1177 B.C.: The Year Civilization Collapsed

by Eric H. Cline

Lest anyone wonder whether someone would go to war over a single person, one need only look at the story of the Trojan War, where the Mycenaeans fought the Trojans for ten years, reportedly because of the kidnapping of the beautiful Helen, to which we shall soon turn. One can also point to the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand in Sarajevo on June 28, 1914, which many see as the flash point igniting World War I.

Suppiluliuma vowed to enact vengeance for the death of his son [Zannanza], he made plans to attack Egyptian territory.

During Suppiluliuma’s reign, there began for the Hittites a period during which they were one of the great powers of the ancient world, on a par with the Egyptians and exceeding the influence of the Mitannians, Assyrians, Kassites/Babylonians, and Cypriots. They maintained their position through a combination of diplomacy, threats, war, and trade.

the ship contained a microcosm of the international trade and contacts that were ongoing in the Eastern Mediterranean, and across the Aegean, during the early thirteenth century BC. Not only were there goods from at least seven different areas, but—judging from the personal possessions the archaeologists found in the shipwreck—there were also at least two Mycenaeans on board, even though this seems to have been a Canaanite ship. Clearly this ship does not belong to a world of isolated civilizations, kingdoms, and fiefdoms, but rather to an interconnected world of trade, migration, diplomacy, and, alas, war. This really was the first truly global age.

the Hittites and Egyptians declared peace and ceased to fight each other, for they likely needed to turn their attention to two other events that may have taken place in about 1250 BC. Although both events may be legendary, and although it has yet to be proven that either actually took place, both still resonate in the modern world today: in Anatolia, the Hittites may have had to contend with the Trojan War, while the Egyptians may have had to deal with the Hebrew Exodus.

About the same time as the run-up to the Battle of Qadesh, the Hittites were also busy on a second front, in western Anatolia, where they were trying to contain rebellious subjects whose activities were apparently being underwritten by the Mycenaeans. This may be one of the earliest examples that we have of one government deliberately engaging in activities designed to undermine another (think Iranian support for Hezbollah in Lebanon, thirty-two hundred years after the Battle of Qadesh).

Priam’s son, whose name was Paris, but who is also called Alexander by Homer, sailed from Troy to mainland Greece on a diplomatic mission to visit Menelaus, the king of Mycenaean Sparta, for the Trojans and the Mycenaeans had been friendly trading partners for some time by that point. While there, he fell in love with Menelaus’s beautiful wife, Helen. When Paris returned home, Helen accompanied him—either voluntarily, according to the Trojans, or taken by force, according to the Greeks. Enraged, Menelaus persuaded his brother Agamemnon, king of Mycenae and the leader of the Greeks, to send an armada of a thousand ships and fifty thousand men against Troy to get Helen back. In the end, after a ten-year-long war, the Greeks were victorious. Troy was sacked, most of its inhabitants were killed, and Helen returned home to Sparta with Menelaus.

Dörpfeld believed that it was not the second city, but rather the sixth—Troy VI—that the Mycenaeans had captured and burned to the ground, and that it was this event that formed the basis of Homer’s epic tales over which the Trojan War had been fought, but that is still a matter of debate. Initially dated to ca. 1250 BC, it was probably actually destroyed a bit earlier, about 1300 BC.29 This was a wealthy city, with imported objects from Mesopotamia, Egypt, and Cyprus, as well as from Mycenaean Greece. It was also what one might call a “contested periphery”—that is, it was located both on the periphery of the Mycenaean world and on the periphery of the Hittite Empire—and was thus caught between two of the great powers of the ancient Mediterranean Bronze Age world.

Blegen, digging several decades after Dörpfeld, disagreed with his interpretations of the archaeology, and published what he said was indisputable evidence for the destruction of Troy VI not by humans but by an earthquake. His argument included positive evidence, such as walls knocked out of line and collapsed towers, as well as negative evidence, for he found no arrows, no swords, no remnants of warfare.31

This story of the Exodus has become one of the most famous and enduring tales from the Hebrew Bible, still celebrated today in the Jewish holiday of Passover. Yet it is also one of the most difficult to substantiate by either ancient texts or archaeological evidence.38

most secular archaeologists favor an alternative date of 1250 BC for the Exodus, which ignores the biblical chronology but makes more sense from an archaeological and historical point of view. It makes more sense because the date falls during the reign of Ramses II, the pharaoh who completed the biblical cities of Pithom and Rameses. It also corresponds to the approximate date for the destructions of a number of cities in Canaan by an unknown hand and allows as much as forty years for the Israelites to wander around in the desert before entering and conquering Canaan, as the biblical account describes, and yet still have them arrive in time to be mentioned by Pharaoh Merneptah in his “Israel Stele”—an inscription that dates to 1207 BC and is generally accepted as the earliest mention outside the Bible of an entity known as Israel.39

there is currently virtually nothing that sheds a specific light on the historicity of the Exodus—all is inference so far.41

numerous efforts to identify the biblical ten plagues that tormented the Egyptians, including frogs, locusts, boils, flies, hail, and the killing of the Egyptian firstborn children, have been either unsuccessful or unconvincing, although this has certainly not been for lack of trying. There is also no evidence to substantiate the biblical account of the parting of the Red (Reed) Sea.

At the moment, all that we can say for certain is that the archaeological evidence, in the form of pottery, architecture, and other aspects of material culture, indicates that the Israelites as an identifiable group were present in Canaan certainly by the end of the thirteenth century BC, and that it is their culture, along with that of the Philistines and the Phoenicians, that rises up out of the ashes of the destruction of the Canaanite civilization sometime during the twelfth century BC. This, in part, is why the question of the Exodus is relevant here, for the Israelites are among the groups of peoples who will make up a new world order, emerging out of the chaos that was the end of the Late Bronze Age.

Assyria had been one of the major players on the international scene in the ancient Near East for nearly two hundred years. It was a kingdom linked by marriage, politics, war, and trade over the centuries with the Egyptians, Babylonians, Hittites, and Mitanni. It was, without question, one of the Great Powers during the Late Bronze Age.

three hundred and more years of the globalized economy that had been the hallmark of the Late Bronze Age in the Aegean and Eastern Mediterranean.

14th into 12th century B.C.E.

excavators have described the “sudden appearance of new cultural patterns expressed in architecture, ceramics, diet, and crafts, particularly weaving.” They connect these changes to the Sea Peoples, specifically the Philistines, and describe them as the result of migrations from the Mycenaean world.62 However, our understanding of this situation in Canaan at the end of the Late Bronze Age

In the Eastern Mediterranean, the Sea Peoples have been blamed for the Bronze Age disruptions on Cyprus, ca. 1200 BC, as well.

Vassos Karageorghis, then the director of antiquities on the island,

Island of Cyprus.

Karageorghis went on to suggest that “large numbers of refugees” left mainland Greece when the “Mycenaean empire” (as he called it) collapsed, and that they became plunderers and adventurers, who eventually reached Cyprus in the company of others, ca. 1225 BC. He attributed to them the destructions on Cyprus at this time, including the major sites of Kition and Enkomi on the eastern coast, as well as activity at other sites such as Maa-Palaeokastro, Kalavasos-Ayios Dhimitrios, Sinda, and Maroni.95

Other scholars, including A. Bernard Knapp, now retired from the University of Glasgow, have suggested that the so-called Mycenaean colonization so prevalent in earlier scholarly literature was neither Mycenaean nor a colonization. Instead, it was more probably a period of hybridization, during which aspects of Cypriot, Aegean, and Levantine material culture were appropriated and reused to form a new elite social identity.102 In other words, we are looking once again at a globalized culture, reflecting a multitude of influences at the end of the Bronze Age, just before the Collapse.

While it is clear that there were destructions on Cyprus either just before or after 1200 BC, it is by no means clear who or what was responsible for this damage; possible culprits range from the Hittites to invaders from the Aegean to Sea Peoples and even earthquakes.

The twelfth century began calmly, under the rule of Seti II and then Queen Twosret, but by the time Ramses III came to the throne in 1184 BC, events were growing tumultuous. In the fifth year of his rule, and again in his eleventh year, he fought major wars against the neighboring Libyans. In between, in his eighth year, he fought the battles against the Sea Peoples that we have been discussing here. And then, in 1155, after ruling for thirty-two years, he was apparently assassinated.

Egypt.

A second body, of a male aged between eighteen and twenty and known only as “Man E,” was found with Ramses III. Wrapped in a ritually impure goatskin and not properly mummified, the body may be that of the guilty prince, according to DNA tests which indicate that he was probably Ramses III’s son. The forensic evidence, including facial contortions and injuries on his throat, suggests that he was probably strangled.108 With the death of Ramses III, the true glory of the Egyptian New Kingdom came to an end.

there is currently no scholarly consensus as to the cause or causes of the collapse of these multiple interconnected societies just over three thousand years ago;

by scholars include “attacks by foreign enemies, social uprising, natural catastrophes, systems collapse, and changes in warfare.”4

Reasons for the end of the Bronze Age.

Thanks to recent research by archaeoseismologists, it now seems probable that mainland Greece, as well as much of the rest of the Aegean and Eastern Mediterranean, was struck by a series of earthquakes, beginning about 1225 BC and lasting for as long as fifty years, until about 1175 BC. The earthquake at Ugarit identified and described by Schaeffer was not an isolated event; it was just one of many such quakes that occurred during this time period. Such a series of earthquakes in antiquity is now known as an “earthquake storm,” in which a seismic fault keeps “unzipping” by unleashing a series of earthquakes over years or decades until all the pressure along the fault line has been released.8

we must concede that although these earthquakes would have undoubtedly caused severe damage, it is unlikely that they alone were sufficient to cause a complete collapse of society, especially since some of the sites were clearly reoccupied and at least partially rebuilt afterward. Such was the case at Mycenae and Tiryns, for example, although they never again functioned at the level that they had achieved prior to the destruction. Thus, we must look elsewhere for a different, or perhaps complementary, explanation for the end of the Late Bronze Age in the Aegean and Eastern Mediterranean.

(POSSIBLE) INVADERS AND THE COLLAPSE OF INTERNATIONAL TRADE

the ancient Greeks—ranging from historians like Herodotus and Thucydides in fifth-century BC Athens to the much-later traveler Pausanias—believed that a group known as the Dorians had invaded from the north at the end of the Bronze Age, thereby initiating the Iron Age.

in recent decades it has become clear that there was no such invasion from the north at this time and no reason to accept the idea of a “Dorian Invasion” bringing the Mycenaean civilization to an end. Despite the traditions of the later classical Greeks, it is clear that the Dorians had nothing to do with the Collapse at the end of the Late Bronze Age and entered Greece only long after those events had transpired.15

scholars have recently pointed out that many of the city-states in the Eastern Mediterranean, and Ugarit in particular, may have been hard-hit by the collapse of the international trade routes, which would have been vulnerable to depredations by maritime marauders.

DECENTRALIZATION AND THE RISE OF THE PRIVATE MERCHANT

Susan Sherratt, now at the University of Sheffield, concluded that the Sea Peoples represent the final step in the replacement of the old centralized politico-economic systems present in the Bronze Age with the new decentralized economic systems of the Iron Age—that is, the change from kingdoms and empires that controlled the international trade to smaller city-states and individual entrepreneurs who were in business for themselves.

Sherratt’s argument is elegantly stated, other scholars had earlier made similar suggestions. For example, Klaus Kilian, excavator of Tiryns, once wrote: “After the fall of the Mycenaean palaces, when ‘private’ economy had been established in Greece, contacts continued with foreign countries. The well-organized palatial system was succeeded by smaller local reigns, certainly less powerful in their economic expansion.”27

While there is no question that privatization may have begun as a by-product of palatial trade, it is not at all clear that this privatization then ultimately undermined the very economy from which it had come.

Instead of accepting the idea that private merchants and their enterprises undermined the Bronze Age economy, perhaps we should consider the alternative suggestion that they simply emerged out of the chaos of the Collapse, as was suggested by James Muhly of the University of Pennsylvania. He saw the twelfth century BC not as a world dominated by “sea raiders, pirates, and freebooting mercenaries,” but rather as a world of “enterprising merchants and traders, exploiting new economic opportunities, new markets, and new sources of raw materials.”31

WAS IT THE SEA PEOPLES AND WHERE DID THEY GO?

consideration of the migrations of the Sea Peoples, who remain as enigmatic and elusive as ever. Whether they are seen as pirates, sea raiders, or migrating populations, the archaeological and textual evidence both indicate that the Sea Peoples, despite their moniker, most likely traveled both by land and by sea—that is, by any means possible. Those proceeding by sea would most likely have hugged the coastline, perhaps even putting in to a safe harbor every evening.

Most scholars agree with Finkelstein that the archaeological evidence seems to indicate that we should be looking primarily at the Aegean region, perhaps via the filter of western Anatolia and Cyprus as intermediate stops for some or most along the way, rather than Sicily, Sardinia, and the Western Mediterranean for the origin of many of the Sea Peoples.44

the material culture of these settlers indicates that they were from “the rather humbler culture that came [immediately] afterward” during the early twelfth century BC. He also notes that some may even have been farmers rather than raiding warriors, looking to improve their lives by moving to a new area. Regardless, they were “an entire population of families on the move to a new home.” In any event, he believes that these migrants were not the cause of the collapse of the Late Bronze Age civilizations in this area but were instead “opportunists” who took advantage of the Collapse to find themselves new homes.45

DNA evidence from Ashkelon that was referenced briefly above. It comes from the remains of four infants, buried under the floors of Philistine houses in Ashkelon during the late twelfth century BC. They cannot themselves have been part of the original waves of invaders ca. 1207 and 1177 BC, since they would not yet have been born, but are instead from a generation or two later. The DNA was recovered from the inner ear (i.e., the petrous bone) of the infants; along with teeth, this is the location that most often yields good traces of ancient DNA. It turns out that all four infants have mixed DNA, with somewhere between one-quarter and more than one-half (43.1 ± 19.2%) identifiable as “southern European,” reflecting ancestors who had come most likely from Bronze Age Crete or, less likely, from Sardinia or Spain, according to the geneticists. The remainder of the infants’ DNA matched the local population, meaning that the Canaanites “had quickly mated with their new neighbors.” Thus, these infants appear to be the direct descendants of Philistines who had initially migrated to, and then assimilated with, the local Canaanites.49

DISEASE

Ramses V, a young king who ruled Egypt for only a few years ca. 1140 BC, suffered from smallpox, as did several members of his immediate family.

Turin Papyrus No. 1923 mentions that he and the others were not buried until fully sixteen months after they died (much longer than the usual seventy days or so), and only after new tombs had been dug just for them, which seems suspicious. Additionally, the men who finally buried them were given a month’s leave “at the expense of the Pharaoh” immediately afterward, and the Valley of the Kings was apparently closed to visitors for six months; this may have been the world’s first textually attested quarantine.54

Dr. Philip Norrie, a physician in Australia, has recently discussed this case and has speculated as well on the possibility of some ten different diseases that theoretically could be implicated in the Bronze Age Collapse, including smallpox, dysentery, bubonic plague, typhoid, malaria, and tularemia (rabbit fever).55

CLIMATE CHANGE, DROUGHT, AND FAMINE

One suggestion favored by scholars, especially those seeking to explain not only the end of the Late Bronze Age but also why the Sea Peoples may have begun their migrations, is that there was climate change back then, manifested in the form of drought, which resulted in famine.

It now seems that such a disastrous drought may have affected northern Italy in the Bronze Age. There are indications that the Terramare culture, which had flourished in the Po delta/plain in northern Italy since the seventeenth century BC, suddenly collapsed around 1200 BC. Kristian Kristiansen, a highly regarded scholar of Bronze Age Europe, notes that a massive migration seems to have taken place at that time, involving up to 120,000 people who left “in several huge exoduses.” Why did they leave? Kristiansen cites a number of possible factors, including demographic pressure and competition for limited resources.

This type of migration is frequently referred to as “push-pull,” with negative conditions in the home area pushing the inhabitants out and positive conditions in the area of destination beckoning or pulling the new migrants in that direction.

the evidence now points rather conclusively to a drought in the region that lasted at least 150 years and possibly 300 years, beginning about 1200 BC. It may be more accurate to call it a megadrought, which is defined as “a severe drought that occurs across a broad region for a long duration, typically multiple decades,” such as the one that has recently been identified in the western United States.75