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The Tjeker or Tjekker (Egyptian: ṯꜣkꜣr or ṯꜣkkꜣr) were one of the Sea Peoples. Known mainly from the "Story of Wenamun", the Tjeker are also documented earlier, at Medinet Habu, as raiders defeated by Pharaoh Ramesses III of Egypt in years 5, 8, and 12 of his reign. They are thought to be the people who developed the port of Dor in Canaan during the 12th century BCE from a small Bronze Age town to a large city. As with other Sea Peoples, the origins of the Tjeker are uncertain. Their name is an Egyptian exonym, usually romanized as tkr, and expanded as Tjekru or Djekker. The Egyptian may also be romanized as skl, i.e. Sikil or Sical. 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 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, links the ethnonym to Zakros, 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. However, this has been dismissed as "pure speculation" by Trevor Bryce. The Tjeker may have conquered the city Dor, on the coast of Canaan near modern Haifa, 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 Phoenicians, which was checked by the Philistines further south and the Israelites. 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".

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Related concepts (3)

Late Bronze Age collapse

The Late Bronze Age collapse was a time of widespread societal collapse during the 12th century BC, between 1200 and 1150. The collapse affected a large area of the Eastern Mediterranean (North Africa and Southeast Europe) and the Near East, in particular Egypt, eastern Libya, the Balkans, the Aegean, Anatolia, and the Caucasus. It was sudden, violent, and culturally disruptive for many Bronze Age civilizations, and it brought a sharp economic decline to regional powers, notably ushering in the Greek Dark Ages.

Peleset

The Peleset (Egyptian: pwrꜣsꜣtj) or Pulasati were one of the several ethnic groups the Sea Peoples were said to be composed of, appearing in fragmentary historical and iconographic records in ancient Egyptian from the Eastern Mediterranean in the late 2nd millennium BC. During the Bronze Age collapse, a seafaring coalition known as the Sea Peoples are recorded as conducting a number of raids and invasions in the East Mediterranean.

Sea Peoples

The Sea Peoples are a hypothesized seafaring confederation that attacked ancient Egypt and other regions in the East Mediterranean before and during the Late Bronze Age collapse (1200–900 BCE). Following the creation of the concept in the 19th century, the Sea Peoples' incursions became one of the most famous chapters of Egyptian history, given its connection with, in the words of Wilhelm Max Müller, "the most important questions of ethnography and the primitive history of classic nations".