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Age. But, there also, the entirely different orientation of the walls proves that there was a stratigraphical and chronological rupture.
None of the structures of the second city, which is posterior to the hiatus, goes back beyond about 1550. The remains of this initial period of the late Bronze Age, distinguished by exceptionally careful execution, are relatively rare, thereby confirming the evidence of the tombs.[handwritten: 11] The city seems to have recovered its ancient prosperity only gradually. But from 1500 B.C. onwards it was again in full activity.
This period corresponding to Late Cypriote II--so splendid in the whole are of Western Asia and Egypt--was interrupted a century and a half later by a violent earthquake, which ravaged all the Syro-Palestinian coastal zone. I have already pointed out[handwritten: 12] indications of this catastrophe at Ras Shamra in the form of burned structures with fissured or collapsed walls and foundations altered by the violence of the lateral shocks. They confirm the account sent by Abimilki of Tyre to Amenophis IV, found at Tell-el-Amarna, and explain his reference to Ugarit which until now had remained enigmatic: "The city of the king has been annihilated by fire, half of it has been burned, and the other half is no longer there."
The effects of an earthquake of exceptional violence which occurred about the middle of the fourteenth century have also been observed among the ruins of Jericho by Garstang,[handwritten: 13] and by Macalister[handwritten: 14] at Gezer. But in consequence of the lack of precision of the chronology, it was not realized that these were only separate manifestations of the same catastrophe. This, we shall show elsewhere,[handwritten: 15] had affected a great number of other urban centers in Syria and Palestine. We see now that it had reached also the eastern coast of Cyprus.
According to the reference in the text of Tell-el-Amarna, the earthquake must have occurred between 1370 and 1360, let us say about 1365 B.C. We
65 figures hard to readstruck struck outadded written in above” jug ditto, and what it repeatsword reading not certain