Pirates: Ancient Egyptian

Although pockets of civilization inhabited the continents of Africa, Asia, Europe, and the Americas long before, great cities of the ancient world emerged about five millennia ago and merchants in one urban center established trading links in another. When the first pirate attack occurred remains a mystery, but surviving historical records pinpoint these sea raiders in the Mediterranean. Ancient Egyptian and Minoan writings include tales of their raids at sea and on land. The earliest recorded incident – inscribed on a clay tablet while Akhenaton, an Egyptian pharaoh, reigned – depicts pirates attacking a ship in 1350 BCE. Another early account provides details of Ramses III’s attack against the Sea Peoples, whom the Egyptians called the Nine Bows, in 1190 BCE. Their raids on the Nile Delta were so devastating the land no longer sustained life. The bloody battle between Ramses’ forces and the Nine Bows involved archers and hand-to-hand combat, but the latter were eventually defeated. An inscription at Medinet Habu, the pharaoh’s mortuary temple at Thebes, records this battle and shows the Nine Bows’ vessels with prows shaped like birds’ heads and sails rather than oars.

Scholars trace the origins of “pirate” to the Ancient Greeks, who first incorporated it into their language around 140 BCE. Peirato referred not to the sea robbers we associate with “piracy,” but to mercenaries who allied themselves with one political faction or city state against another faction or city state. These fighting men were led by an archipirata (sometimes translated as archpirate, but meant “pirate captain”). For example, Plutarch wrote around CE 100:

The power of the pirates [peiratiki] had its seat in Cilicia . . . until they no longer attacked navigators only, but also laid waste islands and maritime cities. And presently men whose wealth gave them power, and whose lineage was illustrious, and those who laid claim to superior intelligence, began to embark on piratical [peiratike] craft and share their enterprises, feeling that the occupation brought them a certain reputation and distinction . . . Their flutes and stringed instruments and drinking bouts along every coast, their seizures of persons in high command, and their ransoming of captured cities, were a disgrace to the Roman supremacy.” (Rubin, 8-9)

Plutarch, however, lived during Rome’s supremacy, and, while his view conformed to that of an earlier age, the Romans saw these “pirates” as enemies because they endangered the Roman State and the senate declared “war against the Pirates.” Even so, the Latin meaning of “pirate” still differs from our concept of the word, for they deemed the pirates “enemies” rather than “outlaws.”