1177 B.C.: The Year Civilization Collapsed

The end of the Late Bronze Age is told through the growth of connections among the Aegean, Egypt, Cyprus and the Near East and through their breakdown, with archaeological contexts and objects read together with inscriptions, letters and later literary traditions. Cline takes 1177 BCE, the eighth regnal year of Ramses III and the date the book gives for the second Egyptian conflict with the Sea Peoples, as a representative date for a crisis that unfolded over several decades.

How it is organised

A prologue introduces the Sea Peoples and the Egyptian accounts of their attacks. Four chronological chapters follow as acts, covering the fifteenth-century setting and early networks, fourteenth-century diplomacy and exchange, thirteenth-century warfare, shipping and international relations, and the twelfth-century destructions and their aftermath. The fifth chapter reviews proposed causes of the collapse and an epilogue treats the transition to the Iron Age. A Dramatis Personae, notes, bibliography and index close the book.

Between stretches of narrative come focused excursions on the Minoans and Mycenaeans, the Hittites, the Amarna correspondence, the Uluburun shipwreck, the Exodus traditions and destructions at individual sites. The final chapter groups its discussion by explanation: earthquakes, drought and famine, rebellion, trade disruption, migration and systems collapse (pp. 139–170).

The argument

Cline argues that the Sea Peoples alone cannot account for the end of the Late Bronze Age. The destructions were not all simultaneous, and archaeological evidence often cannot identify who caused them. He considers the invaders both as aggressors and as people displaced by difficulties elsewhere, and keeps evidence for destruction apart from claims about who destroyed (pp. 9–11).

His own account presents the collapse as the result of several human and environmental pressures acting together. Earthquakes, drought and famine, internal conflict, attacks and the interruption of trade could have amplified one another across societies that depended on exchanges of raw materials and other goods. Cline discusses complexity theory as a way to describe interacting pressures and nonlinear outcomes, and cautions that the evidence does not establish all the relevant variables or their relative effects (pp. 140–150).

Cline concludes that the outcome differed by region: some settlements were destroyed, others abandoned or reoccupied. The epilogue describes the weakening of palace administrations, the end of writing and administrative systems in parts of the Aegean, and the emergence of smaller polities and new regional powers. Cline presents the cessation or reduction of diplomatic and commercial connections as part of the transformation, while noting that contacts and trade continued close to the end in some places (pp. 171–176).

The evidence

Evidence for international relations comes from the Amarna Letters, royal inscriptions and treaties, records from Mari and Ugarit, and imported objects and artistic styles. Cline reads the sequence of Aegean place-names on the statue base of Amenhotep III as possible evidence for an Egyptian voyage, discusses faience plaques bearing the pharaoh's name found at Mycenae, and compares textual records of diplomatic gifts with the archaeology of maritime trade (pp. 43–72).

The Uluburun wreck is a case of a cargo assembled across several regions, with copper and tin, glass, resin, storage jars, pottery, ivory, metal objects and personal possessions, and with the methods used to excavate the wreck and date its sinking (pp. 73–80). Letters from Ugarit add merchants, tax exemptions, grain shipments, enemy ships and continuing contact with Cyprus and other powers close to the city's destruction.

For the destructions Cline compares strata, contents and find contexts with written evidence at sites in northern Syria, Canaan, Anatolia, the Greek mainland and Cyprus, weighing proposed attackers against signs of earthquake damage, abandonment and later occupation. The environmental evidence he considers includes radiocarbon dating, pollen, tree rings, sediment cores and oxygen and carbon isotope data (pp. 108–147).

Cyprus

Alashiya, given as a probable Late Bronze Age name for Cyprus, appears in the Amarna Letters, where its king sends copper, and in an inscription of Tudhaliya IV, who reports capturing the king and making the country tributary. For the end of the period Cline discusses destruction evidence at Enkomi, Kition and Sinda, and the debate over whether Maa-Palaeokastro and Pyla-Kokkinokremos were strongholds. Karageorghis's proposal of Aegean incursions on the island enters the same discussion, and Steel reads Late Bronze Age cultural change as a merging of Aegean and indigenous Cypriot influences. Åström's description of Hala Sultan Tekke as partly burnt and hurriedly deserted sits beside the pollen evidence that Kaniewski reports for the Larnaca Salt Lake Complex. Cline concludes that Cyprus continued through political and economic restructuring (pp. 132–146).

Dating

Cline treats 1177 BCE as a benchmark within a rolling crisis that runs from roughly 1225 to 1175 BCE, with some destructions dated as late as 1130 BCE. Cline acknowledges that regnal dates and site chronologies remain approximate (pp. 156–174).