Shardana

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The Shardana or Sherden sea pirates are one of several groups of "Sea Peoples" who appear in fragmentary historical records (Egyptian inscriptions) for the Mediterranean region in the second millennium B.C.; very little is known for sure about them.

Ramesses II defeated them in his second Year 2 in a sea battle of the Miditerranean coast and subsequently incorporated many of these warriors for his personal guard. (N. Grimal, A History of Ancient Egypt, pp.250-253)

[edit] Connection with Sardinia

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 at the Battle of 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). That these were the same kind of horned helmets and shields of the warriors of the Nuragic culture in Sardinian is indicated by the finding of many little bronze Nuragic statues in the region, the so-called bronzetti sardi.

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.

Moreover recent studies by geneticists on the DNA of inhabitants of the inner areas of the island, tend to confirm the presence of some elements which would be in common with those of people from Anatolia; this has been seen as a further step in the direction of identifying the provenance of ancient Sardinians from a determined area of the Mediterranean.

These theoretical coincidences (enforced, as said, by linguistic considerations) could allow one to assume that a people of skilled sailors left the Eastern Mediterranean and established themselves in Sardinia. They very probably would have encountered some resistance on their way there. It is also possible that they were explorers. If so, it is likely that only a warrior people like the Shardana could have organised such an expedition.