This brings the connection down to about 1050 B.C.
After that date we cannot hope to find any certain evidence of
connection, for by that time the Mycenaean civilization had probably
come to an end. In the days of the XIIth and XVIIIth Dynasties a great
and splendid power evidently existed in Crete, and sent its peaceful
ambassadors, the Keftiu who are represented in the Theban tombs, to
Egypt. But with the XIXth Dynasty the name of the Keftiu disappears from
Egyptian records, and their place is taken by a congeries of warring
seafaring tribes, whose names as given by the Egyptians seem to be forms
of tribal and place names well known to us in the Greece of later days.
We find the Akaivasha (_Axaifol_, Achaians), Shakalsha (Sagalassians of
Pisidia), Tursha (Tylissians of Crete?), and Shardana (Sardians) allied
with the Libyans and Mashauash (Maxyes) in a land attack upon Egypt in
the days of Meneptah, the successor of Ramses II--just as in the later
days of the XXVIth Dynasty the Northern pirates visited the African
shore of the Mediterranean, and in alliance with the predatory Libyans
attacked Egypt.
Prof. Petrie has lately [History of Egypt, iii, pp. Ill, I12.] proffered
an alternative view, which would make all these tribes Tunisians and
Algerians, thus disposing of the identification of the Akaivasha with
the Achaians, and making them the ancient representatives of the town
of el-Aghwat (Roman Agbia) in Tunis.
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