CAMS 400W

The Shardana were among the first of the peoples now categorized as "Sea Peoples" to appear in the historical record. They made their first appearance in the Amarna letters (mid 14th c. BCE), serving as part of an Egyptian garrison in Byblos, where they provided their services to the mayor, Rib Hadda (EA 81, EA 122, EA 123 in Moran 1992: 150-1, 201-2). They would appear next during the reign of Ramesses II, in the mid-13th century BCE. Ramesses tells us, in his Kadesh inscriptions, that he assimilated some of the Shardana into his own personal guard (Kadesh Battle Inscriptions in Lichtheim 1976: 63ff). 

The Shardana showed up in Egypt again during the reign of Merenptah, when they fought Egypt as part of a coalition of Sea Peoples (Redford 1992: 248-9), and again in the reign of Ramesses III, where they are featured prominently in the Medinet Habu reliefs as fighters alongside the Philistines. They are depicted both among the Sea Peoples and as allies of the Egyptians, distinguished by their horned helmets with a ball projecting from the middle, round shields, and large swords (Gardiner 1968: 196-7). 

Finally, the Shardana appear in a list of Sea Peoples occupying the Phoenician Coast in a text dating from c. 1100 BCE, the Onomasticon of Amenemope. The Shardana appear in line 268 of the Onomasticon (Gardiner 1968: 194). 

The role that the Shardana played with relation to Egypt varies from one text to another. They appear as a contingent of the Egyptian army in a wide array of sources, including the battle inscriptions of Ramesses II, the Anastasi Papyrus, and the Papyrus Harris of Ramesses III, and as an enemy of the Egyptians for the first time under Ramesses II, in the Tanis and Aswan Stelae, dated to year 2 of Ramesses II (Gardiner 1968: 195-6). Ultimately, they seem to have been mercenaries with no fixed alliances, who would fight either with or against Egypt (Zertal, 2001: 228). 

In the late 19th century, the French scholar Gaston Maspero suggested that the Shardana were a migratory people originating in Sardis who eventually settled in Sardinia, giving their name to both places. This theory of a migrating group of Sea Peoples was generally accepted in the 19th to early 20th centuries, but, according to Robert Drews (1995: 49-72), it has since come to be disputed. There is no evidence in the texts or archaeological record that the Shardana were a migratory people, nor that they were migrating to Sardinia from any other place. 

According to Dr. Donald Redford, the Shardana can be equated with the Sardonians of the classical era, a people from the Ionian coast who were skilled in fighting (1992: 243). A battle between the Phocaeans and the Sardonians is recorded in Herodotus' History, book I, 165, in which we are told that the Sardonians were a formidable naval force. In the 14th-13th centuries BCE, the Shardana also had a reputation as pirates, and it is possible that their success in this occupation provided one of the motivations for the activities of other groups of Sea Peoples. However, this idea is tied to the theory that the primary factor in the Late Bronze Age-Iron Age transition was massive pillaging and piracy on the part of certain groups in the Aegean (Redford 1992: 244). 

Adam Zertal (2001) proposes that the Sea Peoples, who have been connected by some scholars with classical Sardinia, may have occupied certain sites of central Israel for a short period of time. This theory is based on a marginal similarity between unusual stone corridors and false domes built into the Iron Age I settlement at El-Ahwat and later architectural elements found on Sardinia. Zertal (2001: 228-230) theorizes that these sites may have been established for the Shardana by the Egyptians during the transitional period from the Late Bronze Age to the Iron Age. However, as Zertal points out, the resemblance between the Sardinian sites and El-Ahwat are marginal, and no Shardana pottery has turned up at the sites in Israel. The Israel sites are also far from the coast, which does not match the historical image of the Shardana as maritime people (2001: 229). 

Primary Sources

Papyrus Harris, Ramesses III: 

History, I:166: 

Kadesh Battle Inscriptions, Ramesses II: 

EA 81, EA 122, EA 123, Akhenaten: 

Secondary Sournces

Drews, R. 

Gardiner, A. H. 

Herodotus. 

Lichtheim, M. 

Moran, W. L. 

Redford, D. B. 

Zertal, A.