The Tjeker or Tjekker (

Egyptian ''Egyptian'' describes something of, from, or related to Egypt. Egyptian or Egyptians may refer to: Nations and ethnic groups * Egyptians, a national group in North Africa ** Egyptian culture, a complex and stable culture with thousands of year ...

: ''ṯꜣkꜣr'' or ''ṯꜣkkꜣr'') were one of the

Sea Peoples The Sea Peoples were a group of tribes hypothesized to have attacked Ancient Egypt, Egypt and other Eastern Mediterranean regions around 1200 BC during the Late Bronze Age. The hypothesis was proposed by the 19th-century Egyptology, Egyptologis ...

. Known mainly from the "

Story of Wenamun The Story of Wenamun (alternately known as the Report of Wenamun, The Misadventures of Wenamun, Voyage of Unamūn, or nformallyas just Wenamun) is a literary text written in hieratic in the Late Egyptian language. It is only known from one incom ...

", the Tjeker are also documented earlier, at Medinet Habu, as raiders defeated by

Pharaoh Pharaoh (, ; Egyptian language, Egyptian: ''wikt:pr ꜥꜣ, pr ꜥꜣ''; Meroitic language, Meroitic: 𐦲𐦤𐦧, ; Biblical Hebrew: ''Parʿō'') was the title of the monarch of ancient Egypt from the First Dynasty of Egypt, First Dynasty ( ...

Ramesses III Usermaatre Meryamun Ramesses III was the second Pharaoh of the Twentieth dynasty of Egypt, Twentieth Dynasty in Ancient Egypt. Some scholars date his reign from 26 March 1186 to 15 April 1155 BC, and he is considered the last pharaoh of the New K ...

Egypt Egypt ( , ), officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, is a country spanning the Northeast Africa, northeast corner of Africa and Western Asia, southwest corner of Asia via the Sinai Peninsula. It is bordered by the Mediterranean Sea to northe ...

in years 5, 8, and 12 of his reign. They are thought to be the people who developed the port of Dor in

Canaan CanaanThe current scholarly edition of the Septuagint, Greek Old Testament spells the word without any accents, cf. Septuaginta : id est Vetus Testamentum graece iuxta LXX interprets. 2. ed. / recogn. et emendavit Robert Hanhart. Stuttgart : D ...

during the 12th century BCE from a small

Bronze Age The Bronze Age () was a historical period characterised principally by the use of bronze tools and the development of complex urban societies, as well as the adoption of writing in some areas. The Bronze Age is the middle principal period of ...

town to a large city.

References

Origin

As with other Sea Peoples, the origins of the Tjeker are uncertain. Their name is an Egyptian

exonym An endonym (also known as autonym ) is a common, name for a group of people, individual person, geographical place, language, or dialect, meaning that it is used inside a particular group or linguistic community to identify or designate them ...

, usually romanized as ''tkr'', and expanded as ''Tjekru'' or ''Djekker''. As such there is no consensus on the original form or etymology of the name, or the origin of the people. They have sometimes been identified with the

Sicels The Sicels ( ; or ''Siculī'') were an Indo-European tribe who inhabited eastern Sicily, their namesake, during the Iron Age. They spoke the Siculian language. After the defeat of the Sicels at the Battle of Nomae in 450 BC and the death of ...

of Sicily, who are also linked to '' Shekelesh'': another exonym attributed to a different group amongst the Sea Peoples. Another theory, put forward by

Flinders Petrie Sir William Matthew Flinders Petrie ( – ), commonly known as simply Sir Flinders Petrie, was an English people, English Egyptology, Egyptologist and a pioneer of systematic methodology in archaeology and the preservation of artefacts. ...

, links the ethnonym to

Zakros Zakros ( also Zakro or Kato Zakro) is a Minoan archaeological site on the eastern coast of Crete in Lasithi, Greece. It is regarded as one of the six Minoan palaces, and its protected harbor and strategic location made it an important commercial ...

, in eastern Crete. Some other scholars have accepted the association. A possible identity has been suggested with the Teucri, a tribe described by ancient sources as inhabiting northwest Anatolia to the south of

Troy Troy (/; ; ) or Ilion (; ) was an ancient city located in present-day Hisarlik, Turkey. It is best known as the setting for the Greek mythology, Greek myth of the Trojan War. The archaeological site is open to the public as a tourist destina ...

. However, this has been dismissed as "pure speculation" by

Trevor Bryce Trevor Robert Bryce (; born 1940) is an Australian Hittitologist specializing in ancient and classical Near-eastern history. He is semi-retired and lives in Brisbane. His book, ''The Kingdom of the Hittites'', is popular among English-speaki ...

Settlement at Dor

The Tjeker may have conquered the city Dor, on the coast of

near modern

Haifa Haifa ( ; , ; ) is the List of cities in Israel, third-largest city in Israel—after Jerusalem and Tel Aviv—with a population of in . The city of Haifa forms part of the Haifa metropolitan area, the third-most populous metropolitan area i ...

, and turned it into a large, well-fortified city (classified as "Dor XII", fl. c. 1150–1050), the center of a Tjeker kingdom that is confirmed archaeologically in the northern Sharon plain. The city was violently destroyed in the mid-11th century BCE, with the conflagration turning the mud bricks red and depositing a huge layer of ash and debris. Ephraim Stern connects the destruction with the contemporary expansion of the

Phoenicia Phoenicians were an Ancient Semitic-speaking peoples, ancient Semitic group of people who lived in the Phoenician city-states along a coastal strip in the Levant region of the eastern Mediterranean, primarily modern Lebanon and the Syria, Syrian ...

ns, which was checked by the

Philistines Philistines (; LXX: ; ) were ancient people who lived on the south coast of Canaan during the Iron Age in a confederation of city-states generally referred to as Philistia. There is compelling evidence to suggest that the Philistines origi ...

further south and the

Israelites Israelites were a Hebrew language, Hebrew-speaking ethnoreligious group, consisting of tribes that lived in Canaan during the Iron Age. Modern scholarship describes the Israelites as emerging from indigenous Canaanites, Canaanite populations ...

. The Tjeker are perhaps one of the few Sea Peoples for whom a ruler's name is recorded — in the 11th-century papyrus account of Wenamun, an Egyptian priest, the ruler of Dor is given as " Beder". According to Edward Lipinski,Page 96 the Sicals (Tjekker) of Dor were seamen or mercenaries, and ''b3-dỉ-r'' (Beder) was the title of the local governor, a deputy of the king of Tyre. No mention of the Tjeker is made after the story of Wenamun.

Notes

References

* * * * Stern, Ephraim (August 1990). "New Evidence from Dor for the First Appearance of the Phoenicians along the Northern Coast of Israel" ''Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research'' No. 279, pp. 27–34. *{{cite book , author=Woudhuizen, Frederik Christiaan , year=1992 , title=The Language of the Sea Peoples , location=Amsterdam , publisher=Najade Press , isbn=90-73835-02-X * Woudhuizen, Frederik Christiaan (April 2006).
The Ethnicity of the Sea Peoples
'. Doctoral dissertation; Rotterdam: Erasmus Universiteit Rotterdam, Faculteit der Wijsbegeerte. Sea Peoples Asia in Greek mythology