Text by Manolis Chatzimanolis

Cover photo: The Fall of Troy by Daniel Van Heil. The painting is a masterpiece of Baroque art depicting the fall of the city of Troy to the Greeks. The work was created in the 17th century and is one of the artist’s most important pieces. The artistic style of the painting is typical of the Baroque, with great attention to detail and a dramatic and theatrical composition. The scene is full of movement and action, with figures writhing and fighting in the midst of battle.

The 12th century BC marked a turbulent period of conflicts and cataclysmic changes, as the interconnected diplomatic and commercial world of the eastern Mediterranean during the Late Bronze Age collapsed like a house of cards. Although the causes have not been fully clarified, it appears that from the mid-13th century BC, a combination of devastating earthquakes, deadly epidemics, and climate changes bringing prolonged drought and famine to the Aegean and central Anatolian plateau, which in turn caused a decline in the centrally controlled international trade by the rulers, resulted in the collapse of the palace system in the Aegean and political upheavals in the Hittite empire in central Asia Minor.

Indeed, archaeological evidence shows destruction from earthquakes and perhaps internal uprisings in the Mycenaean palaces around the mid-13th century BC while a significant part of the population, especially the ruling class if we consider Greek myths about the wanderings of the heroes of Troy, seems to have sought their fortune by migrating to areas of the eastern Mediterranean, such as the western Anatolian coasts, Pamphylia, Cyprus, and Syria.

The crisis extended throughout the entire Mediterranean world, as famine, war, and general insecurity led to a surge in piracy and armed conflicts. Hittite King Suppiluliuma II (circa 1207-1178 BC), in an attempt to control the rich copper mines of the island, seized Cyprus, probably installing one of his trusted lieutenants as ruler, while the wealthy Syrian trading city of Ugarit was destroyed by sea raiders around 1190-1185 BC, with its desperate ruler writing to his superior, the king of Cyprus:

“My father, now the enemy’s ships have arrived. They have set fires in my cities and devastated my land. Does my father not know that all my infantry and chariots are stationed in Hatti, and all my ships are anchored in Lukka (Lycia)? They have not yet returned, and thus my country has been annihilated. Let my father be informed of the situation. Now the seven enemy ships that approached us have caused great damage. If more enemy ships appear, send me a report so that I may know.”

A similar situation prevails in Asia. Shortly after 1180 BC, the Hittite capital Hattusa falls, most likely due to an invasion by the neighboring mountainous people of the Kaska, while Troy VIIa, identified with the Homeric one, is destroyed during the same period by enemy invasion, perhaps by the Mycenaean rulers in a final attempt to open new trade routes to the Pontus or to forcibly take what the decline of the palace economy denied them. With the most powerful hegemonies of the region having collapsed, a migratory domino effect takes place, directed from the Aegean and Asia Minor towards Syria, Canaan, and Egypt.

In 1177 BC, a multitude of raiders/migrants finally reaches the land of the Nile, disembarking with their women and children on carts and seemingly aiming to settle, while others arrive by sea on their ships. In a surviving mural in a temple at Medinet Habu, Pharaoh Ramses III (1186-1155 BC) reports:

“The foreign countries made a conspiracy in their islands. All at once the lands were removed and scattered in the fray. No land could stand before their arms: Hatti, Kode, Carchemish, Arzawa, and Alashiya were wasted at once. A camp was set up in one place in Amurru (northern Syrian coast). They desolated its people, and its land was like that which has never come into being. They were advancing forward toward Egypt, while the flame was prepared before them. Their confederation was the Peleset (Aegean Pelasgians, ancestors of the biblical Philistines), Tjeker (possibly Cretans according to Flinders Petrie), Shekelesh (Sicilians), Danuna (Danaans, Greeks of the mainland), and Weshesh (possibly inhabitants of the Anatolian confederation of Assuwa), lands united. They laid their hands upon the lands as far as the ends of the earth, while their hearts were confident and trusting.”

In the great battle that took place in the Egyptian Delta (or perhaps in a series of battles on land and sea), the Egyptians ultimately repelled the invaders:

“Those who reached my frontier, their seed is not; their heart and their soul are finished forever and ever. As for those who came forward on the sea, the full flame was in front of them at the river mouths, while a wall of spears surrounded them on the shore. They were dragged, overturned, and laid low on the beach, killed, and made heaps from stern to bow of their ships. Myriads fell into the hand of the King of Upper and Lower Egypt. Their ships and their goods were as if fallen into the water. I have made them to cease from their plans, and they shall not exist, whether in their lands or on the sea. Were the people of their cities to hear of them, they would burn them.”

Ramses continues on the Harris Papyrus:

“I slaughtered the Danuna of the islands; the Tjeker and the Peleset became ashes. The Shardana (Sardinians) and the Weshesh of the sea are now as if they do not exist; captured at some point, they came to Egypt as captives, like the sand of the shore. I enclosed them as prisoners in my name. I imposed on all of them an annual tribute in clothing and grain from the storehouses and granaries.”

Those of the defeated raiders who survived settled as subjects of Pharaoh in strongholds in Canaan, contributing to the ethnogenesis of the biblical Philistines. Although Ramses III’s Egypt was the only power to successfully resist, the New Kingdom would never be the same again.

The Pharaoh himself was assassinated during a harem conspiracy in 1155, and after the collapse of the Mediterranean world, Egypt would simply be a shadow of its former self. In the ruins of the old kingdoms, new powers would emerge from the 11th century onwards: the tribes of Israel would unite and dominate in Canaan, the cities of the Phoenicians would compete for dominance in the sea routes, neo-Hittite kingdoms would flourish in Syria, while new peoples would settle in Asia Minor, with the Phrygians briefly dominating the central plateau and the first Greek colonization taking place on the coasts, laying the foundations for the Greek rise of the 1st millennium BC.

Sources:

E. Cline, “1177 B.C.: The Year Civilization Collapsed”, publ. Princeton University Press, 2015.

M. Millek, “Destruction and Its Impact on Ancient Societies at the End of the Bronze Age”, publ. Columbus, Lockwood Press, 2023.

Erez Ben Yosef, “Lead in the Levant during the Late Bronze and early Iron Ages”, publ. Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports., 2022.

M. Robins, “Collapse of the Bronze Age: The Story of Greece, Troy, Israel, Egypt, and the Peoples of the Sea”, publ. iUniverse, 2001.