ELLIE'S ARCHIVES AND ADVENTURES

ELLIE'S WORLD

January 22, 2006

Tonight I was contacted by the son of one of my clients, Princess Dena.

In the days BC, Before Crystalinks, I used to teach class here on a weekly basis. One of the regular students was a colorful client who went by the name Princess Dena. She lived in my area, was a few years older than I, looking young and having lots of energy, and spoke to the students about Native American traditions and her bloodline, which is where her title Princess derived.

Princess Dena was interested the spiritual sides of metaphysics, often joining Native Americans in different parts of the US, for sacred ceremonies.

Through the years she enjoyed many careers, including acting in Hollywood while in her 20's, where she met a famous producer, married, had a son, divorced and eventually moved to NYC. She had some very colorful stories to tell about the life and times of the Hollywood set in the 1960's and 1970's.

When we met, she had moved to Brooklyn, not far from where I live, and was active in all sorts of civic affairs. Her son had grown and was trying his hand at acting, which, as with most actors, he eventually gave up, settled down, married and is raising a family.

Always stylish in her fashions, her long dark hair coiffed in a stylish bun, Princess Dena had gone from selling women's boutique fashions to sales at FAO Schwartz toy store in Manhattan, where perhaps some of you may have met her in passing.

For many years we would run into each other on 3rd Avenue in Brooklyn and say hello. As with most students and teachers, classes are attended for a period of time, then student must move on to experience other teachers as their soul guides.

In February 2004, Princess Dena came for a reading in reference to her career as FAO Schwartz had shut down. It was only recently that she had returned to her job at the store, now working as a personal buyer, and according to her son, she was happy to be back.

Sadly, her son called me with unfortunate news. Saturday, around 7 pm, as Princess Dena was returning home from work, while crossing the street at 4th Avenue and 93rd Street, she was killed by a hit and run driver. For those familiar with Bay Ridge, this is near Dunkin' Donuts. I live on 4th Ave. and 101 Street which is not far away.

This morning at 3:33, Princess Dena woke me up. I immediately knew that we had been talking on 'the other side.' I thought 3:33=9-endings.

Princess Dena asked me to write down 3 messages to post, so I turned on the light, grabbed the notepad and pencil I keep in my nightstand, to write dream messages, as she began.

1. Never feel that you do not deserve happiness because those around you are suffering. If you are lucky enough to find it, take the bull by the horns and harness the energies.

2. With my life ending so abruptly, I realize that one should embrace each day to its fullest, just as I did. I was never afraid to ride the NYC subway system for fear of terrorists attacks, etc. I was never afraid of death. When your time is up, so shall it be. Do not walk in fear.

3. Native American Prophecies are coming to pass as prophesized. The sacred ceremonies speak the truth of the next coming. My death came with a soft black cloud of smoke, rising, clearing, then the brilliant golden light of a new age shown to me. This will soon come to pass.

Thank you for reading this and listening.

After we spoke, I fell back to sleep, waking at 5:55 to the sounds of Native American chanting.

Everything Returns to the Sea

We go from last weekend's

Aquarius Meditation

to the sad ending of the wayward whale who

died during the Thames rescue
and the lessons we will glean from his journey ...

to the Sea Peoples who caught my attention while updating the files on the Middle East.

Sea Peoples is the term used for a mysterious confederacy of ship-faring raiders who sailed into the eastern shores of the Mediterranean, invaded Cyprus, Hatti and the Levant, and attempted to enter Egyptian territory during the late 19th dynasty, and especially year 5 of Rameses III of the 20th Dynasty. The term "Sea Peoples" was never used in Egyptian records, but has been popularized in the last century.

The earliest mention of the Sea Peoples proper is in an inscription of the Egyptian king Merneptah, whose rule is usually dated from 1213 BC to 1204 BC, although mention of individual groups does occur earlier (for example Denyen, during the reign of Amenhotep III and Shardana, as mercenaries to Rameses II. Merneptah states that in the fifth year of his reign (1208 BC) he defeated an invasion of an allied force of Libyans and the Sea People, killing 6,000 soldiers and taking 9,000 prisoners.

About 20 years later the Egyptian king Ramses III was forced to deal with another invasion of the Sea Peoples, this time allied with the Philistines. In the mortuary temple he built in Thebes, Ramses describes how, despite the fact "no land could stand before" the forces of the Sea People and that they swept through "Hatti, Kode, Carchemish, Arzawa, and Alashiya" destroying their cities, he defeated them in a sea battle.

He gives the names of the tribes of the Sea People as including: the Peleset, the Tjeker, the Shekelesh, the Denyen, and the Weshesh. However, because this list is identical to the one Merneptah included in his victory inscription, and because Ramses also describes several fictitious victories on his temple walls, some Egyptologists believe that he never actually fought the Sea Peoples, but only claimed the victories of Merneptah as his own, a common practice of a number of the Pharaohs.

A Sea People appear in another set of records dated around the early 12th century BC. Ammurapi, the last king of Ugarit (c.1191 BC, 1182 BC) received a letter from the Hittite king Suppliluliuma II warning him about the "Shikalayu who live on boats" who are perhaps the same people as the Shekelesh mentioned in Merneptah's list. It may be relevant that shortly after he received this communication, Ammurapi was overthrown and the city of Ugarit sacked, never to be inhabited again.

The abrupt end of several civilizations in the decades traditionally dated around 1200 BC have caused many ancient historians to hypothesize that the Sea People caused the collapse of the Hittite, Mycenaean and Mitanni kingdoms. However, Marc Van De Mieroop and others have argued against this theory on several points. Grimal argues that the kingdoms of the Mittani, Assyria, and Babylon were more likely destroyed by a group who dwelled on the edges of the settled lands called by the Akkadian word Habiru. Another argument Grimal makes is that the attempted Sea People invasion of Egypt that Ramses III foiled is now seen as nothing more than a minor skirmish, the records of his victories on his temple walls being greatly exaggerated. Though it is clear from the archeological excavations that Ugarit, Ashkelon and Hazor were destroyed about this time, Carchemish was not and other cities in the area such as Byblos and Sidon survived unscathed.

Another hypothesis concerning the Sea People, based on their recorded names, and on the fact that the pottery associated with Sea Peoples such as the Philistines and Tjekker in the Levant is of Mycenean derivation, is that they may have been formed of people involved in the Greek migrations of this period, either the Greek-speaking invaders (identifying the "Ekwesh" with the Achaeans and the "Denyen" with the Dananoi, an ancient name for the Greek people). This theory implies that the Philistines were part of this Greek-speaking confederacy.

This theory was recently revived by the archeologist Eberhard Zangger in 2001 (earlier in German) that the Sea Peoples were the early semi-literate city states of the Greek Mycenaean civilizations, who destroyed each other in a disastrous series of conflicts lasting several decades. There would have been few or no external invaders and just a few excursions outside the Greek speaking part of the Aegean civilization.

The city states were semi-literate in the sense that very few individuals could master the complex syllabary used to write Linear B and other written forms of the early Greek language, and, thus, relatively few documents were produced in daily life to bear witness to the fratricidal nature of the wars. In contrast, the completely alphabetic writing system which started to appear with the rise of Ancient Greece around 800 BC was relatively easy to learn and use, thus giving rise to the production of many documents, both fictional and non-fictional.

In addition to the foregoing interpretation of relevant textual records, the archaeological record provides a substantial basis to believe that peoples from central Europe and the Italian peninsula may have contributed to the Sea Peoples phenomenon. Pottery and bronze weapons of a distinctly Italic type have been found in quantity at excavations of structures built atop the charred ruins of cities believed to have been burnt to the ground by the Sea Peoples. Attempts have been made to identify certain Sea Peoples with Italian peoples; for example, some scholars have speculated that the Shekelesh can be identified with the ancient people of Sicily.

Additionally, brooches of a plainly Central European type, and amber beads, have also been found at some of the sites. None of these items appear in the archaeological record of the area prior to the Sea Peoples period. Also worth noting is that some of the knives and cups of an Italic design bear a strong resemblance to knives and cups unearthed in Hungary and central Germany, dating to the period 1800, 1600 BC.

One thing about the Sea Peoples is beyond doubt: following violent conquest, the Sea Peoples always burnt rich cities to the ground. They made no attempt to retain this wealth, but instead built new settlements of a lower cultural and economic level atop the ruins. This demonstrates a deep scorn and contempt for what these cities represented. It is unlikely that the traditional Helladic warrior classes would have so discarded the spoils of victory, if the writings of Homer are to be considered a guide.

A recent theory proposed by Holst and others is that the Sea Peoples, facing starvation, migrated from the Black Sea, in cooperation with the Phoenicians, seeking food and land upon which to settle. Supporters of the theory point to the Phoenicians being uniquely not attacked by the Sea Peoples, though this is more usually attributed to the Pheonicians and Philistines being the same people at different times in their history.

Textual and archaeological records show that Greek and Egyptian state structures utilized mercenaries from the north and west. It is possible that these mercenary groups eventually allied themselves with indigenous slave classes to bring down a number of complex but ossified state structures in Greece and the Near East.

Some scholars have tenuously identified the Tribe of Dan with the Danua or Denyen, one of the Sea Peoples, speculating that the Danites abandoned the Sea People confederacy and joined the Israelite tribal confederacy sometime during the twelfth century BC. Such an identification would explain the special enmity between the Danites and the Philistines found in the Book of Judges.

Reference

ELLIE'S ARCHIVES 2006

ELLIE'S ARCHIVES AND ADVENTURES

ELLIE'S WORLD

ALPHABETICAL INDEX OF ALL FILES

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