Ep. 019 – Ugarit in Flames

This episode will conclude with the city of Ugarit in flames. Before we get there, we'll look at two Hittite invasions of Cyprus using borrowed ships, Egypt's first battle with the Sea Peoples, and the practice of using human hands as accounting units. After that, we'll delve into the causes of the Late Bronze Age Collapse: earthquake, climate change, drought, famine, and invasion. With each of these causes we'll look at the evidence as it comes. Finally, we have recovered letters from many cities like Ugarit, cities that were ultimately destroyed. These letters open a window on to the actions and fears of kings and merchants as the Bronze Age World collapsed underneath them. Heady stuff!

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Episode Transcript

Introduction

Last time we began our look at the Late Bronze Age Collapse, taking the story from 1350 BCE up to about 1230 BCE. It was then that the Hittites were defeated by the Assyrians, marking a shift in the power centers of the region. As we mentioned, the Hittites didn’t exit the stage immediately after that defeat, but they certainly began making their way to the exit.

Our first item today then involves the Hittites as they were on their way out. We saw how they made a treaty with Amurru, probably in the hopes of cutting off Assyrian access to the Mediterranean. The Hittites had the Assyrian problem to their east and the Mycenaean problem to their west. Hittite collaboration with Amurru in about 1225 then signals to us that they were trying to neutralize the Assyrian threat to the east, probably so they could shift their focus to a new threat, a threat emerging from the seas off southern Anatolia.

The Oldest Documented Naval Battle

Not long after the Hittites made this treaty with Amurru, they invaded the island of Cyprus, the Mediterranean island just off Anatolia’s southern coast. The Hittite king boasts of invading the island that they called Alasiya, of seizing slaves and gold and making the island pay him tribute. We can’t glean too much info from this invasion, though we get a bit more insight from the next king of the Hittites and his involvement with the same island. Round about the year 1210 now, Suppiluliuma II talks about a series of naval battles with Alasiya. In this inscription he writes:

“Against me the ships from Alasiya drew up in line three times for battle in the midst of the sea. I destroyed them, I seized the ships and in the midst of the sea I set them on fire. But when I arrived on dry land the enemies from Alasiya came in multitude against me for battle.”

This is one of the oldest clear mentions of a battle taking place at sea, but other than what it reveals about the apparent practice of burning ships, we don’t know much about the motivations behind either Hittite invasion of Cyprus. Perhaps the Hittites were simply interested in some extra income as the empire collapsed, or perhaps there had been threats coming from that direction and they hoped that a military presence would calm things down a bit. There is evidence that Cyprus had been used as a base for seaborne raids in the region, so perhaps the increase of maritime related raids and other similar activity after 1250 BCE forced the Hittites to take action.

It’s interesting here to also ask the question, where did the Hittites get ships to fight this naval battle and sail their invasion force down to Cyprus? We’ve seen how the Hittites were not mariners by any means, they were charioteers with a large part of their empire and their capital city landlocked in central Anatolia. This being the case, one idea is that since the Hittites commonly controlled coastal areas through vassal-like arrangements, perhaps the Hittites used ships from a coastal city like Ugarit to make this invasion. We’ve seen with the Battle of Qadesh, for instance, that these arrangements often called for the vassal city to provide soldiers and military support, so I think this is well within the realm of possibility, though ultimately unproven.

At the end of the day here, the Hittite action in Cyprus, or Alasiya, is yet further evidence that seaborne threats had further escalated by 1210 BCE. This is bolstered even more by another text connected to the Hittites. In this one, the Hittite king is writing to Ugarit. He asks that Ugarit send a man up to Hattusa so that the king can question him. Apparently, this man from Ugarit, a man named Ibnadusu, had been captured by a people called the Sikala, a people who are described as the ‘ones who live on ships.’ The Hittites wished to question this guy because he’d escaped from the Sikala, and they hop e to get some inside information about the homeland of these people, the place where he’d been taken during his captivity. From the Hittite records so far discovered, we don’t see any future indication about whether he had useful information concerning the Sikala were, but as has been the case a few times now, the records from Egypt can help us fill in the gaps.

Egypt, Merneptah, and the Sea Peoples

Contemporary with the second Hittite invasion of Cyprus, and at the same time they were questioning the Ugarit man about the Sikala, Pharaoh Merneptah had his own problems to deal with down in Egypt. In 1207, during his rule, we see the first mention of the Sea Peoples in the context that most people think of today when they hear the term. That is, we see that in the 5th year of Merneptah’s reign, a confederation of foreigners invaded Egypt proper. The short version of what happened is contained on identical inscriptions that say: “The wretched chief of Libya has invaded with Shekelesh and every foreign country, which is with him, to violate the borders of Egypt.” We have a much more detailed account from the famous stele at Karnak, but before we go there, I should tell you that some scholars equate the Shekelesh mentioned by Egypt with the Sikala mentioned by the Hittites and Ugarit. Egypt says they were among the Sea Peoples and the Hittites said they were the ‘ones who live on ships.’ The specific arguments for this theory are complicated, but one more obvious parallel is that the names are surprisingly similar.

Now as for the more detailed description from Karnak, we have the following:

“[Beginning of the victory that his majesty achieved in the land of Libya] Eqwesh, Teresh, Lukka, Shardana, Shekelsh, Northerners coming from all lands.” (then there’s a missing portion, followed by) “the third season, saying: The wretched, fallen chief of Libya . . . has fallen upon the country of Tehenu with his bowmen – Shardana, Shekelesh, Eqwesh, Lukka, Teresh, taking the best of every warrior and every man of war of his country.”

That inscription is then followed by a list of how many invaders Egypt took captive. Now, this is completely unrelated to maritime history, but the list names the various groups who Egypt fought, listing captives and the number of men killed by giving a number of hands. That’s right, hands. Apparently the Egyptian practice was for the soldier who killed an enemy to cut off the hands, for proof that the enemy had actually been killed. What better unit of accounting than a human hand, right? Apart from that tidbit though, the list recounts the five groups named as part of what we call the Sea Peoples, the most interesting part being the first line, one of the specific lines that leads to them being known as the Sea Peoples. It lumps the Shardana, Shekelsh, and Eqwesh together and says that they are of “the countries of the sea.” The other line from what we just read mentions that all five groups were seen by Egypt as being “Northerners, coming from all lands,” which isn’t really surprising considering the geographical location of Egypt. Anyone coming from the Mediterranean would, by definition, be coming from the North.

I’m not sure I want to get too into the specifics with trying to divine which group of the Sea Peoples matches up with which Late Bronze Age culture except to say very broadly that many scholars have linked the Eqwesh with the Mycenaeans. If this is indeed accurate, then it would seem that some of them had outgrown their raids in Anatolia, had turned their highly developed ships southward and had joined up with other displaced peoples. Otherwise, Cline links the Shardana and Shekelesh with the Mediterranean islands of Sardinia and Sicily. If we again note that the Shardana, Shekelesh, and Eqwesh were of the “countries of the sea,” then maybe we have to link them with island powers like the Mycenaeans and the emergent peoples from islands a bit further to the west. This is one of the great mysteries of history, to be frank, so if we ever find a concrete answer, it’s pretty much a given that our podcast here won’t be the one to break the story.

At this point we have the Sea Peoples grouped together, invading Egypt in fairly large numbers. If the numbers given to us by Merneptah are to be trusted, then he killed 6,000 soldiers and captured 9,000 more during the 1207 invasion. A large portion of these would have been Libyans, but the Sea Peoples would also have numbered several thousand, at least. The presence of the Sea Peoples in Egypt and elsewhere is an effect, a symptom of the Late Bronze Age Collapse. Let’s see if we can look beneath the surface to find out what caused this drastic change.

The Late Bronze Age Collapse and Various Theories

This is the mystery behind the mystery, to a certain extent, though recent scholarship has proffered some very plausible theories. Moving forward, we’re basically continuing the major theme for this period: we know the basics of how the world turned out and research is revealing more all the time, but we’re forced to do the best we can with what we have. At times, this can paint a contradictory picture, and we’re aware that there’s much we still don’t know, but enough of that. Let’s look at the major issues that, to the best of our knowledge, contributed to the Late Bronze Age Collapse.

From the gates, we need to recognize the fact that all of these things we’ll discuss were interrelated, feeding off of one another while at the same time altering one another. It’s the idea of an ecosystem, which is really what the world is and has always been. The Late Bronze Age world had become quite complex, parts of it very wealthy, but with a wealth that was heavily dependent on trade and the international relations of the time. The wealth and power of these civilizations was based on a precariously stacked base. Take one or two blocks out of the base and the stability disappears. All that to say, I’ll do my best to make this discussion coherent, despite the many moving parts that make it difficult to cobble together a nice tidy narrative out of this. Maybe a general picture will come through nonetheless, so here we go.

The cracks in the base had started to show back as far as 1280 BCE, and we know this because the Sherden were fighting Egypt, Egypt was fighting the Hittites, and Mycenae was invading Anatolia, with many smaller skirmishes and feuds going on all over the place. By 1250 BCE, things had well and truly begun to unravel, and this is why some scholars think that the Trojan War myth assumed the aura that it ultimately still holds. The 13th century BCE saw many raids in Anatolia carried out by the Mycenaeans and others, but perhaps Troy was the last great success, the one that later Greek grandpas looked back on as ‘the good old days,’ an attitude that led to its commemoration in oral tradition. Hard to say for sure, but we can say that after 1250 BCE the cracks in the base had begun to shift, and the entire tower had begun to topple.

Natural Disasters

Earthquakes are one major factor that some have pointed to as the main culprit of the Late Bronze Age Collapse. They were always a reality in the regions that were home to the Bronze Age powers, as we’ve seen. They’re still a problem today too. It seems that earthquakes near the start of the 13th century may have spurred some of the early Mycenaean raids in Anatolia, but the earthquakes really began to pick up around 1225 BCE, and they seem to have had a much more devastating effect on civilization. Scientists call earthquakes that strike a region repeatedly over a period of time an “earthquake storm,” and that’s just what seems to have struck the eastern Mediterranean at this time. They say that this earthquake storm lasted for up to 50 years, to 1175 BCE, and though it struck Ugarit and other cities in the Levant, Hattusa in Anatolia, and even Cyprus, it seems to have had a much more devastating effect on the Mycenaean people in the Aegean. At least 12 cities there show serious signs of earthquake damage, many of them yielding up the skeletons of people who were killed and buried under rubble during the quakes.

This earthquake storm was a problem, for sure, but as I said, earthquakes have always been a problem for humans in cities, so they couldn’t have been the sole cause of societal collapse. In fact, many of these cities that were struck by quakes show signs of subsequent rebuilding, even if the buildings that emerged from the rubble were rudimentary in comparison to their ill-fated predecessors.

Climate Change, Drought, and Famine

The next cause in the lineup is one that’s really a three-for-one deal, because the three parts are so interdependent. This cause is also the one that probably had the greatest part in bringing about the collapse, it’s the one focused on most heavily in academic circles today as well. The cause I’m talking about is the trifecta of climate change, drought, and famine. Just by listing them in that order, it’s easy to see the progression that takes place, so let’s go ahead and see what the evidence is.

One theory comes from an author that I’ve loved reading and would encourage you to read as well if you can, Fernand Braudel. He describes the wind patterns in the Aegean, a system called the Aetesian winds.

“These blow from north-northwest towards Egypt and the African coast. If the sea-crossing from Crete or Rhodes to Egypt was so easy, it was thanks to this wind which blew uninterruptedly for months on end: and absolutely dry wind, blowing out of a clear sky, but raising crests of foam on the waves, and sufficiently strong to slow own the little Greek ferries of our own century if they are island-hopping on a windy day. It is the apparent move northwards of the sun in the summer which causes the development of this relentless and well-established system of winds. It brings drought with it and affects the Middle East, including Greece and the islands, between March and September. In autumn, the dry winds usually make way for rain from the ocean, carried on the west wind.”

Braudel, Fernand, Memory and the Mediterranean (2001).

Braudel then recounts the theory of a scholar named Rhys Carpenter who theorized that climate change in the Late Bronze Age altered wind patterns and disturbed this annual autumn rain for many years. He believed that the Aetesian winds blew for longer than normal over a period of years, increasing the period of drought throughout the Aegean and Near East and leading to a widespread famine.

There’s certainly no way to prove this theory at this point in time, but Braudel points out some fairly convincing indications that align with the theory to explain the population shifts that occurred. He says that:

“The cities of Mycenae perished in this long-drawn-out crisis because they were in a particularly dry zone, as was the plateau of Anatolia. They were simply abandoned. If the palaces were sacked and burned that was because they held stores of foodstuffs levied from the toil of the peasants, whom hunger drove to revolt and pillage. And it so happens that the grain store in the palace of Mycenae was the first building to be destroyed.”

Braudel, Fernand, Memory and the Mediterranean (2001).

This is fascinating stuff, and for some locations, it is probably the best explanation for what happened. Mycenae, as he mentions, seems to have been destroyed just after 1200 BCE, and though there are signs of fire and destruction, especially in the central citadel, there are no signs that it was carried out by foreign invaders. The most logical theory based on the information that we have is that the palace economy collapsed because long-distance trade had gradually eroded. When climate change caused a gradual drought and famine, everything reached a boiling point where the centralized system collapsed and the masses revolted. Again though, this is just a theory, albeit a compelling one.

The difficulty for me here is that this theory applies to Mycenae just fine, but there are many other cities where it doesn’t fit the evidence at all. Troy, for instance, was destroyed once and for all at a similar time, a decade or two following 1200 BCE. The problem is that it shows signs of outside invasion rather than internal rebellion. The same can be said of Hattusa, the Hittite capital city, which was destroyed by fire in the same period. The destruction of Hattusa was essentially the end of the Hittites, a civilization that had been in decline for decades as we’ve seen. Other Hittite cities were destroyed in this period, and based on current evidence it seems that some smaller peoples from the east destroyed Hattusa and other eastern Hittite cities. Because these cities were landlocked, it doesn’t appear to have been the work of the Sea Peoples. Also, a much larger percentage of Hittite cities were just abandoned, and the Hittite cities nearer the Mediterranean show little sign of invasion damage, so it appears that the Sea Peoples, whoever they were, didn’t focus too much on the Hittites. The drought lay on Anatolia as well, though, so perhaps they were headed for greener pastures.

The end result is that by 1180 many Mycenaean cities had been abandoned or destroyed. The same in Anatolia. The Hittites had been basically destroyed, and the Levant also suffered from famine.

Textual Evidence from Ugarit, Egypt, and the Hittites

I want to look now at some fascinating evidence we have that reveals what the rulers of these cities were thinking as their civilizations collapsed beneath them. This evidence comes in the form of text, letters written back and forth between the rulers of Hittite cities, the rulers of Ugarit, and even the Egyptian pharaoh.

For instance, one inscription from the time of Pharaoh Merneptah relates to the Hittites. He claims that he “caused grain to be taken in ships, to keep alive this land of Hatti.” Merneptah is the pharaoh we met earlier who fought the Sea Peoples in 1207 BCE, so this grain shipment happened somewhere in between 1213 and 1203. Famine seems to have been a long-term problem for the Hittites, though. An earlier queen had written to Ramesses II about the lack of grain, and after the inscription from Merneptah there’s another Hittite letter with a bit of attitude showing through; the king who wrote it snidely remarked to his reader, saying “Do you not know that there was a famine in the midst of my lands?”

Eventually, the Hittites succumbed to the numerous problems pressing on them from all directions. Right toward the end of their existence, we have some amazing texts that show us how the rulers of Hattusa and the Hittite vassal city of Ugarit were trying to avoid their impending demise. Ugarit was the commercial center of the time, one of the main commercial centers of the Bronze Age Mediterranean in fact, so the large amount of evidence connected to Ugarit is quite fortunate for illuminating the historical record.

One series of texts are letters between Ugarit and Hattusa, a particular one showing us that Hattusa had requested a shipment of grain from Ugarit. When the shipment got delayed, the Hittite king emphasized that the grain shipment was “A matter of life or death!” There are several more letters also concerned with grain shipments, and one that mentions the delivery of some boats from Ugarit to the Hittites, so maybe that is a reasonable basis to believe that the Hittites used Ugarit ships in their invasions of Alasiya.

Before long though, we see that Ugarit and the other Levantine cities were not themselves immune from drought and famine. At the same relative time that the Hittites were seeing their last days, a letter found in the house of an Ugaritic merchant described a famine that was hitting a nearby city hard: “There is famine in your house,” he says. “We will all die of hunger. If you do not quickly arrive here, we ourselves will die of hunger. You will not see a living soul from your land.” At the time that letter was written it was just a warning, but the warning seems to have been accurate. A letter written by Pharaoh Merneptah himself was discovered in the same merchant’s house, in which the pharaoh refers to “consignments of grain sent from Egypt to relieve the famine in Ugarit.”

A lot of the info in this section on famine comes from Eric Cline’s fantastic book ‘1177 BC: The Year Civilization Collapsed,’ and this next item in particular is a quote from that book. He writes:

“There is also a text from the king of Tyre, located in the coastal area of what is now Lebanon, to the king of Ugarit. It informs the king that his ship, which was returning from Egypt loaded with grain, had been caught in a storm: “Your ship that you sent to Egypt, died in a mighty storm close to Tyre. It was recovered and the salvage master took all the grain from their jars. But I have taken all their grain, all their people, and all their belongings from the salvage master, and I have returned it to them. And now your ship is being taken care of in Akko, stripped.”

Cline, Eric H., 1177 B.C.: The Year Civilization Collapsed (2014).

This last line apparently refers to the ship being salvaged.

These primary sources that describe widespread drought and famine are backed up by the latest in scientific study, particularly pollen analysis to determine moisture levels at points in the past. Cline also talks about these studies and says that the data taken from coastal Syria and the eastern coast of Cyprus shows that a severe and long-term drought seems to have begun at this same time, the time period we’re calling the Late Bronze Age Collapse.

The Pylos Tablets and the Effects of Collapse

So to this point we’ve seen that earthquakes and severe drought and famine precipitated by climate change all contributed to societal collapse and migration. The societal collapse was also helped along by the withering of the maritime trade routes that had previously made the societies around the Mediterranean wealthy. Admittedly, this is an oversimplification of the dynamics at play, but I want us to get a graspable picture of how these various issues converged in both time and place, without overcomplicating things. There’s at least one more piece to the puzzle though, the presence and movements of the seaborne invaders or migrants that we’ve already talked about a bit.

If we take the view that the climate change, drought, famine, and earthquakes destabilized societies beginning even in the 1300s BCE, then it would make sense that some of those societies were displaced, forced to seek greener pastures and more bountiful coffers.

Let’s start with the Mycenaeans once again. We’ve seen how many Mycenaean cities were destroyed in the decades around 1200 BCE and how many of them seem to have suffered internal rebellion, destruction by fire or earthquake, and abandonment in some cases. Deciphering the events that drastically altered the Mycenaean world at this time is quite difficult, and there’s just as much debate regarding this topic as there is regarding the Sea Peoples. For instance, some Mycenaean cities were abandoned, but others simply saw a reduction in population and a rebuilding of humble dwellings on top of the rubble left by the palace destructions. In other regions of the Aegean, like Crete for example, the cities were abandoned, but the survivors simply moved to higher ground, further into the mountains and away from the coasts. In yet other regions it appears that a small group moved inland while some of the population disappeared. The bottom line is that there’s no single narrative that explains the fall of the Mycenaeans; however, it does appear that at least some of their cities were invaded or saw the threat of invasion. Maybe.

The most written about city in this regard is Pylos because it was there that archaeologists discovered a trove of Linear B tablets that date to the time period we’re discussing. Interpreting these tablets has been highly controversial. Some scholars propose the narrative I’m about to present, while others say that there’s no way it could have happened in this manner. My version makes for a better story, so of course that’s the one we’re going to examine.

The foremost tablet from this group is the one on which a lot of this theory hinges. The tablet is entitled with the sentence: “Thus the watchers are guarding the coast.” Following it are a set of tablets that list contingents of men who were assigned to guard the Peloponnesian coast near Pylos. The interpretation of these tablets by some is that Pylos was fearful of something coming from the sea, obviously, that thing would have been seaborne raiders. The palace at Pylos was rather unprotected in comparison to the other Mycenaean palaces that had built up their cyclopean walls, so if they did indeed fear an invasion they needed to see it coming.

The next set of tablets are called the Rower Tablets, an apt name for the tablets that list the names of people drawn from the surrounding region to serve as rowing crews for oared galleys. One tablet gives a number of approximately 600 men, a number that “would have been sufficient to crew a fleet of 30 twenty- oared ships, 20 triaconters, or 12 penteconters.” These rowers appear to have been raised from a handful of cities based on an apportioned amount of rowers that each city would contribute, a structure suggestive of military preparation. We can’t know this for sure, but we do know that very quickly after these rowers were mustered, Pylos was destroyed. The problem is that there is no indication of armed struggle, simply the remains of a burned city abandoned by her people. The site of the Mycenaean city would be abandoned and never resettled, although future settlements would spring up nearby, so what conclusion does this lead to ultimately?

Oh, and one other tablet from the same trove has been painted as an ominous final chapter in the city’s history. This tablet is the king’s final order, an order to “perform the rituals at the shrine of Zeus, and bring the gifts: to Zeus one gold bowl, one man, to Hera one gold bowl, one woman.” The tablet is an order to sacrifice gold and humans to the gods while the rest of the city prepares for the end. Even more suggestive is the state of this tablet upon discovery. It was found “unfinished, hastily scribbled and ill-written, perhaps executed immediately before the palace fell.” The citizens destroyed everything and disappeared, leaving an empty city that would never again be inhabited.

The most logical conclusion that I’ve seen and that a number of scholars support is that the muster of rowers were not needed to man a war fleet but to man an evacuation transport. Remember, oared galleys at this time were used for war and for transport, so this makes perfect sense. The lack of armed struggle at Pylos is suggestive, as is the disappearance of the people with no buried remains to indicate a mass death event. Finally, most of the valuable goods had been removed, the torched palace only containing pottery that had been left on the shelves. This evidence together seems to show a highly organized evacuation. Such evacuations have been documented at other sites around the Mediterranean when populations foresaw an invasion and chose to evacuate and torch their palace behind them. The question we’re left with in this interpretation is what impending doom could have prodded them to abandon their home and burn it beyond repair. Was it possibly the threat emerging from the sea, the one that spurred the “watchers” to “guard the coast?”

We’re again left without definitive evidence concerning Pylos, but as the pressure continued to mount back in Ugarit, we have a few final windows into the possible seaborne invasions. Ugarit was almost destined to fall hard. It was wealthy, sure, but that wealth was almost entirely dependent on the international trade network of the Bronze Age. And while the city’s location made it perfectly placed to be the center of that network, it’s coastal nature also made it a prime target for invasion.

Letters From Ugarit, At the End

Thankfully for us, a surprising amount of textual evidence survived and can now reveal to us the final days of the city. Our first text is a letter that was sent by a governor of Cyprus over to that same merchant house in Ugarit where the earlier texts were found. In this letter, the governor discusses ships that were assaulting the city, saying that he is not responsible for any damage they may cause. He claims that Ugarit is the one to blame, having riled up these attackers, so it should be prepared to defend itself. The text says this: “As for the matter concerning those enemies: the people from your country and your own ships did this! And the people from your country committed these transgressions. . . . Twenty enemy ships even before they would reach the mountain shore have not stayed around but have quickly moved on, and where they have pitched camp we do not know. I am writing to inform and protect you.”

The next letter we have was addressed to the king of Ugarit, written to him by the king of a different city. This letter is pretty interesting for it’s content but also for what it tells us about human nature, something that’s never really changed. The king writing to Ugarit is eager to share his advice on how to handle the situation. He says: “You have written to me: ‘Ships of the enemy have been seen at sea! Well, you must remain firm. Indeed, for your part, where are your troops, your chariots stationed? Are they not stationed near you? Surround your cities with walls. Bring your infantry and chariotry into them. Be on the lookout for the enemy and make yourself strong!” For what it’s worth, this is pretty run-of-the-mill advice, something that I think would be pretty obvious if your city was in danger of invasion, so the writer of the letter could probably have saved himself some postage.

At the end of the day, though, I’m not sure that anyone’s advice could have saved Ugarit. Another letter from a nearby city says that Ugarit should try to hold out as long as possible, that this other city was getting together reinforcements and would be on the way shortly. We’re not sure if the reinforcements ever arrived, but it’s doubtful that they would have even made a difference. The last letter that was supposedly written in Ugarit was a private letter that says simply: “When your messenger arrived, the army was humiliated and the city was sacked. Our food in the threshing floors was burnt and the vineyards were also destroyed. Our city is sacked. May you know it! May you know it!”

Ugarit shows evidence of destruction by force, so it’s almost surely invaders that destroyed the port city. The city was burned, rubble piling up almost 2 meters high in places. It’s amazing to see that hordes of gold and bronze, weapons, and precious items have been found buried throughout the city, their owners hoping to hide their wealth from the invaders and return for it later on. Obviously, they never got that chance. Ugarit is another city that was destroyed comprehensively and never reoccupied after the Late Bronze Age Collapse. The rough estimate for the city’s demise places the destruction in 1185 BCE, so within the 20 year window from 1200 to 1180 where dozens of cities around the Bronze Age World were destroyed.

As we’ve seen, a hodgepodge of causes led to the collapse. Famine pushed some cities over the brink, either forcing the people to revolt or forcing evacuation. The collapse of trade played into this too, especially in the places where revolt occurred, but other places fell for entirely other reasons. Invasion or earthquake toppled some cities but not others. This period was one of drastic, world-wide change for a variety of interrelated and fluid reasons that defy simple explanation. Hopefully today I’ve at least painted an adequate idea of the events in your mind.

The final item today is one that probably wasn’t written while the city of Ugarit was aflame, but it makes for an awesome conclusion even if it’s not entirely accurate in the historical sense. In all likelihood, it was written up to 20 years before Ugarit finally fell, but it still indicates the presence of seaborne invaders as a threat during the city’s final years. In this letter, the king of Ugarit writes to the King of Cyprus and calls him father. This was a political formality of the day, they weren’t actually father and son. Nevertheless, he wrote:

“My father, now enemy ships are coming and they burn down my towns with fire. They have done unseemly things in the land! My father is not aware of the fact that all the troops of my father’s overlord are stations in Hatti and that all my ships are stationed in Lukka. They still have not arrived, and the country is lying open like that! . . . Now, the seven enemy ships that are approaching have done evil things to us. Now then, if there are any other enemy ships send me a report somehow, so that I will know.”

The reason this text make a perfect conclusion is that it was found in the oven where cuneiform tablets were baked for preservation. The writer of this letter never got the chance to fire it in the palace ovens. But, the conflagrations that reduced Ugarit to rubble kindly preserved the tablet for us, heating it just enough to preserve the words but not so hot as to destroy it altogether.

And that’s a wrap on our material today. The simple version is that most of the Bronze Age World has been abandoned or destroyed by 1180 BCE, but next time we’ll look at how the migration panned out, and how some of the major cities rebounded to become the early centers of the Iron Age and beyond. We’ll begin next time with a look the Sea Peoples in their most famous battle with Egypt, their encounter with Ramesses III at Medinet Habu in 1177 BCE. It’s from this battle that we have the only depiction of the ships used by the Sea Peoples, so we’ll focus heavily on that and what it can possibly tell us about their origins. We’ll wrap up the Bronze Age period for the podcast as well so that we can finally turn our sights toward Iron Age Greece, the first true navies, and the rise of Phoenicia.

Sources

• Braudel, Fernand, Memory and the Mediterranean (2001).
• Casson, Lionel, The Ancient Mariners: Seafarers and Sea Fighters of the Mediterranean in Ancient Times (1959).
• Cline, Eric H., 1177 B.C.: The Year Civilization Collapsed (2014).
• Drake, Brandon L., The influence of climatic change on the Late Bronze Age Collapse and the Greek Dark Ages, Journal of Archaeological Science, Volume 39, Issue 6, pp. 1862–1870 (June 2012).
• Emmanuel, Jeffrey, Sea Peoples, Egypt, and the Aegean: Transference of Maritime Technology in the Late Bronze–Early Iron Transition, in Aegean Studies, pp. 21–56 (2014).
• McGrail, Seán, Early Ships and Seafaring: European Water Transport (2014).
• Paine, Lincoln, The Sea and Civilization: A Maritime History of the World (2013).
• Palaima, Thomas G., The Last Days of the Pylos Polity, in Politeia: Society and State in the Aegean Bronze Age, Vol. 12 Aegeaum, pp. 623–633 (1995).
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