The Peleset (
Egyptian: pwrꜣsꜣtj) or Pulasati 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
Sea Peoples were said to be composed.
Earliest records
Very few documentary records exist, both for the Peleset and for the other groups hypothesized as Sea Peoples (see
Sea Peoples#Primary documentary records). One group of people recorded as participating in the
Battle of the Delta were the Peleset; after this point in time, the "Sea Peoples" as a whole disappear from historical records, the Peleset being no exception. Archaeology has not been able to corroborate the migration of
Sea Peoples.[1]
c. 1150 BCE:
Papyrus Harris I: "I extended all the boundaries of Egypt; I overthrew those who invaded them from their lands. I slew the
Denyen in their isles, the
Thekel and the Peleset (Pw-r-s-ty) were made ashes."[4][5]
Today, historians generally identify the Peleset with the
Philistines, or rather, vice versa.[9] The origins of the Peleset, like much of the Sea Peoples, are not universally agreed upon - with that said, scholars have generally concluded that the bulk of the clans originated in the greater
Southern European area, including western
Asia Minor, the
Aegean, and the
islands of the Mediterranean.[10] Fellow Sea Peoples clans have likewise been identified with various Mediterranean polities, to varying acceptance: the Ekwesh with the
Achaens, the Denyen with the
Danaans, the Lukka with the
Lycians, the Shekelesh with the
Sicels, the Sherden with the
Sardinians, etc.
Older sources sometimes identify the Peleset with the
Pelasgians. However, this identification has numerous problems and is usually disregarded by modern scholars. A major issue is the etymological difficulties of the "g" in "Pelasgians" becoming a "t" in the Egyptian translation, especially as the Philistine endonym already corresponded to the form P-L-S-T and therefore required no such modification to be rendered as Peleset in the Egyptian language.[11]
^Israel Finkelstein,
Is The Philistine Paradigm Still Viable?, in: Bietak, M., (Ed.), The Synchronisation of Civilisations in the Eastern Mediterranean in the Second Millennium B. C. III. Proceedings of the SCIEM 2000 – 2nd Euro- Conference, Vienna, 28th of May–1st of June 2003, Denkschriften der Ge- samtakademie 37, Contributions to the Chronology of the Eastern Mediterranean 9, Vienna 2007, pages 517–524. Quote: "SUMMARY Was there a Sea Peoples migration to the coast of the Levant? Yes. Was it a maritime migration? Possibly. Was there a massive maritime Sea Peoples invasion? Probably not. Did the Philistines settle en-masse in Philistia in the days of Ramesses III? No. Were the Iron I Philistine cities fortified? No. Were the Iron I Philistines organized in a peer-polity system? Probably not. Was there a Philistine Pentapolis system in the Iron I? No. Are the Iron I Philistines the Philistines described in the Bible? No."
^Masalha 2018, p. 56: The 3200‑year‑old documents from Ramesses III, including an inscription dated c. 1150 BC, at the Mortuary Temple of Ramesses III at the Medinat Habu Temple in Luxor – one of the best‑preserved temples of Egypt – refers to the Peleset among those who fought against Ramesses III (Breasted 2001: 24; also Bruyère 1929‒1930), who reigned from 1186 to 1155 BC.