"The foreign countries made a conspiracy in their islands. All at once the lands were removed and scattered in the fray. No land could stand before their arms, from Hatti, Qode, Carchemish, Arzawa and Alashiya on, being cut off at one time. A camp was set up in Amurru. They desolated its people, and its land was like that which has never come into being. They were coming forward toward Egypt, while the flame was prepared before them. Their confederation was the Sherden, Lukka, Tjeker, Peleset, Denyen and Weshesh, lands united. They laid their hands upon the land as far as the circuit of the earth, their hearts confident and trusting, "Our plans will succeed!"

- Temple of Ramses III at Medinet Habu

It all began when the earth shook and all the temples at Arinna crumbled into rubble.

The Hittites sun-goddess, whose name was forbidden to be uttered, turned away from the lands of Hattie taking with her, her sister Halkis gift of fertile soil, leaving a barren starving empire.

Weakened Hattusa, the Hittite capital, was besieged by northern invaders.

Unable to stem the waves of the barbarians the once mighty Hittite people lost their power and with their armies gone, their stuart kingdoms in the south on the coast of the rich aegis were wide open for the raiding people of the sea, united they laid waste to their weakened kingdoms which have ruled the aegis for centuries.

Only when the great god pharaoh of Egypt overcame his arrogance in the face of annihilation, was he able to stem the crimson tides that swept over the aegis to crush and scatter the dreaded sea people.

But it was to late, their ravages had taken their toll and even though Egypt was to exist for thousands of years to come, it would never return to its former glory.

But the toll which the rage of the marauding sea peoples had taken on the northern empires of the aegis was much higher.

Gone were the Hittites, the minoen kings, the kings of Ugarit and many more.

The high art of writing and the knowledge necessary to build mighty temples and palaces was lost for centuries to come.

From the north-west the people of Acheron came to settle and intermix with what was left of the Minoens, to become the great traders of their own age, carving out their own empire.

As to the scattered sea-people, some of them settled where the former kings, they toppled, had ruled, to build new civilizations, some of them kept raiding in small bands the Aegean coast under their dreaded name, but they never united again, until they dissolved and their name was lost in the centuries.

The people of Alasiya where the crimson tides rose highest abandoned the rich copper producing settlements at the barmy coast where their people forged bronze, the alloy which gave their time its name.

They settled atop the highest cliffs directly on the naked stone mountains of the inner island, where cold winds blew and the earth was bare.

In fear of the raiders from the sea, they lived pitiful dire lives for a hundred years to come, with memories of a better age present only in melancholic songs and poems.

And so the age of bronze was gone, the mighty kingdoms of their time had taken to much.

To many rivers were diverted from arid fields to feed the fancy fountains of the cities and palaces, too much crop was taken from ever gaunter hands, too heavy was the yoke and too tight the leash the incestuous ruling class had laid upon a starving people.

In the end the downtrodden rose and united under the banner of the sea people and swept away the whip wielding hands of bondage.