The Sea Peoples were a confederation of seafaring raiders of the late Bronze Age, who sailed the Mediterranean and caused disruption and destruction to many of the great civilizations of the time. They are believed to have originated from the Aegean region, and are known to have attacked Egypt,
The Sea Peoples is a phrase used to describe an unidentified seafaring confederation or group of tribes hypothesized to have attacked Egypt and other Eastern Mediterranean regions around 1200 BC during the Late Bronze Age. The hypothesis was proposed by the 19th-century Egyptologists Emmanuel de Rougé and Gaston Maspero, on the basis of primary sources such as the reliefs on the Mortuary Temple of Ramesses III at Medinet Habu. Subsequent research developed the hypothesis further, attempting to link these sources to other Late Bronze Age evidence of migration, piracy, and destruction. While initial versions of the hypothesis regarded the Sea Peoples as a primary cause of the Late Bronze Age collapse, more recent versions generally regard them as a symptom of events which were already in motion before their purported attacks.