History of the Ancient Near East · Part 11 · The age of the great kings · B2
The Bronze Age Collapse
Part 11 of History of the Ancient Near East: around 1200 BCE, the great kingdoms of the eastern Mediterranean were rich and connected. Fifty years later, most of them had gone. What happened is one of the great debates of ancient history. The past perfect (by 1150 BCE, the Hittite empire had disappeared) and cause and effect (led to, due to, contributed to), with Philo, Sophia, Marcos and Demetria.
Tonight, the end of a world. Kings, palaces, scribes, trade routes: within two generations, most of it was gone.
That is exactly the wrong question, Marcos, and everybody asks it. Ask instead: what did it?
In the 13th century BCE, the eastern Mediterranean was a connected world. Egypt, the Hittite empire in Anatolia, Babylon, Assyria, the Mycenaean palaces of Greece, Cyprus and rich trading cities such as Ugarit in Syria exchanged letters, gifts, princesses, grain, copper and tin. Bronze is made of copper and tin, and tin came from very far away.
Between about 1200 and 1150 BCE, much of this world collapsed. The Hittite capital, Hattusa, was abandoned. Ugarit was destroyed and never rebuilt. The Mycenaean palaces burned, and their writing, Linear B, was forgotten. Egypt survived but lost its empire, including Canaan. Afterwards came smaller kingdoms, more iron, and new peoples: among them the Philistines on the coast of Canaan, and the first villages of Israel in its hills.
Egyptian inscriptions blame the “Sea Peoples”, raiders from the north. Modern scholars also point to drought and famine, earthquakes, the breakdown of trade, and revolts. Most now think that several causes worked together, so that a crisis in one place led to crises everywhere.
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