Sea Peoples in the context of "Ascalon"

The Dorian invasion (or Dorian migration) is an ancient Greek myth and discredited archaeological hypothesis describing the movement of the Dorian people into the Peloponnese region of Greece. According to the myth, the Dorians migrated from central Greece shortly after the Trojan War and populated most of the southern Peloponnese, particularly the regions of Laconia, Messenia and the Argolid. The myth became combined with that of the Return of the Heracleidae, such that the descendants of the hero Heracles were imagined to have led the Dorians and founded the ruling lines of several Dorian cities, including Sparta. The myth probably emerged during the Early Iron Age as part of a process of ethnogenesis between cities claiming Dorian ancestry. In the fifth century BCE, it gained greater prominence through its use to promote unity among Sparta's Peloponnesian allies, and to differentiate Sparta from its rival Athens, believed to be of Ionian heritage.

In 1824, the German antiquarian Karl Otfried Müller published The Dorians, in which he argued that the Dorians were a northern, Indo-European people who invaded Greece and subjugated the Peloponnese. Müller's views gained general scholarly acceptance throughout the remainder of the nineteenth century and into the twentieth. The Dorians were credited with introducing new forms of material culture and destroying the Mycenaean palaces, though this created conflicts between the interpretative narrative, the mythological tradition, and the archaeological evidence. The Dorians also became associated with the Sea Peoples, believed to have destroyed several Near Eastern sites at the end of the Bronze Age. During the first half of the twentieth century, scholars attempted to find archaeological and linguistic evidence of the Dorian invasion and to trace its route, though these efforts proved largely unsuccessful.

Piracy is an act of robbery or criminal violence by ship or boat-borne attackers upon another ship or a coastal area, typically with the goal of stealing cargo and valuable goods, or taking hostages. Those who conduct acts of piracy are called pirates, and vessels used for piracy are called pirate ships. The earliest documented instances of piracy were in the 14th century BC, when the Sea Peoples, a group of ocean raiders, attacked the ships of the Aegean and Mediterranean civilisations. Narrow channels which funnel shipping into predictable routes have long created opportunities for piracy, as well as for privateering and commerce raiding.

Historic examples of such areas include the waters of Gibraltar, the Strait of Malacca, Madagascar, the Gulf of Aden, and the English Channel, whose geographic structures facilitated pirate attacks. The term piracy generally refers to maritime piracy, although the term has been generalized to refer to acts committed on land, in the air, on computer networks, and (in science fiction) outer space. Piracy usually excludes crimes committed by the perpetrator on their own vessel (e.g. theft), as well as privateering, which implies authorization by a state government.

The Twentieth Dynasty of Egypt (notated Dynasty XX, alternatively 20th Dynasty or Dynasty 20) is the third and last dynasty of the Ancient Egyptian New Kingdom period, lasting from 1189 BC to 1077 BC. The 19th and 20th Dynasties together constitute an era known as the Ramesside period owing to the predominance of rulers with the given name "Ramesses". This dynasty is generally considered to mark the beginning of the decline of Ancient Egypt, coinciding with the Bronze Age Collapse which led to the end of the New Kingdom and the onset of the Third Intermediate Period. During the period of the Twentieth Dynasty, Ancient Egypt faced the crisis of invasions by Sea Peoples. Though the dynasty was able to successfully defend Egypt, it left the kingdom seriously crippled.

The Peleset (Ancient Egyptian: pwrꜣsꜣtj) or Pulasati (in older literature) are a people appearing in fragmentary historical and iconographic records in ancient Egyptian from the Eastern Mediterranean in the late 2nd millennium BCE. They are hypothesised to have been one of the several ethnic groups of which the invading Sea Peoples were said to be composed. Today, historians generally identify the Peleset with the Philistines.

Lachish (Hebrew: לכיש, romanized: Lāḵîš; Koine Greek: Λαχίς; Latin: Lachis) was an ancient Canaanite and later Israelite city in the Shephelah ("lowlands of Judea") region of Canaan on the south bank of the Lakhish River. The current tell by that name, known as Tel Lachish (Hebrew: תל לכיש) or Tell el-Duweir (تل الدوير), has been identified with Lachish. Today, it is an Israeli national park operated and maintained by the Israel Nature and Parks Authority. It lies near the present-day moshav of Lakhish, which was named in honor of the ancient city.

Lachish was first mentioned in the Amarna letters (dated to the mid-14th century BCE) when it was a significant Canaanite city-state referred to as Lakisha. There is clear archeological evidence for (one or two) violent destruction(s) at Lachish in the late 13th/early 12th century BCE, but there is no historical evidence conclusive about the perpetrators with potential theories discussing internal Canaanite conflict, the Sea Peoples, people from the Habiru group or others. In the Book of Joshua (written around 600-700 BCE), Lachish is cited as one of the cities conquered by the Israelites for joining the league against the Gibeonites (Joshua 10:31–33). According to the Hebrew Bible, the territory was later assigned to the tribe of Judah according to Joshua 15:39 and may have become part of the united Kingdom of Israel. Lachish emerged as one of the most important cities in the Kingdom of Judah, second only to the capital, Jerusalem.