Eric Cline excavating at Megiddo, Israel
For more than 300 years during the Late Bronze Age, from about 1500 B.C. until just after 1200 B.C., the Mediterranean region was the stage on which Egyptians, Mycenaeans, Minoans, Hittites, Assyrians, Babylonians, Cypriots, Trojans, and Canaanites interacted, creating a cosmopolitan world system such as has only rarely been seen before the current day.
It may have been this very internationalism that contributed to the apocalyptic disaster that ended the Bronze Age. When the end came, as it did after centuries of cultural and technological evolution, the civilized and international world of the Mediterranean regions came to a dramatic halt in a vast area stretching from Greece and Italy in the west to Egypt, Canaan, and Mesopotamia in the east.
Large empires and small kingdoms that had taken centuries to evolve collapsed rapidly. With their end came the world’s first recorded Dark Ages. It was not until centuries later that a new cultural renaissance emerged in Greece and other affected areas, setting the stage for the evolution of Western society as we know it today.
Eric Cline, a professor of classics and anthropology in the Department of Classical Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations at George Washington University, surveys a dramatic period of achievement, upheaval, and collapse.
Oct. 17 Mycenaeans, Minoans, and Trojans
Thanks to the pioneering efforts of Heinrich Schliemann, the remains of the Mycenaeans and the Trojans, made famous by Homer as opponents in the Trojan War, were first brought to light on mainland Greece and northwestern Turkey in the 1870s. And it was due to Sir Arthur Evans that the Minoans and the site of Knossos on Crete came to the attention of the world beginning about 1900. Cline looks at the remains of these cultures and the cosmopolitan world of which they were a part, from palaces to frescoes to international trade, and asks as well whether the Trojan War actually took place.
Oct. 24 Egyptians, Canaanites, and Cypriots
During the New Kingdom period, from approximately 1500 B.C. to just after 1200 B.C., the Egyptians played a dominant role across much of the ancient Near East. Pharaohs during this period include Hatshepsut, who is perhaps the best-known female pharaoh; Akhenaten, known as the heretic pharaoh; and King Tut, whose treasure-filled tomb was discovered in 1922. The Egyptians dominated the small, petty kingdoms of Canaan and traded with the inhabitants of the island of Cyprus as well as with other societies. Artifacts and ancient texts, including the so-called Amarna Letters, document all of this, offering a better understanding of this fabulous period.
Oct. 31 Hittites, Assyrians, and Babylonians
The Hittites, a kingdom based in Anatolia (ancient Turkey), were lost to the modern world until the late 1800s. Since then, excavations at the capital city of Hattusa and elsewhere yielded royal archives that allowed scholars to decipher and translate their language. Documents describe a kingdom that reached the western coast of Turkey and stretched into what is now modern Syria, where Hittites came into contact— and occasionally battled—with the Egyptians. Beginning in the 1840s, British, French, and German excavators uncovered evidence of the Assyrians and Babylonians in ancient Mesopotamia, now modern Syria and Iraq. Their expeditions revealed civilizations that flourished as part of the Great Powers during the Late Bronze Age, whose rulers traded and exchanged both letters and daughters with the pharaohs of New-Kingdom Egypt.
Nov. 7 Collapse
Blame for the end of the Late Bronze Age is usually laid squarely at the feet of the so-called marauding Sea Peoples. However, as with the fall of the Roman Empire, the end of empires in this region was not the result of a single invasion, but of multiple causes. The Sea Peoples may have been responsible for some of the destruction that occurred at the end of the Late Bronze Age, but it is more likely that a nexus of events, both human and natural—including earthquake storms, droughts, rebellions, and systems’ collapse—coalesced to create a perfect storm that brought the age to an end.
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