It will be remembered that I have suggested that the Nordic “Achæans” were an offshoot of the body, who as Thracians and Phrygians moved eastward into Thrace and Asia Minor. I have also suggested that they came to the south down the Vardar valley. Usually they have been brought straight from Thrace, which is, of course, possible, but Ridgeway, on the other hand, brings them from Epirus, and points out that they held in veneration the Zeus of Dodona.[380] If their arrival was, as I have suggested, in small bands or by ones and twos, there is no reason to postulate that they all arrived by the same route; all that matters is that they should have come eventually from the Danube basin. As I have already mentioned, some of the Homeric heroes were Zeus-born, and may have come _via_ Epirus, while others, the majority, were of the stock of Ares. Now Ares was the god of the Thracians, or of some group of people inhabiting Thrace.[381] It would seem then that some, probably most, of the “Achæans” came from the Thraco-Phrygian stock, though whether they started on their way from Thrace, or left the main body before it had reached that country, is a matter of relatively small importance. When the archæology of Macedonia and Thrace is better understood, we shall doubtless be able to clear up this point. It is unfortunately not possible to date these swords with precision from their associations, as there are difficulties in ascertaining the exact position in which they were found, or in identifying the potsherds and other objects found with them. They are believed to date from the third Late Minoan period, that is to say, sometime after 1400 or 1350 /B.C./ It is here that our Egyptian evidence helps us. We learn from the Egyptian records that[382] in the fifth year of Merneptah, 1220 /B.C./, the Delta was attacked by Meryey, king of the Libyans, who brought with him a host of Tehenu, who had been living in the country behind Alexandria. He had also numerous oversea allies, pirates and traders, who came in search of loot. These were the Sherden, Shekelesh, Teresh and the Ekwesh. If the three first have been rightly identified, they were the people of Sardinia and Sicily and the Tyrsenians, who we know later as the Etruscans; whether these identifications are correct has been much disputed, but it is significant that all three represent areas or peoples which we have already identified with Prospector activities. On the fourth the Ekwesh, there is more general agreement, and I believe all authorities unite in seeing in this name the word “Achæan.” If this be so, our Nordic intruders, who had made themselves lords of the trading cities in Greece, had taken to the sea, like their fellows in the Baltic, and were, with Prospector allies, attacking and plundering the rich lands of the Delta.