Homer Tilted into Absurdity

Ancient bust of Homer

The following is a slightly reworked version of a few postings1 I did a few years ago on the book Where Troy Once Stood2 Having read it I was amused but not convinced at all.

The Crisis or
The End of the Bronze Age Part II

In Part I I looked at the causes of the crisis at the end of the Bronze Age, (1200-900 B.C.E.) here I will look at the course and consequences of the crisis.

Course

Egypt

During the Reign of Rameses II, (c. 1250 B.C.E.), Egyptian records mention raids by both the Libyans and by various sea going peoples into the Egyptian Delta. It also appears that Rameses either settled or was unable to prevent Libyans and others from settling in the Nile Delta. We also begin to hear about problems in administration, collecting taxes and the like.

During the Reign of Rameses II son, Merneptah (c. 1215 B.C.E.) both the Libyan and sea peoples made major attacks on Egypt which if the Egyptian accounts are anything to go by were beaten off with serious difficulty. Merneptah’s various records complain about corrupt and bad officials. After Merneptah's death the 19th Dynasty went into a severe crisis and shortly afterwards came to an end, with much corruption, bad harvests, intrigue. In fact a scribe looking back at this time period records the following for the period after Merneptah's death:

The land of Fgypt was cast a drift, every man being a law unto himself , and they had no leader for many years - empty years when Irsu, a Syrian [Chancellor Bay], was chief having set the entire land in subjugation before him; each joined his neighbour in plundering their goods and they treated the gods like people and no one dedicated offerings in the temples...1

Rameses III of the 20th Dynasty (c. 1170 B.C.E.) faced renewed attacks on Egypt by both the "Sea Peoples" and the Libyans. From his account it appears that Rameses was initially beaten and only survived by winning a crushing naval victory at the last moment. During his reign corruption became common, the tombs in the valley of the Kings started to be systematically pillaged and Rameses III himself was apparently murdered in a palace intrigue. Egypt lost control of much her remaining Asiatic Empire. The Reigns of the Kings who succeeded Rameses III was characterized by increased corruption, growing provincial independence, massive Asiatic settlement of the Nile Delta loss of control of what was left of Egypt in Asia.

Relief of Rameses III

By 1100 B.C.E. this process was well advanced by 1050 Upper Egypt, centered in Thebes was virtually independent and Nubia to the south was lost forever. In fact some time about 1088 B.C.E. things had so broken down in Thebes that for a period of time known as "The year of the Hyena" order completely broke down. This was when thieves were able to strip the precious metal from the gates of the Temple of Amun in Karnak, Thebes it also appears that pillagers were able to plunder the inner shrine. Shortly after words Egypt was divided between the High Priest of Amun, aided by the God's Wife of Amun in Upper Egypt, (the seizure of power was apparently a desperate effort to re-impose order), and a Pharaoh, (soon to be two) in Lower Egypt.2

The downward slide continued so that by about 970 B.C.E., the independent Libyan chieftains of the Nile Delta where powerful enough that one of them was able to seize Tanis and proclaim himself Pharaoh and have the title recognized throughout Egypt. Egypt was never to recover from the crisis.3

Cannan

In about 1200 BCE Egyptian control of Cannan began to seriously slip we know that Merneptah was forced to campaign in Cannan to restore Egyptian control.

For example an Inscription from his reign contains the following:

The princes are prostrate, saying: "Mercy!"
Not one raises his head among the Nine Bows.
Desolation is for Tehenu; Hatti is pacified;
Plundered is the Canaan with every evil;
Carried off is Ashkelon; seized upon is Gezer;
Yanoam is made as that which does not exist;
Israel is laid waste, his seed is not;
Hurru is become a widow for Egypt!
All lands together, they are pacified;4

That he faced coalitions of enemy cities and attacks by the Sea-Peoples advancing along the coast from the north. Shortly after that, in the period 1200 BCE - 1150 BCE the following cities were sacked Akko, Megiddo, Bethel, Lachish, Gaza, Ashod, Ashkelon Deir Allia, Hazor, Tannach. This list is not complete. Certain cities did not fall, such as Jerusalem. About 1160 - 1140 BCE the Pelest, from Crete and Cyprus settled in the cities of Philistina, i.e., Gaza, Gezer Ashkelon, and formed a confederation and becoming the Philistines. In the north of Philistina the Danu settled. And near Akko the Tjeker occupied the city of Dor.

In the interior and in the highlands the local peoples, composed of farmers, refugees, and immigrants, some perhaps from Egypt formed a tribal confederacy called Israel based on a rejection of rule by the city state and based on tribal system of defence and support. Israel was apparently in existence by 1200 BCE and is recorded by Pharaoh Merneptah has being one of Egypt's enemies that he crushed. The Israelite confederation was engaged in fighting with some of remaining Canaanite city states, in alliance with some of the rest.

The conquest narratives in the Bible are problematic in that they record the destruction of cities that were not sacked at this time, and it does not record the sack of cities that were sacked at this time. In fact in the entire conquest narrative only Hazor is mentioned as being destroyed in the North. In the south various cities like Debir, which was not occupied, are claimed to be destroyed. Other cities like Gaza are claimed destroyed by Israel when in fact it appears that the Sea-Peoples sacked them.

It appears from the Books of Joshua and Judges that this was a confusing period in which the tribal confederacy operated as way of providing both security and stability. In about 1020 B.C.E., Saul was chosen has the first King of Israel to lead the fight against the Philistines after words David would become King (c. 1000 B.C.E.)

Israel under David and his son Solomon flourished briefly during this period (c. 1000-940 B.C.E.) in which Babylonia, Egypt, the Hittite empire, and Assyria was laid low. After Solomon's death Israel was divided into two kingdoms soon to be threatened by the reviving power of both Egypt and Assyria.

Born with the Tribal confederacy is a belief system, or religion; forged under conditions of crisis and the loss of faith in conventional modes of belief; it will change our world radically in the future. These developments will take centuries to come about.5

Syria

The history of Syria during this time is still a bit unclear but a general pattern of events is clearly known.

In about 1250 B.C.E., archaeological remains indicate the beginning of a decline in trade. Some cuneiform tablets indicate an increase in piracy and raids. At this time most of Syria was controlled by the Hittite Empire, which was having increasing problems maintaining control over its subject peoples. About 1200 - 1150 B.C.E. a wave of destruction swept over Syria. During those years the cities of Kadesh, Carchemish, and Aleppo among many others were sacked along with other cities and numerous smaller sites. The great seaport of Ugarit the most important Phoenician seaport was sacked along with cities on the island of Cyprus.

Shortly afterwards migrants from Asia Minor settled in much of northern Syria, establishing their own city states upon the ruins of the devastated old cities. These city states are called Neo-Hittite because of their cultural and linguistic links with the old Hittite Empire. By about 1000 B.C.E. these city states were established and were engaged in a series of fratricidal wars for local supremacy. Shortly after 900 B.C.E. they would be threatened by a reviving Assyrian Empire.

Aside from migrants from Asia Minor large numbers of Arameans, a semi pastoral people, had moved in from the desert fringes of the Fertile Crescent and settled large areas of Syria. In the coastal regions the southern Phoenician cities of Sidon, Byblos and Tyre were able to weather the storm, although some inscriptional evidence indicates that Tyre for example may have been besieged 3 or more times. It appears that the Phoenician city-states were able to take over what was left of trade in the Mediterranean. The Phoenician monopoly of trade would last for centuries, well past the end of the crisis. Only the rise of the Greeks has trading rivals after 800 B.C.E. would that begin to change.

This period also saw the large scale settlement of Greeks onto the island of Cyprus.6

Asia Minor

Lion Gate, Hattusa

The chief event of the crisis in Asia Minor was the destruction of the Hittite Empire. Between 1250 - 1200 B.C.E. there was increased unrest in the Empire as refractory vassals to break free of Hittite control. Between 1200 - 1175 B.C.E., the surviving cuneiform tablets indicates increasing difficulty suppressing rebellions, shortages of grain, (we have a letter from the Hittite King requesting grain from Egypt), and general unrest on the frontiers. The writings and inscriptions end abruptly about 1175 B.C.E., the capital Hattusa is sacked and destroyed never to be rebuilt. At the same time sites like Tarsus, Karaoglan, and Alishar Hoyuk are also destroyed. The destroyers are unknown. Although the destruction seems to have occurred at the same time at the hand of the same, unknown, invaders.

In the aftermath large numbers of the people of central Asia Minor abandoned their homes and moved south, over a long period of time, into northern Syria.

Relief of Suppiluliuma III last known Hittite King

Some time between about 1150 - 1100 B.C.E. invaders began to settle former frontier provinces of the empire and threaten the Assyrian empire. About 1000 B.C.E. the Phrygians moved into central Asia Minor from Thrace in Europe and set-up the kingdom of Phrygia, famous for the story of King Midas. Shortly afterwards the Lydians set-up the kingdom of Lydia near the Aegean coast of Asia Minor.7

Greece

The inscribed tablets found in various palaces in Greece, (Knossos, Pylos, Mycenae etc.) give very few hints about the approaching disaster. It appears that trade was being disrupted and declining in the period 1250 -1200 B.C.E. Further about 1250 B.C.E., the palace at Thebes was destroyed only to be rebuilt almost at once.

The tablets at Pylos record the existence of an apparent threat from the sea, (raiders it appears and a concern with collecting revenue also). Further a wall was built across the Isthmus of Corinth linking the Peloponnese with the mainland.

About 1200 - 1150 B.C.E., most of the palaces were destroyed for example Thebes, Pylos, and Knossos. The fortresses of Mycenae and Tiryns were able to survive although the area outside the walls was devastated. In Ionia (Aegean coast of Asia Minor), the cities of Miletus and Troy were sacked. In fact it appears that the sack of Troy about this time inspired the Epic poem the Iliad.

Lion Gate Mycenae

After this wave of destruction much of Greece was severely depopulated and a large portion of the population moved to Ionia and Cyprus in the centuries which followed.

Literacy vanished in this period (1150 - 1100 B.C.E.) and virtually all building activity stopped. In about 1050 B.C.E. the Dorians moved in from central Greece into the Peloponnese and later into Crete and nearby islands. During this time period or shortly before the fortresses of Tiryns and Mycenae were sacked. During the entire period of the crisis Athens was able to successfully survive.

Greece disintegrated into a collection of petty city states, trade collapsed and what was left of it fell into the hands of Phoenician merchants. This was the "Heroic" age of Greek history that provided the inspiration for Homer's Epics the Iliad and the Odyssey. The Palace cultures never revived. The new emerging Greek culture would centre not on palaces but on the "Polis", or city state with its institution of rule through various types of communal rule.

By 900 B.C.E., signs of reviving trade, settlement and building activity are present in Greece. The new emerging Greek culture would exercise a profound influence on our world of today.8

Assyria

Assyria represents in some respects a anomaly. The initial period of the crisis saw an expansion of Assyrian power into Syria as both Egypt and the Hittite empire retreated from Syria and the Hittite empire collapsed. Unlike both Egypt and the Hittite empire to say nothing of Mycenaean Greece, the records of Assyria are comparatively quite abundant.

What the records reveal is continual campaigning by one Assyrian Monarch after the other. Including wars with Babylonia and with the various peoples who had occupied the former Hittite empire. These conflicts started c. 1200 B.C.E. Assyrian kings were able to campaign to the Mediterranean until about 1080 B.C.E., despite this the Assyrian kings were unable to secure either control or security. We know that Assyria was distracted by wars with both migrating peoples from the north and with Babylonia.

The wars were continuous has Assyria was forced to fight peoples migrating from the North. We know that c. 1175 B.C.E. Assyria had to fight off a major invasion from the North. Despite apparent success with Assyrian armies frequently advancing to the Mediterranean, the Assyrians had to deal with the same problems over and over again, conquering and re-conquering territories, while in the heart land of Assyria harvests declined and civil strife was common.

After a last spasm of effort c. 1075 B.C.E. Assyria went into dramatic decline. During the preceding period, (c. 1200 - 1075 B.C.E.) large numbers of Aramean semi-pastoral had been infiltrating into Syria and Assyria and Babylonia presenting a continual threat to Assyrian control. Any solution was only temporary during this period. From 1075 - 900 B.C.E. most of northern Mesopotamia was lost to the Arameans who pressed Assyria from the west by c. 900 B.C.E. Assyria was a small beleaguered kingdom confined to a 50 mile stretch of the Tigris river only about 30 miles across.

Despite the decline shortly after 900 B.C.E. Assyria would quite spectacularly revive.9

Stela of Adad-Nirari

Babylonia

Unlike Assyria the records of Babylonia are fragmentary and sparse during this time period. We know that beginning about 1200 B.C.E. Aramean semi-pastoralists began to infiltrate into Babylonia and that harvests began to decline. The Kassite dynasty which had ruled Babylonia for over 300 years was in terminal decline beset by wars with Assyria and Elam, famine, unrest and economic decline. c. 1140 B.C.E. the Elamites sacked Babylonia. A period of confusion followed during which Nebuchadnezzar I established a new dynasty and defeated Elam. (c. 1125 B.C.E.)

Shortly after Babylonia began engaged in debilitating wars with Assyria and was unable to cope with continuous economic decline and the Arameanian infiltration of Babylonia. By 1050 the Babylonian state had disintegrated into competing city states many controlled by Arameanian Kings with large scale Arameanian settlement. The nadir of all this was reached in about 900 B.C.E. when from the sources we have it appears that much of Babylonia was abandoned and many of her cities in partial ruin. A revival of central rule was shortly to begin.10

Iran

The Kingdom of Elam was able to take advantage of the beginning of the crisis to sack Babylonia but was unable to escape defeat by a reviving Babylonia. Meanwhile and after Elam was beset by migrating peoples from the north. We have only poor records from this time period in Elam it appears that Elam was beset by chronic and severe internal problems and simply unable to take advantage of either Assyria's or Babylonia's problems. Elam was not a factor in Middle Eastern politics until after 900 B.C.E.

In other parts of Iran the evidence seems to indicate a significant population loss in the period c. 1200 - 1000 B.C.E. followed by a recovery. At the same time several peoples from the northern part of Iran moved to the south and east.11

India

The traditional date of the Aryan invasions of India is c. 1500 B.C.E. Traditionally they have also been credited (or discredited) with destroying the Indus Civilization. It now appears that the Indus civilization collapsed a few centuries before the Aryans arrived and that the Aryan invaders came in waves one of those waves, in fact the main one, seems to have been c. 1200 - 1000 B.C.E. It has been recently claimed that this wave was in fact the only wave of invaders. This event was one of the turning points of the history of India because it brought to India many of the basic ideas that would develop into Hinduism.12

China

In China this period c. 1200 - 1050 B.C.E. saw the decline and fall of the Shang dynasty of China, which was afflicted by internal strife, failing harvests according to both traditional history and oracle bone inscriptions. (Tortoise shells on which questions would be inscribed for divination purposes) About c. 1050 B.C.E., the Chou a people from the west who had set up their own kingdom c. 1200 B.C.E. overthrew the Shang and established the Chou dynasty that would govern China both in reality and nominally for 800 years. This period would see the establishment of "Classic" Chinese civilization.13

Europe

In Europe this period c. 1200 - 900 B.C.E., saw the expansion of the "Tepe" people from central Germany / Poland area of Europe. The Tempe people were the ancestors of the Celts who would eventually spread all over Europe from Thrace to Spain.

It also appears that various peoples from Asia Minor and Thrace moved into Italy and Spain. For example the Sikels migrated to Sicily from either the Balkans or Asia Minor. The Sharhkans migrated from Libya to Sardinia, (this is controversial)

In comparison with the time period before and after the period c. 1200 - 900 B.C.E., seems to have unusual for the amount of disruption and population movement in Europe.14

Consequences and Conclusions

For the West the crisis of c. 1200 - 900 B.C.E., was instrumental in the formation of the two dominant cultures that form its foundations Greece and Israel. Without the crisis it is hard to believe that the Religion of Israel that would exercise such a profound influence would have developed. As for Greece. Until the crisis the Greek culture was basically a variant on the palace cultures of the Middle East, now it would change into a different mold different enough from other cultures to exercise in a different way from Israel a profound influence on all of us.

In the rest of the world the crisis also had an influence by for example in China inaugurating the rule of the Chou dynasty brought changes into Chinese thought not just a change of dynasty including the concept of the mandate of heaven, and in India the Aryans who arrived during this time brought both to India basic Hindu concepts like Karma.15

We have been living in the world created by the crisis ever since.

1. Ancient Lives, John Romer, Phoenix Press, London, 1984, p. 58. Romer is quoting a scribe who wrote many years after the death of Merneptah.

2. Ibid. pp. 168-176. Gives some details about the chaos that hapenned during the Year of the Hyenas".

3. The End of the Bronze Age, Robert Drews, Princeton University Press, Princeton NJ, 1993, pp. 18-21, Out of the Desert, William H. Stiebing Jr., Prometheus Books, Buffalo NY, 1989, pp. 178-182, The Ancient Near East, vol. 2, Amelie Kuhrt, Routledge, London, 1995, pp. 285-393, The Rise of the West, William H. McNeil, University of Chicago Press, Chicago ILL, 1963, pp. 113-120, A History of Egypt, James Henry Breasted, Bantam Books, New York, 1964, pp. 389-448, The Sea Peoples, N. K. Sandars, Thames and Hudson, London, 1978, pp. 105-137.

4. Ancient Near Eastern Texts, James B. Pritchard, Princeton University Press, Princeton NJ, 1969., pp. 378,.

5. Stiebing, pp. 189-202, Drews, pp. 15-17, Sandars, pp. 157-174, Kuhrt, pp. 401-456, The Tribes of Yahweh, Norman K. Gottwald, Orbis Books, Maryknoll NY, 1979. Who were the Early Israelites and Where did They Come From?, William G. Dever, William B. Eerdmans Pub. Co., Cambridge, 2003, pp. 153-189, What did the Biblical Writers know and When Did They Know it?, William G. Dever, William B. Eerdmans Pub. Co., 2001, pp. 97-157.

6. Kuhrt, pp. 401-418, Sandars, pp. 139-155, Drews, pp. 13-15, Stiebing, pp. 175, 178.

7. Stiebing, 171-174, Sandars, pp. 139-144, Drews, pp. 8-11, Kuhrt, 386-393, The Hittites, O.R. Gurney, Penguin Books, London, 1952, pp. 36-39.

8. McNeill, pp. 188-196, Drews, pp. 221-29, Sandars, pp. 55-103, 179-195, Stiebing, 169-171, Decline, Destruction and Aftermath, Sigrid Deger-Jalkotzy, in The Cambridge Companion to The Aegean Bronze Age, Ed. Cynthia W. Shelmerdine, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2008, pp. 387-407. Early Greece: The Bronze and Archaic Ages, M. I. Finley, W. W. Norton and Co. Inc., New York, 1970, pp. 58-68.

9. Stiebing pp. 180-182, Drews, pp. 17-18, McNeill pp. 116-122, Kuhrt, pp. 386-401, The Greatness that was Babylon, H.W.F. Saggs, Mentor Books, New York, 1962, pp. 96-106, Ancient Iraq, 3rd Edition, Georges Roux, Penguin Books, London, 1992, pp. 266-281, The Might that was Assyria, H.W.F. Saggs, Sidgwick and Jackson, London, 1984, pp. 55-69, History of Assyria, A. T. Olmstead, The University of Chicago Press, Chicago ILL., 1923, pp. 57-80.

10. Ibid.

11. Kuhrt, p. 394, Saggs, 1984, pp. 56-57.

12. The Birth of Indian Civilization, Brigit and Raymond Allchin, Penguin Books, 1968, pp. 144-156, McNeill, pp. 86-89, 108, Mankind and Mother Earth, Arnold Toynbee, Paladin, 1976, pp. 115.

13. McNeill, pp. 223-224, Toynbee, pp. 116-117.

14. Roux, p. 265-266, McNeill, pp. 102-109, Sandars, 97-103.

15. Sandars, 197-202, Drews, pp. 29-30, Stiebing, pp. 189-202.

Other Books used.

Shang Civilization, Kwang-Chih Chang, Yale University Press, London, 1980.

Early Civilizations of the Old World, Charles Keith Mai8sels, Routledge, New York, 1999.

Chariot, Arthur Cotterell, Pimlico, London, 2004.

Structure, Dynamics, and the Final Collapse of Bronze Age Civilizations in Second Millenium B.C., Kajsa Ekholm Friedman, in Hegemonic Declines Present and Past, Ed. Jonathan Friedman, Christopher Chase-Dunn, Paradign Publishers, London, 2005, pp. 51-87.

Archaic States, Ed. Gary M. Feinman, Joyce Marcus, School of American Research Press, Santa-Fe NM, 1998.

The Collapse of Complex Societies, Joseph Tainter, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1988.

Myths of the Archaic State, Norman Yoffee, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2005.

Pierre Cloutier

The Crisis or

The End of the Bronze Age Part I

The end of the Bronze Age, (c. 1200-900 B.C.E.) in the history of the world may in fact be the great turning point. In this essay a brief look will be made of various causes, courses and consequences.

Causes

A) Climate Change

Around 1300 B.C.E. there is evidence of a cooling of the climate in the Middle East and Europe, in fact the whole Old World seems to have been affected by a gradual cooling has the weather became both cooler and noticeably dryer.

The evidence for an increase in dryness of the climate has come from an examination of many strands of evidence. For example evidence of prehistoric lake levels and the advance of Glaciers would seem to indicate that between c. 1250 B.C.E. - 1050 B.C.E, was a period of unusual dryness. The result was a series of prolonged and serious drought. Which brought in its wake chaos and disorder producing the collapse of the Bronze Age civilizations.

The idea is that the Bronze Age civilizations were dependant on surpluses created by agriculture that disappeared when the drought came. Agricultural surpluses at this time tended to be very small so that a prolonged drought was potentially cataclysmic and not simply disastrous. Archaeological evidence indicates that in parts of Greece the population may have declined up to 75% during this time period.

Evidence from Babylonia indicates a period of severe dryness that lasted until c. 900 B.C.E. Evidence from Egypt indicates that there was at this time a period of dryness and bad harvests. Physical evidence from India indicates a period of dryness and poor local harvests in fact it appears possible that some Indian rivers may have dried out. In China there is some evidence from Oracle bone inscriptions of problems with harvests and the weather.

The problem with this evidence is that although it is suggestive it is not conclusive other pieces of evidence indicate that the weather was not unusually dry in each of the areas mentioned. Also increased dryness may have been a tendency not a sudden, dramatic change of weather conditions. In other words this is not a sufficient sole cause for the crisis.1

B) Mass Migrations

The Egyptian inscriptions record that the attacks of the Sea-Peoples where veritable movements of entire peoples, including children, wives and goods, of people looking for a place to settle down. Much of the migrations originated from Aegean area and peoples from there settled from Sardinia to Palestine. In Europe ceramic and other evidence indicates a series of mass movements into Europe.

It was first proposed in the late nineteenth century that the close of the Egyptian New Kingdom had been caused by the mass migrations of whole peoples. The model for this being the mass migrations of the period at the end of the Roman Empire.

The most convincing evidence for the mass migration theory is a series of inscriptions from Egypt that describe mass movements of peoples from the north into the Middle East. An inscription from the reign of Rameses III; the inscription talks about a confederacy of many different peoples that after destroying the Hittite Empire then devastates Syria before descending on Egypt. These inscriptions date from the reign of Rameses III (1182 - 1151 B.C.E).

For example:

The foreign countries made a plot in their islands. Dislodged and scattered by battle were the lands all at one time, and no land could stand before their arms, beginning with Khatti [Hittite Empire], Kode[Asia Minor] , Carchemish[Syria] , Arzawa[Asia minor] , and Alasiya [Asia Minor?]...A camp was set up in one place in Amor [Cannan?], and they desolated its people and its land as though they had never come into being. They came, the flame prepared before them, onwards to Egypt. Their confederacy consisted of Peleset, Tjekker, Sheklesh, Danu, and Weshesh, united lands, and they laid their hands upon the lands to the entire circuit of the earth, their hearts bent and trustful 'Our plan is accomplished!' But the heart of this god, the lord of the gods, was prepared and ready to ensnare them like birds...I established my boundary in Djahi , prepared in front of them, the local princes, garrison-commanders, and Maryannu. I caused to be prepared the river mouth like a strong wall with warships, galleys, and skiffs. They were completely equipped both fore and aft with brave fighters carrying their weapons and infantry of all the pick of Egypt, being like roaring lions upon the mountains; chariotry with able warriors and all goodly officers whose hands were competent. Their horses quivered in all their limbs, prepared to crush the foreign countries under their hoofs.

... a net was prepared for them to ensnare them, those who entered into the river-mouths being confined and fallen within it, pinioned in their places, butchered and their corpses hacked up. 2

It was evidence like the above that caused late nineteenth century historians to theorize by analogy with the "Wandering of Nations" at the end of the Roman Empire to suggest that something similar happened at this time. This explanation is now under severe attack. For example it appears that the analogy with events around the fall of Rome are not quite as convincing if only because it is now recognized that the "Barbarian Hordes" that "destroyed" the Roman Empire were actually quite small, (For example the largest "horde" referred to, the Vandals, numbered, Men, Women, Children and Slaves, 80,000 persons) and so migration turns out to be an inadequate explanation for the fall of Rome. That being the case it may not be the explanation for the end of the Bronze Age. Further the inscriptional evidence used to support this theory is not quite as clear as it seems given that many of the peoples referred to in fact lived quite close to the peoples they were attacking. Also evidence of a change in population is not apparent in most places.

Despite the above points there is some evidence in some areas of population change. For example the arrival of the Phrygians in Asia Minor by c. 1000 B.C.E., the Philistines in Palestine by 1150 B.C.E., and the Greek Speaking Dorians into southern Greece c. 1000 B.C.E. In most cases these migrations seem to have occurred one or two centuries after the collapse of Bronze Age civilization in the areas settled into by the people involved. The only exception seems to be the Philistines whose arrival coincides with the destruction of many cities in Syria / Palestine.3

Relief showing Ramese's III defeat of the Sea Peoples

C) Raiders

A different reading of the evidence indicates that, at least in the Aegean, it is possible that Raiders based in modern day Thessaly pillaged, one by one the Mycenaean Palaces and destroyed Troy.

This argument first originated from an analysis of the Iliad and Odyssey of Homer, which indicated that the traditions of the Iliad and the Odyssey seemed to originate from an area of southern Thessaly from which bands of sea-borne raiders originated in period of c. 1200-900 B.C.E. It seemed that oral traditions from that area played a role in creating the Epics of the Iliad and Odyssey whose traditions centred around the exploits of raiders. The problem with this account was that it was based on amalysis of traditions that involved only one of the cultures that collapsed and it did not explain the completeness of the collapse given that the raiders were interested in rich booty not in inflicting massive cataclysmic destruction.

In other words the raiders appeared to be more a symptom of decline than a cause of the decline and fall of Bronze Age civilization.4

D) The Military Explanation

During the Bronze Age Military Power was concentrated in the so-called Palace Civilizations, which based their power on the command of large Chariot armies. Egypt had thousands of Chariots, and so did Babylonia, Assyria and the Hittite empire.

In this time period Horses were not large or strong enough to support a human riding on his/her back, but were perfectly capable of drawing a Chariot. The Chariot was drawn by a team of Horses, (two). On the Chariot were usually 3 persons. The Driver who drove the horses, a soldier who protected with a shield and sword the main warrior, and the main warrior, the Archer who fired long arrows from a powerful compound bow.

The evidence indicates that the whole system was quite expensive. The horses had to be carefully trained to function as a team and were therefore expensive. The Chariot itself was a very expensive item requiring a specialist to build. The compound bow was expensive requiring, usually, years of work by a specialist to create. The armour of the Archer was also expensive. And the Archer required years of training and as a specialist warrior was not cheap. Add to that the driver, the cost of horse fodder, the great expense of Bronze weaponry, due to the cost and rarity of Bronze. The result was that most countries were much too small to support more than a few hundred Chariots. Only great states like Egypt or the Hittite empire, Assyria, Babylonia could support thousands of Chariots. Needless to say losing such expensive military equipment was not wanted given the cost of replacing it.

The Chariot and the Archer were the main military forces of this time period. The Chariot being used as a mobile platform for an archer to shoot from, and the main enemy of the chariot archer being other chariot archers. Battles were contests on level ground between chariot armies.

The Chariot Archer were aided by skirmishers who provided support and helped protect the horses from injury and attack. Theses forces also provided troops to besiege cities and fortresses and to provide troops to fight in difficult terrain, like mountains etc. Theses skirmishers were vastly more numerous than the numbers of Chariot archers, drivers and bodyguards.

Theses troops were recruited mainly from peoples living on the margins of the great civilizations, such has the peoples of central Greece, the Caucasus, the Zagros Mountains, and the Arabian Desert, highland areas throughout the Middle East and probably beyond.

Between 1300 B.C.E., and 1200 B.C.E., these skirmishers discovered that with their protective armour, javelins, long swords. Spears and the occasional bow combined with their vastly larger numbers that they could destroy the Chariot armies of the Palace civilizations. Only civilizations that could field large infantry forces to protect the Chariot forces had any chance with swarms of skirmishers who, killed or wounded the horses and then dispatched the vastly outnumbered archer, driver and body guard. The result was the pillaging of one Palace after the other, the destruction of cities and mass migrations throughout the eastern Mediterranean.5

E) The Advent of Iron

The warrior aristocracies of the late Bronze Age depended for their power on the use and monopoly of scarce bronze weaponry. Bronze was rare because it was an alloy of copper and tin. Copper was relatively common. Tin however was quite rare and had to be imported from far away. At this time the main source of tin seems to have been Hindu Kush area of the Himalayas. Tin also seems to have come in smaller amounts from England. Making bronze also required that both the copper and tin be liquefied and so required highly technical and specialized training to do. It also required fairly complex apparatus to do. This limited the ability of people to work with bronze. The result was to add greatly to the cost of the resulting bronze. The end result was very expensive bronze tools and weapons.

Iron had one crushing advantage over bronze, it was relatively common, certainly more common than copper. The main problem was that working iron required higher temperatures than bronze, but unlike bronze there was no need to liquefy iron it could be worked solid. It was the invention of the bellows that enabled craftsman to create the temperatures necessary to work iron. With bellows the craftsman, or blacksmith, working iron, was also considerably more mobile than the worker of bronze. With the loss of the monopoly of metal weaponry the warrior aristocracies collapsed.

We know that iron weaponry starts to appear in the 14th century, for example an iron dagger appears in the tomb of Tutankhamen, made from meteoric iron. The Hittites also started to use iron weapons in the 13th century. The problem with iron weaponry being the main reason for the collapse is that iron weaponry became common well after the end of the Bronze Age was underway. In fact the armies of the Sea Peoples and others that threatened the great civilizations were overwhelmingly armed with bronze. It appears that the spread of iron confirmed the collapse and end of the Bronze Age Warrior aristocracies but did not cause it.

At the last half of the dark age period, (1050-900 B.C.E.), it appears that large forces of iron equipped peoples had encircled, undermined and invaded the great civilizations of the Middle East and thus putting all such societies under serious threat. So it appears that iron played a role later on in prolonging the crisis, and confirming its effects.6

F) Systems Collapse

We know a fair bit about the Palace civilizations of the late bronze age due to the survival of Palace archives from such places as Mycenae, Pylos, Knossos in Greece, Hattusa in Turkey, Ashur in Assyria, Babylonian cuneiform tablets, and of course the records of Egypt.

What these tablets reveal is that the world of "Palace" civilizations was one of bureaucratic domination and administration.

Babylonian Boundary Stone

The records could be quite meticulous and detailed listing, vats of olive oil, amounts of wheat stored, officials working in the palace etc., etc. Given their size the "Palace Civilizations" were quite bureaucratic and top heavy. These societies depended upon a class of scribal record keepers to record taxes, of grains, olive oil, rare metals, etc. Further trade was subject to quite rigid control by the Palace bureaucracies.

The Palaces were not simply habitations for members of the Royal and Noble families, they were centers of bureaucratic control and production and distribution. For example the Palace of Minos at Knossos in Greece, which covered an area bigger than Buckingham Palace in England, devoted much of its space to storage and distribution of grain and olive oil. Also in the Palace was found archives and centers of bureaucratic activity. This pattern of centralized bureaucratic Palace culture with centralized taxation, distribution, production and control was found in the Hittite Empire, Babylonia, and Assyria and in Egypt. This system required meticulous record keeping and a staff of full time bureaucrats and record keepers.

At both Pylos in Greece, Thebes in Egypt and at Mari in Babylonia surviving archival documents reveal careful records were kept of size of herds of animals, taxes in kind from fields, amounts of various goods stored in different locations, who did what or was to do what, and Royal control of foreign trade.

It appears that the system was heavily dependent on the continued operation of the bureaucracy and the smooth functioning of system. It seems to have been rather sensitive to disruption. It seems to have required rather significant exploitation of the peasant population. As soon as the system was unable to extract the necessary taxes from the population it was in trouble. It appears that in many areas there was no significant middle part of the population, ("middle class"), to mediate the social dynamics between the classes of rulers and ruled.

So that when the system was stressed, by crop failure, invasion, wars, etc., it had a built in potential to crash and burn because it lacked strength to deal with the severe stress.

An analogy can be made with the Classic Maya collapse of 800-900 C.E., when another top-heavy system fell apart under stress because of lack of basic strength. Cultures like that of Egypt and Babylonia-Assyria were able to better weather the crisis because of the much greater strength of the middle strata of their societies and because the bureaucratic apparatus was therefore less of a burden on the societies.

Although suggestive this theory would be helped if we had much better records from this period and so is far from proven.7

Conclusion

The most obvious conclusion is that a search for a one cause for the collapse will fail. It appears that the reasons the collapse happened were multi-causal, and that theses causes interacted in such a way to produce the end of the Bronze Age and the birth of a new world.

Course and consequences to follow in Part II

1. Out of the Desert, William H. Stiebing Jr., Prometheus Books, Buffalo NY, 1989, pp. 167-187. see The End of the Bronze Age, Robert Drews, Princeton University Press, Princeton NJ., 1993, pp. 77-84 for a summary and critique.

2. From Here See also Ancient Records of Egypt, vol. 4, James Henry Breasted, University of Chicago Press, Chicago ILL., 1906, pp. 37-39.

3. The Ancient Near East, vol. 2, Amelie Kuhrt, Routledge, London, 1995, pp. 385-410, Drews, pp. 48-72, The Sea Peoples, N. K. Sandars, Thames and Hudson, London, 1978, Ancient Iraq, 3rd Edition, George Roux, Penguin Books, 1992, pp. 266-281, The Greatness that was Babylonia, H. W. F. Saags, Mentor Books, New York, 1962, pp. 98-104, also see Steibing above.

4. See Drews, pp. 91-93, and Sandars.

5, See Drews, Part 11, pp. 97-225.

6. Drews pp. 73-76, Sandars pp. 174-177, Rise of the West, William McNeil, University of Chicago Press, Chicago ILL., 1963, pp. 117-118.

7. The Collapse of Complex Systems, Joseph Trainter, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1989, McNeil, pp. 116-133, Drews, 85-90. Kuhrt, pp. 385-410, Structure, Dynamics, and the Final Collapse of Bronze Age Civilizations in the Second Millenium B.C., Kajsa Ekholm Friedman, in Hegemonic Declines Present and Past, Ed. Jonathon Friedman, Chistopher Chase, Dunn Paradigm Publishers, London, 2005, pp. 51-87, Myths of the Archaic State, Norman Yoffee, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2005, pp. 131-160, Roux above, For the Mayan Collapse see The Fall of the Ancient Maya, David Webster, Thames and Hudson, 2002.

Course and Consequences to follow in Part II

Pierre Cloutier