon No3 Unlike his colleague No9 who is stillgoading the oxen onwards NO5 has given up hope and raises his hands indespair

Image No 6

The upper rim of the chariot hides the back of Woman No 6s neck Itwould be possible to reconstruct her hairstyle with a long narrow plait like thewomen already described It would also be possible to envisage her as havingshort hair However it is unusual to find women from Syro-Palestineportrayed in this way A group of women depicted in the tomb of Reklunirehave short hair (Fig 82 Davies 192840 followed by Feucht 1990a195identifies the long wrap-around dresses of these women as Syrian in style)This short hairstyle may be adopted from the group of Nubian women whoprecede the Syrians in this picture A naked goddess mounted on a horse isalso portrayed wearing short hair and a large earring (Fig 83 Brunner-Traut197929-30 NO5 PI V Petersen 1973 No 31 However Petersen idemsuggests that the goddess is wearing a helmet) The Hittite princess bride ofRamses II is shown with short hair (Fig 84) but she has been dressed upEgyptian style for the celebrations so her hairstyle is not necessarilysignificant

In Egyptian art this short hairstyle is characteristic of Nubian women (Fig85 Davies amp Gardiner 1926 PI xxx University of Chicago 1930 PI 9Ricke 1967 PIs 89 Brack amp Brack 1980 PI 50 Dziobeck 1992 PI 1) Itis true that the front part of Woman No 6s hairstyle tapers back from herforehead whereas most Nubian women wear their hair in a thick fringeHowever Nubian women are depicted with this type of central parting in afew New Kingdom tombs such as those of Rekhmire (Davies 1943 PI xxii)and Haremheb (Brack amp Brack 1980 PI 50 see also University of Chicago1930 PI 9)

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Fig 7 71 Ivory from Megiddo (after Loud 1939 No 159) 72 Ivory from Megiddo (afteribid No 160)73 Bronze plaque from Hazor (after Redford 1992197 Fig 71)

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Image No 7

This person wears its hair tapering to the nape of the neck Syro-Canaanitewomen sometimes wear their hair tapering to a point (Muller 1906 PI 9)although usually their hair is somewhat longer than that of Image NO7 andthe pointed tip of their hairstyle falls farther back behind their shoulderslO

(Fig 86) A woman portrayed on one of the Megiddo ivories has the samehairstyle (Loud 1939 No 2b)

This image may represent another Syro-Canaanite woman A more remotepossibility is that this image represents a Hittite man Hittite men wore theirhair in a queue and had bald foreheads In the reliefs at Medinet Habu the linemarking the front of the Hittite mens bald pates is not necessarily drawn in(Fig 87) Hittite men generally wore their hair much longer but there are afew examples of Hittite men whose hair only reaches to the back of their necks(Figs 87-92 see also Kuentz 1928 PI xviii)

There is a small possibility that Hittite women may also have worn thisstyle but the evidence is ambiguous In the Ramesseum relief of the siege ofDapur a group of people are shown leaving the city bearing baskets ofprovisions and begging for peace (Fig 93) Their hair tapers to theirshoulders Wreszinski (1935 PI 109) and HeIck (1962343) suggest thatthese people are the ruler of the city and the women of his house On the otherhand some of the dead warriors lying on the battlefield have exactly the samehairstyle so the figures accompanying the ruler are not necessarily women Inany case their hair is too long to be compared to this figure

There is no parallel for this figure in Aegean art

Image No 8

So little is visible of Image NO8 that any discussion of her coiffure wouldbe inconclusive

10 Some of the figures in the siege of Ullaza (University of Chicago 1932 PI 87) have thishairstyle but they are not necessarily women A decorated spoon in the Rijksmuseum vonOudheiden at Leiden has a similar hairstyle but since the woman is naked it is difficult totell whether she represents a foreigner (Eggebrecht 1987 No 246) The same applies tothe decorated spoon Louvre N-I728 (Vandier dAbbadie 197214-15)

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Fig 8 81 Goddess on the Yazilikaya rock carvings (after Kohlmeyer 1995 Fig 9) 82Women from the tomb of Rekhmire (after Davies 1943 PI Ivii) 83 Goddess onhorseback (drawing after Brunner-Traut 1956 No 16 PI viii) 84 The Hittiteprincess from the Marriage Stele of Ramses IT(after Lepsius 1849-1859 PI 196) 85Nubian women (after Davies 1905 PI xxviii) 86 Syro-Canaanite woman from thetomb ofRekhmire (after Davies 1943 PI xxiii) 87-8 Hittite warriors from MedinetHabu (after University of Chicago 1932 PI 87)

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The Children of the Sea People

The child standing by Wagon NO5 (Fig 22) wears a single long lock of hairgrowing from the crown of his head 11 This hairstyle is characteristic ofSyro-Canaanite children of both sexes in New Kingdom reliefs12(Fig 94 Davies1905 PI xxxiX)13

Children often appear in New Kingdom scenes of siege or battle beinglifted over the walls of a besieged city in Syria or Canaan (Fig 95) It is notclear whether these children are being sacrificed to the gods to change thecourse of the battle presented to Pharaoh as hostages or helped to escape(Keel 1975 Spalinger 1977-8 Feucht 1990b33-39 Donohue 1992) In thisinstance we suggest that they are being helped to escape (Keel 1975456 Thechildren appear to be on the point of collapse and their chances of escape areprobably slim Keel suggests that fear of Pharaoh immobilizes the childrenwith terror and they sink to the ground unable to stir)

Donohue (199283) suggests that the women are scooping the children upinto the wagons before the advancing enemy but this is unlikely If they weretrying to clamber into the wagons they would be facing inwards and probablyusing their legs to get a purchase on the side of the wagon as they clamber upit (The same applies to children in scenes of besieged cities There are onlytwo examples of children who could conceivably be climbing into the city (thelittle girl on the left in Fig 95 see also Keel 1975 Fig 19)

The fact that the older children are dressed as Sea Peoples may suggestpatrilineal behaviour in the immigrant society - at least in regard to costume

Summary

The limitations of this type of source material preclude absolute conclusionsThe Aegean paintings and statuettes come from a different artistic traditionthan the Medinet Habu reliefs discrepancies between the two are inevitableEgyptian depictions of foreigners have their limitations and since the artists atMedinet Habu may have been unfamiliar with these hairstyles it is difficult to tellhow accurate these portrayals are We may however make a few suggestions

11 The second line emerging from the crown of his head in University of Chicago 1930 PI49D is probably a scratch rather than a second lock

12 See also Pritchard 1954 No 45 (the man presenting this child is said to be the ruler ofTunip and can therefore be located in Syria) Save Stiderbergh 1957 PI xxiii Martin1989PI 105 University of Chicago 1932PI 87Feucht 1990a198 n 82 points out that apart from the single plait children from Syriamay also sport two plaits a head of short hair or two clumps of hair There is quite avariety of hairstyles

13 The parallel to this scene in the tomb ofHuya describes this tribute as coming from Kharuand Kush (Sandman 193837 line 1)

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Fig 9 91 Hittite warrior from Medinet Habu (after University of Chicago 1932 PI 87) 92Hittite warriors from Abu Simbel (after Wreszinski 1935 PI 170) 93 Group ofHittites from the siege of Dapur (after ibid PI 109) 94 Syro-Canaanite women andchild (after Davies 1947 PI viii) 95 Girl being let down over the city wall relief ofthe siege of Ashkelon (after Keel 1975Fig 21)

Woman NO4 with her long straight plait conforms to Egyptian depictionsof Syro-Canaanite women although she also has parallels in Aegean artWoman No 1 has parallels in both the Egyptian tradition and the Aegeantradition although the Egyptian parallels are stronger and she is also probablya Syro-Canaanite woman Image NO7 if she is a woman is vaguely similarto certain Egyptian pictures of Syro-Canaanite women but her hair is rathershort to provide a good parallel it should fall to a point further down her back

No exact parallels are known for the hairstyle of No 2 in either Egyptian orAegean art It is not clear whether this hairstyle may represent an ethnic groupunknown to us Alternatively middotdifferent hairstyles may have been worn bywomen at different periods of their lives - married ~omen and maidens forexample or old women and young ones or pregnant women They may alsocharacterize different social standings or occupations

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In some cases the persons hairstyle is incomplete It is masked by overlappinglinages or by the edge of the wagon as in Images Nos 3 and 6If they had longer hair these people might have hairstyles like those of Women 12or 4 If Image No3 had long hair she would have excellent parallels in Aegeanart where hair ribbons are very common If the bag-shaped hairstyle of Image No3 is complete as it stands however then the best parallels are actually fomIdamongst Syrian men Woman No 6s short hair is occasionally paralleled amongstSyrian women it is much more characteristic of Nubian women however Notonly did themiddotEgyptians have Nubian servants and slaves but many Egyptians werethemselves of Nubian stock so that women of this type could be found throughoutthe territories under Egyptian rule

The Sea Peoples were accompanied by men from the areas they traversedThey may have been taken as slaves or prisoners or maybe they decided tojoin the Sea Peoples advance in order to seek their fortunes abroad Such arethe wagon drivers Nos 5 and 9 who are definitely Syro-Canaanites andperhaps Image No3 ifhe is a Syrian or Image No7 if he is a Hittite

This picture of a complex and highly diverse origin of the group of Sea Peoplesportrayed in the Medinet Habu reliefs (which mayor may not be a typical group)suggests that it is unlikely that the Philistines were 100 pure Mycenaean Greeks(Stager 1995337 following Mazar 1988255-6 260) Like Sherratt (1998307)we characterize the Sea Peoples as cosmopolitan although we still envisagemany of them as Aegeans Other groups or individuals would have joined the SeaPeoples in northern Syria and Canaan

Conclusions

In the Medinet Habu reliefs the Sea Peoples are accompanied by at leastone woman who is clearly Syro-Canaanite and also by women with parallelsin Aegean art A similar conclusion was also reached by an analysis ofmaterial culture assemblages from Syria and Palestine (Bunimovitz andYasur-Landau forthcoming a b) attributed to the first stages of Aegeansettlement at the beginning of the Iron Age In these studies evidence ofbehavioural patterns of Aegean origin such as weaving with a loom equippedwith round unperfonlted loomweights and cooking on a hearth with Aegeanstyle cooking-pots were found side by side with local textile manufacture andcooking methods These finds may be cautiously interpreted as evidence of thepresence of women of both Aegean and local origin at these sites

The evidence from the reliefs shows that the Sea Peoples were accompaniedby men and women from Syria andor Canaan and by children probably theSea Peoples offspring by these women This indicates that the Sea Peoplesspent time in Syria andor Canaan before they continued on their way to Egypt

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Rather than envisaging the Sea Peoples immigration as a rapid concerted attack ata number of points simultaneously (Stager 1995) we should consider it as acomplex situation of not necessarily coordinated movements by different groupsfrom different areas

The size of the children depicted in the Medinet Habu reliefs may give ussome indication of how long the Sea Peoples had been present in the areabefore they moved south to Egypt If the younger children are the offspring ofthese women and the Sea Peoples the latter must have reached the area someseven or six years earlier if the older children wearing Philistine headgearare also the offspring of these households then we should think in terms of aninterval of thirteen years or more A similar observation was made by Singer(1987418) on the basis of the tablets from Ugarit and Ras Ibn Hani Thismeans that the fall of Ugarit should have occurred some fifteen to twentyyears before Ramses Ills war with the Sea Peoples It is quite acceptablehowever to postulate a short period of consolidation before the Sea Peoplesattempted to surge down into Egypt 14

The group we see in the Medinet Habu reliefs with their families would thenbe a second wave of settlement

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank I Finkelstein I Singer S Bunimovitz and the lateP Beck for reading and commenting on earlier drafts of this paper We wouldalso like to thank the Griffith Institute Oxford for allowing us to quotematerial from the unpublished notebooks of Sir Alan Gardiner

REFERENCES

Akurgal E 1962 The Art of the Hittites LondonAldred C 1973 Akhenaten and Nefertiti New YorkAstrom P 1992 Approaches to the Study of Women in Ancient Cyprus In

Astrom P ed Acta Cypria Acts of an International Congress onCypriote Archaeology held in GOteborg on 22-24 August 1991 Part 2(Studies in Mediterranean Archaeology Pocket-Book 117) Jonsered 5-8

14 On the other hand the size of the children depicted in the reliefs may not necessarily haveany historical significance Nor are these children necessarily these womens offspring bythe Sea People they even may be these womens children by previous partners in whichcase this part of the argument is irrelevant The Philistine youths may even be youngPhilistines who have been assigned to guarding the women and children as a relativelysafe post in view of their youth and inexperience

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Bietak M 1996 Avaris The Capital othe Hyksos LondonBolger D 1994 Engendering Cypriot Archaeology Female Roles and

Statuses before the Bronze Age Opuscula Atheniensia XX 19-17Brack A and Brack A 1980 Das Grab des Haremheb Theben Nr 78

MainzBrug JF 1984 A Literary and Archaeological Study othe Philistines Vols

1 and 2 MichiganBrunner-Traut E 1956 Die altiigyptischen Scherbenbilder (Bildostraka) der

Deutschen Museen und Sammlungen WiesbadenBrunner-Traut E 1979 Egyptian Artists Sketches LondonBuchholz H-G and Karageorghis V 1973 Prehistoric Greece and Cyprus

LondonBunimovitz S and Yasur-Landau A 1996 Philistine and Israelite Pottery A

Comparative Approach to the Question of Pots and People Tel Aviv2388-101

Bunimovitz S and Yasur-Landau A Forthcominga Behavioural Aspects of12th Century BCE Aegean Immigrants in Palestine and Cyprus

Bunimovitz S and Yasur-Landau A Forthcominglb Women and AegeanImmigration to Cyprus in the 12th Century BCE

Caubert A 1998 The International Style A point of View from the Levantand Syria In Cline EH and Harris-Cline D eds The Aegean and theOrient in the Second Millennium (Aegaeum 18) Liege 105-111

Cifola B 1991 The Terminology of Ramses Ills Historical Records with aFormal Analysis of the War Scenes Orientalia 609-57

Cifola B 1994 The Role of the Sea Peoples at the end of the Late BronzeAge A Reassessment of Textual and Archaeological Evidence OriensAntiqui Miscellanea 11-23

Cline EH 1995 Tinker Tailor Soldier Sailor Minoans and MyceneansAbroad In Laffineur R and Niemeier W-D eds Politeia Societyand State in the Aegean Bronze Age (Aegaeum 12) Liege 265-287

Conkey MW and Spector J 1984 Archaeology and the Study of GenderAdvances in Archaeological Method and Theory 71-38

Darnell J C 1991 Supposed Depictions of the Hittites in the Amarna PeriodStudien zur Altiigyptischen Kultur 18 113-140

Davies N de Garis 1905 The Rock Tombs of El Amarna II LondonDavies N de Garis 1908 The Rock Tombs of El Amarna VI LondonDavies N de Garis 1928 The Work of the Graphic Branch of the

Expedition Bulletin othe Metropolitan Museum 0Art 23237-48Davies N de Garis 1932 The Work of the Graphic Branch of the

Expedition Bulletin of the Metropolitan Museum of Art 273 51-62

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Fig 4 41 Dying warrior from relief of the siege ofUllaza (after University of Chicago 1932PI 87) 42 Ivoryheads from Megiddo wearing scroll wigs (drawing after Loud 1939Nos 192-193)43 Woman from The House of the Ladies Thera (drawing afterhnmerwahr 1990 colour PI XI) 44 Woman from The House of the Ladies Thera(drawing after ibid colour PI XII) 45 Statuette of goddess from Karphi (drawingafter Buchholz amp Karageorghis 1973 Fig 1267) 46 Statuette of goddess fromKnossos (drawing after ibid Fig 1269) 47 The Mykenaia figure from Mycenae(drawing after hnmerwahr 1990 colour PI XX) 48 Women captives from the tombofHaremheb (after Martin 1989PI 105)

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Parallels include the women in the tomb of Haremheb (Fig 48) and in thetomb of Rekhmire (Fig 5 1) Another possible parallel are the women captiveson the Karnak talatat (Fig 35 above the ribbon does not appear on theoriginal relief blocks but is restored in the frontispiece of Redford 1984) aswell as those on three decorated spoons (Fig 52 Fechheimer 1921138Vandier d Abbadie 197220-21)

The women from the tomb of Reklullire are said to be serfs from the templeof Amun brought by Tuthmosis III as captives from his campaignsTuthmosis northern campaigns ranged from Canaan to the EuphratesTuthmosis declaration that he gave prisoners from the siege of Megiddo to thetemple of Amun (Sethe 1961 (Urk IV)74210-7438) may indicate that thesewomen were Canaanites but it is also possible that they are prisoners of warfrom Tuthmosis other campaigns to Lebanon or Syria

There are many parallels for both women and men wearing a fillet aroundtheir heads from the Aegean (Kontorli-Papadopoulou 199695) such as thehead of the Lady with the Lily from the LH lIlB cultic centre of Mycenae(Fig 53) and the pyxis-bearers from Tiryns (Fig 54) A parallel even closerin time may be the depiction of a woman with a hair ribbon on the LH IIICWarrior Vase from Mycenae (Venllule and Karageorghis 1982130-131Fig X142) Unfortunately only the frontal part of the womans head hassurvived leaving the rest of the headdress unknown to us

Nevertheless we know of no other instance of a Syrian woman with abag-shaped hairstyle like this one On the other hand the back of Image No3 s hairstyle is hidden by Image No2 she might conceivably have a hairstylelike Women Nos 12 or 7

It is most likely that this woman comes from the Aegean However if weassume that nothing is missing from the hairstyle then there is a more remotepossibility that this figure is a not a woman from Syria but a Syrian man aprisoner or a slave This bag-shaped hairstyle is characteristic of Syro-Canaanitemen in Egyptian art of this period although they are traditionally shown withbeards (HeIck 1962346) By contrast in Canaanite art there are manyinstances of clean-shaven men (Figs 71-3 below see also Loud 1939 Nos2 161 162) It is also extremely common for Syrian men to wear filletsaround their brows (Fig 61 Ricke 1967 PI 12 Martin 1989 PI 105)

Image No 4

Women with a single long plait of hair like No 4 appear in various NewKingdom contexts as representative of northerners or Syrians (HeIck 1962347)There are two variants of this hairstyle a single plait falling down the womansback and a plait falling to the side of her face which could be one of a pair

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Fig 5 51 Syro-Canaanite women from the tomb ofRekhmire (after Davies 1943 PI xxiii)52 Decorated spoon in the form of a Syro-Canaanite woman (after Wallert 1967PI24) 53 The Lady with the Lily from Mycenae (drawing afterKontorli-Papadopulou 1996 PI 94) 54 Pyxis-bearer from Tiryns (drawing afterImmerwahr 1990 PI 56)

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Women wearing a plait straight down their back appear in the tomb ofRekhmire (Fig 62 Davies 192840 followed by Feucht 1990a194 suggeststhat these women are Hittites) This hairstyle is also worn by a woman in SetiIs reliefs of his campaign against the Shasu (Fig 63) This woman is probablyone of the Shasu although since Setis battle against the Shasu takes place enroute to Gaza she might be a Canaanite taken captive by the Shasu This styleis also attested on an ivory figure from Megiddo (Loud 1939 No 175)

Women with a plait to one side appear on the throne of Queen Tiy in thetomb of Kheruef (Fig 64) and in the tombs of Menkheperresoneb (Fig 65)and Amenmose (Davies 1933 PI xxxiv)9 On the throne of Tiy such womenappear as typical northerners contrasted with Nubian captives in the tombs ofMenkheperresoneb and Amenmose their origin is not specified Plaits hangingto one side also appear on two decorated spoons (Fig 52 above and Vandierd Abbadie 197220-21) and on a servant girl from the tomb of Intef (althoughthis girl is not said explicitly to be a foreigner and the end of her plait isreconstructed) (Davies 193253)

Note incidentally that in Egyptian art this hairstyle is always worn bySyro-Canaanite slaves or captives and not by women from the same countrieswhen at home (with the possible exception of the Shasu or Canaanite womanin Fig 63) Presumably female slaves tied their long hair back to keep it outof the way whilst working and this practice became generic for theiconography of Syro-Canaanite captive women

Aegean art includes numerous examples of women with plaits Howevermost of these examples are more similar to the curling lock of Woman No1The best parallels to the straight plait of Woman NO4 are the simple plaitsworn by female statuettes However the latter may reflect the limitations ofworking in clay as opposed to paint rather than actually reproducing adifferent hairstyle (see note 7 above)

There may also be parallels in Hittite art for tIlis single long plait The InandikPithos (OzgUy 198883-92 Fig 64) dated to the Old Hittite Period (Fig 66Hoffner 1995558-559 Figs 1 and 2) depicts scenes of preparation for a weddingin a wealthy house Some women wear either a single plait or a waist-lengthheaddress whereas others wear all-enveloping shawls covering the head Asinlilar plait or headdress is worn by the queen in an orthostat from Alaca Hoyiik(Akurgal 1962 PI 92) dated before the 13th century BCE (Kohlmeyer19952647) and also under the crowns worn by the goddesses on the Yazilikayarock carvings (Fig 81 ibid2650 Fig 9) dated to the 13th century BCE

9 Gardiner Notebook 28819 is a photograph of a painting of the wall here we see that thewomens plaits are much the same colour as their garments which is why the-plait doesnot show up clearly in photographs (Meyer 1913721 Wreszinski 1923275)

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Fig 6 61 Syro-Canaanite men wearing fillets (after Davies 1947 PI viii) 62Syro-Canaanite women from the tomb of Reklunire (after Davies 1943 PI Ivii) 63Woman from the relief of Seti Is battle against the Shasu (after University ofChicago 1986 PI 12) 64 Syro-Canaanite and Nubian female captives decoratingQueen Tiys throne (after University of Chicago 1980 PI 47) 65 Syro-Canaanitewoman from the tomb of Menkheperresoneb (after Davies 1933 PI v) 66 Womenfrom the Inandik pithos (after Hoffner 1995Fig 2)

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Images No 5 and 9

Images NO5 and 9 are either bald or have their hair closely cropped Giventhat both heads are damaged however this observation is not entirely certain

Men with sho~t hair are very rare in Aegean art~ where only babies andyoung children wear their hair short (Koehl 1986100-101) On the otherhand men with close-cropped hair or close-fitting caps (Stern 1989) arecommon in Canaanite art (Figs 71-3 Loud 1939 Nos 2 162) Interestinglyenough these Canaanites are shown driving chariots (ibid Nos 2 159 161)which provides a good parallel to NO9 the driver of Wagon NO5 Image No5 may be the driver of Wagon No3 Unlike his colleague No9 who is stillgoading the oxen onwards NO5 has given up hope and raises his hands indespair

Image No 6

The upper rim of the chariot hides the back of Woman No 6s neck Itwould be possible to reconstruct her hairstyle with a long narrow plait like thewomen already described It would also be possible to envisage her as havingshort hair However it is unusual to find women from Syro-Palestineportrayed in this way A group of women depicted in the tomb of Reklunirehave short hair (Fig 82 Davies 192840 followed by Feucht 1990a195identifies the long wrap-around dresses of these women as Syrian in style)This short hairstyle may be adopted from the group of Nubian women whoprecede the Syrians in this picture A naked goddess mounted on a horse isalso portrayed wearing short hair and a large earring (Fig 83 Brunner-Traut197929-30 NO5 PI V Petersen 1973 No 31 However Petersen idemsuggests that the goddess is wearing a helmet) The Hittite princess bride ofRamses II is shown with short hair (Fig 84) but she has been dressed upEgyptian style for the celebrations so her hairstyle is not necessarilysignificant

In Egyptian art this short hairstyle is characteristic of Nubian women (Fig85 Davies amp Gardiner 1926 PI xxx University of Chicago 1930 PI 9Ricke 1967 PIs 89 Brack amp Brack 1980 PI 50 Dziobeck 1992 PI 1) Itis true that the front part of Woman No 6s hairstyle tapers back from herforehead whereas most Nubian women wear their hair in a thick fringeHowever Nubian women are depicted with this type of central parting in afew New Kingdom tombs such as those of Rekhmire (Davies 1943 PI xxii)and Haremheb (Brack amp Brack 1980 PI 50 see also University of Chicago1930 PI 9)

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Fig 7 71 Ivory from Megiddo (after Loud 1939 No 159) 72 Ivory from Megiddo (afteribid No 160)73 Bronze plaque from Hazor (after Redford 1992197 Fig 71)

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Image No 7

This person wears its hair tapering to the nape of the neck Syro-Canaanitewomen sometimes wear their hair tapering to a point (Muller 1906 PI 9)although usually their hair is somewhat longer than that of Image NO7 andthe pointed tip of their hairstyle falls farther back behind their shoulderslO

(Fig 86) A woman portrayed on one of the Megiddo ivories has the samehairstyle (Loud 1939 No 2b)

This image may represent another Syro-Canaanite woman A more remotepossibility is that this image represents a Hittite man Hittite men wore theirhair in a queue and had bald foreheads In the reliefs at Medinet Habu the linemarking the front of the Hittite mens bald pates is not necessarily drawn in(Fig 87) Hittite men generally wore their hair much longer but there are afew examples of Hittite men whose hair only reaches to the back of their necks(Figs 87-92 see also Kuentz 1928 PI xviii)

There is a small possibility that Hittite women may also have worn thisstyle but the evidence is ambiguous In the Ramesseum relief of the siege ofDapur a group of people are shown leaving the city bearing baskets ofprovisions and begging for peace (Fig 93) Their hair tapers to theirshoulders Wreszinski (1935 PI 109) and HeIck (1962343) suggest thatthese people are the ruler of the city and the women of his house On the otherhand some of the dead warriors lying on the battlefield have exactly the samehairstyle so the figures accompanying the ruler are not necessarily women Inany case their hair is too long to be compared to this figure

There is no parallel for this figure in Aegean art

Image No 8

So little is visible of Image NO8 that any discussion of her coiffure wouldbe inconclusive

10 Some of the figures in the siege of Ullaza (University of Chicago 1932 PI 87) have thishairstyle but they are not necessarily women A decorated spoon in the Rijksmuseum vonOudheiden at Leiden has a similar hairstyle but since the woman is naked it is difficult totell whether she represents a foreigner (Eggebrecht 1987 No 246) The same applies tothe decorated spoon Louvre N-I728 (Vandier dAbbadie 197214-15)

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Fig 8 81 Goddess on the Yazilikaya rock carvings (after Kohlmeyer 1995 Fig 9) 82Women from the tomb of Rekhmire (after Davies 1943 PI Ivii) 83 Goddess onhorseback (drawing after Brunner-Traut 1956 No 16 PI viii) 84 The Hittiteprincess from the Marriage Stele of Ramses IT(after Lepsius 1849-1859 PI 196) 85Nubian women (after Davies 1905 PI xxviii) 86 Syro-Canaanite woman from thetomb ofRekhmire (after Davies 1943 PI xxiii) 87-8 Hittite warriors from MedinetHabu (after University of Chicago 1932 PI 87)

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The Children of the Sea People

The child standing by Wagon NO5 (Fig 22) wears a single long lock of hairgrowing from the crown of his head 11 This hairstyle is characteristic ofSyro-Canaanite children of both sexes in New Kingdom reliefs12(Fig 94 Davies1905 PI xxxiX)13

Children often appear in New Kingdom scenes of siege or battle beinglifted over the walls of a besieged city in Syria or Canaan (Fig 95) It is notclear whether these children are being sacrificed to the gods to change thecourse of the battle presented to Pharaoh as hostages or helped to escape(Keel 1975 Spalinger 1977-8 Feucht 1990b33-39 Donohue 1992) In thisinstance we suggest that they are being helped to escape (Keel 1975456 Thechildren appear to be on the point of collapse and their chances of escape areprobably slim Keel suggests that fear of Pharaoh immobilizes the childrenwith terror and they sink to the ground unable to stir)

Donohue (199283) suggests that the women are scooping the children upinto the wagons before the advancing enemy but this is unlikely If they weretrying to clamber into the wagons they would be facing inwards and probablyusing their legs to get a purchase on the side of the wagon as they clamber upit (The same applies to children in scenes of besieged cities There are onlytwo examples of children who could conceivably be climbing into the city (thelittle girl on the left in Fig 95 see also Keel 1975 Fig 19)

The fact that the older children are dressed as Sea Peoples may suggestpatrilineal behaviour in the immigrant society - at least in regard to costume

Summary

The limitations of this type of source material preclude absolute conclusionsThe Aegean paintings and statuettes come from a different artistic traditionthan the Medinet Habu reliefs discrepancies between the two are inevitableEgyptian depictions of foreigners have their limitations and since the artists atMedinet Habu may have been unfamiliar with these hairstyles it is difficult to tellhow accurate these portrayals are We may however make a few suggestions

11 The second line emerging from the crown of his head in University of Chicago 1930 PI49D is probably a scratch rather than a second lock

12 See also Pritchard 1954 No 45 (the man presenting this child is said to be the ruler ofTunip and can therefore be located in Syria) Save Stiderbergh 1957 PI xxiii Martin1989PI 105 University of Chicago 1932PI 87Feucht 1990a198 n 82 points out that apart from the single plait children from Syriamay also sport two plaits a head of short hair or two clumps of hair There is quite avariety of hairstyles

13 The parallel to this scene in the tomb ofHuya describes this tribute as coming from Kharuand Kush (Sandman 193837 line 1)

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Fig 9 91 Hittite warrior from Medinet Habu (after University of Chicago 1932 PI 87) 92Hittite warriors from Abu Simbel (after Wreszinski 1935 PI 170) 93 Group ofHittites from the siege of Dapur (after ibid PI 109) 94 Syro-Canaanite women andchild (after Davies 1947 PI viii) 95 Girl being let down over the city wall relief ofthe siege of Ashkelon (after Keel 1975Fig 21)

Woman NO4 with her long straight plait conforms to Egyptian depictionsof Syro-Canaanite women although she also has parallels in Aegean artWoman No 1 has parallels in both the Egyptian tradition and the Aegeantradition although the Egyptian parallels are stronger and she is also probablya Syro-Canaanite woman Image NO7 if she is a woman is vaguely similarto certain Egyptian pictures of Syro-Canaanite women but her hair is rathershort to provide a good parallel it should fall to a point further down her back

No exact parallels are known for the hairstyle of No 2 in either Egyptian orAegean art It is not clear whether this hairstyle may represent an ethnic groupunknown to us Alternatively middotdifferent hairstyles may have been worn bywomen at different periods of their lives - married ~omen and maidens forexample or old women and young ones or pregnant women They may alsocharacterize different social standings or occupations

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In some cases the persons hairstyle is incomplete It is masked by overlappinglinages or by the edge of the wagon as in Images Nos 3 and 6If they had longer hair these people might have hairstyles like those of Women 12or 4 If Image No3 had long hair she would have excellent parallels in Aegeanart where hair ribbons are very common If the bag-shaped hairstyle of Image No3 is complete as it stands however then the best parallels are actually fomIdamongst Syrian men Woman No 6s short hair is occasionally paralleled amongstSyrian women it is much more characteristic of Nubian women however Notonly did themiddotEgyptians have Nubian servants and slaves but many Egyptians werethemselves of Nubian stock so that women of this type could be found throughoutthe territories under Egyptian rule

The Sea Peoples were accompanied by men from the areas they traversedThey may have been taken as slaves or prisoners or maybe they decided tojoin the Sea Peoples advance in order to seek their fortunes abroad Such arethe wagon drivers Nos 5 and 9 who are definitely Syro-Canaanites andperhaps Image No3 ifhe is a Syrian or Image No7 if he is a Hittite

This picture of a complex and highly diverse origin of the group of Sea Peoplesportrayed in the Medinet Habu reliefs (which mayor may not be a typical group)suggests that it is unlikely that the Philistines were 100 pure Mycenaean Greeks(Stager 1995337 following Mazar 1988255-6 260) Like Sherratt (1998307)we characterize the Sea Peoples as cosmopolitan although we still envisagemany of them as Aegeans Other groups or individuals would have joined the SeaPeoples in northern Syria and Canaan

Conclusions

In the Medinet Habu reliefs the Sea Peoples are accompanied by at leastone woman who is clearly Syro-Canaanite and also by women with parallelsin Aegean art A similar conclusion was also reached by an analysis ofmaterial culture assemblages from Syria and Palestine (Bunimovitz andYasur-Landau forthcoming a b) attributed to the first stages of Aegeansettlement at the beginning of the Iron Age In these studies evidence ofbehavioural patterns of Aegean origin such as weaving with a loom equippedwith round unperfonlted loomweights and cooking on a hearth with Aegeanstyle cooking-pots were found side by side with local textile manufacture andcooking methods These finds may be cautiously interpreted as evidence of thepresence of women of both Aegean and local origin at these sites

The evidence from the reliefs shows that the Sea Peoples were accompaniedby men and women from Syria andor Canaan and by children probably theSea Peoples offspring by these women This indicates that the Sea Peoplesspent time in Syria andor Canaan before they continued on their way to Egypt

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Rather than envisaging the Sea Peoples immigration as a rapid concerted attack ata number of points simultaneously (Stager 1995) we should consider it as acomplex situation of not necessarily coordinated movements by different groupsfrom different areas

The size of the children depicted in the Medinet Habu reliefs may give ussome indication of how long the Sea Peoples had been present in the areabefore they moved south to Egypt If the younger children are the offspring ofthese women and the Sea Peoples the latter must have reached the area someseven or six years earlier if the older children wearing Philistine headgearare also the offspring of these households then we should think in terms of aninterval of thirteen years or more A similar observation was made by Singer(1987418) on the basis of the tablets from Ugarit and Ras Ibn Hani Thismeans that the fall of Ugarit should have occurred some fifteen to twentyyears before Ramses Ills war with the Sea Peoples It is quite acceptablehowever to postulate a short period of consolidation before the Sea Peoplesattempted to surge down into Egypt 14

The group we see in the Medinet Habu reliefs with their families would thenbe a second wave of settlement

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank I Finkelstein I Singer S Bunimovitz and the lateP Beck for reading and commenting on earlier drafts of this paper We wouldalso like to thank the Griffith Institute Oxford for allowing us to quotematerial from the unpublished notebooks of Sir Alan Gardiner

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14 On the other hand the size of the children depicted in the reliefs may not necessarily haveany historical significance Nor are these children necessarily these womens offspring bythe Sea People they even may be these womens children by previous partners in whichcase this part of the argument is irrelevant The Philistine youths may even be youngPhilistines who have been assigned to guarding the women and children as a relativelysafe post in view of their youth and inexperience

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Caubert A 1998 The International Style A point of View from the Levantand Syria In Cline EH and Harris-Cline D eds The Aegean and theOrient in the Second Millennium (Aegaeum 18) Liege 105-111

Cifola B 1991 The Terminology of Ramses Ills Historical Records with aFormal Analysis of the War Scenes Orientalia 609-57

Cifola B 1994 The Role of the Sea Peoples at the end of the Late BronzeAge A Reassessment of Textual and Archaeological Evidence OriensAntiqui Miscellanea 11-23

Cline EH 1995 Tinker Tailor Soldier Sailor Minoans and MyceneansAbroad In Laffineur R and Niemeier W-D eds Politeia Societyand State in the Aegean Bronze Age (Aegaeum 12) Liege 265-287

Conkey MW and Spector J 1984 Archaeology and the Study of GenderAdvances in Archaeological Method and Theory 71-38

Darnell J C 1991 Supposed Depictions of the Hittites in the Amarna PeriodStudien zur Altiigyptischen Kultur 18 113-140

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Parallels include the women in the tomb of Haremheb (Fig 48) and in thetomb of Rekhmire (Fig 5 1) Another possible parallel are the women captiveson the Karnak talatat (Fig 35 above the ribbon does not appear on theoriginal relief blocks but is restored in the frontispiece of Redford 1984) aswell as those on three decorated spoons (Fig 52 Fechheimer 1921138Vandier d Abbadie 197220-21)

The women from the tomb of Reklullire are said to be serfs from the templeof Amun brought by Tuthmosis III as captives from his campaignsTuthmosis northern campaigns ranged from Canaan to the EuphratesTuthmosis declaration that he gave prisoners from the siege of Megiddo to thetemple of Amun (Sethe 1961 (Urk IV)74210-7438) may indicate that thesewomen were Canaanites but it is also possible that they are prisoners of warfrom Tuthmosis other campaigns to Lebanon or Syria

There are many parallels for both women and men wearing a fillet aroundtheir heads from the Aegean (Kontorli-Papadopoulou 199695) such as thehead of the Lady with the Lily from the LH lIlB cultic centre of Mycenae(Fig 53) and the pyxis-bearers from Tiryns (Fig 54) A parallel even closerin time may be the depiction of a woman with a hair ribbon on the LH IIICWarrior Vase from Mycenae (Venllule and Karageorghis 1982130-131Fig X142) Unfortunately only the frontal part of the womans head hassurvived leaving the rest of the headdress unknown to us

Nevertheless we know of no other instance of a Syrian woman with abag-shaped hairstyle like this one On the other hand the back of Image No3 s hairstyle is hidden by Image No2 she might conceivably have a hairstylelike Women Nos 12 or 7

It is most likely that this woman comes from the Aegean However if weassume that nothing is missing from the hairstyle then there is a more remotepossibility that this figure is a not a woman from Syria but a Syrian man aprisoner or a slave This bag-shaped hairstyle is characteristic of Syro-Canaanitemen in Egyptian art of this period although they are traditionally shown withbeards (HeIck 1962346) By contrast in Canaanite art there are manyinstances of clean-shaven men (Figs 71-3 below see also Loud 1939 Nos2 161 162) It is also extremely common for Syrian men to wear filletsaround their brows (Fig 61 Ricke 1967 PI 12 Martin 1989 PI 105)

Image No 4

Women with a single long plait of hair like No 4 appear in various NewKingdom contexts as representative of northerners or Syrians (HeIck 1962347)There are two variants of this hairstyle a single plait falling down the womansback and a plait falling to the side of her face which could be one of a pair

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Fig 5 51 Syro-Canaanite women from the tomb ofRekhmire (after Davies 1943 PI xxiii)52 Decorated spoon in the form of a Syro-Canaanite woman (after Wallert 1967PI24) 53 The Lady with the Lily from Mycenae (drawing afterKontorli-Papadopulou 1996 PI 94) 54 Pyxis-bearer from Tiryns (drawing afterImmerwahr 1990 PI 56)

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Women wearing a plait straight down their back appear in the tomb ofRekhmire (Fig 62 Davies 192840 followed by Feucht 1990a194 suggeststhat these women are Hittites) This hairstyle is also worn by a woman in SetiIs reliefs of his campaign against the Shasu (Fig 63) This woman is probablyone of the Shasu although since Setis battle against the Shasu takes place enroute to Gaza she might be a Canaanite taken captive by the Shasu This styleis also attested on an ivory figure from Megiddo (Loud 1939 No 175)

Women with a plait to one side appear on the throne of Queen Tiy in thetomb of Kheruef (Fig 64) and in the tombs of Menkheperresoneb (Fig 65)and Amenmose (Davies 1933 PI xxxiv)9 On the throne of Tiy such womenappear as typical northerners contrasted with Nubian captives in the tombs ofMenkheperresoneb and Amenmose their origin is not specified Plaits hangingto one side also appear on two decorated spoons (Fig 52 above and Vandierd Abbadie 197220-21) and on a servant girl from the tomb of Intef (althoughthis girl is not said explicitly to be a foreigner and the end of her plait isreconstructed) (Davies 193253)

Note incidentally that in Egyptian art this hairstyle is always worn bySyro-Canaanite slaves or captives and not by women from the same countrieswhen at home (with the possible exception of the Shasu or Canaanite womanin Fig 63) Presumably female slaves tied their long hair back to keep it outof the way whilst working and this practice became generic for theiconography of Syro-Canaanite captive women

Aegean art includes numerous examples of women with plaits Howevermost of these examples are more similar to the curling lock of Woman No1The best parallels to the straight plait of Woman NO4 are the simple plaitsworn by female statuettes However the latter may reflect the limitations ofworking in clay as opposed to paint rather than actually reproducing adifferent hairstyle (see note 7 above)

There may also be parallels in Hittite art for tIlis single long plait The InandikPithos (OzgUy 198883-92 Fig 64) dated to the Old Hittite Period (Fig 66Hoffner 1995558-559 Figs 1 and 2) depicts scenes of preparation for a weddingin a wealthy house Some women wear either a single plait or a waist-lengthheaddress whereas others wear all-enveloping shawls covering the head Asinlilar plait or headdress is worn by the queen in an orthostat from Alaca Hoyiik(Akurgal 1962 PI 92) dated before the 13th century BCE (Kohlmeyer19952647) and also under the crowns worn by the goddesses on the Yazilikayarock carvings (Fig 81 ibid2650 Fig 9) dated to the 13th century BCE

9 Gardiner Notebook 28819 is a photograph of a painting of the wall here we see that thewomens plaits are much the same colour as their garments which is why the-plait doesnot show up clearly in photographs (Meyer 1913721 Wreszinski 1923275)

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Fig 6 61 Syro-Canaanite men wearing fillets (after Davies 1947 PI viii) 62Syro-Canaanite women from the tomb of Reklunire (after Davies 1943 PI Ivii) 63Woman from the relief of Seti Is battle against the Shasu (after University ofChicago 1986 PI 12) 64 Syro-Canaanite and Nubian female captives decoratingQueen Tiys throne (after University of Chicago 1980 PI 47) 65 Syro-Canaanitewoman from the tomb of Menkheperresoneb (after Davies 1933 PI v) 66 Womenfrom the Inandik pithos (after Hoffner 1995Fig 2)

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Images No 5 and 9

Images NO5 and 9 are either bald or have their hair closely cropped Giventhat both heads are damaged however this observation is not entirely certain

Men with sho~t hair are very rare in Aegean art~ where only babies andyoung children wear their hair short (Koehl 1986100-101) On the otherhand men with close-cropped hair or close-fitting caps (Stern 1989) arecommon in Canaanite art (Figs 71-3 Loud 1939 Nos 2 162) Interestinglyenough these Canaanites are shown driving chariots (ibid Nos 2 159 161)which provides a good parallel to NO9 the driver of Wagon NO5 Image No5 may be the driver of Wagon No3 Unlike his colleague No9 who is stillgoading the oxen onwards NO5 has given up hope and raises his hands indespair

Image No 6

The upper rim of the chariot hides the back of Woman No 6s neck Itwould be possible to reconstruct her hairstyle with a long narrow plait like thewomen already described It would also be possible to envisage her as havingshort hair However it is unusual to find women from Syro-Palestineportrayed in this way A group of women depicted in the tomb of Reklunirehave short hair (Fig 82 Davies 192840 followed by Feucht 1990a195identifies the long wrap-around dresses of these women as Syrian in style)This short hairstyle may be adopted from the group of Nubian women whoprecede the Syrians in this picture A naked goddess mounted on a horse isalso portrayed wearing short hair and a large earring (Fig 83 Brunner-Traut197929-30 NO5 PI V Petersen 1973 No 31 However Petersen idemsuggests that the goddess is wearing a helmet) The Hittite princess bride ofRamses II is shown with short hair (Fig 84) but she has been dressed upEgyptian style for the celebrations so her hairstyle is not necessarilysignificant

In Egyptian art this short hairstyle is characteristic of Nubian women (Fig85 Davies amp Gardiner 1926 PI xxx University of Chicago 1930 PI 9Ricke 1967 PIs 89 Brack amp Brack 1980 PI 50 Dziobeck 1992 PI 1) Itis true that the front part of Woman No 6s hairstyle tapers back from herforehead whereas most Nubian women wear their hair in a thick fringeHowever Nubian women are depicted with this type of central parting in afew New Kingdom tombs such as those of Rekhmire (Davies 1943 PI xxii)and Haremheb (Brack amp Brack 1980 PI 50 see also University of Chicago1930 PI 9)

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Fig 7 71 Ivory from Megiddo (after Loud 1939 No 159) 72 Ivory from Megiddo (afteribid No 160)73 Bronze plaque from Hazor (after Redford 1992197 Fig 71)

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Image No 7

This person wears its hair tapering to the nape of the neck Syro-Canaanitewomen sometimes wear their hair tapering to a point (Muller 1906 PI 9)although usually their hair is somewhat longer than that of Image NO7 andthe pointed tip of their hairstyle falls farther back behind their shoulderslO

(Fig 86) A woman portrayed on one of the Megiddo ivories has the samehairstyle (Loud 1939 No 2b)

This image may represent another Syro-Canaanite woman A more remotepossibility is that this image represents a Hittite man Hittite men wore theirhair in a queue and had bald foreheads In the reliefs at Medinet Habu the linemarking the front of the Hittite mens bald pates is not necessarily drawn in(Fig 87) Hittite men generally wore their hair much longer but there are afew examples of Hittite men whose hair only reaches to the back of their necks(Figs 87-92 see also Kuentz 1928 PI xviii)

There is a small possibility that Hittite women may also have worn thisstyle but the evidence is ambiguous In the Ramesseum relief of the siege ofDapur a group of people are shown leaving the city bearing baskets ofprovisions and begging for peace (Fig 93) Their hair tapers to theirshoulders Wreszinski (1935 PI 109) and HeIck (1962343) suggest thatthese people are the ruler of the city and the women of his house On the otherhand some of the dead warriors lying on the battlefield have exactly the samehairstyle so the figures accompanying the ruler are not necessarily women Inany case their hair is too long to be compared to this figure

There is no parallel for this figure in Aegean art

Image No 8

So little is visible of Image NO8 that any discussion of her coiffure wouldbe inconclusive

10 Some of the figures in the siege of Ullaza (University of Chicago 1932 PI 87) have thishairstyle but they are not necessarily women A decorated spoon in the Rijksmuseum vonOudheiden at Leiden has a similar hairstyle but since the woman is naked it is difficult totell whether she represents a foreigner (Eggebrecht 1987 No 246) The same applies tothe decorated spoon Louvre N-I728 (Vandier dAbbadie 197214-15)

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Fig 8 81 Goddess on the Yazilikaya rock carvings (after Kohlmeyer 1995 Fig 9) 82Women from the tomb of Rekhmire (after Davies 1943 PI Ivii) 83 Goddess onhorseback (drawing after Brunner-Traut 1956 No 16 PI viii) 84 The Hittiteprincess from the Marriage Stele of Ramses IT(after Lepsius 1849-1859 PI 196) 85Nubian women (after Davies 1905 PI xxviii) 86 Syro-Canaanite woman from thetomb ofRekhmire (after Davies 1943 PI xxiii) 87-8 Hittite warriors from MedinetHabu (after University of Chicago 1932 PI 87)

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The Children of the Sea People

The child standing by Wagon NO5 (Fig 22) wears a single long lock of hairgrowing from the crown of his head 11 This hairstyle is characteristic ofSyro-Canaanite children of both sexes in New Kingdom reliefs12(Fig 94 Davies1905 PI xxxiX)13

Children often appear in New Kingdom scenes of siege or battle beinglifted over the walls of a besieged city in Syria or Canaan (Fig 95) It is notclear whether these children are being sacrificed to the gods to change thecourse of the battle presented to Pharaoh as hostages or helped to escape(Keel 1975 Spalinger 1977-8 Feucht 1990b33-39 Donohue 1992) In thisinstance we suggest that they are being helped to escape (Keel 1975456 Thechildren appear to be on the point of collapse and their chances of escape areprobably slim Keel suggests that fear of Pharaoh immobilizes the childrenwith terror and they sink to the ground unable to stir)

Donohue (199283) suggests that the women are scooping the children upinto the wagons before the advancing enemy but this is unlikely If they weretrying to clamber into the wagons they would be facing inwards and probablyusing their legs to get a purchase on the side of the wagon as they clamber upit (The same applies to children in scenes of besieged cities There are onlytwo examples of children who could conceivably be climbing into the city (thelittle girl on the left in Fig 95 see also Keel 1975 Fig 19)

The fact that the older children are dressed as Sea Peoples may suggestpatrilineal behaviour in the immigrant society - at least in regard to costume

Summary

The limitations of this type of source material preclude absolute conclusionsThe Aegean paintings and statuettes come from a different artistic traditionthan the Medinet Habu reliefs discrepancies between the two are inevitableEgyptian depictions of foreigners have their limitations and since the artists atMedinet Habu may have been unfamiliar with these hairstyles it is difficult to tellhow accurate these portrayals are We may however make a few suggestions

11 The second line emerging from the crown of his head in University of Chicago 1930 PI49D is probably a scratch rather than a second lock

12 See also Pritchard 1954 No 45 (the man presenting this child is said to be the ruler ofTunip and can therefore be located in Syria) Save Stiderbergh 1957 PI xxiii Martin1989PI 105 University of Chicago 1932PI 87Feucht 1990a198 n 82 points out that apart from the single plait children from Syriamay also sport two plaits a head of short hair or two clumps of hair There is quite avariety of hairstyles

13 The parallel to this scene in the tomb ofHuya describes this tribute as coming from Kharuand Kush (Sandman 193837 line 1)

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Fig 9 91 Hittite warrior from Medinet Habu (after University of Chicago 1932 PI 87) 92Hittite warriors from Abu Simbel (after Wreszinski 1935 PI 170) 93 Group ofHittites from the siege of Dapur (after ibid PI 109) 94 Syro-Canaanite women andchild (after Davies 1947 PI viii) 95 Girl being let down over the city wall relief ofthe siege of Ashkelon (after Keel 1975Fig 21)

Woman NO4 with her long straight plait conforms to Egyptian depictionsof Syro-Canaanite women although she also has parallels in Aegean artWoman No 1 has parallels in both the Egyptian tradition and the Aegeantradition although the Egyptian parallels are stronger and she is also probablya Syro-Canaanite woman Image NO7 if she is a woman is vaguely similarto certain Egyptian pictures of Syro-Canaanite women but her hair is rathershort to provide a good parallel it should fall to a point further down her back

No exact parallels are known for the hairstyle of No 2 in either Egyptian orAegean art It is not clear whether this hairstyle may represent an ethnic groupunknown to us Alternatively middotdifferent hairstyles may have been worn bywomen at different periods of their lives - married ~omen and maidens forexample or old women and young ones or pregnant women They may alsocharacterize different social standings or occupations

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In some cases the persons hairstyle is incomplete It is masked by overlappinglinages or by the edge of the wagon as in Images Nos 3 and 6If they had longer hair these people might have hairstyles like those of Women 12or 4 If Image No3 had long hair she would have excellent parallels in Aegeanart where hair ribbons are very common If the bag-shaped hairstyle of Image No3 is complete as it stands however then the best parallels are actually fomIdamongst Syrian men Woman No 6s short hair is occasionally paralleled amongstSyrian women it is much more characteristic of Nubian women however Notonly did themiddotEgyptians have Nubian servants and slaves but many Egyptians werethemselves of Nubian stock so that women of this type could be found throughoutthe territories under Egyptian rule

The Sea Peoples were accompanied by men from the areas they traversedThey may have been taken as slaves or prisoners or maybe they decided tojoin the Sea Peoples advance in order to seek their fortunes abroad Such arethe wagon drivers Nos 5 and 9 who are definitely Syro-Canaanites andperhaps Image No3 ifhe is a Syrian or Image No7 if he is a Hittite

This picture of a complex and highly diverse origin of the group of Sea Peoplesportrayed in the Medinet Habu reliefs (which mayor may not be a typical group)suggests that it is unlikely that the Philistines were 100 pure Mycenaean Greeks(Stager 1995337 following Mazar 1988255-6 260) Like Sherratt (1998307)we characterize the Sea Peoples as cosmopolitan although we still envisagemany of them as Aegeans Other groups or individuals would have joined the SeaPeoples in northern Syria and Canaan

Conclusions

In the Medinet Habu reliefs the Sea Peoples are accompanied by at leastone woman who is clearly Syro-Canaanite and also by women with parallelsin Aegean art A similar conclusion was also reached by an analysis ofmaterial culture assemblages from Syria and Palestine (Bunimovitz andYasur-Landau forthcoming a b) attributed to the first stages of Aegeansettlement at the beginning of the Iron Age In these studies evidence ofbehavioural patterns of Aegean origin such as weaving with a loom equippedwith round unperfonlted loomweights and cooking on a hearth with Aegeanstyle cooking-pots were found side by side with local textile manufacture andcooking methods These finds may be cautiously interpreted as evidence of thepresence of women of both Aegean and local origin at these sites

The evidence from the reliefs shows that the Sea Peoples were accompaniedby men and women from Syria andor Canaan and by children probably theSea Peoples offspring by these women This indicates that the Sea Peoplesspent time in Syria andor Canaan before they continued on their way to Egypt

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Rather than envisaging the Sea Peoples immigration as a rapid concerted attack ata number of points simultaneously (Stager 1995) we should consider it as acomplex situation of not necessarily coordinated movements by different groupsfrom different areas

The size of the children depicted in the Medinet Habu reliefs may give ussome indication of how long the Sea Peoples had been present in the areabefore they moved south to Egypt If the younger children are the offspring ofthese women and the Sea Peoples the latter must have reached the area someseven or six years earlier if the older children wearing Philistine headgearare also the offspring of these households then we should think in terms of aninterval of thirteen years or more A similar observation was made by Singer(1987418) on the basis of the tablets from Ugarit and Ras Ibn Hani Thismeans that the fall of Ugarit should have occurred some fifteen to twentyyears before Ramses Ills war with the Sea Peoples It is quite acceptablehowever to postulate a short period of consolidation before the Sea Peoplesattempted to surge down into Egypt 14

The group we see in the Medinet Habu reliefs with their families would thenbe a second wave of settlement

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank I Finkelstein I Singer S Bunimovitz and the lateP Beck for reading and commenting on earlier drafts of this paper We wouldalso like to thank the Griffith Institute Oxford for allowing us to quotematerial from the unpublished notebooks of Sir Alan Gardiner

REFERENCES

Akurgal E 1962 The Art of the Hittites LondonAldred C 1973 Akhenaten and Nefertiti New YorkAstrom P 1992 Approaches to the Study of Women in Ancient Cyprus In

Astrom P ed Acta Cypria Acts of an International Congress onCypriote Archaeology held in GOteborg on 22-24 August 1991 Part 2(Studies in Mediterranean Archaeology Pocket-Book 117) Jonsered 5-8

14 On the other hand the size of the children depicted in the reliefs may not necessarily haveany historical significance Nor are these children necessarily these womens offspring bythe Sea People they even may be these womens children by previous partners in whichcase this part of the argument is irrelevant The Philistine youths may even be youngPhilistines who have been assigned to guarding the women and children as a relativelysafe post in view of their youth and inexperience

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Bietak M 1996 Avaris The Capital othe Hyksos LondonBolger D 1994 Engendering Cypriot Archaeology Female Roles and

Statuses before the Bronze Age Opuscula Atheniensia XX 19-17Brack A and Brack A 1980 Das Grab des Haremheb Theben Nr 78

MainzBrug JF 1984 A Literary and Archaeological Study othe Philistines Vols

1 and 2 MichiganBrunner-Traut E 1956 Die altiigyptischen Scherbenbilder (Bildostraka) der

Deutschen Museen und Sammlungen WiesbadenBrunner-Traut E 1979 Egyptian Artists Sketches LondonBuchholz H-G and Karageorghis V 1973 Prehistoric Greece and Cyprus

LondonBunimovitz S and Yasur-Landau A 1996 Philistine and Israelite Pottery A

Comparative Approach to the Question of Pots and People Tel Aviv2388-101

Bunimovitz S and Yasur-Landau A Forthcominga Behavioural Aspects of12th Century BCE Aegean Immigrants in Palestine and Cyprus

Bunimovitz S and Yasur-Landau A Forthcominglb Women and AegeanImmigration to Cyprus in the 12th Century BCE

Caubert A 1998 The International Style A point of View from the Levantand Syria In Cline EH and Harris-Cline D eds The Aegean and theOrient in the Second Millennium (Aegaeum 18) Liege 105-111

Cifola B 1991 The Terminology of Ramses Ills Historical Records with aFormal Analysis of the War Scenes Orientalia 609-57

Cifola B 1994 The Role of the Sea Peoples at the end of the Late BronzeAge A Reassessment of Textual and Archaeological Evidence OriensAntiqui Miscellanea 11-23

Cline EH 1995 Tinker Tailor Soldier Sailor Minoans and MyceneansAbroad In Laffineur R and Niemeier W-D eds Politeia Societyand State in the Aegean Bronze Age (Aegaeum 12) Liege 265-287

Conkey MW and Spector J 1984 Archaeology and the Study of GenderAdvances in Archaeological Method and Theory 71-38

Darnell J C 1991 Supposed Depictions of the Hittites in the Amarna PeriodStudien zur Altiigyptischen Kultur 18 113-140

Davies N de Garis 1905 The Rock Tombs of El Amarna II LondonDavies N de Garis 1908 The Rock Tombs of El Amarna VI LondonDavies N de Garis 1928 The Work of the Graphic Branch of the

Expedition Bulletin othe Metropolitan Museum 0Art 23237-48Davies N de Garis 1932 The Work of the Graphic Branch of the

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Fig 5 51 Syro-Canaanite women from the tomb ofRekhmire (after Davies 1943 PI xxiii)52 Decorated spoon in the form of a Syro-Canaanite woman (after Wallert 1967PI24) 53 The Lady with the Lily from Mycenae (drawing afterKontorli-Papadopulou 1996 PI 94) 54 Pyxis-bearer from Tiryns (drawing afterImmerwahr 1990 PI 56)

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Women wearing a plait straight down their back appear in the tomb ofRekhmire (Fig 62 Davies 192840 followed by Feucht 1990a194 suggeststhat these women are Hittites) This hairstyle is also worn by a woman in SetiIs reliefs of his campaign against the Shasu (Fig 63) This woman is probablyone of the Shasu although since Setis battle against the Shasu takes place enroute to Gaza she might be a Canaanite taken captive by the Shasu This styleis also attested on an ivory figure from Megiddo (Loud 1939 No 175)

Women with a plait to one side appear on the throne of Queen Tiy in thetomb of Kheruef (Fig 64) and in the tombs of Menkheperresoneb (Fig 65)and Amenmose (Davies 1933 PI xxxiv)9 On the throne of Tiy such womenappear as typical northerners contrasted with Nubian captives in the tombs ofMenkheperresoneb and Amenmose their origin is not specified Plaits hangingto one side also appear on two decorated spoons (Fig 52 above and Vandierd Abbadie 197220-21) and on a servant girl from the tomb of Intef (althoughthis girl is not said explicitly to be a foreigner and the end of her plait isreconstructed) (Davies 193253)

Note incidentally that in Egyptian art this hairstyle is always worn bySyro-Canaanite slaves or captives and not by women from the same countrieswhen at home (with the possible exception of the Shasu or Canaanite womanin Fig 63) Presumably female slaves tied their long hair back to keep it outof the way whilst working and this practice became generic for theiconography of Syro-Canaanite captive women

Aegean art includes numerous examples of women with plaits Howevermost of these examples are more similar to the curling lock of Woman No1The best parallels to the straight plait of Woman NO4 are the simple plaitsworn by female statuettes However the latter may reflect the limitations ofworking in clay as opposed to paint rather than actually reproducing adifferent hairstyle (see note 7 above)

There may also be parallels in Hittite art for tIlis single long plait The InandikPithos (OzgUy 198883-92 Fig 64) dated to the Old Hittite Period (Fig 66Hoffner 1995558-559 Figs 1 and 2) depicts scenes of preparation for a weddingin a wealthy house Some women wear either a single plait or a waist-lengthheaddress whereas others wear all-enveloping shawls covering the head Asinlilar plait or headdress is worn by the queen in an orthostat from Alaca Hoyiik(Akurgal 1962 PI 92) dated before the 13th century BCE (Kohlmeyer19952647) and also under the crowns worn by the goddesses on the Yazilikayarock carvings (Fig 81 ibid2650 Fig 9) dated to the 13th century BCE

9 Gardiner Notebook 28819 is a photograph of a painting of the wall here we see that thewomens plaits are much the same colour as their garments which is why the-plait doesnot show up clearly in photographs (Meyer 1913721 Wreszinski 1923275)

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Fig 6 61 Syro-Canaanite men wearing fillets (after Davies 1947 PI viii) 62Syro-Canaanite women from the tomb of Reklunire (after Davies 1943 PI Ivii) 63Woman from the relief of Seti Is battle against the Shasu (after University ofChicago 1986 PI 12) 64 Syro-Canaanite and Nubian female captives decoratingQueen Tiys throne (after University of Chicago 1980 PI 47) 65 Syro-Canaanitewoman from the tomb of Menkheperresoneb (after Davies 1933 PI v) 66 Womenfrom the Inandik pithos (after Hoffner 1995Fig 2)

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Images No 5 and 9

Images NO5 and 9 are either bald or have their hair closely cropped Giventhat both heads are damaged however this observation is not entirely certain

Men with sho~t hair are very rare in Aegean art~ where only babies andyoung children wear their hair short (Koehl 1986100-101) On the otherhand men with close-cropped hair or close-fitting caps (Stern 1989) arecommon in Canaanite art (Figs 71-3 Loud 1939 Nos 2 162) Interestinglyenough these Canaanites are shown driving chariots (ibid Nos 2 159 161)which provides a good parallel to NO9 the driver of Wagon NO5 Image No5 may be the driver of Wagon No3 Unlike his colleague No9 who is stillgoading the oxen onwards NO5 has given up hope and raises his hands indespair

Image No 6

The upper rim of the chariot hides the back of Woman No 6s neck Itwould be possible to reconstruct her hairstyle with a long narrow plait like thewomen already described It would also be possible to envisage her as havingshort hair However it is unusual to find women from Syro-Palestineportrayed in this way A group of women depicted in the tomb of Reklunirehave short hair (Fig 82 Davies 192840 followed by Feucht 1990a195identifies the long wrap-around dresses of these women as Syrian in style)This short hairstyle may be adopted from the group of Nubian women whoprecede the Syrians in this picture A naked goddess mounted on a horse isalso portrayed wearing short hair and a large earring (Fig 83 Brunner-Traut197929-30 NO5 PI V Petersen 1973 No 31 However Petersen idemsuggests that the goddess is wearing a helmet) The Hittite princess bride ofRamses II is shown with short hair (Fig 84) but she has been dressed upEgyptian style for the celebrations so her hairstyle is not necessarilysignificant

In Egyptian art this short hairstyle is characteristic of Nubian women (Fig85 Davies amp Gardiner 1926 PI xxx University of Chicago 1930 PI 9Ricke 1967 PIs 89 Brack amp Brack 1980 PI 50 Dziobeck 1992 PI 1) Itis true that the front part of Woman No 6s hairstyle tapers back from herforehead whereas most Nubian women wear their hair in a thick fringeHowever Nubian women are depicted with this type of central parting in afew New Kingdom tombs such as those of Rekhmire (Davies 1943 PI xxii)and Haremheb (Brack amp Brack 1980 PI 50 see also University of Chicago1930 PI 9)

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Fig 7 71 Ivory from Megiddo (after Loud 1939 No 159) 72 Ivory from Megiddo (afteribid No 160)73 Bronze plaque from Hazor (after Redford 1992197 Fig 71)

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Image No 7

This person wears its hair tapering to the nape of the neck Syro-Canaanitewomen sometimes wear their hair tapering to a point (Muller 1906 PI 9)although usually their hair is somewhat longer than that of Image NO7 andthe pointed tip of their hairstyle falls farther back behind their shoulderslO

(Fig 86) A woman portrayed on one of the Megiddo ivories has the samehairstyle (Loud 1939 No 2b)

This image may represent another Syro-Canaanite woman A more remotepossibility is that this image represents a Hittite man Hittite men wore theirhair in a queue and had bald foreheads In the reliefs at Medinet Habu the linemarking the front of the Hittite mens bald pates is not necessarily drawn in(Fig 87) Hittite men generally wore their hair much longer but there are afew examples of Hittite men whose hair only reaches to the back of their necks(Figs 87-92 see also Kuentz 1928 PI xviii)

There is a small possibility that Hittite women may also have worn thisstyle but the evidence is ambiguous In the Ramesseum relief of the siege ofDapur a group of people are shown leaving the city bearing baskets ofprovisions and begging for peace (Fig 93) Their hair tapers to theirshoulders Wreszinski (1935 PI 109) and HeIck (1962343) suggest thatthese people are the ruler of the city and the women of his house On the otherhand some of the dead warriors lying on the battlefield have exactly the samehairstyle so the figures accompanying the ruler are not necessarily women Inany case their hair is too long to be compared to this figure

There is no parallel for this figure in Aegean art

Image No 8

So little is visible of Image NO8 that any discussion of her coiffure wouldbe inconclusive

10 Some of the figures in the siege of Ullaza (University of Chicago 1932 PI 87) have thishairstyle but they are not necessarily women A decorated spoon in the Rijksmuseum vonOudheiden at Leiden has a similar hairstyle but since the woman is naked it is difficult totell whether she represents a foreigner (Eggebrecht 1987 No 246) The same applies tothe decorated spoon Louvre N-I728 (Vandier dAbbadie 197214-15)

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Fig 8 81 Goddess on the Yazilikaya rock carvings (after Kohlmeyer 1995 Fig 9) 82Women from the tomb of Rekhmire (after Davies 1943 PI Ivii) 83 Goddess onhorseback (drawing after Brunner-Traut 1956 No 16 PI viii) 84 The Hittiteprincess from the Marriage Stele of Ramses IT(after Lepsius 1849-1859 PI 196) 85Nubian women (after Davies 1905 PI xxviii) 86 Syro-Canaanite woman from thetomb ofRekhmire (after Davies 1943 PI xxiii) 87-8 Hittite warriors from MedinetHabu (after University of Chicago 1932 PI 87)

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The Children of the Sea People

The child standing by Wagon NO5 (Fig 22) wears a single long lock of hairgrowing from the crown of his head 11 This hairstyle is characteristic ofSyro-Canaanite children of both sexes in New Kingdom reliefs12(Fig 94 Davies1905 PI xxxiX)13

Children often appear in New Kingdom scenes of siege or battle beinglifted over the walls of a besieged city in Syria or Canaan (Fig 95) It is notclear whether these children are being sacrificed to the gods to change thecourse of the battle presented to Pharaoh as hostages or helped to escape(Keel 1975 Spalinger 1977-8 Feucht 1990b33-39 Donohue 1992) In thisinstance we suggest that they are being helped to escape (Keel 1975456 Thechildren appear to be on the point of collapse and their chances of escape areprobably slim Keel suggests that fear of Pharaoh immobilizes the childrenwith terror and they sink to the ground unable to stir)

Donohue (199283) suggests that the women are scooping the children upinto the wagons before the advancing enemy but this is unlikely If they weretrying to clamber into the wagons they would be facing inwards and probablyusing their legs to get a purchase on the side of the wagon as they clamber upit (The same applies to children in scenes of besieged cities There are onlytwo examples of children who could conceivably be climbing into the city (thelittle girl on the left in Fig 95 see also Keel 1975 Fig 19)

The fact that the older children are dressed as Sea Peoples may suggestpatrilineal behaviour in the immigrant society - at least in regard to costume

Summary

The limitations of this type of source material preclude absolute conclusionsThe Aegean paintings and statuettes come from a different artistic traditionthan the Medinet Habu reliefs discrepancies between the two are inevitableEgyptian depictions of foreigners have their limitations and since the artists atMedinet Habu may have been unfamiliar with these hairstyles it is difficult to tellhow accurate these portrayals are We may however make a few suggestions

11 The second line emerging from the crown of his head in University of Chicago 1930 PI49D is probably a scratch rather than a second lock

12 See also Pritchard 1954 No 45 (the man presenting this child is said to be the ruler ofTunip and can therefore be located in Syria) Save Stiderbergh 1957 PI xxiii Martin1989PI 105 University of Chicago 1932PI 87Feucht 1990a198 n 82 points out that apart from the single plait children from Syriamay also sport two plaits a head of short hair or two clumps of hair There is quite avariety of hairstyles

13 The parallel to this scene in the tomb ofHuya describes this tribute as coming from Kharuand Kush (Sandman 193837 line 1)

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Fig 9 91 Hittite warrior from Medinet Habu (after University of Chicago 1932 PI 87) 92Hittite warriors from Abu Simbel (after Wreszinski 1935 PI 170) 93 Group ofHittites from the siege of Dapur (after ibid PI 109) 94 Syro-Canaanite women andchild (after Davies 1947 PI viii) 95 Girl being let down over the city wall relief ofthe siege of Ashkelon (after Keel 1975Fig 21)

Woman NO4 with her long straight plait conforms to Egyptian depictionsof Syro-Canaanite women although she also has parallels in Aegean artWoman No 1 has parallels in both the Egyptian tradition and the Aegeantradition although the Egyptian parallels are stronger and she is also probablya Syro-Canaanite woman Image NO7 if she is a woman is vaguely similarto certain Egyptian pictures of Syro-Canaanite women but her hair is rathershort to provide a good parallel it should fall to a point further down her back

No exact parallels are known for the hairstyle of No 2 in either Egyptian orAegean art It is not clear whether this hairstyle may represent an ethnic groupunknown to us Alternatively middotdifferent hairstyles may have been worn bywomen at different periods of their lives - married ~omen and maidens forexample or old women and young ones or pregnant women They may alsocharacterize different social standings or occupations

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In some cases the persons hairstyle is incomplete It is masked by overlappinglinages or by the edge of the wagon as in Images Nos 3 and 6If they had longer hair these people might have hairstyles like those of Women 12or 4 If Image No3 had long hair she would have excellent parallels in Aegeanart where hair ribbons are very common If the bag-shaped hairstyle of Image No3 is complete as it stands however then the best parallels are actually fomIdamongst Syrian men Woman No 6s short hair is occasionally paralleled amongstSyrian women it is much more characteristic of Nubian women however Notonly did themiddotEgyptians have Nubian servants and slaves but many Egyptians werethemselves of Nubian stock so that women of this type could be found throughoutthe territories under Egyptian rule

The Sea Peoples were accompanied by men from the areas they traversedThey may have been taken as slaves or prisoners or maybe they decided tojoin the Sea Peoples advance in order to seek their fortunes abroad Such arethe wagon drivers Nos 5 and 9 who are definitely Syro-Canaanites andperhaps Image No3 ifhe is a Syrian or Image No7 if he is a Hittite

This picture of a complex and highly diverse origin of the group of Sea Peoplesportrayed in the Medinet Habu reliefs (which mayor may not be a typical group)suggests that it is unlikely that the Philistines were 100 pure Mycenaean Greeks(Stager 1995337 following Mazar 1988255-6 260) Like Sherratt (1998307)we characterize the Sea Peoples as cosmopolitan although we still envisagemany of them as Aegeans Other groups or individuals would have joined the SeaPeoples in northern Syria and Canaan

Conclusions

In the Medinet Habu reliefs the Sea Peoples are accompanied by at leastone woman who is clearly Syro-Canaanite and also by women with parallelsin Aegean art A similar conclusion was also reached by an analysis ofmaterial culture assemblages from Syria and Palestine (Bunimovitz andYasur-Landau forthcoming a b) attributed to the first stages of Aegeansettlement at the beginning of the Iron Age In these studies evidence ofbehavioural patterns of Aegean origin such as weaving with a loom equippedwith round unperfonlted loomweights and cooking on a hearth with Aegeanstyle cooking-pots were found side by side with local textile manufacture andcooking methods These finds may be cautiously interpreted as evidence of thepresence of women of both Aegean and local origin at these sites

The evidence from the reliefs shows that the Sea Peoples were accompaniedby men and women from Syria andor Canaan and by children probably theSea Peoples offspring by these women This indicates that the Sea Peoplesspent time in Syria andor Canaan before they continued on their way to Egypt

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Rather than envisaging the Sea Peoples immigration as a rapid concerted attack ata number of points simultaneously (Stager 1995) we should consider it as acomplex situation of not necessarily coordinated movements by different groupsfrom different areas

The size of the children depicted in the Medinet Habu reliefs may give ussome indication of how long the Sea Peoples had been present in the areabefore they moved south to Egypt If the younger children are the offspring ofthese women and the Sea Peoples the latter must have reached the area someseven or six years earlier if the older children wearing Philistine headgearare also the offspring of these households then we should think in terms of aninterval of thirteen years or more A similar observation was made by Singer(1987418) on the basis of the tablets from Ugarit and Ras Ibn Hani Thismeans that the fall of Ugarit should have occurred some fifteen to twentyyears before Ramses Ills war with the Sea Peoples It is quite acceptablehowever to postulate a short period of consolidation before the Sea Peoplesattempted to surge down into Egypt 14

The group we see in the Medinet Habu reliefs with their families would thenbe a second wave of settlement

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank I Finkelstein I Singer S Bunimovitz and the lateP Beck for reading and commenting on earlier drafts of this paper We wouldalso like to thank the Griffith Institute Oxford for allowing us to quotematerial from the unpublished notebooks of Sir Alan Gardiner

REFERENCES

Akurgal E 1962 The Art of the Hittites LondonAldred C 1973 Akhenaten and Nefertiti New YorkAstrom P 1992 Approaches to the Study of Women in Ancient Cyprus In

Astrom P ed Acta Cypria Acts of an International Congress onCypriote Archaeology held in GOteborg on 22-24 August 1991 Part 2(Studies in Mediterranean Archaeology Pocket-Book 117) Jonsered 5-8

14 On the other hand the size of the children depicted in the reliefs may not necessarily haveany historical significance Nor are these children necessarily these womens offspring bythe Sea People they even may be these womens children by previous partners in whichcase this part of the argument is irrelevant The Philistine youths may even be youngPhilistines who have been assigned to guarding the women and children as a relativelysafe post in view of their youth and inexperience

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Bietak M 1996 Avaris The Capital othe Hyksos LondonBolger D 1994 Engendering Cypriot Archaeology Female Roles and

Statuses before the Bronze Age Opuscula Atheniensia XX 19-17Brack A and Brack A 1980 Das Grab des Haremheb Theben Nr 78

MainzBrug JF 1984 A Literary and Archaeological Study othe Philistines Vols

1 and 2 MichiganBrunner-Traut E 1956 Die altiigyptischen Scherbenbilder (Bildostraka) der

Deutschen Museen und Sammlungen WiesbadenBrunner-Traut E 1979 Egyptian Artists Sketches LondonBuchholz H-G and Karageorghis V 1973 Prehistoric Greece and Cyprus

LondonBunimovitz S and Yasur-Landau A 1996 Philistine and Israelite Pottery A

Comparative Approach to the Question of Pots and People Tel Aviv2388-101

Bunimovitz S and Yasur-Landau A Forthcominga Behavioural Aspects of12th Century BCE Aegean Immigrants in Palestine and Cyprus

Bunimovitz S and Yasur-Landau A Forthcominglb Women and AegeanImmigration to Cyprus in the 12th Century BCE

Caubert A 1998 The International Style A point of View from the Levantand Syria In Cline EH and Harris-Cline D eds The Aegean and theOrient in the Second Millennium (Aegaeum 18) Liege 105-111

Cifola B 1991 The Terminology of Ramses Ills Historical Records with aFormal Analysis of the War Scenes Orientalia 609-57

Cifola B 1994 The Role of the Sea Peoples at the end of the Late BronzeAge A Reassessment of Textual and Archaeological Evidence OriensAntiqui Miscellanea 11-23

Cline EH 1995 Tinker Tailor Soldier Sailor Minoans and MyceneansAbroad In Laffineur R and Niemeier W-D eds Politeia Societyand State in the Aegean Bronze Age (Aegaeum 12) Liege 265-287

Conkey MW and Spector J 1984 Archaeology and the Study of GenderAdvances in Archaeological Method and Theory 71-38

Darnell J C 1991 Supposed Depictions of the Hittites in the Amarna PeriodStudien zur Altiigyptischen Kultur 18 113-140

Davies N de Garis 1905 The Rock Tombs of El Amarna II LondonDavies N de Garis 1908 The Rock Tombs of El Amarna VI LondonDavies N de Garis 1928 The Work of the Graphic Branch of the

Expedition Bulletin othe Metropolitan Museum 0Art 23237-48Davies N de Garis 1932 The Work of the Graphic Branch of the

Expedition Bulletin of the Metropolitan Museum of Art 273 51-62

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Women wearing a plait straight down their back appear in the tomb ofRekhmire (Fig 62 Davies 192840 followed by Feucht 1990a194 suggeststhat these women are Hittites) This hairstyle is also worn by a woman in SetiIs reliefs of his campaign against the Shasu (Fig 63) This woman is probablyone of the Shasu although since Setis battle against the Shasu takes place enroute to Gaza she might be a Canaanite taken captive by the Shasu This styleis also attested on an ivory figure from Megiddo (Loud 1939 No 175)

Women with a plait to one side appear on the throne of Queen Tiy in thetomb of Kheruef (Fig 64) and in the tombs of Menkheperresoneb (Fig 65)and Amenmose (Davies 1933 PI xxxiv)9 On the throne of Tiy such womenappear as typical northerners contrasted with Nubian captives in the tombs ofMenkheperresoneb and Amenmose their origin is not specified Plaits hangingto one side also appear on two decorated spoons (Fig 52 above and Vandierd Abbadie 197220-21) and on a servant girl from the tomb of Intef (althoughthis girl is not said explicitly to be a foreigner and the end of her plait isreconstructed) (Davies 193253)

Note incidentally that in Egyptian art this hairstyle is always worn bySyro-Canaanite slaves or captives and not by women from the same countrieswhen at home (with the possible exception of the Shasu or Canaanite womanin Fig 63) Presumably female slaves tied their long hair back to keep it outof the way whilst working and this practice became generic for theiconography of Syro-Canaanite captive women

Aegean art includes numerous examples of women with plaits Howevermost of these examples are more similar to the curling lock of Woman No1The best parallels to the straight plait of Woman NO4 are the simple plaitsworn by female statuettes However the latter may reflect the limitations ofworking in clay as opposed to paint rather than actually reproducing adifferent hairstyle (see note 7 above)

There may also be parallels in Hittite art for tIlis single long plait The InandikPithos (OzgUy 198883-92 Fig 64) dated to the Old Hittite Period (Fig 66Hoffner 1995558-559 Figs 1 and 2) depicts scenes of preparation for a weddingin a wealthy house Some women wear either a single plait or a waist-lengthheaddress whereas others wear all-enveloping shawls covering the head Asinlilar plait or headdress is worn by the queen in an orthostat from Alaca Hoyiik(Akurgal 1962 PI 92) dated before the 13th century BCE (Kohlmeyer19952647) and also under the crowns worn by the goddesses on the Yazilikayarock carvings (Fig 81 ibid2650 Fig 9) dated to the 13th century BCE

9 Gardiner Notebook 28819 is a photograph of a painting of the wall here we see that thewomens plaits are much the same colour as their garments which is why the-plait doesnot show up clearly in photographs (Meyer 1913721 Wreszinski 1923275)

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Fig 6 61 Syro-Canaanite men wearing fillets (after Davies 1947 PI viii) 62Syro-Canaanite women from the tomb of Reklunire (after Davies 1943 PI Ivii) 63Woman from the relief of Seti Is battle against the Shasu (after University ofChicago 1986 PI 12) 64 Syro-Canaanite and Nubian female captives decoratingQueen Tiys throne (after University of Chicago 1980 PI 47) 65 Syro-Canaanitewoman from the tomb of Menkheperresoneb (after Davies 1933 PI v) 66 Womenfrom the Inandik pithos (after Hoffner 1995Fig 2)

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Images No 5 and 9

Images NO5 and 9 are either bald or have their hair closely cropped Giventhat both heads are damaged however this observation is not entirely certain

Men with sho~t hair are very rare in Aegean art~ where only babies andyoung children wear their hair short (Koehl 1986100-101) On the otherhand men with close-cropped hair or close-fitting caps (Stern 1989) arecommon in Canaanite art (Figs 71-3 Loud 1939 Nos 2 162) Interestinglyenough these Canaanites are shown driving chariots (ibid Nos 2 159 161)which provides a good parallel to NO9 the driver of Wagon NO5 Image No5 may be the driver of Wagon No3 Unlike his colleague No9 who is stillgoading the oxen onwards NO5 has given up hope and raises his hands indespair

Image No 6

The upper rim of the chariot hides the back of Woman No 6s neck Itwould be possible to reconstruct her hairstyle with a long narrow plait like thewomen already described It would also be possible to envisage her as havingshort hair However it is unusual to find women from Syro-Palestineportrayed in this way A group of women depicted in the tomb of Reklunirehave short hair (Fig 82 Davies 192840 followed by Feucht 1990a195identifies the long wrap-around dresses of these women as Syrian in style)This short hairstyle may be adopted from the group of Nubian women whoprecede the Syrians in this picture A naked goddess mounted on a horse isalso portrayed wearing short hair and a large earring (Fig 83 Brunner-Traut197929-30 NO5 PI V Petersen 1973 No 31 However Petersen idemsuggests that the goddess is wearing a helmet) The Hittite princess bride ofRamses II is shown with short hair (Fig 84) but she has been dressed upEgyptian style for the celebrations so her hairstyle is not necessarilysignificant

In Egyptian art this short hairstyle is characteristic of Nubian women (Fig85 Davies amp Gardiner 1926 PI xxx University of Chicago 1930 PI 9Ricke 1967 PIs 89 Brack amp Brack 1980 PI 50 Dziobeck 1992 PI 1) Itis true that the front part of Woman No 6s hairstyle tapers back from herforehead whereas most Nubian women wear their hair in a thick fringeHowever Nubian women are depicted with this type of central parting in afew New Kingdom tombs such as those of Rekhmire (Davies 1943 PI xxii)and Haremheb (Brack amp Brack 1980 PI 50 see also University of Chicago1930 PI 9)

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Fig 7 71 Ivory from Megiddo (after Loud 1939 No 159) 72 Ivory from Megiddo (afteribid No 160)73 Bronze plaque from Hazor (after Redford 1992197 Fig 71)

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Image No 7

This person wears its hair tapering to the nape of the neck Syro-Canaanitewomen sometimes wear their hair tapering to a point (Muller 1906 PI 9)although usually their hair is somewhat longer than that of Image NO7 andthe pointed tip of their hairstyle falls farther back behind their shoulderslO

(Fig 86) A woman portrayed on one of the Megiddo ivories has the samehairstyle (Loud 1939 No 2b)

This image may represent another Syro-Canaanite woman A more remotepossibility is that this image represents a Hittite man Hittite men wore theirhair in a queue and had bald foreheads In the reliefs at Medinet Habu the linemarking the front of the Hittite mens bald pates is not necessarily drawn in(Fig 87) Hittite men generally wore their hair much longer but there are afew examples of Hittite men whose hair only reaches to the back of their necks(Figs 87-92 see also Kuentz 1928 PI xviii)

There is a small possibility that Hittite women may also have worn thisstyle but the evidence is ambiguous In the Ramesseum relief of the siege ofDapur a group of people are shown leaving the city bearing baskets ofprovisions and begging for peace (Fig 93) Their hair tapers to theirshoulders Wreszinski (1935 PI 109) and HeIck (1962343) suggest thatthese people are the ruler of the city and the women of his house On the otherhand some of the dead warriors lying on the battlefield have exactly the samehairstyle so the figures accompanying the ruler are not necessarily women Inany case their hair is too long to be compared to this figure

There is no parallel for this figure in Aegean art

Image No 8

So little is visible of Image NO8 that any discussion of her coiffure wouldbe inconclusive

10 Some of the figures in the siege of Ullaza (University of Chicago 1932 PI 87) have thishairstyle but they are not necessarily women A decorated spoon in the Rijksmuseum vonOudheiden at Leiden has a similar hairstyle but since the woman is naked it is difficult totell whether she represents a foreigner (Eggebrecht 1987 No 246) The same applies tothe decorated spoon Louvre N-I728 (Vandier dAbbadie 197214-15)

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Fig 8 81 Goddess on the Yazilikaya rock carvings (after Kohlmeyer 1995 Fig 9) 82Women from the tomb of Rekhmire (after Davies 1943 PI Ivii) 83 Goddess onhorseback (drawing after Brunner-Traut 1956 No 16 PI viii) 84 The Hittiteprincess from the Marriage Stele of Ramses IT(after Lepsius 1849-1859 PI 196) 85Nubian women (after Davies 1905 PI xxviii) 86 Syro-Canaanite woman from thetomb ofRekhmire (after Davies 1943 PI xxiii) 87-8 Hittite warriors from MedinetHabu (after University of Chicago 1932 PI 87)

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The Children of the Sea People

The child standing by Wagon NO5 (Fig 22) wears a single long lock of hairgrowing from the crown of his head 11 This hairstyle is characteristic ofSyro-Canaanite children of both sexes in New Kingdom reliefs12(Fig 94 Davies1905 PI xxxiX)13

Children often appear in New Kingdom scenes of siege or battle beinglifted over the walls of a besieged city in Syria or Canaan (Fig 95) It is notclear whether these children are being sacrificed to the gods to change thecourse of the battle presented to Pharaoh as hostages or helped to escape(Keel 1975 Spalinger 1977-8 Feucht 1990b33-39 Donohue 1992) In thisinstance we suggest that they are being helped to escape (Keel 1975456 Thechildren appear to be on the point of collapse and their chances of escape areprobably slim Keel suggests that fear of Pharaoh immobilizes the childrenwith terror and they sink to the ground unable to stir)

Donohue (199283) suggests that the women are scooping the children upinto the wagons before the advancing enemy but this is unlikely If they weretrying to clamber into the wagons they would be facing inwards and probablyusing their legs to get a purchase on the side of the wagon as they clamber upit (The same applies to children in scenes of besieged cities There are onlytwo examples of children who could conceivably be climbing into the city (thelittle girl on the left in Fig 95 see also Keel 1975 Fig 19)

The fact that the older children are dressed as Sea Peoples may suggestpatrilineal behaviour in the immigrant society - at least in regard to costume

Summary

The limitations of this type of source material preclude absolute conclusionsThe Aegean paintings and statuettes come from a different artistic traditionthan the Medinet Habu reliefs discrepancies between the two are inevitableEgyptian depictions of foreigners have their limitations and since the artists atMedinet Habu may have been unfamiliar with these hairstyles it is difficult to tellhow accurate these portrayals are We may however make a few suggestions

11 The second line emerging from the crown of his head in University of Chicago 1930 PI49D is probably a scratch rather than a second lock

12 See also Pritchard 1954 No 45 (the man presenting this child is said to be the ruler ofTunip and can therefore be located in Syria) Save Stiderbergh 1957 PI xxiii Martin1989PI 105 University of Chicago 1932PI 87Feucht 1990a198 n 82 points out that apart from the single plait children from Syriamay also sport two plaits a head of short hair or two clumps of hair There is quite avariety of hairstyles

13 The parallel to this scene in the tomb ofHuya describes this tribute as coming from Kharuand Kush (Sandman 193837 line 1)

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Fig 9 91 Hittite warrior from Medinet Habu (after University of Chicago 1932 PI 87) 92Hittite warriors from Abu Simbel (after Wreszinski 1935 PI 170) 93 Group ofHittites from the siege of Dapur (after ibid PI 109) 94 Syro-Canaanite women andchild (after Davies 1947 PI viii) 95 Girl being let down over the city wall relief ofthe siege of Ashkelon (after Keel 1975Fig 21)

Woman NO4 with her long straight plait conforms to Egyptian depictionsof Syro-Canaanite women although she also has parallels in Aegean artWoman No 1 has parallels in both the Egyptian tradition and the Aegeantradition although the Egyptian parallels are stronger and she is also probablya Syro-Canaanite woman Image NO7 if she is a woman is vaguely similarto certain Egyptian pictures of Syro-Canaanite women but her hair is rathershort to provide a good parallel it should fall to a point further down her back

No exact parallels are known for the hairstyle of No 2 in either Egyptian orAegean art It is not clear whether this hairstyle may represent an ethnic groupunknown to us Alternatively middotdifferent hairstyles may have been worn bywomen at different periods of their lives - married ~omen and maidens forexample or old women and young ones or pregnant women They may alsocharacterize different social standings or occupations

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In some cases the persons hairstyle is incomplete It is masked by overlappinglinages or by the edge of the wagon as in Images Nos 3 and 6If they had longer hair these people might have hairstyles like those of Women 12or 4 If Image No3 had long hair she would have excellent parallels in Aegeanart where hair ribbons are very common If the bag-shaped hairstyle of Image No3 is complete as it stands however then the best parallels are actually fomIdamongst Syrian men Woman No 6s short hair is occasionally paralleled amongstSyrian women it is much more characteristic of Nubian women however Notonly did themiddotEgyptians have Nubian servants and slaves but many Egyptians werethemselves of Nubian stock so that women of this type could be found throughoutthe territories under Egyptian rule

The Sea Peoples were accompanied by men from the areas they traversedThey may have been taken as slaves or prisoners or maybe they decided tojoin the Sea Peoples advance in order to seek their fortunes abroad Such arethe wagon drivers Nos 5 and 9 who are definitely Syro-Canaanites andperhaps Image No3 ifhe is a Syrian or Image No7 if he is a Hittite

This picture of a complex and highly diverse origin of the group of Sea Peoplesportrayed in the Medinet Habu reliefs (which mayor may not be a typical group)suggests that it is unlikely that the Philistines were 100 pure Mycenaean Greeks(Stager 1995337 following Mazar 1988255-6 260) Like Sherratt (1998307)we characterize the Sea Peoples as cosmopolitan although we still envisagemany of them as Aegeans Other groups or individuals would have joined the SeaPeoples in northern Syria and Canaan

Conclusions

In the Medinet Habu reliefs the Sea Peoples are accompanied by at leastone woman who is clearly Syro-Canaanite and also by women with parallelsin Aegean art A similar conclusion was also reached by an analysis ofmaterial culture assemblages from Syria and Palestine (Bunimovitz andYasur-Landau forthcoming a b) attributed to the first stages of Aegeansettlement at the beginning of the Iron Age In these studies evidence ofbehavioural patterns of Aegean origin such as weaving with a loom equippedwith round unperfonlted loomweights and cooking on a hearth with Aegeanstyle cooking-pots were found side by side with local textile manufacture andcooking methods These finds may be cautiously interpreted as evidence of thepresence of women of both Aegean and local origin at these sites

The evidence from the reliefs shows that the Sea Peoples were accompaniedby men and women from Syria andor Canaan and by children probably theSea Peoples offspring by these women This indicates that the Sea Peoplesspent time in Syria andor Canaan before they continued on their way to Egypt

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Rather than envisaging the Sea Peoples immigration as a rapid concerted attack ata number of points simultaneously (Stager 1995) we should consider it as acomplex situation of not necessarily coordinated movements by different groupsfrom different areas

The size of the children depicted in the Medinet Habu reliefs may give ussome indication of how long the Sea Peoples had been present in the areabefore they moved south to Egypt If the younger children are the offspring ofthese women and the Sea Peoples the latter must have reached the area someseven or six years earlier if the older children wearing Philistine headgearare also the offspring of these households then we should think in terms of aninterval of thirteen years or more A similar observation was made by Singer(1987418) on the basis of the tablets from Ugarit and Ras Ibn Hani Thismeans that the fall of Ugarit should have occurred some fifteen to twentyyears before Ramses Ills war with the Sea Peoples It is quite acceptablehowever to postulate a short period of consolidation before the Sea Peoplesattempted to surge down into Egypt 14

The group we see in the Medinet Habu reliefs with their families would thenbe a second wave of settlement

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank I Finkelstein I Singer S Bunimovitz and the lateP Beck for reading and commenting on earlier drafts of this paper We wouldalso like to thank the Griffith Institute Oxford for allowing us to quotematerial from the unpublished notebooks of Sir Alan Gardiner

REFERENCES

Akurgal E 1962 The Art of the Hittites LondonAldred C 1973 Akhenaten and Nefertiti New YorkAstrom P 1992 Approaches to the Study of Women in Ancient Cyprus In

Astrom P ed Acta Cypria Acts of an International Congress onCypriote Archaeology held in GOteborg on 22-24 August 1991 Part 2(Studies in Mediterranean Archaeology Pocket-Book 117) Jonsered 5-8

14 On the other hand the size of the children depicted in the reliefs may not necessarily haveany historical significance Nor are these children necessarily these womens offspring bythe Sea People they even may be these womens children by previous partners in whichcase this part of the argument is irrelevant The Philistine youths may even be youngPhilistines who have been assigned to guarding the women and children as a relativelysafe post in view of their youth and inexperience

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Bietak M 1996 Avaris The Capital othe Hyksos LondonBolger D 1994 Engendering Cypriot Archaeology Female Roles and

Statuses before the Bronze Age Opuscula Atheniensia XX 19-17Brack A and Brack A 1980 Das Grab des Haremheb Theben Nr 78

MainzBrug JF 1984 A Literary and Archaeological Study othe Philistines Vols

1 and 2 MichiganBrunner-Traut E 1956 Die altiigyptischen Scherbenbilder (Bildostraka) der

Deutschen Museen und Sammlungen WiesbadenBrunner-Traut E 1979 Egyptian Artists Sketches LondonBuchholz H-G and Karageorghis V 1973 Prehistoric Greece and Cyprus

LondonBunimovitz S and Yasur-Landau A 1996 Philistine and Israelite Pottery A

Comparative Approach to the Question of Pots and People Tel Aviv2388-101

Bunimovitz S and Yasur-Landau A Forthcominga Behavioural Aspects of12th Century BCE Aegean Immigrants in Palestine and Cyprus

Bunimovitz S and Yasur-Landau A Forthcominglb Women and AegeanImmigration to Cyprus in the 12th Century BCE

Caubert A 1998 The International Style A point of View from the Levantand Syria In Cline EH and Harris-Cline D eds The Aegean and theOrient in the Second Millennium (Aegaeum 18) Liege 105-111

Cifola B 1991 The Terminology of Ramses Ills Historical Records with aFormal Analysis of the War Scenes Orientalia 609-57

Cifola B 1994 The Role of the Sea Peoples at the end of the Late BronzeAge A Reassessment of Textual and Archaeological Evidence OriensAntiqui Miscellanea 11-23

Cline EH 1995 Tinker Tailor Soldier Sailor Minoans and MyceneansAbroad In Laffineur R and Niemeier W-D eds Politeia Societyand State in the Aegean Bronze Age (Aegaeum 12) Liege 265-287

Conkey MW and Spector J 1984 Archaeology and the Study of GenderAdvances in Archaeological Method and Theory 71-38

Darnell J C 1991 Supposed Depictions of the Hittites in the Amarna PeriodStudien zur Altiigyptischen Kultur 18 113-140

Davies N de Garis 1905 The Rock Tombs of El Amarna II LondonDavies N de Garis 1908 The Rock Tombs of El Amarna VI LondonDavies N de Garis 1928 The Work of the Graphic Branch of the

Expedition Bulletin othe Metropolitan Museum 0Art 23237-48Davies N de Garis 1932 The Work of the Graphic Branch of the

Expedition Bulletin of the Metropolitan Museum of Art 273 51-62

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Fig 6 61 Syro-Canaanite men wearing fillets (after Davies 1947 PI viii) 62Syro-Canaanite women from the tomb of Reklunire (after Davies 1943 PI Ivii) 63Woman from the relief of Seti Is battle against the Shasu (after University ofChicago 1986 PI 12) 64 Syro-Canaanite and Nubian female captives decoratingQueen Tiys throne (after University of Chicago 1980 PI 47) 65 Syro-Canaanitewoman from the tomb of Menkheperresoneb (after Davies 1933 PI v) 66 Womenfrom the Inandik pithos (after Hoffner 1995Fig 2)

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Images No 5 and 9

Images NO5 and 9 are either bald or have their hair closely cropped Giventhat both heads are damaged however this observation is not entirely certain

Men with sho~t hair are very rare in Aegean art~ where only babies andyoung children wear their hair short (Koehl 1986100-101) On the otherhand men with close-cropped hair or close-fitting caps (Stern 1989) arecommon in Canaanite art (Figs 71-3 Loud 1939 Nos 2 162) Interestinglyenough these Canaanites are shown driving chariots (ibid Nos 2 159 161)which provides a good parallel to NO9 the driver of Wagon NO5 Image No5 may be the driver of Wagon No3 Unlike his colleague No9 who is stillgoading the oxen onwards NO5 has given up hope and raises his hands indespair

Image No 6

The upper rim of the chariot hides the back of Woman No 6s neck Itwould be possible to reconstruct her hairstyle with a long narrow plait like thewomen already described It would also be possible to envisage her as havingshort hair However it is unusual to find women from Syro-Palestineportrayed in this way A group of women depicted in the tomb of Reklunirehave short hair (Fig 82 Davies 192840 followed by Feucht 1990a195identifies the long wrap-around dresses of these women as Syrian in style)This short hairstyle may be adopted from the group of Nubian women whoprecede the Syrians in this picture A naked goddess mounted on a horse isalso portrayed wearing short hair and a large earring (Fig 83 Brunner-Traut197929-30 NO5 PI V Petersen 1973 No 31 However Petersen idemsuggests that the goddess is wearing a helmet) The Hittite princess bride ofRamses II is shown with short hair (Fig 84) but she has been dressed upEgyptian style for the celebrations so her hairstyle is not necessarilysignificant

In Egyptian art this short hairstyle is characteristic of Nubian women (Fig85 Davies amp Gardiner 1926 PI xxx University of Chicago 1930 PI 9Ricke 1967 PIs 89 Brack amp Brack 1980 PI 50 Dziobeck 1992 PI 1) Itis true that the front part of Woman No 6s hairstyle tapers back from herforehead whereas most Nubian women wear their hair in a thick fringeHowever Nubian women are depicted with this type of central parting in afew New Kingdom tombs such as those of Rekhmire (Davies 1943 PI xxii)and Haremheb (Brack amp Brack 1980 PI 50 see also University of Chicago1930 PI 9)

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Fig 7 71 Ivory from Megiddo (after Loud 1939 No 159) 72 Ivory from Megiddo (afteribid No 160)73 Bronze plaque from Hazor (after Redford 1992197 Fig 71)

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Image No 7

This person wears its hair tapering to the nape of the neck Syro-Canaanitewomen sometimes wear their hair tapering to a point (Muller 1906 PI 9)although usually their hair is somewhat longer than that of Image NO7 andthe pointed tip of their hairstyle falls farther back behind their shoulderslO

(Fig 86) A woman portrayed on one of the Megiddo ivories has the samehairstyle (Loud 1939 No 2b)

This image may represent another Syro-Canaanite woman A more remotepossibility is that this image represents a Hittite man Hittite men wore theirhair in a queue and had bald foreheads In the reliefs at Medinet Habu the linemarking the front of the Hittite mens bald pates is not necessarily drawn in(Fig 87) Hittite men generally wore their hair much longer but there are afew examples of Hittite men whose hair only reaches to the back of their necks(Figs 87-92 see also Kuentz 1928 PI xviii)

There is a small possibility that Hittite women may also have worn thisstyle but the evidence is ambiguous In the Ramesseum relief of the siege ofDapur a group of people are shown leaving the city bearing baskets ofprovisions and begging for peace (Fig 93) Their hair tapers to theirshoulders Wreszinski (1935 PI 109) and HeIck (1962343) suggest thatthese people are the ruler of the city and the women of his house On the otherhand some of the dead warriors lying on the battlefield have exactly the samehairstyle so the figures accompanying the ruler are not necessarily women Inany case their hair is too long to be compared to this figure

There is no parallel for this figure in Aegean art

Image No 8

So little is visible of Image NO8 that any discussion of her coiffure wouldbe inconclusive

10 Some of the figures in the siege of Ullaza (University of Chicago 1932 PI 87) have thishairstyle but they are not necessarily women A decorated spoon in the Rijksmuseum vonOudheiden at Leiden has a similar hairstyle but since the woman is naked it is difficult totell whether she represents a foreigner (Eggebrecht 1987 No 246) The same applies tothe decorated spoon Louvre N-I728 (Vandier dAbbadie 197214-15)

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Fig 8 81 Goddess on the Yazilikaya rock carvings (after Kohlmeyer 1995 Fig 9) 82Women from the tomb of Rekhmire (after Davies 1943 PI Ivii) 83 Goddess onhorseback (drawing after Brunner-Traut 1956 No 16 PI viii) 84 The Hittiteprincess from the Marriage Stele of Ramses IT(after Lepsius 1849-1859 PI 196) 85Nubian women (after Davies 1905 PI xxviii) 86 Syro-Canaanite woman from thetomb ofRekhmire (after Davies 1943 PI xxiii) 87-8 Hittite warriors from MedinetHabu (after University of Chicago 1932 PI 87)

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The Children of the Sea People

The child standing by Wagon NO5 (Fig 22) wears a single long lock of hairgrowing from the crown of his head 11 This hairstyle is characteristic ofSyro-Canaanite children of both sexes in New Kingdom reliefs12(Fig 94 Davies1905 PI xxxiX)13

Children often appear in New Kingdom scenes of siege or battle beinglifted over the walls of a besieged city in Syria or Canaan (Fig 95) It is notclear whether these children are being sacrificed to the gods to change thecourse of the battle presented to Pharaoh as hostages or helped to escape(Keel 1975 Spalinger 1977-8 Feucht 1990b33-39 Donohue 1992) In thisinstance we suggest that they are being helped to escape (Keel 1975456 Thechildren appear to be on the point of collapse and their chances of escape areprobably slim Keel suggests that fear of Pharaoh immobilizes the childrenwith terror and they sink to the ground unable to stir)

Donohue (199283) suggests that the women are scooping the children upinto the wagons before the advancing enemy but this is unlikely If they weretrying to clamber into the wagons they would be facing inwards and probablyusing their legs to get a purchase on the side of the wagon as they clamber upit (The same applies to children in scenes of besieged cities There are onlytwo examples of children who could conceivably be climbing into the city (thelittle girl on the left in Fig 95 see also Keel 1975 Fig 19)

The fact that the older children are dressed as Sea Peoples may suggestpatrilineal behaviour in the immigrant society - at least in regard to costume

Summary

The limitations of this type of source material preclude absolute conclusionsThe Aegean paintings and statuettes come from a different artistic traditionthan the Medinet Habu reliefs discrepancies between the two are inevitableEgyptian depictions of foreigners have their limitations and since the artists atMedinet Habu may have been unfamiliar with these hairstyles it is difficult to tellhow accurate these portrayals are We may however make a few suggestions

11 The second line emerging from the crown of his head in University of Chicago 1930 PI49D is probably a scratch rather than a second lock

12 See also Pritchard 1954 No 45 (the man presenting this child is said to be the ruler ofTunip and can therefore be located in Syria) Save Stiderbergh 1957 PI xxiii Martin1989PI 105 University of Chicago 1932PI 87Feucht 1990a198 n 82 points out that apart from the single plait children from Syriamay also sport two plaits a head of short hair or two clumps of hair There is quite avariety of hairstyles

13 The parallel to this scene in the tomb ofHuya describes this tribute as coming from Kharuand Kush (Sandman 193837 line 1)

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Fig 9 91 Hittite warrior from Medinet Habu (after University of Chicago 1932 PI 87) 92Hittite warriors from Abu Simbel (after Wreszinski 1935 PI 170) 93 Group ofHittites from the siege of Dapur (after ibid PI 109) 94 Syro-Canaanite women andchild (after Davies 1947 PI viii) 95 Girl being let down over the city wall relief ofthe siege of Ashkelon (after Keel 1975Fig 21)

Woman NO4 with her long straight plait conforms to Egyptian depictionsof Syro-Canaanite women although she also has parallels in Aegean artWoman No 1 has parallels in both the Egyptian tradition and the Aegeantradition although the Egyptian parallels are stronger and she is also probablya Syro-Canaanite woman Image NO7 if she is a woman is vaguely similarto certain Egyptian pictures of Syro-Canaanite women but her hair is rathershort to provide a good parallel it should fall to a point further down her back

No exact parallels are known for the hairstyle of No 2 in either Egyptian orAegean art It is not clear whether this hairstyle may represent an ethnic groupunknown to us Alternatively middotdifferent hairstyles may have been worn bywomen at different periods of their lives - married ~omen and maidens forexample or old women and young ones or pregnant women They may alsocharacterize different social standings or occupations

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In some cases the persons hairstyle is incomplete It is masked by overlappinglinages or by the edge of the wagon as in Images Nos 3 and 6If they had longer hair these people might have hairstyles like those of Women 12or 4 If Image No3 had long hair she would have excellent parallels in Aegeanart where hair ribbons are very common If the bag-shaped hairstyle of Image No3 is complete as it stands however then the best parallels are actually fomIdamongst Syrian men Woman No 6s short hair is occasionally paralleled amongstSyrian women it is much more characteristic of Nubian women however Notonly did themiddotEgyptians have Nubian servants and slaves but many Egyptians werethemselves of Nubian stock so that women of this type could be found throughoutthe territories under Egyptian rule

The Sea Peoples were accompanied by men from the areas they traversedThey may have been taken as slaves or prisoners or maybe they decided tojoin the Sea Peoples advance in order to seek their fortunes abroad Such arethe wagon drivers Nos 5 and 9 who are definitely Syro-Canaanites andperhaps Image No3 ifhe is a Syrian or Image No7 if he is a Hittite

This picture of a complex and highly diverse origin of the group of Sea Peoplesportrayed in the Medinet Habu reliefs (which mayor may not be a typical group)suggests that it is unlikely that the Philistines were 100 pure Mycenaean Greeks(Stager 1995337 following Mazar 1988255-6 260) Like Sherratt (1998307)we characterize the Sea Peoples as cosmopolitan although we still envisagemany of them as Aegeans Other groups or individuals would have joined the SeaPeoples in northern Syria and Canaan

Conclusions

In the Medinet Habu reliefs the Sea Peoples are accompanied by at leastone woman who is clearly Syro-Canaanite and also by women with parallelsin Aegean art A similar conclusion was also reached by an analysis ofmaterial culture assemblages from Syria and Palestine (Bunimovitz andYasur-Landau forthcoming a b) attributed to the first stages of Aegeansettlement at the beginning of the Iron Age In these studies evidence ofbehavioural patterns of Aegean origin such as weaving with a loom equippedwith round unperfonlted loomweights and cooking on a hearth with Aegeanstyle cooking-pots were found side by side with local textile manufacture andcooking methods These finds may be cautiously interpreted as evidence of thepresence of women of both Aegean and local origin at these sites

The evidence from the reliefs shows that the Sea Peoples were accompaniedby men and women from Syria andor Canaan and by children probably theSea Peoples offspring by these women This indicates that the Sea Peoplesspent time in Syria andor Canaan before they continued on their way to Egypt

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Rather than envisaging the Sea Peoples immigration as a rapid concerted attack ata number of points simultaneously (Stager 1995) we should consider it as acomplex situation of not necessarily coordinated movements by different groupsfrom different areas

The size of the children depicted in the Medinet Habu reliefs may give ussome indication of how long the Sea Peoples had been present in the areabefore they moved south to Egypt If the younger children are the offspring ofthese women and the Sea Peoples the latter must have reached the area someseven or six years earlier if the older children wearing Philistine headgearare also the offspring of these households then we should think in terms of aninterval of thirteen years or more A similar observation was made by Singer(1987418) on the basis of the tablets from Ugarit and Ras Ibn Hani Thismeans that the fall of Ugarit should have occurred some fifteen to twentyyears before Ramses Ills war with the Sea Peoples It is quite acceptablehowever to postulate a short period of consolidation before the Sea Peoplesattempted to surge down into Egypt 14

The group we see in the Medinet Habu reliefs with their families would thenbe a second wave of settlement

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank I Finkelstein I Singer S Bunimovitz and the lateP Beck for reading and commenting on earlier drafts of this paper We wouldalso like to thank the Griffith Institute Oxford for allowing us to quotematerial from the unpublished notebooks of Sir Alan Gardiner

REFERENCES

Akurgal E 1962 The Art of the Hittites LondonAldred C 1973 Akhenaten and Nefertiti New YorkAstrom P 1992 Approaches to the Study of Women in Ancient Cyprus In

Astrom P ed Acta Cypria Acts of an International Congress onCypriote Archaeology held in GOteborg on 22-24 August 1991 Part 2(Studies in Mediterranean Archaeology Pocket-Book 117) Jonsered 5-8

14 On the other hand the size of the children depicted in the reliefs may not necessarily haveany historical significance Nor are these children necessarily these womens offspring bythe Sea People they even may be these womens children by previous partners in whichcase this part of the argument is irrelevant The Philistine youths may even be youngPhilistines who have been assigned to guarding the women and children as a relativelysafe post in view of their youth and inexperience

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Bietak M 1996 Avaris The Capital othe Hyksos LondonBolger D 1994 Engendering Cypriot Archaeology Female Roles and

Statuses before the Bronze Age Opuscula Atheniensia XX 19-17Brack A and Brack A 1980 Das Grab des Haremheb Theben Nr 78

MainzBrug JF 1984 A Literary and Archaeological Study othe Philistines Vols

1 and 2 MichiganBrunner-Traut E 1956 Die altiigyptischen Scherbenbilder (Bildostraka) der

Deutschen Museen und Sammlungen WiesbadenBrunner-Traut E 1979 Egyptian Artists Sketches LondonBuchholz H-G and Karageorghis V 1973 Prehistoric Greece and Cyprus

LondonBunimovitz S and Yasur-Landau A 1996 Philistine and Israelite Pottery A

Comparative Approach to the Question of Pots and People Tel Aviv2388-101

Bunimovitz S and Yasur-Landau A Forthcominga Behavioural Aspects of12th Century BCE Aegean Immigrants in Palestine and Cyprus

Bunimovitz S and Yasur-Landau A Forthcominglb Women and AegeanImmigration to Cyprus in the 12th Century BCE

Caubert A 1998 The International Style A point of View from the Levantand Syria In Cline EH and Harris-Cline D eds The Aegean and theOrient in the Second Millennium (Aegaeum 18) Liege 105-111

Cifola B 1991 The Terminology of Ramses Ills Historical Records with aFormal Analysis of the War Scenes Orientalia 609-57

Cifola B 1994 The Role of the Sea Peoples at the end of the Late BronzeAge A Reassessment of Textual and Archaeological Evidence OriensAntiqui Miscellanea 11-23

Cline EH 1995 Tinker Tailor Soldier Sailor Minoans and MyceneansAbroad In Laffineur R and Niemeier W-D eds Politeia Societyand State in the Aegean Bronze Age (Aegaeum 12) Liege 265-287

Conkey MW and Spector J 1984 Archaeology and the Study of GenderAdvances in Archaeological Method and Theory 71-38

Darnell J C 1991 Supposed Depictions of the Hittites in the Amarna PeriodStudien zur Altiigyptischen Kultur 18 113-140

Davies N de Garis 1905 The Rock Tombs of El Amarna II LondonDavies N de Garis 1908 The Rock Tombs of El Amarna VI LondonDavies N de Garis 1928 The Work of the Graphic Branch of the

Expedition Bulletin othe Metropolitan Museum 0Art 23237-48Davies N de Garis 1932 The Work of the Graphic Branch of the

Expedition Bulletin of the Metropolitan Museum of Art 273 51-62

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Images No 5 and 9

Images NO5 and 9 are either bald or have their hair closely cropped Giventhat both heads are damaged however this observation is not entirely certain

Men with sho~t hair are very rare in Aegean art~ where only babies andyoung children wear their hair short (Koehl 1986100-101) On the otherhand men with close-cropped hair or close-fitting caps (Stern 1989) arecommon in Canaanite art (Figs 71-3 Loud 1939 Nos 2 162) Interestinglyenough these Canaanites are shown driving chariots (ibid Nos 2 159 161)which provides a good parallel to NO9 the driver of Wagon NO5 Image No5 may be the driver of Wagon No3 Unlike his colleague No9 who is stillgoading the oxen onwards NO5 has given up hope and raises his hands indespair

Image No 6

The upper rim of the chariot hides the back of Woman No 6s neck Itwould be possible to reconstruct her hairstyle with a long narrow plait like thewomen already described It would also be possible to envisage her as havingshort hair However it is unusual to find women from Syro-Palestineportrayed in this way A group of women depicted in the tomb of Reklunirehave short hair (Fig 82 Davies 192840 followed by Feucht 1990a195identifies the long wrap-around dresses of these women as Syrian in style)This short hairstyle may be adopted from the group of Nubian women whoprecede the Syrians in this picture A naked goddess mounted on a horse isalso portrayed wearing short hair and a large earring (Fig 83 Brunner-Traut197929-30 NO5 PI V Petersen 1973 No 31 However Petersen idemsuggests that the goddess is wearing a helmet) The Hittite princess bride ofRamses II is shown with short hair (Fig 84) but she has been dressed upEgyptian style for the celebrations so her hairstyle is not necessarilysignificant

In Egyptian art this short hairstyle is characteristic of Nubian women (Fig85 Davies amp Gardiner 1926 PI xxx University of Chicago 1930 PI 9Ricke 1967 PIs 89 Brack amp Brack 1980 PI 50 Dziobeck 1992 PI 1) Itis true that the front part of Woman No 6s hairstyle tapers back from herforehead whereas most Nubian women wear their hair in a thick fringeHowever Nubian women are depicted with this type of central parting in afew New Kingdom tombs such as those of Rekhmire (Davies 1943 PI xxii)and Haremheb (Brack amp Brack 1980 PI 50 see also University of Chicago1930 PI 9)

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Fig 7 71 Ivory from Megiddo (after Loud 1939 No 159) 72 Ivory from Megiddo (afteribid No 160)73 Bronze plaque from Hazor (after Redford 1992197 Fig 71)

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Image No 7

This person wears its hair tapering to the nape of the neck Syro-Canaanitewomen sometimes wear their hair tapering to a point (Muller 1906 PI 9)although usually their hair is somewhat longer than that of Image NO7 andthe pointed tip of their hairstyle falls farther back behind their shoulderslO

(Fig 86) A woman portrayed on one of the Megiddo ivories has the samehairstyle (Loud 1939 No 2b)

This image may represent another Syro-Canaanite woman A more remotepossibility is that this image represents a Hittite man Hittite men wore theirhair in a queue and had bald foreheads In the reliefs at Medinet Habu the linemarking the front of the Hittite mens bald pates is not necessarily drawn in(Fig 87) Hittite men generally wore their hair much longer but there are afew examples of Hittite men whose hair only reaches to the back of their necks(Figs 87-92 see also Kuentz 1928 PI xviii)

There is a small possibility that Hittite women may also have worn thisstyle but the evidence is ambiguous In the Ramesseum relief of the siege ofDapur a group of people are shown leaving the city bearing baskets ofprovisions and begging for peace (Fig 93) Their hair tapers to theirshoulders Wreszinski (1935 PI 109) and HeIck (1962343) suggest thatthese people are the ruler of the city and the women of his house On the otherhand some of the dead warriors lying on the battlefield have exactly the samehairstyle so the figures accompanying the ruler are not necessarily women Inany case their hair is too long to be compared to this figure

There is no parallel for this figure in Aegean art

Image No 8

So little is visible of Image NO8 that any discussion of her coiffure wouldbe inconclusive

10 Some of the figures in the siege of Ullaza (University of Chicago 1932 PI 87) have thishairstyle but they are not necessarily women A decorated spoon in the Rijksmuseum vonOudheiden at Leiden has a similar hairstyle but since the woman is naked it is difficult totell whether she represents a foreigner (Eggebrecht 1987 No 246) The same applies tothe decorated spoon Louvre N-I728 (Vandier dAbbadie 197214-15)

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Fig 8 81 Goddess on the Yazilikaya rock carvings (after Kohlmeyer 1995 Fig 9) 82Women from the tomb of Rekhmire (after Davies 1943 PI Ivii) 83 Goddess onhorseback (drawing after Brunner-Traut 1956 No 16 PI viii) 84 The Hittiteprincess from the Marriage Stele of Ramses IT(after Lepsius 1849-1859 PI 196) 85Nubian women (after Davies 1905 PI xxviii) 86 Syro-Canaanite woman from thetomb ofRekhmire (after Davies 1943 PI xxiii) 87-8 Hittite warriors from MedinetHabu (after University of Chicago 1932 PI 87)

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The Children of the Sea People

The child standing by Wagon NO5 (Fig 22) wears a single long lock of hairgrowing from the crown of his head 11 This hairstyle is characteristic ofSyro-Canaanite children of both sexes in New Kingdom reliefs12(Fig 94 Davies1905 PI xxxiX)13

Children often appear in New Kingdom scenes of siege or battle beinglifted over the walls of a besieged city in Syria or Canaan (Fig 95) It is notclear whether these children are being sacrificed to the gods to change thecourse of the battle presented to Pharaoh as hostages or helped to escape(Keel 1975 Spalinger 1977-8 Feucht 1990b33-39 Donohue 1992) In thisinstance we suggest that they are being helped to escape (Keel 1975456 Thechildren appear to be on the point of collapse and their chances of escape areprobably slim Keel suggests that fear of Pharaoh immobilizes the childrenwith terror and they sink to the ground unable to stir)

Donohue (199283) suggests that the women are scooping the children upinto the wagons before the advancing enemy but this is unlikely If they weretrying to clamber into the wagons they would be facing inwards and probablyusing their legs to get a purchase on the side of the wagon as they clamber upit (The same applies to children in scenes of besieged cities There are onlytwo examples of children who could conceivably be climbing into the city (thelittle girl on the left in Fig 95 see also Keel 1975 Fig 19)

The fact that the older children are dressed as Sea Peoples may suggestpatrilineal behaviour in the immigrant society - at least in regard to costume

Summary

The limitations of this type of source material preclude absolute conclusionsThe Aegean paintings and statuettes come from a different artistic traditionthan the Medinet Habu reliefs discrepancies between the two are inevitableEgyptian depictions of foreigners have their limitations and since the artists atMedinet Habu may have been unfamiliar with these hairstyles it is difficult to tellhow accurate these portrayals are We may however make a few suggestions

11 The second line emerging from the crown of his head in University of Chicago 1930 PI49D is probably a scratch rather than a second lock

12 See also Pritchard 1954 No 45 (the man presenting this child is said to be the ruler ofTunip and can therefore be located in Syria) Save Stiderbergh 1957 PI xxiii Martin1989PI 105 University of Chicago 1932PI 87Feucht 1990a198 n 82 points out that apart from the single plait children from Syriamay also sport two plaits a head of short hair or two clumps of hair There is quite avariety of hairstyles

13 The parallel to this scene in the tomb ofHuya describes this tribute as coming from Kharuand Kush (Sandman 193837 line 1)

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Fig 9 91 Hittite warrior from Medinet Habu (after University of Chicago 1932 PI 87) 92Hittite warriors from Abu Simbel (after Wreszinski 1935 PI 170) 93 Group ofHittites from the siege of Dapur (after ibid PI 109) 94 Syro-Canaanite women andchild (after Davies 1947 PI viii) 95 Girl being let down over the city wall relief ofthe siege of Ashkelon (after Keel 1975Fig 21)

Woman NO4 with her long straight plait conforms to Egyptian depictionsof Syro-Canaanite women although she also has parallels in Aegean artWoman No 1 has parallels in both the Egyptian tradition and the Aegeantradition although the Egyptian parallels are stronger and she is also probablya Syro-Canaanite woman Image NO7 if she is a woman is vaguely similarto certain Egyptian pictures of Syro-Canaanite women but her hair is rathershort to provide a good parallel it should fall to a point further down her back

No exact parallels are known for the hairstyle of No 2 in either Egyptian orAegean art It is not clear whether this hairstyle may represent an ethnic groupunknown to us Alternatively middotdifferent hairstyles may have been worn bywomen at different periods of their lives - married ~omen and maidens forexample or old women and young ones or pregnant women They may alsocharacterize different social standings or occupations

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In some cases the persons hairstyle is incomplete It is masked by overlappinglinages or by the edge of the wagon as in Images Nos 3 and 6If they had longer hair these people might have hairstyles like those of Women 12or 4 If Image No3 had long hair she would have excellent parallels in Aegeanart where hair ribbons are very common If the bag-shaped hairstyle of Image No3 is complete as it stands however then the best parallels are actually fomIdamongst Syrian men Woman No 6s short hair is occasionally paralleled amongstSyrian women it is much more characteristic of Nubian women however Notonly did themiddotEgyptians have Nubian servants and slaves but many Egyptians werethemselves of Nubian stock so that women of this type could be found throughoutthe territories under Egyptian rule

The Sea Peoples were accompanied by men from the areas they traversedThey may have been taken as slaves or prisoners or maybe they decided tojoin the Sea Peoples advance in order to seek their fortunes abroad Such arethe wagon drivers Nos 5 and 9 who are definitely Syro-Canaanites andperhaps Image No3 ifhe is a Syrian or Image No7 if he is a Hittite

This picture of a complex and highly diverse origin of the group of Sea Peoplesportrayed in the Medinet Habu reliefs (which mayor may not be a typical group)suggests that it is unlikely that the Philistines were 100 pure Mycenaean Greeks(Stager 1995337 following Mazar 1988255-6 260) Like Sherratt (1998307)we characterize the Sea Peoples as cosmopolitan although we still envisagemany of them as Aegeans Other groups or individuals would have joined the SeaPeoples in northern Syria and Canaan

Conclusions

In the Medinet Habu reliefs the Sea Peoples are accompanied by at leastone woman who is clearly Syro-Canaanite and also by women with parallelsin Aegean art A similar conclusion was also reached by an analysis ofmaterial culture assemblages from Syria and Palestine (Bunimovitz andYasur-Landau forthcoming a b) attributed to the first stages of Aegeansettlement at the beginning of the Iron Age In these studies evidence ofbehavioural patterns of Aegean origin such as weaving with a loom equippedwith round unperfonlted loomweights and cooking on a hearth with Aegeanstyle cooking-pots were found side by side with local textile manufacture andcooking methods These finds may be cautiously interpreted as evidence of thepresence of women of both Aegean and local origin at these sites

The evidence from the reliefs shows that the Sea Peoples were accompaniedby men and women from Syria andor Canaan and by children probably theSea Peoples offspring by these women This indicates that the Sea Peoplesspent time in Syria andor Canaan before they continued on their way to Egypt

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Rather than envisaging the Sea Peoples immigration as a rapid concerted attack ata number of points simultaneously (Stager 1995) we should consider it as acomplex situation of not necessarily coordinated movements by different groupsfrom different areas

The size of the children depicted in the Medinet Habu reliefs may give ussome indication of how long the Sea Peoples had been present in the areabefore they moved south to Egypt If the younger children are the offspring ofthese women and the Sea Peoples the latter must have reached the area someseven or six years earlier if the older children wearing Philistine headgearare also the offspring of these households then we should think in terms of aninterval of thirteen years or more A similar observation was made by Singer(1987418) on the basis of the tablets from Ugarit and Ras Ibn Hani Thismeans that the fall of Ugarit should have occurred some fifteen to twentyyears before Ramses Ills war with the Sea Peoples It is quite acceptablehowever to postulate a short period of consolidation before the Sea Peoplesattempted to surge down into Egypt 14

The group we see in the Medinet Habu reliefs with their families would thenbe a second wave of settlement

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank I Finkelstein I Singer S Bunimovitz and the lateP Beck for reading and commenting on earlier drafts of this paper We wouldalso like to thank the Griffith Institute Oxford for allowing us to quotematerial from the unpublished notebooks of Sir Alan Gardiner

REFERENCES

Akurgal E 1962 The Art of the Hittites LondonAldred C 1973 Akhenaten and Nefertiti New YorkAstrom P 1992 Approaches to the Study of Women in Ancient Cyprus In

Astrom P ed Acta Cypria Acts of an International Congress onCypriote Archaeology held in GOteborg on 22-24 August 1991 Part 2(Studies in Mediterranean Archaeology Pocket-Book 117) Jonsered 5-8

14 On the other hand the size of the children depicted in the reliefs may not necessarily haveany historical significance Nor are these children necessarily these womens offspring bythe Sea People they even may be these womens children by previous partners in whichcase this part of the argument is irrelevant The Philistine youths may even be youngPhilistines who have been assigned to guarding the women and children as a relativelysafe post in view of their youth and inexperience

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Bietak M 1996 Avaris The Capital othe Hyksos LondonBolger D 1994 Engendering Cypriot Archaeology Female Roles and

Statuses before the Bronze Age Opuscula Atheniensia XX 19-17Brack A and Brack A 1980 Das Grab des Haremheb Theben Nr 78

MainzBrug JF 1984 A Literary and Archaeological Study othe Philistines Vols

1 and 2 MichiganBrunner-Traut E 1956 Die altiigyptischen Scherbenbilder (Bildostraka) der

Deutschen Museen und Sammlungen WiesbadenBrunner-Traut E 1979 Egyptian Artists Sketches LondonBuchholz H-G and Karageorghis V 1973 Prehistoric Greece and Cyprus

LondonBunimovitz S and Yasur-Landau A 1996 Philistine and Israelite Pottery A

Comparative Approach to the Question of Pots and People Tel Aviv2388-101

Bunimovitz S and Yasur-Landau A Forthcominga Behavioural Aspects of12th Century BCE Aegean Immigrants in Palestine and Cyprus

Bunimovitz S and Yasur-Landau A Forthcominglb Women and AegeanImmigration to Cyprus in the 12th Century BCE

Caubert A 1998 The International Style A point of View from the Levantand Syria In Cline EH and Harris-Cline D eds The Aegean and theOrient in the Second Millennium (Aegaeum 18) Liege 105-111

Cifola B 1991 The Terminology of Ramses Ills Historical Records with aFormal Analysis of the War Scenes Orientalia 609-57

Cifola B 1994 The Role of the Sea Peoples at the end of the Late BronzeAge A Reassessment of Textual and Archaeological Evidence OriensAntiqui Miscellanea 11-23

Cline EH 1995 Tinker Tailor Soldier Sailor Minoans and MyceneansAbroad In Laffineur R and Niemeier W-D eds Politeia Societyand State in the Aegean Bronze Age (Aegaeum 12) Liege 265-287

Conkey MW and Spector J 1984 Archaeology and the Study of GenderAdvances in Archaeological Method and Theory 71-38

Darnell J C 1991 Supposed Depictions of the Hittites in the Amarna PeriodStudien zur Altiigyptischen Kultur 18 113-140

Davies N de Garis 1905 The Rock Tombs of El Amarna II LondonDavies N de Garis 1908 The Rock Tombs of El Amarna VI LondonDavies N de Garis 1928 The Work of the Graphic Branch of the

Expedition Bulletin othe Metropolitan Museum 0Art 23237-48Davies N de Garis 1932 The Work of the Graphic Branch of the

Expedition Bulletin of the Metropolitan Museum of Art 273 51-62

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Fig 7 71 Ivory from Megiddo (after Loud 1939 No 159) 72 Ivory from Megiddo (afteribid No 160)73 Bronze plaque from Hazor (after Redford 1992197 Fig 71)

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Image No 7

This person wears its hair tapering to the nape of the neck Syro-Canaanitewomen sometimes wear their hair tapering to a point (Muller 1906 PI 9)although usually their hair is somewhat longer than that of Image NO7 andthe pointed tip of their hairstyle falls farther back behind their shoulderslO

(Fig 86) A woman portrayed on one of the Megiddo ivories has the samehairstyle (Loud 1939 No 2b)

This image may represent another Syro-Canaanite woman A more remotepossibility is that this image represents a Hittite man Hittite men wore theirhair in a queue and had bald foreheads In the reliefs at Medinet Habu the linemarking the front of the Hittite mens bald pates is not necessarily drawn in(Fig 87) Hittite men generally wore their hair much longer but there are afew examples of Hittite men whose hair only reaches to the back of their necks(Figs 87-92 see also Kuentz 1928 PI xviii)

There is a small possibility that Hittite women may also have worn thisstyle but the evidence is ambiguous In the Ramesseum relief of the siege ofDapur a group of people are shown leaving the city bearing baskets ofprovisions and begging for peace (Fig 93) Their hair tapers to theirshoulders Wreszinski (1935 PI 109) and HeIck (1962343) suggest thatthese people are the ruler of the city and the women of his house On the otherhand some of the dead warriors lying on the battlefield have exactly the samehairstyle so the figures accompanying the ruler are not necessarily women Inany case their hair is too long to be compared to this figure

There is no parallel for this figure in Aegean art

Image No 8

So little is visible of Image NO8 that any discussion of her coiffure wouldbe inconclusive

10 Some of the figures in the siege of Ullaza (University of Chicago 1932 PI 87) have thishairstyle but they are not necessarily women A decorated spoon in the Rijksmuseum vonOudheiden at Leiden has a similar hairstyle but since the woman is naked it is difficult totell whether she represents a foreigner (Eggebrecht 1987 No 246) The same applies tothe decorated spoon Louvre N-I728 (Vandier dAbbadie 197214-15)

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Fig 8 81 Goddess on the Yazilikaya rock carvings (after Kohlmeyer 1995 Fig 9) 82Women from the tomb of Rekhmire (after Davies 1943 PI Ivii) 83 Goddess onhorseback (drawing after Brunner-Traut 1956 No 16 PI viii) 84 The Hittiteprincess from the Marriage Stele of Ramses IT(after Lepsius 1849-1859 PI 196) 85Nubian women (after Davies 1905 PI xxviii) 86 Syro-Canaanite woman from thetomb ofRekhmire (after Davies 1943 PI xxiii) 87-8 Hittite warriors from MedinetHabu (after University of Chicago 1932 PI 87)

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The Children of the Sea People

The child standing by Wagon NO5 (Fig 22) wears a single long lock of hairgrowing from the crown of his head 11 This hairstyle is characteristic ofSyro-Canaanite children of both sexes in New Kingdom reliefs12(Fig 94 Davies1905 PI xxxiX)13

Children often appear in New Kingdom scenes of siege or battle beinglifted over the walls of a besieged city in Syria or Canaan (Fig 95) It is notclear whether these children are being sacrificed to the gods to change thecourse of the battle presented to Pharaoh as hostages or helped to escape(Keel 1975 Spalinger 1977-8 Feucht 1990b33-39 Donohue 1992) In thisinstance we suggest that they are being helped to escape (Keel 1975456 Thechildren appear to be on the point of collapse and their chances of escape areprobably slim Keel suggests that fear of Pharaoh immobilizes the childrenwith terror and they sink to the ground unable to stir)

Donohue (199283) suggests that the women are scooping the children upinto the wagons before the advancing enemy but this is unlikely If they weretrying to clamber into the wagons they would be facing inwards and probablyusing their legs to get a purchase on the side of the wagon as they clamber upit (The same applies to children in scenes of besieged cities There are onlytwo examples of children who could conceivably be climbing into the city (thelittle girl on the left in Fig 95 see also Keel 1975 Fig 19)

The fact that the older children are dressed as Sea Peoples may suggestpatrilineal behaviour in the immigrant society - at least in regard to costume

Summary

The limitations of this type of source material preclude absolute conclusionsThe Aegean paintings and statuettes come from a different artistic traditionthan the Medinet Habu reliefs discrepancies between the two are inevitableEgyptian depictions of foreigners have their limitations and since the artists atMedinet Habu may have been unfamiliar with these hairstyles it is difficult to tellhow accurate these portrayals are We may however make a few suggestions

11 The second line emerging from the crown of his head in University of Chicago 1930 PI49D is probably a scratch rather than a second lock

12 See also Pritchard 1954 No 45 (the man presenting this child is said to be the ruler ofTunip and can therefore be located in Syria) Save Stiderbergh 1957 PI xxiii Martin1989PI 105 University of Chicago 1932PI 87Feucht 1990a198 n 82 points out that apart from the single plait children from Syriamay also sport two plaits a head of short hair or two clumps of hair There is quite avariety of hairstyles

13 The parallel to this scene in the tomb ofHuya describes this tribute as coming from Kharuand Kush (Sandman 193837 line 1)

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Fig 9 91 Hittite warrior from Medinet Habu (after University of Chicago 1932 PI 87) 92Hittite warriors from Abu Simbel (after Wreszinski 1935 PI 170) 93 Group ofHittites from the siege of Dapur (after ibid PI 109) 94 Syro-Canaanite women andchild (after Davies 1947 PI viii) 95 Girl being let down over the city wall relief ofthe siege of Ashkelon (after Keel 1975Fig 21)

Woman NO4 with her long straight plait conforms to Egyptian depictionsof Syro-Canaanite women although she also has parallels in Aegean artWoman No 1 has parallels in both the Egyptian tradition and the Aegeantradition although the Egyptian parallels are stronger and she is also probablya Syro-Canaanite woman Image NO7 if she is a woman is vaguely similarto certain Egyptian pictures of Syro-Canaanite women but her hair is rathershort to provide a good parallel it should fall to a point further down her back

No exact parallels are known for the hairstyle of No 2 in either Egyptian orAegean art It is not clear whether this hairstyle may represent an ethnic groupunknown to us Alternatively middotdifferent hairstyles may have been worn bywomen at different periods of their lives - married ~omen and maidens forexample or old women and young ones or pregnant women They may alsocharacterize different social standings or occupations

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In some cases the persons hairstyle is incomplete It is masked by overlappinglinages or by the edge of the wagon as in Images Nos 3 and 6If they had longer hair these people might have hairstyles like those of Women 12or 4 If Image No3 had long hair she would have excellent parallels in Aegeanart where hair ribbons are very common If the bag-shaped hairstyle of Image No3 is complete as it stands however then the best parallels are actually fomIdamongst Syrian men Woman No 6s short hair is occasionally paralleled amongstSyrian women it is much more characteristic of Nubian women however Notonly did themiddotEgyptians have Nubian servants and slaves but many Egyptians werethemselves of Nubian stock so that women of this type could be found throughoutthe territories under Egyptian rule

The Sea Peoples were accompanied by men from the areas they traversedThey may have been taken as slaves or prisoners or maybe they decided tojoin the Sea Peoples advance in order to seek their fortunes abroad Such arethe wagon drivers Nos 5 and 9 who are definitely Syro-Canaanites andperhaps Image No3 ifhe is a Syrian or Image No7 if he is a Hittite

This picture of a complex and highly diverse origin of the group of Sea Peoplesportrayed in the Medinet Habu reliefs (which mayor may not be a typical group)suggests that it is unlikely that the Philistines were 100 pure Mycenaean Greeks(Stager 1995337 following Mazar 1988255-6 260) Like Sherratt (1998307)we characterize the Sea Peoples as cosmopolitan although we still envisagemany of them as Aegeans Other groups or individuals would have joined the SeaPeoples in northern Syria and Canaan

Conclusions

In the Medinet Habu reliefs the Sea Peoples are accompanied by at leastone woman who is clearly Syro-Canaanite and also by women with parallelsin Aegean art A similar conclusion was also reached by an analysis ofmaterial culture assemblages from Syria and Palestine (Bunimovitz andYasur-Landau forthcoming a b) attributed to the first stages of Aegeansettlement at the beginning of the Iron Age In these studies evidence ofbehavioural patterns of Aegean origin such as weaving with a loom equippedwith round unperfonlted loomweights and cooking on a hearth with Aegeanstyle cooking-pots were found side by side with local textile manufacture andcooking methods These finds may be cautiously interpreted as evidence of thepresence of women of both Aegean and local origin at these sites

The evidence from the reliefs shows that the Sea Peoples were accompaniedby men and women from Syria andor Canaan and by children probably theSea Peoples offspring by these women This indicates that the Sea Peoplesspent time in Syria andor Canaan before they continued on their way to Egypt

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Sweeneyand Yasur-Landau Women Sea Peoples

Rather than envisaging the Sea Peoples immigration as a rapid concerted attack ata number of points simultaneously (Stager 1995) we should consider it as acomplex situation of not necessarily coordinated movements by different groupsfrom different areas

The size of the children depicted in the Medinet Habu reliefs may give ussome indication of how long the Sea Peoples had been present in the areabefore they moved south to Egypt If the younger children are the offspring ofthese women and the Sea Peoples the latter must have reached the area someseven or six years earlier if the older children wearing Philistine headgearare also the offspring of these households then we should think in terms of aninterval of thirteen years or more A similar observation was made by Singer(1987418) on the basis of the tablets from Ugarit and Ras Ibn Hani Thismeans that the fall of Ugarit should have occurred some fifteen to twentyyears before Ramses Ills war with the Sea Peoples It is quite acceptablehowever to postulate a short period of consolidation before the Sea Peoplesattempted to surge down into Egypt 14

The group we see in the Medinet Habu reliefs with their families would thenbe a second wave of settlement

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank I Finkelstein I Singer S Bunimovitz and the lateP Beck for reading and commenting on earlier drafts of this paper We wouldalso like to thank the Griffith Institute Oxford for allowing us to quotematerial from the unpublished notebooks of Sir Alan Gardiner

REFERENCES

Akurgal E 1962 The Art of the Hittites LondonAldred C 1973 Akhenaten and Nefertiti New YorkAstrom P 1992 Approaches to the Study of Women in Ancient Cyprus In

Astrom P ed Acta Cypria Acts of an International Congress onCypriote Archaeology held in GOteborg on 22-24 August 1991 Part 2(Studies in Mediterranean Archaeology Pocket-Book 117) Jonsered 5-8

14 On the other hand the size of the children depicted in the reliefs may not necessarily haveany historical significance Nor are these children necessarily these womens offspring bythe Sea People they even may be these womens children by previous partners in whichcase this part of the argument is irrelevant The Philistine youths may even be youngPhilistines who have been assigned to guarding the women and children as a relativelysafe post in view of their youth and inexperience

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Tel Aviv 26 (1999)

Bietak M 1996 Avaris The Capital othe Hyksos LondonBolger D 1994 Engendering Cypriot Archaeology Female Roles and

Statuses before the Bronze Age Opuscula Atheniensia XX 19-17Brack A and Brack A 1980 Das Grab des Haremheb Theben Nr 78

MainzBrug JF 1984 A Literary and Archaeological Study othe Philistines Vols

1 and 2 MichiganBrunner-Traut E 1956 Die altiigyptischen Scherbenbilder (Bildostraka) der

Deutschen Museen und Sammlungen WiesbadenBrunner-Traut E 1979 Egyptian Artists Sketches LondonBuchholz H-G and Karageorghis V 1973 Prehistoric Greece and Cyprus

LondonBunimovitz S and Yasur-Landau A 1996 Philistine and Israelite Pottery A

Comparative Approach to the Question of Pots and People Tel Aviv2388-101

Bunimovitz S and Yasur-Landau A Forthcominga Behavioural Aspects of12th Century BCE Aegean Immigrants in Palestine and Cyprus

Bunimovitz S and Yasur-Landau A Forthcominglb Women and AegeanImmigration to Cyprus in the 12th Century BCE

Caubert A 1998 The International Style A point of View from the Levantand Syria In Cline EH and Harris-Cline D eds The Aegean and theOrient in the Second Millennium (Aegaeum 18) Liege 105-111

Cifola B 1991 The Terminology of Ramses Ills Historical Records with aFormal Analysis of the War Scenes Orientalia 609-57

Cifola B 1994 The Role of the Sea Peoples at the end of the Late BronzeAge A Reassessment of Textual and Archaeological Evidence OriensAntiqui Miscellanea 11-23

Cline EH 1995 Tinker Tailor Soldier Sailor Minoans and MyceneansAbroad In Laffineur R and Niemeier W-D eds Politeia Societyand State in the Aegean Bronze Age (Aegaeum 12) Liege 265-287

Conkey MW and Spector J 1984 Archaeology and the Study of GenderAdvances in Archaeological Method and Theory 71-38

Darnell J C 1991 Supposed Depictions of the Hittites in the Amarna PeriodStudien zur Altiigyptischen Kultur 18 113-140

Davies N de Garis 1905 The Rock Tombs of El Amarna II LondonDavies N de Garis 1908 The Rock Tombs of El Amarna VI LondonDavies N de Garis 1928 The Work of the Graphic Branch of the

Expedition Bulletin othe Metropolitan Museum 0Art 23237-48Davies N de Garis 1932 The Work of the Graphic Branch of the

Expedition Bulletin of the Metropolitan Museum of Art 273 51-62

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Image No 7

This person wears its hair tapering to the nape of the neck Syro-Canaanitewomen sometimes wear their hair tapering to a point (Muller 1906 PI 9)although usually their hair is somewhat longer than that of Image NO7 andthe pointed tip of their hairstyle falls farther back behind their shoulderslO

(Fig 86) A woman portrayed on one of the Megiddo ivories has the samehairstyle (Loud 1939 No 2b)

This image may represent another Syro-Canaanite woman A more remotepossibility is that this image represents a Hittite man Hittite men wore theirhair in a queue and had bald foreheads In the reliefs at Medinet Habu the linemarking the front of the Hittite mens bald pates is not necessarily drawn in(Fig 87) Hittite men generally wore their hair much longer but there are afew examples of Hittite men whose hair only reaches to the back of their necks(Figs 87-92 see also Kuentz 1928 PI xviii)

There is a small possibility that Hittite women may also have worn thisstyle but the evidence is ambiguous In the Ramesseum relief of the siege ofDapur a group of people are shown leaving the city bearing baskets ofprovisions and begging for peace (Fig 93) Their hair tapers to theirshoulders Wreszinski (1935 PI 109) and HeIck (1962343) suggest thatthese people are the ruler of the city and the women of his house On the otherhand some of the dead warriors lying on the battlefield have exactly the samehairstyle so the figures accompanying the ruler are not necessarily women Inany case their hair is too long to be compared to this figure

There is no parallel for this figure in Aegean art

Image No 8

So little is visible of Image NO8 that any discussion of her coiffure wouldbe inconclusive

10 Some of the figures in the siege of Ullaza (University of Chicago 1932 PI 87) have thishairstyle but they are not necessarily women A decorated spoon in the Rijksmuseum vonOudheiden at Leiden has a similar hairstyle but since the woman is naked it is difficult totell whether she represents a foreigner (Eggebrecht 1987 No 246) The same applies tothe decorated spoon Louvre N-I728 (Vandier dAbbadie 197214-15)

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1 3

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5

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7 8

Fig 8 81 Goddess on the Yazilikaya rock carvings (after Kohlmeyer 1995 Fig 9) 82Women from the tomb of Rekhmire (after Davies 1943 PI Ivii) 83 Goddess onhorseback (drawing after Brunner-Traut 1956 No 16 PI viii) 84 The Hittiteprincess from the Marriage Stele of Ramses IT(after Lepsius 1849-1859 PI 196) 85Nubian women (after Davies 1905 PI xxviii) 86 Syro-Canaanite woman from thetomb ofRekhmire (after Davies 1943 PI xxiii) 87-8 Hittite warriors from MedinetHabu (after University of Chicago 1932 PI 87)

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The Children of the Sea People

The child standing by Wagon NO5 (Fig 22) wears a single long lock of hairgrowing from the crown of his head 11 This hairstyle is characteristic ofSyro-Canaanite children of both sexes in New Kingdom reliefs12(Fig 94 Davies1905 PI xxxiX)13

Children often appear in New Kingdom scenes of siege or battle beinglifted over the walls of a besieged city in Syria or Canaan (Fig 95) It is notclear whether these children are being sacrificed to the gods to change thecourse of the battle presented to Pharaoh as hostages or helped to escape(Keel 1975 Spalinger 1977-8 Feucht 1990b33-39 Donohue 1992) In thisinstance we suggest that they are being helped to escape (Keel 1975456 Thechildren appear to be on the point of collapse and their chances of escape areprobably slim Keel suggests that fear of Pharaoh immobilizes the childrenwith terror and they sink to the ground unable to stir)

Donohue (199283) suggests that the women are scooping the children upinto the wagons before the advancing enemy but this is unlikely If they weretrying to clamber into the wagons they would be facing inwards and probablyusing their legs to get a purchase on the side of the wagon as they clamber upit (The same applies to children in scenes of besieged cities There are onlytwo examples of children who could conceivably be climbing into the city (thelittle girl on the left in Fig 95 see also Keel 1975 Fig 19)

The fact that the older children are dressed as Sea Peoples may suggestpatrilineal behaviour in the immigrant society - at least in regard to costume

Summary

The limitations of this type of source material preclude absolute conclusionsThe Aegean paintings and statuettes come from a different artistic traditionthan the Medinet Habu reliefs discrepancies between the two are inevitableEgyptian depictions of foreigners have their limitations and since the artists atMedinet Habu may have been unfamiliar with these hairstyles it is difficult to tellhow accurate these portrayals are We may however make a few suggestions

11 The second line emerging from the crown of his head in University of Chicago 1930 PI49D is probably a scratch rather than a second lock

12 See also Pritchard 1954 No 45 (the man presenting this child is said to be the ruler ofTunip and can therefore be located in Syria) Save Stiderbergh 1957 PI xxiii Martin1989PI 105 University of Chicago 1932PI 87Feucht 1990a198 n 82 points out that apart from the single plait children from Syriamay also sport two plaits a head of short hair or two clumps of hair There is quite avariety of hairstyles

13 The parallel to this scene in the tomb ofHuya describes this tribute as coming from Kharuand Kush (Sandman 193837 line 1)

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Fig 9 91 Hittite warrior from Medinet Habu (after University of Chicago 1932 PI 87) 92Hittite warriors from Abu Simbel (after Wreszinski 1935 PI 170) 93 Group ofHittites from the siege of Dapur (after ibid PI 109) 94 Syro-Canaanite women andchild (after Davies 1947 PI viii) 95 Girl being let down over the city wall relief ofthe siege of Ashkelon (after Keel 1975Fig 21)

Woman NO4 with her long straight plait conforms to Egyptian depictionsof Syro-Canaanite women although she also has parallels in Aegean artWoman No 1 has parallels in both the Egyptian tradition and the Aegeantradition although the Egyptian parallels are stronger and she is also probablya Syro-Canaanite woman Image NO7 if she is a woman is vaguely similarto certain Egyptian pictures of Syro-Canaanite women but her hair is rathershort to provide a good parallel it should fall to a point further down her back

No exact parallels are known for the hairstyle of No 2 in either Egyptian orAegean art It is not clear whether this hairstyle may represent an ethnic groupunknown to us Alternatively middotdifferent hairstyles may have been worn bywomen at different periods of their lives - married ~omen and maidens forexample or old women and young ones or pregnant women They may alsocharacterize different social standings or occupations

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In some cases the persons hairstyle is incomplete It is masked by overlappinglinages or by the edge of the wagon as in Images Nos 3 and 6If they had longer hair these people might have hairstyles like those of Women 12or 4 If Image No3 had long hair she would have excellent parallels in Aegeanart where hair ribbons are very common If the bag-shaped hairstyle of Image No3 is complete as it stands however then the best parallels are actually fomIdamongst Syrian men Woman No 6s short hair is occasionally paralleled amongstSyrian women it is much more characteristic of Nubian women however Notonly did themiddotEgyptians have Nubian servants and slaves but many Egyptians werethemselves of Nubian stock so that women of this type could be found throughoutthe territories under Egyptian rule

The Sea Peoples were accompanied by men from the areas they traversedThey may have been taken as slaves or prisoners or maybe they decided tojoin the Sea Peoples advance in order to seek their fortunes abroad Such arethe wagon drivers Nos 5 and 9 who are definitely Syro-Canaanites andperhaps Image No3 ifhe is a Syrian or Image No7 if he is a Hittite

This picture of a complex and highly diverse origin of the group of Sea Peoplesportrayed in the Medinet Habu reliefs (which mayor may not be a typical group)suggests that it is unlikely that the Philistines were 100 pure Mycenaean Greeks(Stager 1995337 following Mazar 1988255-6 260) Like Sherratt (1998307)we characterize the Sea Peoples as cosmopolitan although we still envisagemany of them as Aegeans Other groups or individuals would have joined the SeaPeoples in northern Syria and Canaan

Conclusions

In the Medinet Habu reliefs the Sea Peoples are accompanied by at leastone woman who is clearly Syro-Canaanite and also by women with parallelsin Aegean art A similar conclusion was also reached by an analysis ofmaterial culture assemblages from Syria and Palestine (Bunimovitz andYasur-Landau forthcoming a b) attributed to the first stages of Aegeansettlement at the beginning of the Iron Age In these studies evidence ofbehavioural patterns of Aegean origin such as weaving with a loom equippedwith round unperfonlted loomweights and cooking on a hearth with Aegeanstyle cooking-pots were found side by side with local textile manufacture andcooking methods These finds may be cautiously interpreted as evidence of thepresence of women of both Aegean and local origin at these sites

The evidence from the reliefs shows that the Sea Peoples were accompaniedby men and women from Syria andor Canaan and by children probably theSea Peoples offspring by these women This indicates that the Sea Peoplesspent time in Syria andor Canaan before they continued on their way to Egypt

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Sweeneyand Yasur-Landau Women Sea Peoples

Rather than envisaging the Sea Peoples immigration as a rapid concerted attack ata number of points simultaneously (Stager 1995) we should consider it as acomplex situation of not necessarily coordinated movements by different groupsfrom different areas

The size of the children depicted in the Medinet Habu reliefs may give ussome indication of how long the Sea Peoples had been present in the areabefore they moved south to Egypt If the younger children are the offspring ofthese women and the Sea Peoples the latter must have reached the area someseven or six years earlier if the older children wearing Philistine headgearare also the offspring of these households then we should think in terms of aninterval of thirteen years or more A similar observation was made by Singer(1987418) on the basis of the tablets from Ugarit and Ras Ibn Hani Thismeans that the fall of Ugarit should have occurred some fifteen to twentyyears before Ramses Ills war with the Sea Peoples It is quite acceptablehowever to postulate a short period of consolidation before the Sea Peoplesattempted to surge down into Egypt 14

The group we see in the Medinet Habu reliefs with their families would thenbe a second wave of settlement

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank I Finkelstein I Singer S Bunimovitz and the lateP Beck for reading and commenting on earlier drafts of this paper We wouldalso like to thank the Griffith Institute Oxford for allowing us to quotematerial from the unpublished notebooks of Sir Alan Gardiner

REFERENCES

Akurgal E 1962 The Art of the Hittites LondonAldred C 1973 Akhenaten and Nefertiti New YorkAstrom P 1992 Approaches to the Study of Women in Ancient Cyprus In

Astrom P ed Acta Cypria Acts of an International Congress onCypriote Archaeology held in GOteborg on 22-24 August 1991 Part 2(Studies in Mediterranean Archaeology Pocket-Book 117) Jonsered 5-8

14 On the other hand the size of the children depicted in the reliefs may not necessarily haveany historical significance Nor are these children necessarily these womens offspring bythe Sea People they even may be these womens children by previous partners in whichcase this part of the argument is irrelevant The Philistine youths may even be youngPhilistines who have been assigned to guarding the women and children as a relativelysafe post in view of their youth and inexperience

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Tel Aviv 26 (1999)

Bietak M 1996 Avaris The Capital othe Hyksos LondonBolger D 1994 Engendering Cypriot Archaeology Female Roles and

Statuses before the Bronze Age Opuscula Atheniensia XX 19-17Brack A and Brack A 1980 Das Grab des Haremheb Theben Nr 78

MainzBrug JF 1984 A Literary and Archaeological Study othe Philistines Vols

1 and 2 MichiganBrunner-Traut E 1956 Die altiigyptischen Scherbenbilder (Bildostraka) der

Deutschen Museen und Sammlungen WiesbadenBrunner-Traut E 1979 Egyptian Artists Sketches LondonBuchholz H-G and Karageorghis V 1973 Prehistoric Greece and Cyprus

LondonBunimovitz S and Yasur-Landau A 1996 Philistine and Israelite Pottery A

Comparative Approach to the Question of Pots and People Tel Aviv2388-101

Bunimovitz S and Yasur-Landau A Forthcominga Behavioural Aspects of12th Century BCE Aegean Immigrants in Palestine and Cyprus

Bunimovitz S and Yasur-Landau A Forthcominglb Women and AegeanImmigration to Cyprus in the 12th Century BCE

Caubert A 1998 The International Style A point of View from the Levantand Syria In Cline EH and Harris-Cline D eds The Aegean and theOrient in the Second Millennium (Aegaeum 18) Liege 105-111

Cifola B 1991 The Terminology of Ramses Ills Historical Records with aFormal Analysis of the War Scenes Orientalia 609-57

Cifola B 1994 The Role of the Sea Peoples at the end of the Late BronzeAge A Reassessment of Textual and Archaeological Evidence OriensAntiqui Miscellanea 11-23

Cline EH 1995 Tinker Tailor Soldier Sailor Minoans and MyceneansAbroad In Laffineur R and Niemeier W-D eds Politeia Societyand State in the Aegean Bronze Age (Aegaeum 12) Liege 265-287

Conkey MW and Spector J 1984 Archaeology and the Study of GenderAdvances in Archaeological Method and Theory 71-38

Darnell J C 1991 Supposed Depictions of the Hittites in the Amarna PeriodStudien zur Altiigyptischen Kultur 18 113-140

Davies N de Garis 1905 The Rock Tombs of El Amarna II LondonDavies N de Garis 1908 The Rock Tombs of El Amarna VI LondonDavies N de Garis 1928 The Work of the Graphic Branch of the

Expedition Bulletin othe Metropolitan Museum 0Art 23237-48Davies N de Garis 1932 The Work of the Graphic Branch of the

Expedition Bulletin of the Metropolitan Museum of Art 273 51-62

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Sweeney and Yasur-Landau Women Sea Peoples

1 3

2 4 6

5

~ I

7 8

Fig 8 81 Goddess on the Yazilikaya rock carvings (after Kohlmeyer 1995 Fig 9) 82Women from the tomb of Rekhmire (after Davies 1943 PI Ivii) 83 Goddess onhorseback (drawing after Brunner-Traut 1956 No 16 PI viii) 84 The Hittiteprincess from the Marriage Stele of Ramses IT(after Lepsius 1849-1859 PI 196) 85Nubian women (after Davies 1905 PI xxviii) 86 Syro-Canaanite woman from thetomb ofRekhmire (after Davies 1943 PI xxiii) 87-8 Hittite warriors from MedinetHabu (after University of Chicago 1932 PI 87)

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The Children of the Sea People

The child standing by Wagon NO5 (Fig 22) wears a single long lock of hairgrowing from the crown of his head 11 This hairstyle is characteristic ofSyro-Canaanite children of both sexes in New Kingdom reliefs12(Fig 94 Davies1905 PI xxxiX)13

Children often appear in New Kingdom scenes of siege or battle beinglifted over the walls of a besieged city in Syria or Canaan (Fig 95) It is notclear whether these children are being sacrificed to the gods to change thecourse of the battle presented to Pharaoh as hostages or helped to escape(Keel 1975 Spalinger 1977-8 Feucht 1990b33-39 Donohue 1992) In thisinstance we suggest that they are being helped to escape (Keel 1975456 Thechildren appear to be on the point of collapse and their chances of escape areprobably slim Keel suggests that fear of Pharaoh immobilizes the childrenwith terror and they sink to the ground unable to stir)

Donohue (199283) suggests that the women are scooping the children upinto the wagons before the advancing enemy but this is unlikely If they weretrying to clamber into the wagons they would be facing inwards and probablyusing their legs to get a purchase on the side of the wagon as they clamber upit (The same applies to children in scenes of besieged cities There are onlytwo examples of children who could conceivably be climbing into the city (thelittle girl on the left in Fig 95 see also Keel 1975 Fig 19)

The fact that the older children are dressed as Sea Peoples may suggestpatrilineal behaviour in the immigrant society - at least in regard to costume

Summary

The limitations of this type of source material preclude absolute conclusionsThe Aegean paintings and statuettes come from a different artistic traditionthan the Medinet Habu reliefs discrepancies between the two are inevitableEgyptian depictions of foreigners have their limitations and since the artists atMedinet Habu may have been unfamiliar with these hairstyles it is difficult to tellhow accurate these portrayals are We may however make a few suggestions

11 The second line emerging from the crown of his head in University of Chicago 1930 PI49D is probably a scratch rather than a second lock

12 See also Pritchard 1954 No 45 (the man presenting this child is said to be the ruler ofTunip and can therefore be located in Syria) Save Stiderbergh 1957 PI xxiii Martin1989PI 105 University of Chicago 1932PI 87Feucht 1990a198 n 82 points out that apart from the single plait children from Syriamay also sport two plaits a head of short hair or two clumps of hair There is quite avariety of hairstyles

13 The parallel to this scene in the tomb ofHuya describes this tribute as coming from Kharuand Kush (Sandman 193837 line 1)

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2 3

4

5

Fig 9 91 Hittite warrior from Medinet Habu (after University of Chicago 1932 PI 87) 92Hittite warriors from Abu Simbel (after Wreszinski 1935 PI 170) 93 Group ofHittites from the siege of Dapur (after ibid PI 109) 94 Syro-Canaanite women andchild (after Davies 1947 PI viii) 95 Girl being let down over the city wall relief ofthe siege of Ashkelon (after Keel 1975Fig 21)

Woman NO4 with her long straight plait conforms to Egyptian depictionsof Syro-Canaanite women although she also has parallels in Aegean artWoman No 1 has parallels in both the Egyptian tradition and the Aegeantradition although the Egyptian parallels are stronger and she is also probablya Syro-Canaanite woman Image NO7 if she is a woman is vaguely similarto certain Egyptian pictures of Syro-Canaanite women but her hair is rathershort to provide a good parallel it should fall to a point further down her back

No exact parallels are known for the hairstyle of No 2 in either Egyptian orAegean art It is not clear whether this hairstyle may represent an ethnic groupunknown to us Alternatively middotdifferent hairstyles may have been worn bywomen at different periods of their lives - married ~omen and maidens forexample or old women and young ones or pregnant women They may alsocharacterize different social standings or occupations

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In some cases the persons hairstyle is incomplete It is masked by overlappinglinages or by the edge of the wagon as in Images Nos 3 and 6If they had longer hair these people might have hairstyles like those of Women 12or 4 If Image No3 had long hair she would have excellent parallels in Aegeanart where hair ribbons are very common If the bag-shaped hairstyle of Image No3 is complete as it stands however then the best parallels are actually fomIdamongst Syrian men Woman No 6s short hair is occasionally paralleled amongstSyrian women it is much more characteristic of Nubian women however Notonly did themiddotEgyptians have Nubian servants and slaves but many Egyptians werethemselves of Nubian stock so that women of this type could be found throughoutthe territories under Egyptian rule

The Sea Peoples were accompanied by men from the areas they traversedThey may have been taken as slaves or prisoners or maybe they decided tojoin the Sea Peoples advance in order to seek their fortunes abroad Such arethe wagon drivers Nos 5 and 9 who are definitely Syro-Canaanites andperhaps Image No3 ifhe is a Syrian or Image No7 if he is a Hittite

This picture of a complex and highly diverse origin of the group of Sea Peoplesportrayed in the Medinet Habu reliefs (which mayor may not be a typical group)suggests that it is unlikely that the Philistines were 100 pure Mycenaean Greeks(Stager 1995337 following Mazar 1988255-6 260) Like Sherratt (1998307)we characterize the Sea Peoples as cosmopolitan although we still envisagemany of them as Aegeans Other groups or individuals would have joined the SeaPeoples in northern Syria and Canaan

Conclusions

In the Medinet Habu reliefs the Sea Peoples are accompanied by at leastone woman who is clearly Syro-Canaanite and also by women with parallelsin Aegean art A similar conclusion was also reached by an analysis ofmaterial culture assemblages from Syria and Palestine (Bunimovitz andYasur-Landau forthcoming a b) attributed to the first stages of Aegeansettlement at the beginning of the Iron Age In these studies evidence ofbehavioural patterns of Aegean origin such as weaving with a loom equippedwith round unperfonlted loomweights and cooking on a hearth with Aegeanstyle cooking-pots were found side by side with local textile manufacture andcooking methods These finds may be cautiously interpreted as evidence of thepresence of women of both Aegean and local origin at these sites

The evidence from the reliefs shows that the Sea Peoples were accompaniedby men and women from Syria andor Canaan and by children probably theSea Peoples offspring by these women This indicates that the Sea Peoplesspent time in Syria andor Canaan before they continued on their way to Egypt

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Sweeneyand Yasur-Landau Women Sea Peoples

Rather than envisaging the Sea Peoples immigration as a rapid concerted attack ata number of points simultaneously (Stager 1995) we should consider it as acomplex situation of not necessarily coordinated movements by different groupsfrom different areas

The size of the children depicted in the Medinet Habu reliefs may give ussome indication of how long the Sea Peoples had been present in the areabefore they moved south to Egypt If the younger children are the offspring ofthese women and the Sea Peoples the latter must have reached the area someseven or six years earlier if the older children wearing Philistine headgearare also the offspring of these households then we should think in terms of aninterval of thirteen years or more A similar observation was made by Singer(1987418) on the basis of the tablets from Ugarit and Ras Ibn Hani Thismeans that the fall of Ugarit should have occurred some fifteen to twentyyears before Ramses Ills war with the Sea Peoples It is quite acceptablehowever to postulate a short period of consolidation before the Sea Peoplesattempted to surge down into Egypt 14

The group we see in the Medinet Habu reliefs with their families would thenbe a second wave of settlement

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank I Finkelstein I Singer S Bunimovitz and the lateP Beck for reading and commenting on earlier drafts of this paper We wouldalso like to thank the Griffith Institute Oxford for allowing us to quotematerial from the unpublished notebooks of Sir Alan Gardiner

REFERENCES

Akurgal E 1962 The Art of the Hittites LondonAldred C 1973 Akhenaten and Nefertiti New YorkAstrom P 1992 Approaches to the Study of Women in Ancient Cyprus In

Astrom P ed Acta Cypria Acts of an International Congress onCypriote Archaeology held in GOteborg on 22-24 August 1991 Part 2(Studies in Mediterranean Archaeology Pocket-Book 117) Jonsered 5-8

14 On the other hand the size of the children depicted in the reliefs may not necessarily haveany historical significance Nor are these children necessarily these womens offspring bythe Sea People they even may be these womens children by previous partners in whichcase this part of the argument is irrelevant The Philistine youths may even be youngPhilistines who have been assigned to guarding the women and children as a relativelysafe post in view of their youth and inexperience

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Tel Aviv 26 (1999)

Bietak M 1996 Avaris The Capital othe Hyksos LondonBolger D 1994 Engendering Cypriot Archaeology Female Roles and

Statuses before the Bronze Age Opuscula Atheniensia XX 19-17Brack A and Brack A 1980 Das Grab des Haremheb Theben Nr 78

MainzBrug JF 1984 A Literary and Archaeological Study othe Philistines Vols

1 and 2 MichiganBrunner-Traut E 1956 Die altiigyptischen Scherbenbilder (Bildostraka) der

Deutschen Museen und Sammlungen WiesbadenBrunner-Traut E 1979 Egyptian Artists Sketches LondonBuchholz H-G and Karageorghis V 1973 Prehistoric Greece and Cyprus

LondonBunimovitz S and Yasur-Landau A 1996 Philistine and Israelite Pottery A

Comparative Approach to the Question of Pots and People Tel Aviv2388-101

Bunimovitz S and Yasur-Landau A Forthcominga Behavioural Aspects of12th Century BCE Aegean Immigrants in Palestine and Cyprus

Bunimovitz S and Yasur-Landau A Forthcominglb Women and AegeanImmigration to Cyprus in the 12th Century BCE

Caubert A 1998 The International Style A point of View from the Levantand Syria In Cline EH and Harris-Cline D eds The Aegean and theOrient in the Second Millennium (Aegaeum 18) Liege 105-111

Cifola B 1991 The Terminology of Ramses Ills Historical Records with aFormal Analysis of the War Scenes Orientalia 609-57

Cifola B 1994 The Role of the Sea Peoples at the end of the Late BronzeAge A Reassessment of Textual and Archaeological Evidence OriensAntiqui Miscellanea 11-23

Cline EH 1995 Tinker Tailor Soldier Sailor Minoans and MyceneansAbroad In Laffineur R and Niemeier W-D eds Politeia Societyand State in the Aegean Bronze Age (Aegaeum 12) Liege 265-287

Conkey MW and Spector J 1984 Archaeology and the Study of GenderAdvances in Archaeological Method and Theory 71-38

Darnell J C 1991 Supposed Depictions of the Hittites in the Amarna PeriodStudien zur Altiigyptischen Kultur 18 113-140

Davies N de Garis 1905 The Rock Tombs of El Amarna II LondonDavies N de Garis 1908 The Rock Tombs of El Amarna VI LondonDavies N de Garis 1928 The Work of the Graphic Branch of the

Expedition Bulletin othe Metropolitan Museum 0Art 23237-48Davies N de Garis 1932 The Work of the Graphic Branch of the

Expedition Bulletin of the Metropolitan Museum of Art 273 51-62

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The Children of the Sea People

The child standing by Wagon NO5 (Fig 22) wears a single long lock of hairgrowing from the crown of his head 11 This hairstyle is characteristic ofSyro-Canaanite children of both sexes in New Kingdom reliefs12(Fig 94 Davies1905 PI xxxiX)13

Children often appear in New Kingdom scenes of siege or battle beinglifted over the walls of a besieged city in Syria or Canaan (Fig 95) It is notclear whether these children are being sacrificed to the gods to change thecourse of the battle presented to Pharaoh as hostages or helped to escape(Keel 1975 Spalinger 1977-8 Feucht 1990b33-39 Donohue 1992) In thisinstance we suggest that they are being helped to escape (Keel 1975456 Thechildren appear to be on the point of collapse and their chances of escape areprobably slim Keel suggests that fear of Pharaoh immobilizes the childrenwith terror and they sink to the ground unable to stir)

Donohue (199283) suggests that the women are scooping the children upinto the wagons before the advancing enemy but this is unlikely If they weretrying to clamber into the wagons they would be facing inwards and probablyusing their legs to get a purchase on the side of the wagon as they clamber upit (The same applies to children in scenes of besieged cities There are onlytwo examples of children who could conceivably be climbing into the city (thelittle girl on the left in Fig 95 see also Keel 1975 Fig 19)

The fact that the older children are dressed as Sea Peoples may suggestpatrilineal behaviour in the immigrant society - at least in regard to costume

Summary

The limitations of this type of source material preclude absolute conclusionsThe Aegean paintings and statuettes come from a different artistic traditionthan the Medinet Habu reliefs discrepancies between the two are inevitableEgyptian depictions of foreigners have their limitations and since the artists atMedinet Habu may have been unfamiliar with these hairstyles it is difficult to tellhow accurate these portrayals are We may however make a few suggestions

11 The second line emerging from the crown of his head in University of Chicago 1930 PI49D is probably a scratch rather than a second lock

12 See also Pritchard 1954 No 45 (the man presenting this child is said to be the ruler ofTunip and can therefore be located in Syria) Save Stiderbergh 1957 PI xxiii Martin1989PI 105 University of Chicago 1932PI 87Feucht 1990a198 n 82 points out that apart from the single plait children from Syriamay also sport two plaits a head of short hair or two clumps of hair There is quite avariety of hairstyles

13 The parallel to this scene in the tomb ofHuya describes this tribute as coming from Kharuand Kush (Sandman 193837 line 1)

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Fig 9 91 Hittite warrior from Medinet Habu (after University of Chicago 1932 PI 87) 92Hittite warriors from Abu Simbel (after Wreszinski 1935 PI 170) 93 Group ofHittites from the siege of Dapur (after ibid PI 109) 94 Syro-Canaanite women andchild (after Davies 1947 PI viii) 95 Girl being let down over the city wall relief ofthe siege of Ashkelon (after Keel 1975Fig 21)

Woman NO4 with her long straight plait conforms to Egyptian depictionsof Syro-Canaanite women although she also has parallels in Aegean artWoman No 1 has parallels in both the Egyptian tradition and the Aegeantradition although the Egyptian parallels are stronger and she is also probablya Syro-Canaanite woman Image NO7 if she is a woman is vaguely similarto certain Egyptian pictures of Syro-Canaanite women but her hair is rathershort to provide a good parallel it should fall to a point further down her back

No exact parallels are known for the hairstyle of No 2 in either Egyptian orAegean art It is not clear whether this hairstyle may represent an ethnic groupunknown to us Alternatively middotdifferent hairstyles may have been worn bywomen at different periods of their lives - married ~omen and maidens forexample or old women and young ones or pregnant women They may alsocharacterize different social standings or occupations

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In some cases the persons hairstyle is incomplete It is masked by overlappinglinages or by the edge of the wagon as in Images Nos 3 and 6If they had longer hair these people might have hairstyles like those of Women 12or 4 If Image No3 had long hair she would have excellent parallels in Aegeanart where hair ribbons are very common If the bag-shaped hairstyle of Image No3 is complete as it stands however then the best parallels are actually fomIdamongst Syrian men Woman No 6s short hair is occasionally paralleled amongstSyrian women it is much more characteristic of Nubian women however Notonly did themiddotEgyptians have Nubian servants and slaves but many Egyptians werethemselves of Nubian stock so that women of this type could be found throughoutthe territories under Egyptian rule

The Sea Peoples were accompanied by men from the areas they traversedThey may have been taken as slaves or prisoners or maybe they decided tojoin the Sea Peoples advance in order to seek their fortunes abroad Such arethe wagon drivers Nos 5 and 9 who are definitely Syro-Canaanites andperhaps Image No3 ifhe is a Syrian or Image No7 if he is a Hittite

This picture of a complex and highly diverse origin of the group of Sea Peoplesportrayed in the Medinet Habu reliefs (which mayor may not be a typical group)suggests that it is unlikely that the Philistines were 100 pure Mycenaean Greeks(Stager 1995337 following Mazar 1988255-6 260) Like Sherratt (1998307)we characterize the Sea Peoples as cosmopolitan although we still envisagemany of them as Aegeans Other groups or individuals would have joined the SeaPeoples in northern Syria and Canaan

Conclusions

In the Medinet Habu reliefs the Sea Peoples are accompanied by at leastone woman who is clearly Syro-Canaanite and also by women with parallelsin Aegean art A similar conclusion was also reached by an analysis ofmaterial culture assemblages from Syria and Palestine (Bunimovitz andYasur-Landau forthcoming a b) attributed to the first stages of Aegeansettlement at the beginning of the Iron Age In these studies evidence ofbehavioural patterns of Aegean origin such as weaving with a loom equippedwith round unperfonlted loomweights and cooking on a hearth with Aegeanstyle cooking-pots were found side by side with local textile manufacture andcooking methods These finds may be cautiously interpreted as evidence of thepresence of women of both Aegean and local origin at these sites

The evidence from the reliefs shows that the Sea Peoples were accompaniedby men and women from Syria andor Canaan and by children probably theSea Peoples offspring by these women This indicates that the Sea Peoplesspent time in Syria andor Canaan before they continued on their way to Egypt

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Sweeneyand Yasur-Landau Women Sea Peoples

Rather than envisaging the Sea Peoples immigration as a rapid concerted attack ata number of points simultaneously (Stager 1995) we should consider it as acomplex situation of not necessarily coordinated movements by different groupsfrom different areas

The size of the children depicted in the Medinet Habu reliefs may give ussome indication of how long the Sea Peoples had been present in the areabefore they moved south to Egypt If the younger children are the offspring ofthese women and the Sea Peoples the latter must have reached the area someseven or six years earlier if the older children wearing Philistine headgearare also the offspring of these households then we should think in terms of aninterval of thirteen years or more A similar observation was made by Singer(1987418) on the basis of the tablets from Ugarit and Ras Ibn Hani Thismeans that the fall of Ugarit should have occurred some fifteen to twentyyears before Ramses Ills war with the Sea Peoples It is quite acceptablehowever to postulate a short period of consolidation before the Sea Peoplesattempted to surge down into Egypt 14

The group we see in the Medinet Habu reliefs with their families would thenbe a second wave of settlement

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank I Finkelstein I Singer S Bunimovitz and the lateP Beck for reading and commenting on earlier drafts of this paper We wouldalso like to thank the Griffith Institute Oxford for allowing us to quotematerial from the unpublished notebooks of Sir Alan Gardiner

REFERENCES

Akurgal E 1962 The Art of the Hittites LondonAldred C 1973 Akhenaten and Nefertiti New YorkAstrom P 1992 Approaches to the Study of Women in Ancient Cyprus In

Astrom P ed Acta Cypria Acts of an International Congress onCypriote Archaeology held in GOteborg on 22-24 August 1991 Part 2(Studies in Mediterranean Archaeology Pocket-Book 117) Jonsered 5-8

14 On the other hand the size of the children depicted in the reliefs may not necessarily haveany historical significance Nor are these children necessarily these womens offspring bythe Sea People they even may be these womens children by previous partners in whichcase this part of the argument is irrelevant The Philistine youths may even be youngPhilistines who have been assigned to guarding the women and children as a relativelysafe post in view of their youth and inexperience

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Tel Aviv 26 (1999)

Bietak M 1996 Avaris The Capital othe Hyksos LondonBolger D 1994 Engendering Cypriot Archaeology Female Roles and

Statuses before the Bronze Age Opuscula Atheniensia XX 19-17Brack A and Brack A 1980 Das Grab des Haremheb Theben Nr 78

MainzBrug JF 1984 A Literary and Archaeological Study othe Philistines Vols

1 and 2 MichiganBrunner-Traut E 1956 Die altiigyptischen Scherbenbilder (Bildostraka) der

Deutschen Museen und Sammlungen WiesbadenBrunner-Traut E 1979 Egyptian Artists Sketches LondonBuchholz H-G and Karageorghis V 1973 Prehistoric Greece and Cyprus

LondonBunimovitz S and Yasur-Landau A 1996 Philistine and Israelite Pottery A

Comparative Approach to the Question of Pots and People Tel Aviv2388-101

Bunimovitz S and Yasur-Landau A Forthcominga Behavioural Aspects of12th Century BCE Aegean Immigrants in Palestine and Cyprus

Bunimovitz S and Yasur-Landau A Forthcominglb Women and AegeanImmigration to Cyprus in the 12th Century BCE

Caubert A 1998 The International Style A point of View from the Levantand Syria In Cline EH and Harris-Cline D eds The Aegean and theOrient in the Second Millennium (Aegaeum 18) Liege 105-111

Cifola B 1991 The Terminology of Ramses Ills Historical Records with aFormal Analysis of the War Scenes Orientalia 609-57

Cifola B 1994 The Role of the Sea Peoples at the end of the Late BronzeAge A Reassessment of Textual and Archaeological Evidence OriensAntiqui Miscellanea 11-23

Cline EH 1995 Tinker Tailor Soldier Sailor Minoans and MyceneansAbroad In Laffineur R and Niemeier W-D eds Politeia Societyand State in the Aegean Bronze Age (Aegaeum 12) Liege 265-287

Conkey MW and Spector J 1984 Archaeology and the Study of GenderAdvances in Archaeological Method and Theory 71-38

Darnell J C 1991 Supposed Depictions of the Hittites in the Amarna PeriodStudien zur Altiigyptischen Kultur 18 113-140

Davies N de Garis 1905 The Rock Tombs of El Amarna II LondonDavies N de Garis 1908 The Rock Tombs of El Amarna VI LondonDavies N de Garis 1928 The Work of the Graphic Branch of the

Expedition Bulletin othe Metropolitan Museum 0Art 23237-48Davies N de Garis 1932 The Work of the Graphic Branch of the

Expedition Bulletin of the Metropolitan Museum of Art 273 51-62

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2 3

4

5

Fig 9 91 Hittite warrior from Medinet Habu (after University of Chicago 1932 PI 87) 92Hittite warriors from Abu Simbel (after Wreszinski 1935 PI 170) 93 Group ofHittites from the siege of Dapur (after ibid PI 109) 94 Syro-Canaanite women andchild (after Davies 1947 PI viii) 95 Girl being let down over the city wall relief ofthe siege of Ashkelon (after Keel 1975Fig 21)

Woman NO4 with her long straight plait conforms to Egyptian depictionsof Syro-Canaanite women although she also has parallels in Aegean artWoman No 1 has parallels in both the Egyptian tradition and the Aegeantradition although the Egyptian parallels are stronger and she is also probablya Syro-Canaanite woman Image NO7 if she is a woman is vaguely similarto certain Egyptian pictures of Syro-Canaanite women but her hair is rathershort to provide a good parallel it should fall to a point further down her back

No exact parallels are known for the hairstyle of No 2 in either Egyptian orAegean art It is not clear whether this hairstyle may represent an ethnic groupunknown to us Alternatively middotdifferent hairstyles may have been worn bywomen at different periods of their lives - married ~omen and maidens forexample or old women and young ones or pregnant women They may alsocharacterize different social standings or occupations

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In some cases the persons hairstyle is incomplete It is masked by overlappinglinages or by the edge of the wagon as in Images Nos 3 and 6If they had longer hair these people might have hairstyles like those of Women 12or 4 If Image No3 had long hair she would have excellent parallels in Aegeanart where hair ribbons are very common If the bag-shaped hairstyle of Image No3 is complete as it stands however then the best parallels are actually fomIdamongst Syrian men Woman No 6s short hair is occasionally paralleled amongstSyrian women it is much more characteristic of Nubian women however Notonly did themiddotEgyptians have Nubian servants and slaves but many Egyptians werethemselves of Nubian stock so that women of this type could be found throughoutthe territories under Egyptian rule

The Sea Peoples were accompanied by men from the areas they traversedThey may have been taken as slaves or prisoners or maybe they decided tojoin the Sea Peoples advance in order to seek their fortunes abroad Such arethe wagon drivers Nos 5 and 9 who are definitely Syro-Canaanites andperhaps Image No3 ifhe is a Syrian or Image No7 if he is a Hittite

This picture of a complex and highly diverse origin of the group of Sea Peoplesportrayed in the Medinet Habu reliefs (which mayor may not be a typical group)suggests that it is unlikely that the Philistines were 100 pure Mycenaean Greeks(Stager 1995337 following Mazar 1988255-6 260) Like Sherratt (1998307)we characterize the Sea Peoples as cosmopolitan although we still envisagemany of them as Aegeans Other groups or individuals would have joined the SeaPeoples in northern Syria and Canaan

Conclusions

In the Medinet Habu reliefs the Sea Peoples are accompanied by at leastone woman who is clearly Syro-Canaanite and also by women with parallelsin Aegean art A similar conclusion was also reached by an analysis ofmaterial culture assemblages from Syria and Palestine (Bunimovitz andYasur-Landau forthcoming a b) attributed to the first stages of Aegeansettlement at the beginning of the Iron Age In these studies evidence ofbehavioural patterns of Aegean origin such as weaving with a loom equippedwith round unperfonlted loomweights and cooking on a hearth with Aegeanstyle cooking-pots were found side by side with local textile manufacture andcooking methods These finds may be cautiously interpreted as evidence of thepresence of women of both Aegean and local origin at these sites

The evidence from the reliefs shows that the Sea Peoples were accompaniedby men and women from Syria andor Canaan and by children probably theSea Peoples offspring by these women This indicates that the Sea Peoplesspent time in Syria andor Canaan before they continued on their way to Egypt

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Sweeneyand Yasur-Landau Women Sea Peoples

Rather than envisaging the Sea Peoples immigration as a rapid concerted attack ata number of points simultaneously (Stager 1995) we should consider it as acomplex situation of not necessarily coordinated movements by different groupsfrom different areas

The size of the children depicted in the Medinet Habu reliefs may give ussome indication of how long the Sea Peoples had been present in the areabefore they moved south to Egypt If the younger children are the offspring ofthese women and the Sea Peoples the latter must have reached the area someseven or six years earlier if the older children wearing Philistine headgearare also the offspring of these households then we should think in terms of aninterval of thirteen years or more A similar observation was made by Singer(1987418) on the basis of the tablets from Ugarit and Ras Ibn Hani Thismeans that the fall of Ugarit should have occurred some fifteen to twentyyears before Ramses Ills war with the Sea Peoples It is quite acceptablehowever to postulate a short period of consolidation before the Sea Peoplesattempted to surge down into Egypt 14

The group we see in the Medinet Habu reliefs with their families would thenbe a second wave of settlement

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank I Finkelstein I Singer S Bunimovitz and the lateP Beck for reading and commenting on earlier drafts of this paper We wouldalso like to thank the Griffith Institute Oxford for allowing us to quotematerial from the unpublished notebooks of Sir Alan Gardiner

REFERENCES

Akurgal E 1962 The Art of the Hittites LondonAldred C 1973 Akhenaten and Nefertiti New YorkAstrom P 1992 Approaches to the Study of Women in Ancient Cyprus In

Astrom P ed Acta Cypria Acts of an International Congress onCypriote Archaeology held in GOteborg on 22-24 August 1991 Part 2(Studies in Mediterranean Archaeology Pocket-Book 117) Jonsered 5-8

14 On the other hand the size of the children depicted in the reliefs may not necessarily haveany historical significance Nor are these children necessarily these womens offspring bythe Sea People they even may be these womens children by previous partners in whichcase this part of the argument is irrelevant The Philistine youths may even be youngPhilistines who have been assigned to guarding the women and children as a relativelysafe post in view of their youth and inexperience

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Tel Aviv 26 (1999)

Bietak M 1996 Avaris The Capital othe Hyksos LondonBolger D 1994 Engendering Cypriot Archaeology Female Roles and

Statuses before the Bronze Age Opuscula Atheniensia XX 19-17Brack A and Brack A 1980 Das Grab des Haremheb Theben Nr 78

MainzBrug JF 1984 A Literary and Archaeological Study othe Philistines Vols

1 and 2 MichiganBrunner-Traut E 1956 Die altiigyptischen Scherbenbilder (Bildostraka) der

Deutschen Museen und Sammlungen WiesbadenBrunner-Traut E 1979 Egyptian Artists Sketches LondonBuchholz H-G and Karageorghis V 1973 Prehistoric Greece and Cyprus

LondonBunimovitz S and Yasur-Landau A 1996 Philistine and Israelite Pottery A

Comparative Approach to the Question of Pots and People Tel Aviv2388-101

Bunimovitz S and Yasur-Landau A Forthcominga Behavioural Aspects of12th Century BCE Aegean Immigrants in Palestine and Cyprus

Bunimovitz S and Yasur-Landau A Forthcominglb Women and AegeanImmigration to Cyprus in the 12th Century BCE

Caubert A 1998 The International Style A point of View from the Levantand Syria In Cline EH and Harris-Cline D eds The Aegean and theOrient in the Second Millennium (Aegaeum 18) Liege 105-111

Cifola B 1991 The Terminology of Ramses Ills Historical Records with aFormal Analysis of the War Scenes Orientalia 609-57

Cifola B 1994 The Role of the Sea Peoples at the end of the Late BronzeAge A Reassessment of Textual and Archaeological Evidence OriensAntiqui Miscellanea 11-23

Cline EH 1995 Tinker Tailor Soldier Sailor Minoans and MyceneansAbroad In Laffineur R and Niemeier W-D eds Politeia Societyand State in the Aegean Bronze Age (Aegaeum 12) Liege 265-287

Conkey MW and Spector J 1984 Archaeology and the Study of GenderAdvances in Archaeological Method and Theory 71-38

Darnell J C 1991 Supposed Depictions of the Hittites in the Amarna PeriodStudien zur Altiigyptischen Kultur 18 113-140

Davies N de Garis 1905 The Rock Tombs of El Amarna II LondonDavies N de Garis 1908 The Rock Tombs of El Amarna VI LondonDavies N de Garis 1928 The Work of the Graphic Branch of the

Expedition Bulletin othe Metropolitan Museum 0Art 23237-48Davies N de Garis 1932 The Work of the Graphic Branch of the

Expedition Bulletin of the Metropolitan Museum of Art 273 51-62

140

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In some cases the persons hairstyle is incomplete It is masked by overlappinglinages or by the edge of the wagon as in Images Nos 3 and 6If they had longer hair these people might have hairstyles like those of Women 12or 4 If Image No3 had long hair she would have excellent parallels in Aegeanart where hair ribbons are very common If the bag-shaped hairstyle of Image No3 is complete as it stands however then the best parallels are actually fomIdamongst Syrian men Woman No 6s short hair is occasionally paralleled amongstSyrian women it is much more characteristic of Nubian women however Notonly did themiddotEgyptians have Nubian servants and slaves but many Egyptians werethemselves of Nubian stock so that women of this type could be found throughoutthe territories under Egyptian rule

The Sea Peoples were accompanied by men from the areas they traversedThey may have been taken as slaves or prisoners or maybe they decided tojoin the Sea Peoples advance in order to seek their fortunes abroad Such arethe wagon drivers Nos 5 and 9 who are definitely Syro-Canaanites andperhaps Image No3 ifhe is a Syrian or Image No7 if he is a Hittite

This picture of a complex and highly diverse origin of the group of Sea Peoplesportrayed in the Medinet Habu reliefs (which mayor may not be a typical group)suggests that it is unlikely that the Philistines were 100 pure Mycenaean Greeks(Stager 1995337 following Mazar 1988255-6 260) Like Sherratt (1998307)we characterize the Sea Peoples as cosmopolitan although we still envisagemany of them as Aegeans Other groups or individuals would have joined the SeaPeoples in northern Syria and Canaan

Conclusions

In the Medinet Habu reliefs the Sea Peoples are accompanied by at leastone woman who is clearly Syro-Canaanite and also by women with parallelsin Aegean art A similar conclusion was also reached by an analysis ofmaterial culture assemblages from Syria and Palestine (Bunimovitz andYasur-Landau forthcoming a b) attributed to the first stages of Aegeansettlement at the beginning of the Iron Age In these studies evidence ofbehavioural patterns of Aegean origin such as weaving with a loom equippedwith round unperfonlted loomweights and cooking on a hearth with Aegeanstyle cooking-pots were found side by side with local textile manufacture andcooking methods These finds may be cautiously interpreted as evidence of thepresence of women of both Aegean and local origin at these sites

The evidence from the reliefs shows that the Sea Peoples were accompaniedby men and women from Syria andor Canaan and by children probably theSea Peoples offspring by these women This indicates that the Sea Peoplesspent time in Syria andor Canaan before they continued on their way to Egypt

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Rather than envisaging the Sea Peoples immigration as a rapid concerted attack ata number of points simultaneously (Stager 1995) we should consider it as acomplex situation of not necessarily coordinated movements by different groupsfrom different areas

The size of the children depicted in the Medinet Habu reliefs may give ussome indication of how long the Sea Peoples had been present in the areabefore they moved south to Egypt If the younger children are the offspring ofthese women and the Sea Peoples the latter must have reached the area someseven or six years earlier if the older children wearing Philistine headgearare also the offspring of these households then we should think in terms of aninterval of thirteen years or more A similar observation was made by Singer(1987418) on the basis of the tablets from Ugarit and Ras Ibn Hani Thismeans that the fall of Ugarit should have occurred some fifteen to twentyyears before Ramses Ills war with the Sea Peoples It is quite acceptablehowever to postulate a short period of consolidation before the Sea Peoplesattempted to surge down into Egypt 14

The group we see in the Medinet Habu reliefs with their families would thenbe a second wave of settlement

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank I Finkelstein I Singer S Bunimovitz and the lateP Beck for reading and commenting on earlier drafts of this paper We wouldalso like to thank the Griffith Institute Oxford for allowing us to quotematerial from the unpublished notebooks of Sir Alan Gardiner

REFERENCES

Akurgal E 1962 The Art of the Hittites LondonAldred C 1973 Akhenaten and Nefertiti New YorkAstrom P 1992 Approaches to the Study of Women in Ancient Cyprus In

Astrom P ed Acta Cypria Acts of an International Congress onCypriote Archaeology held in GOteborg on 22-24 August 1991 Part 2(Studies in Mediterranean Archaeology Pocket-Book 117) Jonsered 5-8

14 On the other hand the size of the children depicted in the reliefs may not necessarily haveany historical significance Nor are these children necessarily these womens offspring bythe Sea People they even may be these womens children by previous partners in whichcase this part of the argument is irrelevant The Philistine youths may even be youngPhilistines who have been assigned to guarding the women and children as a relativelysafe post in view of their youth and inexperience

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Bietak M 1996 Avaris The Capital othe Hyksos LondonBolger D 1994 Engendering Cypriot Archaeology Female Roles and

Statuses before the Bronze Age Opuscula Atheniensia XX 19-17Brack A and Brack A 1980 Das Grab des Haremheb Theben Nr 78

MainzBrug JF 1984 A Literary and Archaeological Study othe Philistines Vols

1 and 2 MichiganBrunner-Traut E 1956 Die altiigyptischen Scherbenbilder (Bildostraka) der

Deutschen Museen und Sammlungen WiesbadenBrunner-Traut E 1979 Egyptian Artists Sketches LondonBuchholz H-G and Karageorghis V 1973 Prehistoric Greece and Cyprus

LondonBunimovitz S and Yasur-Landau A 1996 Philistine and Israelite Pottery A

Comparative Approach to the Question of Pots and People Tel Aviv2388-101

Bunimovitz S and Yasur-Landau A Forthcominga Behavioural Aspects of12th Century BCE Aegean Immigrants in Palestine and Cyprus

Bunimovitz S and Yasur-Landau A Forthcominglb Women and AegeanImmigration to Cyprus in the 12th Century BCE

Caubert A 1998 The International Style A point of View from the Levantand Syria In Cline EH and Harris-Cline D eds The Aegean and theOrient in the Second Millennium (Aegaeum 18) Liege 105-111

Cifola B 1991 The Terminology of Ramses Ills Historical Records with aFormal Analysis of the War Scenes Orientalia 609-57

Cifola B 1994 The Role of the Sea Peoples at the end of the Late BronzeAge A Reassessment of Textual and Archaeological Evidence OriensAntiqui Miscellanea 11-23

Cline EH 1995 Tinker Tailor Soldier Sailor Minoans and MyceneansAbroad In Laffineur R and Niemeier W-D eds Politeia Societyand State in the Aegean Bronze Age (Aegaeum 12) Liege 265-287

Conkey MW and Spector J 1984 Archaeology and the Study of GenderAdvances in Archaeological Method and Theory 71-38

Darnell J C 1991 Supposed Depictions of the Hittites in the Amarna PeriodStudien zur Altiigyptischen Kultur 18 113-140

Davies N de Garis 1905 The Rock Tombs of El Amarna II LondonDavies N de Garis 1908 The Rock Tombs of El Amarna VI LondonDavies N de Garis 1928 The Work of the Graphic Branch of the

Expedition Bulletin othe Metropolitan Museum 0Art 23237-48Davies N de Garis 1932 The Work of the Graphic Branch of the

Expedition Bulletin of the Metropolitan Museum of Art 273 51-62

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Sweeneyand Yasur-Landau Women Sea Peoples

Rather than envisaging the Sea Peoples immigration as a rapid concerted attack ata number of points simultaneously (Stager 1995) we should consider it as acomplex situation of not necessarily coordinated movements by different groupsfrom different areas

The size of the children depicted in the Medinet Habu reliefs may give ussome indication of how long the Sea Peoples had been present in the areabefore they moved south to Egypt If the younger children are the offspring ofthese women and the Sea Peoples the latter must have reached the area someseven or six years earlier if the older children wearing Philistine headgearare also the offspring of these households then we should think in terms of aninterval of thirteen years or more A similar observation was made by Singer(1987418) on the basis of the tablets from Ugarit and Ras Ibn Hani Thismeans that the fall of Ugarit should have occurred some fifteen to twentyyears before Ramses Ills war with the Sea Peoples It is quite acceptablehowever to postulate a short period of consolidation before the Sea Peoplesattempted to surge down into Egypt 14

The group we see in the Medinet Habu reliefs with their families would thenbe a second wave of settlement

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank I Finkelstein I Singer S Bunimovitz and the lateP Beck for reading and commenting on earlier drafts of this paper We wouldalso like to thank the Griffith Institute Oxford for allowing us to quotematerial from the unpublished notebooks of Sir Alan Gardiner

REFERENCES

Akurgal E 1962 The Art of the Hittites LondonAldred C 1973 Akhenaten and Nefertiti New YorkAstrom P 1992 Approaches to the Study of Women in Ancient Cyprus In

Astrom P ed Acta Cypria Acts of an International Congress onCypriote Archaeology held in GOteborg on 22-24 August 1991 Part 2(Studies in Mediterranean Archaeology Pocket-Book 117) Jonsered 5-8

14 On the other hand the size of the children depicted in the reliefs may not necessarily haveany historical significance Nor are these children necessarily these womens offspring bythe Sea People they even may be these womens children by previous partners in whichcase this part of the argument is irrelevant The Philistine youths may even be youngPhilistines who have been assigned to guarding the women and children as a relativelysafe post in view of their youth and inexperience

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Bietak M 1996 Avaris The Capital othe Hyksos LondonBolger D 1994 Engendering Cypriot Archaeology Female Roles and

Statuses before the Bronze Age Opuscula Atheniensia XX 19-17Brack A and Brack A 1980 Das Grab des Haremheb Theben Nr 78

MainzBrug JF 1984 A Literary and Archaeological Study othe Philistines Vols

1 and 2 MichiganBrunner-Traut E 1956 Die altiigyptischen Scherbenbilder (Bildostraka) der

Deutschen Museen und Sammlungen WiesbadenBrunner-Traut E 1979 Egyptian Artists Sketches LondonBuchholz H-G and Karageorghis V 1973 Prehistoric Greece and Cyprus

LondonBunimovitz S and Yasur-Landau A 1996 Philistine and Israelite Pottery A

Comparative Approach to the Question of Pots and People Tel Aviv2388-101

Bunimovitz S and Yasur-Landau A Forthcominga Behavioural Aspects of12th Century BCE Aegean Immigrants in Palestine and Cyprus

Bunimovitz S and Yasur-Landau A Forthcominglb Women and AegeanImmigration to Cyprus in the 12th Century BCE

Caubert A 1998 The International Style A point of View from the Levantand Syria In Cline EH and Harris-Cline D eds The Aegean and theOrient in the Second Millennium (Aegaeum 18) Liege 105-111

Cifola B 1991 The Terminology of Ramses Ills Historical Records with aFormal Analysis of the War Scenes Orientalia 609-57

Cifola B 1994 The Role of the Sea Peoples at the end of the Late BronzeAge A Reassessment of Textual and Archaeological Evidence OriensAntiqui Miscellanea 11-23

Cline EH 1995 Tinker Tailor Soldier Sailor Minoans and MyceneansAbroad In Laffineur R and Niemeier W-D eds Politeia Societyand State in the Aegean Bronze Age (Aegaeum 12) Liege 265-287

Conkey MW and Spector J 1984 Archaeology and the Study of GenderAdvances in Archaeological Method and Theory 71-38

Darnell J C 1991 Supposed Depictions of the Hittites in the Amarna PeriodStudien zur Altiigyptischen Kultur 18 113-140

Davies N de Garis 1905 The Rock Tombs of El Amarna II LondonDavies N de Garis 1908 The Rock Tombs of El Amarna VI LondonDavies N de Garis 1928 The Work of the Graphic Branch of the

Expedition Bulletin othe Metropolitan Museum 0Art 23237-48Davies N de Garis 1932 The Work of the Graphic Branch of the

Expedition Bulletin of the Metropolitan Museum of Art 273 51-62

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Tel Aviv 26 (1999)

Bietak M 1996 Avaris The Capital othe Hyksos LondonBolger D 1994 Engendering Cypriot Archaeology Female Roles and

Statuses before the Bronze Age Opuscula Atheniensia XX 19-17Brack A and Brack A 1980 Das Grab des Haremheb Theben Nr 78

MainzBrug JF 1984 A Literary and Archaeological Study othe Philistines Vols

1 and 2 MichiganBrunner-Traut E 1956 Die altiigyptischen Scherbenbilder (Bildostraka) der

Deutschen Museen und Sammlungen WiesbadenBrunner-Traut E 1979 Egyptian Artists Sketches LondonBuchholz H-G and Karageorghis V 1973 Prehistoric Greece and Cyprus

LondonBunimovitz S and Yasur-Landau A 1996 Philistine and Israelite Pottery A

Comparative Approach to the Question of Pots and People Tel Aviv2388-101

Bunimovitz S and Yasur-Landau A Forthcominga Behavioural Aspects of12th Century BCE Aegean Immigrants in Palestine and Cyprus

Bunimovitz S and Yasur-Landau A Forthcominglb Women and AegeanImmigration to Cyprus in the 12th Century BCE

Caubert A 1998 The International Style A point of View from the Levantand Syria In Cline EH and Harris-Cline D eds The Aegean and theOrient in the Second Millennium (Aegaeum 18) Liege 105-111

Cifola B 1991 The Terminology of Ramses Ills Historical Records with aFormal Analysis of the War Scenes Orientalia 609-57

Cifola B 1994 The Role of the Sea Peoples at the end of the Late BronzeAge A Reassessment of Textual and Archaeological Evidence OriensAntiqui Miscellanea 11-23

Cline EH 1995 Tinker Tailor Soldier Sailor Minoans and MyceneansAbroad In Laffineur R and Niemeier W-D eds Politeia Societyand State in the Aegean Bronze Age (Aegaeum 12) Liege 265-287

Conkey MW and Spector J 1984 Archaeology and the Study of GenderAdvances in Archaeological Method and Theory 71-38

Darnell J C 1991 Supposed Depictions of the Hittites in the Amarna PeriodStudien zur Altiigyptischen Kultur 18 113-140

Davies N de Garis 1905 The Rock Tombs of El Amarna II LondonDavies N de Garis 1908 The Rock Tombs of El Amarna VI LondonDavies N de Garis 1928 The Work of the Graphic Branch of the

Expedition Bulletin othe Metropolitan Museum 0Art 23237-48Davies N de Garis 1932 The Work of the Graphic Branch of the

Expedition Bulletin of the Metropolitan Museum of Art 273 51-62

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University of Chicago Oriental Institute Epigraphic and Architectural Survey1930 Medinet Habu Vol I Chicago

University of Chicago Oriental Institute Epigraphic and Architectural Survey1932 Medinet Habu Vol II Chicago

University of Chicago Oriental Institute Epigraphic and Architectural Survey1936 Reliefs and Inscriptions at Karnak Vol II Chicago

University of Chicago Oriental Institute Epigraphic and Architectural Survey1980 The Tomb ofKheruef Theban Tomb 192 Chicago

University of Chicago Oriental Institute Epigraphic and Architectural Survey1986 The Battle Reliefs of King Sety I In Reliefs and Inscriptions atKarnak Vol IV Chicago

Vandersleyen C 1995 L Egypte et la vallee du Nil Tome 2 ParisVandier d Abbadie r 1972 Les objects de toilette egyptiens au musee du

Louvre ParisVermeule E and Karageorghis V 1982 Mycenean Pictorial Vase Painting

Cambridge (Ma)Wachsmann S 1987 Aegeans in the Theban Tombs LeuvenWainwright G 1964 Shekelesh or Shashu JEA 5040-46Wallert I 1967 Der Verzierte Laffel Agyptologische Abhandlungen 16

WiesbadenWeinstein JM 1998 Egyptian Relations with the Eastern Mediterranean

World at the End of the Second Millennium BCE In Gitin S MazarA and Stern E eds Mediterranean Peoples in Transition Thirteenthto Early Tenth Centuries BCpound In Honour of Professor Trude DothanJerusalem 188-196

Wenig S 1967 Die Frau im Alten Agypten LeipzigWreszinski W 1923 Atlas zur altiigyptischen Kunstgeschichte I LeipzigWreszinski W 1935 Atlas zur altagyptischen Kunstgeschichte II Leipzig

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of T

el A

viv

Uni

vers

ity

Sweeneyand Yasur-Landau Women Sea Peoples

Stone B 1995 The Philistines and Acculturation Culture Change and EthnicContinuity in the Iron Age BASOR 2987-32

University of Chicago Oriental Institute Epigraphic and Architectural Survey1930 Medinet Habu Vol I Chicago

University of Chicago Oriental Institute Epigraphic and Architectural Survey1932 Medinet Habu Vol II Chicago

University of Chicago Oriental Institute Epigraphic and Architectural Survey1936 Reliefs and Inscriptions at Karnak Vol II Chicago

University of Chicago Oriental Institute Epigraphic and Architectural Survey1980 The Tomb ofKheruef Theban Tomb 192 Chicago

University of Chicago Oriental Institute Epigraphic and Architectural Survey1986 The Battle Reliefs of King Sety I In Reliefs and Inscriptions atKarnak Vol IV Chicago

Vandersleyen C 1995 L Egypte et la vallee du Nil Tome 2 ParisVandier d Abbadie r 1972 Les objects de toilette egyptiens au musee du

Louvre ParisVermeule E and Karageorghis V 1982 Mycenean Pictorial Vase Painting

Cambridge (Ma)Wachsmann S 1987 Aegeans in the Theban Tombs LeuvenWainwright G 1964 Shekelesh or Shashu JEA 5040-46Wallert I 1967 Der Verzierte Laffel Agyptologische Abhandlungen 16

WiesbadenWeinstein JM 1998 Egyptian Relations with the Eastern Mediterranean

World at the End of the Second Millennium BCE In Gitin S MazarA and Stern E eds Mediterranean Peoples in Transition Thirteenthto Early Tenth Centuries BCpound In Honour of Professor Trude DothanJerusalem 188-196

Wenig S 1967 Die Frau im Alten Agypten LeipzigWreszinski W 1923 Atlas zur altiigyptischen Kunstgeschichte I LeipzigWreszinski W 1935 Atlas zur altagyptischen Kunstgeschichte II Leipzig

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