transportation of large quantities of grain from Egypt to the
homeland via Hittite-controlled ports on the southern Anatolian
coast. The Hittites’ Syrian vassal states, notably Ugarit and
Amurru, were also called upon to send grain to the homeland, via
ships to Anatolian ports like Ura, on the southeast coast, for
overland transport. Serious problems would arise if the supply-
routes, from Egypt or Syria, were cut off or seriously disrupted.
ATTACKS BY LAND AND SEA
At this point we should introduce another element into our story–
the so-called Sea Peoples. Records from the reign of the Egyptian
pharaoh Ramesses III (1184–1153) tell us that in the early twelfth
century, large groups of peoples coming from across the sea swept
through many parts of the Near Eastern world, from Anatolia to
Cyprus and across much of Syria and Palestine, leaving a trail of
devastation in their wake before they were finally repulsed in
Canaan and on the Egyptian coast by the pharaoh’s forces. Though
commonly known as‘the Sea Peoples’, their movements involved
extensive operations on land as well as by sea. Some of them had
already attacked the Egyptian Delta in the reign of one of Ramesses’
Figure 25.1Sherden warriors (a Sea Peoples group), Luxor.
260 WARRIORS OF ANATOLIA