The Collapse of the Bronze Age: Part III

Tiglath-Pileser III

In the east, the troubles appear to have less to do with famines and earthquakes and more to do with human frailties. The difficult times may have prompted the assassination of the powerful Assyrian king, Tukulti-Ninurta I, but assassination was not uncommon. The wars that followed between Assyria and Babylon were pointless and persistent and the collapse of the Kassite Dynasty in Babylon was the perfectly natural result of being under attack from Assyria and Elam. But the fall of the Egyptian and Hittite empires had put events in motion. Free from imperial control the newly independent peoples in Syria and Palestine may have provided inspiration to others, or possibly the migrations of the Sea Peoples, despite probably being small in numbers, may have pushed other tribes further inland.

"…The people ate one another's flesh to save their lives. Like a flood's ravaging water the Aramean rulers became strong, plundered the crops of Assyria, conquered and took many fortified cities of Assyria." 
Inscription by Tigleth-Pileser I describing the attacks of the Arameans. 

When Assyria next has a strong military commander (Tiglath-Pileser I in the year 1114BC) the Babylonian threat has passed but a new people, the Arameans, inhabit Syria. Tiglath-Pileser reported that he devastated them in retaliation for their attacks on Assyria but the Arameans were to be a threat for several hundred years and it was not until around 732BC during the reign of Tiglath-Pileser III that the Arameans were finally crushed by Assyria.

After the chaos surrounding the end of the Bronze Age, the old empires had either fallen, gone into terminal decline or been locked in perpetual conflict. This allowed the areas at the edges of civilisation to gain their independence and for new ideas, cultures and peoples to thrive. While the stability of the Bronze Age was sometimes viewed as golden the new cultures of the Iron Age would go on to irrevocably shape the world as we know it. In the temporary absence of the great empires political entities such as the Greek city states or the Israelite kingdoms were able to flourish and create cultural legacies that last to this day.

Temple at Delphi: a centre of later Greek civilisation 

Hundreds of years later, as Greece emerged from the "Dark Ages" after the Bronze Age Collapse, the poet Hesiod immortalised the traditions surrounding the events of times past by describing two ages that had preceded his own. I believe that these two ages reflect a cultural memory of the old Mycenaean empire and the overall structure of the Bronze Age and Hesiod’s writing sums up the fear and the splendour that was associated with this memory in later times, as well as the wish that such splendour would have a form of immortality and never truly pass away. I conclude the post by quoting Hesiod in full and leaving the reader with a speculative timeline for the events mentioned above.

"Great was their strength and unconquerable the arms which grew from their shoulders on their strong limbs.  Their armour was of bronze, and their houses of bronze, and of bronze were their implements: there was no black iron.  These were destroyed by their own hands and passed to the dank house of chill Hades, and left no name: terrible though they were, black Death seized them, and they left the bright light of the sun.

But when earth had covered this generation also, Zeus, the son of Cronos, made yet another, the fourth, upon the fruitful earth, which was nobler and more righteous, a god-like race of heroes who are called demi-gods, the race before our own, throughout the boundless earth.  Grim war and dread battle destroyed a part of them, some in the land of Cadmus at seven-gated Thebes when they fought for the flocks of Oedipus, and some, when it had brought them in ships over the great sea gulf to Troy for rich-haired Helen's sake: there death's end enshrouded a part of them.  But to the others father Zeus, the son of Cronos, gave a living and an abode apart from men, and made them dwell at the ends of earth.  And they live untouched by sorrow in the islands of the blessed along the shore of deep swirling ocean, happy heroes for whom the grain-giving earth bears honey-sweet fruit flourishing thrice a year, far from the deathless gods, and Cronos rules over them for the father of men and gods released him from his bonds.  And these last equally have honour and glory.

And again far-seeing Zeus made yet another generation, the fifth, of men who are upon the bounteous earth. Thereafter, would that I were not among the men of the fifth generation, but either had died before or been born afterwards.  For now truly is a race of iron, and men never rest from labour and sorrow by day, and from perishing by night; and the gods shall lay sore trouble upon them." 

Hesiod, Works and Days

Relief of Sea Peoples at Medinet Habu

Speculative timeline of events

1208BC: Simultaneous attack on Egypt by Nubians and Libyans with Sea Peoples allies

1207BC: Assassination of Assyrian king Tukulti-Ninurta I

c.1200BC: Destruction of Mycenaean citadels at Tiryns, Mycenae and Pylos

c.1200BC: Destruction of Hittite capital of Hattusa

c.1200BC: Destruction of citadel at Troy

c.1192BC: Destruction of Ugarit

c.1178BC: Battle of the Delta: Ramesses III defeats Sea Peoples invasion of Egypt

c.1158BC: Sack of Babylon by Elamite king Shutruk-Nakhunte and end of Kassite Dynasty


Related Blog Posts:
Collapse of the Bronze Age: Part I
Collapse of the Bronze Age: Part II
Collapse of the Bronze Age: Part III
The Late Bronze Age in the Middle East
The Early Iron Age and the Death of Kings: I

The Collapse of the Bronze Age: Part I

Lion Gate of Mycenae

"…You say that you have seen the boats of the enemy at sea…. Be strong! Move your chariots and troops within the walls of the city…. The enemy is very strong. …."
Fragments from a response to a plea for help from the king of Ugarit from around the year 1190BC, translation from The Collapse of the Bronze Age by Manuel Robbins

I previously spoke of the complexity of the late Bronze Age, of the palaces and cities, art and literature, warfare and diplomacy that comprise our knowledge of this civilised period. In this post I will speak of how it came to an end. Around the year 1200BC many cities of the Bronze Age are burned, empires fall and entire swathes of land are abandoned for hundreds of years. Some of the more stable civilisations survive but in a reduced form, cowering behind city walls; others disappear forever. Sources for the period are very poor and civilisation declined to the point that some states lost the ability to write their own languages while in other areas place-names are forgotten, suggesting long term abandonment. But these tumultuous events seem to have left behind echoes and some believe that works such as the Iliad and the Odyssey might be distant recollections of these chaotic times.

A much later statue of Homer

Around the year 1208 BC Egypt was attacked by a hitherto unknown coalition that the Egyptians called the "Sea Peoples", in alliance with Egypt’s ancient tribal foes from Libya. A simultaneous revolt of the southern region of Nubia placed Egypt under strain and the Pharaoh Merneptah (son of the builder Ramesses II) was only barely able to contain the attack. In later years a much more concerted series of attacks by the Sea Peoples were repulsed by Ramesses III, but Egypt’s empire in Syria was lost and never properly recovered and one group of Sea Peoples, the Philistines settled along the coast of what were previously Egyptian possessions.

Merneptah blamed the Hittites for allowing the attack suggesting that the Sea Peoples may have been from Anatolia and from the area supposedly controlled by the Hittites. But the Hittite Empire was in serious trouble as well. A civil war had divided loyalties in the population and elites and their northern capital was abandoned for a safer location further south. Texts seem to signify a great famine in the land as well. The weakened empire lost control of western Anatolia and the northern city of Wilusha (probably the city now referred to as Troy) was burnt. Around 1190 BC the old capital of Hattusa suffered a complete destruction. In Mycenaean Greece the great palaces in Mycenae and Tiryns suffer heavy damage and burning. Surviving Linear B fragments from the palace of Pylos point to invaders from the sea, although there may have been land invaders as well. The opulent trading city of Ugarit, in modern day Syria, was burned to the ground around a similar date, while their trading partners in Cyprus see their cities burned. While the Cypriot cities are quickly reoccupied, the destruction in Ugarit was so intense that the fires turned limestone building blocks to lime and the city was never rebuilt.

Assyrian Stele

The inland empires of Assyria, Babylonia and Elam are less affected. Assyria, under the strong leadership of Tukulti-Ninurta I, was expanding at Babylon’s expense around 1200BC before his assassination. After the assassination of Tukulti-Ninurta Assyria went into rapid decline, having kings with short and uncertain reigns and inconclusive wars with Babylon. These wars weakened Babylon to the point where a strong Elamite king was able to raid the city and end the Kassite Dynasty. When Assyria recovered from the dynastic strife it was forced to fight a nearly continuous series of wars against new tribes that had occupied the neighbouring territories.

By around 1150BC the Babylonian, Assyrian and Egyptian empires had been seriously weakened while the Hittite and Mycenaean civilisations had fallen entirely, never to rise again. The population dropped across the Near East and when records become plentiful hundreds of years later, there are new states, peoples, cities and gods. What event or series of events was able to trigger this catastrophic change?

Relief of Hittite Chariots

Firstly I should attempt to exonerate some of the usual suspects. While contemporary sources and later myths suggest mass barbarian invasions, I doubt that barbarian invaders alone could topple the advanced Bronze Age empires. The sheer organisation of these empires meant that they could field large armies and they had fended off external attacks before. Secondly, climate change is unlikely, in and of itself, to have caused the catastrophe. The world population was quite low, arguing against large scale anthropogenic climate change. Also, the civilisations were all affected differently suggesting more local factors were at work. There is no agreement on the order of many of the events described here and even less consensus on causal factors, but I shall tell the story as I understand it, giving primary quotations to back up my arguments where possible. The reader should be aware that very different interpretations are possible.

Fresco of Mycenaean Woman

I have used the book, the Collapse of the Bronze Age by Manuel Robbins quite extensively, and while, not all of the ideas stated here are drawn upon his research, it was the single most valuable secondary source used in researching this piece. I would quite recommend the book.

Related Blog Posts:
Collapse of the Bronze Age: Part I
Collapse of the Bronze Age: Part II
Collapse of the Bronze Age: Part III
The Late Bronze Age in the Middle East
The Early Iron Age and the Death of Kings: I
The Early Iron Age and the Death of Kings: II