BIBLE HISTORY DAILY

Mysterious Mercenaries

The Shardanu warriors in the Levant

A stone tower nuraghe) at Nuraghe Losa in western Sardinia. Photo by Mauro Spanu / Alamy.

The biblical King David, before he became leader of the Israelites, was a mercenary who sold his services to the Philistine king of Gath. This was nothing out of ordinary, as mercenaries were an integral part of many ancient armies, beginning in the Late Bronze Age (c. 1550–1100 BCE). Among the better-documented warrior groups of that era were the Shardanu, whose name would suggest they originated from the island of Sardinia in the central Mediterranean.

In the Summer 2026 issue of Biblical Archaeology Review, Aaron A. Burke, who is a professor of the archaeology of ancient Israel and the Levant at the UCLA, explores the origins and roles of the Shardanu warriors, examining the particular material culture they helped spread across the eastern Mediterranean and the persistence on Sardinia of an ancient warrior culture. Burke’s specific interest is in “illuminating the broader sociopolitical context of Israel’s rise and its relationship to its coastal neighbors, namely, the Philistines.”

Shardanu in temple reliefs at Medinet Habu. Courtesy Photo Companion to the Bible.

In his article titled “Mediterranean Mercenaries of the Bronze Age,” Burke first addresses the question of origin. In ancient sources, the Shardanu first appear in the so-called Amarna Letters, a mid-14th century BCE  collection of cuneiform tablets consisting mostly of letters sent between Egypt’s New Kingdom pharaohs and the rulers of various Canaanite city-states. In this royal correspondence, which sheds light on political and cultural relations between the major Late Bronze Age polities of the ancient Near East, the Shardanu appear as individuals or small groups of sea-faring mercenaries involved in piracy or local conflicts within the eastern Mediterranean. 

This picture changes dramatically only a century later, when the Shardanu appear as a massive migrating army joining eventually the coalitions of the “Sea Peoples” in their attacks on Egypt and the coastal Levant during a turbulent time leading up to the Bronze Age Collapse. These battles are famously captured in the wall reliefs of Ramesses III’s mortuary temple at Medinet Habu (see above), where the Shardanu feature alongside the Peleset (Philistines), Tjeker, and Weshesh as one of the “Sea Peoples.”

Intriguingly, some of the Shardanu (presumably mercenaries) in these reliefs are shown fighting on the side of the Egyptians to repel an attack from the “Sea Peoples.” It seems that within only a few years after their earlier attempted invasion of Egypt, in 1278/77, the defeated Shardanu were pressed into Egyptian military service. This would also explain why some Shardanu appear as elite bodyguards in the service of King Ramesses II (r. 1279–1213) and as fighting on his side against the Hittites in the battle of Kadesh (c. 1274). So where did these mighty warriors come from?

A bronze figurine representing Shardanu warrior with a shield. Photo by Dmitriy Moroz / Alamy.

“Various lines of evidence reveal they belonged to a diaspora of soldiers and raiders from the island of Sardinia who gradually, over the course of the Late Bronze Age, entered military service in the eastern Mediterranean,” writes Burke. “Most of the Shardanu likely originated among the many ancient megalithic villages that dot the Sardinian landscape to the present day (see opening photo). Archaeologists have identified more than 7,000 such villages, which were founded as early as the mid-second millennium and were likely inhabited until the coming of the Phoenicians in the tenth or ninth century BCE.” 

In the temple reliefs at Medinet Habu, the Shardanu are consistently depicted with distinctive weapons and gear, including longswords, round shields, and horned helmets. This iconography matches the material culture from Sardinia, where the island’s warrior culture is reflected in the many bronze figurines with horned helmets, round shields, and spears found at sites across Sardinia. These figurines have traditionally been dated to the tenth century or later, i.e., about three centuries after the Egyptian reliefs. Two more centuries later, astonishingly similar representations of the Shardanu come from the Sardinian site of Mont’e Prama, where they take the form of life-size limestone statues of warriors wielding shields, swords, bows, and quivers. Taken together, these artistic representations, spanning half-a-millennium, testify to the endurance and cultural memory of that Bronze Age warrior society.

“The example of the Shardanu provides us with a better understanding of the emergence of another of the “peoples of the sea”—the Philistines—who arrived on the scene in the early 12th century to emerge eventually as Israel’s early nemesis,” states Burke in his article.

Subscribers: Read the full article “Mediterranean Mercenaries of the Bronze Age” by Aaron A. Burke in the Summer 2026 issue of Biblical Archaeology Review.

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Join Aaron Burke (University of California, Los Angeles) Tuesday, October 6, 2026 (7:30 pm to 8:30 pm ET) for the online lecture When Worlds Collide: Mediterranean Mercenaries and Israel’s Genesis, exploring the archaeology of the early Iron Age. Learn more and register >>

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