Mediterranean Mercenaries of the Bronze Age

MAURO SPANU / ALAMY

Few readers of the Bible spend much time considering what may be one of the most interesting facets to the story of the rise of ancient Israel, namely the central role of professional warriors, more commonly known as mercenaries. These often unsavory individuals, however, were a staple of the social environment from which ancient Israel emerged. Even David, before he became leader of the Israelites, is remembered as a mercenary who sold his services to the Philistine king of Gath. Later, as king, David routinely surrounded himself with sellswords and foreign fighters.

Well before David’s rise to power, mercenaries were regularly involved in the social, political, and military affairs of the Mediterranean during the Late Bronze Age (c. 1550–1100 BCE). In this period, mercenaries were employed not only by imperial powers, such as New Kingdom Egypt and the Hittites, but also by many of the Levantine vassal kingdoms that resisted imperial rule. Indeed, warriors from across the Mediterranean—from Cyprus to Anatolia and even Sardinia—served in the Levant, as illustrated by textual sources, iconography, and increasingly archaeology. Here, I examine one of the better-documented warrior groups, the Shardanu. On their example, I will illuminate the broader sociopolitical context of Israel’s rise and its relationship to its coastal neighbors, namely, the Philistines.

The Shardanu are first mentioned in the famous Amarna Letters (mid-14th century BCE), and then again during the second year of Ramesses II (r. 1279–1213), following their attempted invasion of Egypt in 1278/77. Within only a few years, the defeated Shardanu seem to have been pressed into Egyptian military service, fighting conspicuously against the Hittites in the battle of Kadesh (c. 1274), as depicted in various commemorative reliefs. They appear again in the reliefs in the mortuary complex of Ramesses III (r. 1187–1157) at Medinet Habu, where they are listed alongside the Peleset (Philistines), Tjeker, and Weshesh as one of the “peoples of the sea,” although some Shardanu (presumably mercenaries) are also shown fighting on the side of the Egyptians. After their defeat, Ramesses III claims to have impressed the Shardanu into service and settled them in various forts in Egypt. Interestingly, these Egyptian reliefs consistently depict the Shardanu wielding longswords, bearing round shields, and wearing distinctive horned helmets.

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So who were the Shardanu and where did they come from? Various lines of evidence reveal they belonged to a diaspora of soldiers and raiders from the island of Sardinia who gradually, over the course of the Late Bronze Age, entered military service in the eastern Mediterranean. Scholars have long associated the Shardanu with Sardinia based on the similarity of the two names, although most have assumed the Shardanu originally migrated from the east (possibly Anatolia) and simply lent their name to the island once they settled there. Only in the past two decades, in fact, have scholars grown comfortable with identifying the Shardanu as Sardinia’s indigenous inhabitants who ventured east during the course of the Late Bronze Age.

ERICH LESSING / ART RESOURCE, NY

Most of the Shardanu likely originated among the many ancient megalithic villages that dot the Sardinian landscape to the present day.^a Archaeologists have identified more than 7,000 such villages, which were founded as early as the mid-second millennium and were likely inhabited until the coming of the Phoenicians in the tenth or ninth century BCE. They are defined especially by their impressive stone towers (known locally as nuraghi) that likely served as village strongholds. The island’s ancient warrior culture is reflected in the many bronze warrior figurines with horned helmets, shields, and spears that have been found at sites across Sardinia.¹ Traditionally dated to the tenth century or later, these indigenous representations compare very well with how the Shardanu were depicted in the earlier Egyptian reliefs. Together with the discovery at Mont’e Prama of numerous life-size limestone statues from around 800 BCE of warriors wielding shields, swords, bows, and quivers, these Iron Age artifacts from the Shardanu’s ancestral land testify to the endurance or cultural memory of that Bronze Age warrior society.

DMITRIY MOROZ / ALAMY

Archaeological evidence indicates that Sardinian mercenaries were present throughout the eastern Mediterranean during the Late Bronze Age. For example, the distinctive longswords carried by the Shardanu in Egyptian reliefs are well known from archaeological sites in the central and western Mediterranean, especially Italy and mainland Greece, where they were likely produced. Much longer than a typical Egyptian or Levantine dagger, this sword was used as both a thrusting and slashing weapon. Examples have been excavated at the site of Enkomi in Cyprus, at Alalakh and Ugarit in the northern Levant, and at Gezer and Tell es-Sa’idiyeh in the south.² When viewed alongside textual sources, such discoveries suggest the possibility that Sardinian mercenaries were present in many major Levantine cities.

REALY EASY STAR / TONI SPAGONE / ALAMY

Ceramic evidence similarly points to the likely presence of Sardinians in Cyprus and the Levant. At the ancient capital known today as Hala Sultan Tekke in eastern Cyprus, a half-dozen Sardinian black burnished bowls were recovered from offering pits dated to the 13th century.³ These undecorated and rather mundane vessels—which scholars call Nuragic Gray Ware (after the nuraghi village sites where such pottery is found in abundance)—were not luxury wares or prestige items imported from Sardinia. Rather, they were probably the everyday wares carried and used by Sardinian mercenaries who ended up in Cyprus and were themselves perhaps foreign imports (see below). Nuragic pottery, including four ovoid storage jars, was also discovered at the nearby site of Pyla-Kokkinokremos, an isolated fortified settlement dating to the 12th century that may have included Sardinian mercenaries. Likewise, certain types of locally produced handmade burnished wares found in northern Levantine sites, such as Ugarit and Tell Kazel (south of Tartus), closely resemble Nuragic pottery and may point to the presence of Sardinians who settled in the region.

REALY EASY STAR / TONI SPAGONE / ALAMY

Evidence from ancient trade also indicates that Sardinia was actively involved in the long-distance trading networks that characterized the Late Bronze Age. For example, copper ingots from Sardinia were part of the cargo discovered with the Late Bronze Age ship-wreck found off the northern coast of Israel near HaHotrim, and scores of Cypriot ingots have been excavated at sites across Sardinia.⁴ These are not isolated finds but rather evidence of enduring, long-distance exchanges in which Cypriot copper flowed westward to Sardinia, probably for the production of weaponry, and Sardinian copper was shipped eastward to Cyprus and the Levant. Based on the archaeological evidence presented above, I believe these exchanges likely also included Sardinian mercenaries who traveled east with their weapons and wares, effectively becoming traded goods themselves.

COURTESY P. M. FISCHER / THE NEW SWEDISH CYPRUS EXPEDITION AT HALA SULTAN TEKKE

COURTESY P. M. FISCHER / THE NEW SWEDISH CYPRUS EXPEDITION AT HALA SULTAN TEKKE

The combined evidence from texts, iconography, and archaeology, therefore, makes the Shardanu one of the best-documented examples of foreign mercenaries who found their way to Egypt and the Levant during the Late Bronze Age. Indeed, they are perhaps the only one of the “peoples of the sea”^b whose origins and movements can be traced both historically and geographically. Consequently, the example of the Shardanu provides us with a better understanding of the emergence of another of the “peoples of the sea”—the Philistines—who arrived on the scene later, in the early 12th century, to emerge eventually as Israel’s early nemesis.

PRISMA ARCHIVO / ALAMY

The Philistines first appeared along the southern Levantine coast in the wake of their own defeat by Ramesses III in Egypt. The emerging consensus among archaeologists, however, is that their arrival was not part of an organized conquest or single migratory event. Rather, the five Philistine cities—Ashdod, Ashkelon, Ekron, Gath, and Gaza—each experienced different settlement transitions during the early 12th century: Some cities were largely destroyed (Ekron), others only partially (Ashdod), and others were seemingly abandoned by the Egyptians (Ashkelon).⁵ In each case, they were thereafter inhabited by a Philistine minority that lived with and along-side the local Canaanite population. This is suggested by the fact that only about 30 percent of the pottery from these sites is culturally Philistine (with typical Aegean characteristics, albeit locally made), while the remainder of the assemblage continues Canaanite ceramic traditions. This Philistine minority also brought with them new building styles and industries, including distinctive house and hearth types as well as new weaving traditions.

A.D. RIDDLE / BIBLEPLACES.COM

The story of the Shardanu, however, suggests that the Philistines actually represent the tail end of a long-running Late Bronze Age phenomenon where Mediterranean groups were drawn into imperial conflicts in the east. When faced with defeat, the Philistines, like the Shardanu before them, were pressed into mercenary service by the Egyptians. During the waning days of the empire, they were then forcibly resettled in Egyptian strongholds along the southern Levantine coast. After Egypt’s withdrawal from Canaan in the late 12th century, however, the Philistines achieved much greater autonomy than the Shardanu before them, as the Egyptian army was neither present to direct them in conflict nor able to contain them within their allotted territory. This picture is corroborated by the biblical account, which describes the 12th and 11th centuries as a time when independent Philistine warlords were frequently in confrontation with the early Israelites, with no mention of the Egyptians (e.g., Judges 13–16; 1 Samuel 4–7; 13–14; 17).

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Why have mercenaries often been overlooked in our understanding of the messy transition from Bronze Age imperial powers to the rise of new groups such as the Israelites and Philistines during the Iron Age? Scholarly narratives of ancient Near Eastern history largely represent the perspectives and biases of imperial powers, such as Egypt, Hatti, and Assyria, that produced most of our surviving texts. This has inadvertently led to the construction of idealized images of the rise and fall of ancient empires, without proper consideration given to the role played by less conspicuous groups, including foreign fighters, whose presence can often be difficult to establish. But, as we learn by examining the Shardanu, the Philistines, and even the biblical stories of King David, mercenaries were not only commonplace but also critical players in the shaping of the cultural, sociopolitical, and economic landscape of the ancient Mediterranean across millennia.