| This may blow your mind, but what if the "People From the Sea" are Odysseus, his family, and his crew? * It was Penelope herself who voiced her fear of the People From the Sea. Did anyone outside of this group mention the People From the Sea? Was anyone outside of the group anticipating, terrified, or already terrorized by some other group? * Ithaca is an island kingdom; anyone who lives there is a sailor by experience, and all of Greece is a region of islands and archipelagos * Odysseus and his crew had not seen them or found them, because they are not sufficiently self-aware or spiritual * They violated the Law of Zeus. All of them. * That's why the Trojan Horse didn't have wheels. It was terrible to drag across dry land, but it was made of buoyant wood. It was a seahorse. * Everyone they met, from the Trojans to Circe to Calypso and the Cyclopes, obesrved them to approach from the sea, land on the shore, and leave the same way * They (Odysseus and his family) ultimately attacked Ithaca (the suitors) * Odysseus, his wife and son go into exile by boat, and sail west, [beyond Gibraltar], thus permanently becoming People Of The Sea * The Odyssey is a myth, fiction, legendary, and none of its characters actually existed * The People From the Sea are not mentioned in Homer's text. They're extra-canonical. They were hypothesized, starting in the 19th century. |
The term "Sea People" or "People of the Sea" has been taken from Egyptian documents that described a series of battles for defending Egypt against them.
Egypt succeeded to repel them, but other regions were not so lucky, because around the same time a lot of cities were destroyed. Because of the coincidence in time, it is assumed that the Egyptians have fought against the same people who destroyed the other cities.
There are also documents from Ugarit, written immediately before that city was destroyed, which requested help because they expected an imminent attack, but it was too late and the city was destroyed before receiving any help.
The documents do not contain enough information to identify who were the attackers, but there is no doubt that attacks existed and they destroyed many cities in Greece, Crete, Anatolia and in the territory of modern Syria.