An outline, era by era

Fall of the Hittites and Mycenaeans; Egypt weakened; the "Sea Peoples"

Bronze Age · ~3300 – ~1200 BCE

Around 1200 BCE the great powers of the eastern Mediterranean entered a period of crisis. The Hittite kingdom of Anatolia, whose capital Hattusa was abandoned and burned, ceased to exist as a state. The Mycenaean palaces of Greece, such as Pylos, Mycenae and Tiryns, were destroyed or left, and the palace economies and their Linear B writing vanished. The Syrian port of Ugarit was destroyed and never rebuilt. Egypt survived but lost its holdings in Canaan and was left poorer and weaker.

Egyptian records of the reigns of Merneptah and Ramesses III describe attacks by groups from the north and the sea, which modern writers call the Sea Peoples. Their role is much debated. Most scholars now see them as one part of a wider crisis that also involved earthquakes, drought, famine, failing trade and internal revolt. The episode matters because it ended the age of palace-centred kingdoms and international diplomacy, and it opened the way to the Iron Age and to new peoples and states such as the Philistines, Phoenician cities and Neo-Assyria.

Things happened, and the rest is history

  1. The Sea Peoples who swept away every land

    Popular belief

    The legend

    A vast horde of seaborne raiders sweeps down the coast from the north, burning city after city. No land can stand against their arms: Hatti, Arzawa, Carchemish and Alashiya are all cut down. They are halted only at the borders of Egypt, where they are finally destroyed.

    The rest is history

    This picture comes largely from the inscription of Ramesses III at Medinet Habu, which says that no land could stand before them. It is a royal boast, and it lists places that other evidence shows were already failing. Historians used it in the 1800s to explain the whole collapse as a single invasion, a view now widely doubted. Excavations show that destruction at different sites came at different times and from mixed causes. The groups named, such as the Peleset, Tjekker and Sherden, seem to have included migrating families as well as warriors. Ramesses III's battles against them are dated to his eighth year, around 1177 BCE.

    Sources

    1. PrimaryMedinet Habu inscriptions of Ramesses III, Year 8. Egyptian royal inscriptions, Twentieth Dynasty, c. 1177 BCE. In Edgerton, William F., and John A. Wilson, Historical Records of Ramses III. Studies in Ancient Oriental Civilization 12. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1936.Text and translation of the land and sea battle reliefs and inscriptions.
    2. BookCline, Eric H. 1177 B.C.: The Year Civilization Collapsed. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2014.Argues for several linked causes rather than one invasion.
    3. BookSandars, N. K. The Sea Peoples: Warriors of the Ancient Mediterranean. London: Thames and Hudson, 1978.

  2. The letter from Ugarit: the enemy ships have come

    Popular belief

    The legend

    As the enemy fleet approaches, the last king of Ugarit writes in despair to the king of Alashiya. His troops are away in Hatti, his ships are in Lycia, and the enemy has already burned his towns. The city falls without help, and its people vanish from history.

    The rest is history

    The letter is real. It is known as RS 20.238 and was found in the ruins of Ugarit, and it is one of several urgent texts of the city's last years. Its writer, probably the last king Ammurapi, says the enemy ships came, burned his cities and ravaged the land. Other tablets show the Hittite king asking Ugarit for troops and ships and ask for grain, a sign of famine in the region. Ugarit was destroyed by fire in the early 1100s BCE, with the date debated, and its site was not resettled as a city. The identity of the attackers is not named in the tablets.

    Sources

    1. PrimaryLetter RS 20.238 from Ammurapi of Ugarit to the king of Alashiya. Akkadian tablet, Ugarit, c. 1190 BCE. Published in Nougayrol, Jean, et al., Ugaritica V. Paris: Imprimerie Nationale, 1968.One of the last letters found in the ruins of the city.
    2. BookYon, Marguerite. The City of Ugarit at Tell Ras Shamra. Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2006.
    3. BookCline, Eric H. 1177 B.C.: The Year Civilization Collapsed. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2014.

  3. The burning of Hattusa and the end of Hatti

    Popular belief

    The legend

    The Hittite capital, Hattusa, is stormed by enemy armies and put to the torch. The great empire dies in a single night, and its people are gone, leaving only ruins that were forgotten for three thousand years.

    The rest is history

    Hattusa was indeed burned, and its palace and temples show signs of fire. But Hugo Winckler's excavations from 1906 and later work found that the city's valuables and archives seem to have been removed beforehand, which suggests an organised abandonment before the burning. The cause is debated. The last known kings, Tudhaliya IV, Arnuwanda III and Suppiluliuma II, faced famine, rebellion and rival claimants. Suppiluliuma II's inscriptions claim naval victories off Cyprus. After about 1180 BCE the Hittite people did not vanish, since small Neo-Hittite states with Luwian inscriptions lasted in Syria and southern Anatolia for centuries. Hittite itself was only deciphered in 1915, by Bedřich Hrozný.

    Sources

    1. BookBryce, Trevor. The Kingdom of the Hittites. New ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005.
    2. BookSeeher, Jürgen. Hattuscha-Hattusa: Die Hauptstadt der Hethiter. Stuttgart: Theiss, 2011.Excavator's account of the end of the city (in German).
    3. PrimarySüdburg inscription of Suppiluliuma II. Hieroglyphic Luwian rock inscription, Hattusa, c. 1200 BCE.Last royal text of the Hittite capital, recording campaigns including at sea.

  4. Mycenae and the fall of the Greek heroes' palaces

    Origin story

    The legend

    The kingdoms of the great heroes of Troy, Agamemnon of Mycenae and Nestor of Pylos, are destroyed after the war. In Greek tradition, the Dorians and the 'return of the Heraclidae' then arrive from the north and take over the Peloponnese, ending the age of heroes.

    The rest is history

    The Dorian invasion story is told by Greek writers such as Thucydides and Herodotus, who wrote some 700 years after the events. Archaeology does not clearly support a single conquest. The Mycenaean palaces were destroyed or abandoned in stages from about 1250 to 1150 BCE, with causes such as earthquakes, internal conflict, and failing trade often proposed. At Pylos, the Linear B tablets baked by the fire that destroyed the palace record men being sent to guard the coast. Writing disappeared in Greece for around 400 years, until the alphabet appeared in the 700s BCE. The Homeric poems keep a memory of Mycenaean places, but were composed much later.

    Sources

    1. PrimaryThucydides. History of the Peloponnesian War, Book 1.12. Greek history, late 5th century BCE.Gives the Greek tradition of the Dorian return, 80 years after Troy.
    2. BookDrews, Robert. The End of the Bronze Age: Changes in Warfare and the Catastrophe ca. 1200 B.C. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993.
    3. BookDickinson, Oliver. The Aegean from Bronze Age to Iron Age. London: Routledge, 2006.

  5. Ramesses III saves Egypt

    Heroic tale

    The legend

    Pharaoh Ramesses III stands at the edge of the Nile Delta as the enemy fleets close in. He draws up his archers along the shore and ambushes the invaders' ships. They are dragged in, overturned and slaughtered, and Egypt is saved while every other land falls.

    The rest is history

    The battle is shown in the reliefs at Medinet Habu, his mortuary temple at Thebes. They are propaganda in the standard style, but Egypt did in fact repel the attacks, and Ramesses probably settled some of the defeated groups as garrisons or subjects. The Philistines of the coast of Canaan are generally linked to the Peleset, though this is debated. Egypt paid heavily. Strikes by the tomb workers at Deir el-Medina in his 29th year are the first known labour strike in recorded history. Ramesses III was probably killed in a harem conspiracy, and Egypt lost its Canaanite possessions by around 1130 BCE and entered a long decline.

    Sources

    1. PrimaryPapyrus Harris I. Egyptian papyrus, Twentieth Dynasty, c. 1150 BCE. British Museum EA 9999.Long account of Ramesses III's reign, including the defeat of the northern peoples.
    2. BookKitchen, Kenneth A. Pharaoh Triumphant: The Life and Times of Ramesses II. Warminster: Aris and Phillips, 1982.Background to the late Nineteenth Dynasty and its military setting.
    3. BookGrandet, Pierre. Ramsès III: Histoire d'un règne. Paris: Pygmalion, 1993.Standard biography of the king (in French).

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