OPERATION CAURIA - May 2014
"Les Peuples de la Mer", invaders of Antiquity archeostudio / France Télévision - Via Stella / France 3 Corse
Sea Peoples - Pharaoh's Mercenaries
Sea Peoples - Invasions / Migrations
Pictures in process
Pictures in process
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Louvre Museum
Feature film retracing the lives of the people who lived on the CAURIA Plateau in southern Corsica during the Neolithic period, from the mercenaries of the Egyptian kingdom under the reign of Ramses III, to the height of the Bronze Age.
Two archaeological sites are concerned on the CAURIA plateau : I Stantari and Renaghju .
This fairly broad period, from around 4,000 to 1,000 BC, saw the development of various cultural, pastoral, social and religious practices.
In the wake of the Neolithic shepherds' dwellings, numerous granite stelae were erected in various alignments, which are still present today.
Archaeological site of Settiva, near Petreto Bicchisano. Dating from the Bronze Age, it consists of a funerary chamber formed by large, semi-buried vertical slabs, covered by another large slab. The chamber is preceded by a vestibule enclosed by slabs. Excavations by René Grosjean in 1970 revealed the presence of some twenty single-handled cups.
And in many other places, including on the outskirts of Petreto Bicchisano as early as 2000 BC, a village perched between Ajaccio and Propriano. It became a religious sanctuary in the Bronze Age, then a stronghold of the lords of Istria. A multi-millennial land with crystal-clear springs that flow down from the mountains into the Taravo valley and out to sea.
Around 1200 BC, a class of helmeted and harnessed warriors armed with Mycenaean swords appeared in the southernmost part of the island.
They are also represented in the rock alongside the ancient stelae, but in a far less peaceful style than their ancestors.
Set into the ground, these warrior stelae point proudly towards the rising sun, as if to contemplate the ascent of the shining star.
Or perhaps they point martially to the place from which their flesh-and-blood models came. Beyond the shores of the western Mediterranean.
How mysteriously did they arrive on the CAURIA plateau in southern Corsica?
The Aegean Sea was within sailing distance for seasoned navigators, pushing ever further the bows of their ships, astonishingly perfected at the time.
It was the time of the Egyptian Pharaohs, of Agamemnon in Mycenae, of the Great King of the Hittite Empire. Between 1000 and 500 years before Pericles' Greece.
Troy had just been defeated. Mycenae, triumphant, would nevertheless be destroyed 50 years later. Would Achilles and Hector have caused the loss of their own kingdoms through this interminable war?
Did this rigid, feudal military aristocracy lead vassal or opportunistic cities to rise up, or did the droughts of the late Bronze Age provoke a mass exodus, setting the Levantine world ablaze?
Historians are wondering.
These stone warriors looking to the East may have been seeking a new land: "Shardanes, Peleset, Ekwesh, Théresch, Lukka, Karkisha, Shekelesh, Denyen, Tjeker, Lebbu",...
These were their names, methodically recorded by the scribes of Ramses III.
They were all formidable warriors of the Helladic Bronze Age, conquerors of the kingdoms of the Middle East.
Are the Shekelesh the Aegean ancestors of the "Siculli", as the Romans called them (Sicily)?
Are the Shardanes, depicted on the fresco of the Medinet Abou temple under Ramses III, warriors and sailors with horned helmets, leather and bronze breastplates, Mycenaean swords slung over their shoulders, the founders of "Shardania", between northern Sardinia and southern Corsica?
Masters of the Aegean Sea, all the way to the shores of the Nile.
They were part of the "Sea Peoples" confederation.
Invaders of antiquity, destroyers of Troy, first Greeks.
After destroying Ugarit, they set out to conquer Ramses III's Egypt via the lands of Amurou (Palestine).
But also by sea, at the mouth of the Pelusiac (eastern) branch of the Nile.
The first naval battle in history was about to take place.
The monoliths of the Cauria plateau, reminders of the island's ancient times, emerge from a silence three thousand years old to tell the story of this formidable epic.
Philippe PETRETO (Archeostudio: co-direction and 3D)
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