the greater Southern European area, including western Asia Minor, the Aegean, and the islands of the Mediterranean. Egypt, in particular, repelled numerous attempted invasions from the Sea Peoples, most famously at the Battle of the Delta, where the pharaoh Ramesses III defeated a massive invasion force which had already plundered Hattusa, Carchemish, Cyprus, and the Southern Levant. Egyptian sources name one of these implicated Sea Peoples as the pwrꜣsꜣtj, generally transliterated as either Peleset or Pulasti. Following the Sea Peoples' defeat, Ramesses III allegedly relocated a number of the pwrꜣsꜣtj to southern Canaan, as recorded in an inscription from his funerary temple in Medinet Habu, and the Great Harris Papyrus. Though archaeological investigation has been unable to correlate any such settlement existing during this time period, this, coupled with the name Peleset/Pulasti and the peoples' supposed Aegean origins, have led many scholars to identify the pwrꜣsꜣtj with the Philistines. Typically "Philistine" artifacts begin appearing in Canaan by the 12th century BCE. Pottery of Philistine origin has been found far outside of what would later become the core of Philistia, including at the majority of Iron Age I sites in the Jezreel Valley; however, because the quantity of said pottery finds are light, it is assumed that the Philistines' presence in these areas were not as strong as in their core territory, and that they probably were a minority which had assimilated into the native Canaanite population by the 10th century BCE. There is little evidence that the Sea Peoples forcefully injected themselves into the southern Levant, as many sites where Philistine material culture appears show nearly no signs of an intervening event marked by destruction. At Ashdod, only some ash was found in part of one area, but as David Ben-Shlomo, one of the site's excavators put it, "Sites like Ashdod display no evidence for destruction in the Early Iron Age levels." The original assumed destruction of Ashkelon was only a lens of ash uncovered in 1921, as all excavations have shown that no destruction took place ca. 1200 BCE. As the former lead excavator from Ashkelon stated, "The only clear conclusion that can be drawn is that there is no evidence of destruction." At Tell es-Safi/Gath, no evidence of a destruction has been uncovered in any area, as the cited evidence for a destruction were some pieces of restorable pottery uncovered on one floor. For Ekron, only a single