Today's episode is a transition, of sorts. As Series 1 concluded, the Sea Peoples had attempted an invasion of Egypt and the Late Bronze Age Collapse had wreaked havoc on many cultures of the ancient world. Now, we look at how things had settled over the 100 years that followed 1177 BCE. We look at the "Balkanization" of the areas that had once been controlled by powerful empires. In looking at this change, the journey of an Egyptian priest named Wenamun serves as the perfect picture of just how the world had changed by 1050 BCE, and how that change operated to open the door for a new trading power to rise.
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Episode Transcript
Introduction
We finished up Episode 020 by seeing how the Sea Peoples came into very direct conflict with Egypt in the years surrounding 1177 BCE. After another few decades though, the mass migration seems to have died down and some of the Sea Peoples settled in Canaan, the southern area of the Levant. The big ripples had subsided by about 1150 BCE or so, and the next 100 to 150 years were a period of rebuilding and reorganization.
Before we get too far along today, I should acknowledge that I poached the “Balkanization” idea in the title straight from Braudel, though perhaps it’s not considered poaching if you give credit. Right, we’ll go with that. Anyway, here’s the opening paragraph from Memory and the Mediterranean, specifically from the chapter the begins his examination of the 12th century BC and beyond, so the rough timeframe he is alluding to is about 1150 BCE. He writes:
“The map of Middle East had become extremely complicated. The simultaneous decline of Egypt and Mesopotamia and the collapse of the Hittite Empire had brought into being a multitude of small warring states, which occupied the forefront of history with their minor but noisy squabbles.”
Fernand Braudel, Memory and the Mediterranean (2001).
That is the concept behind the term “Balkanization.” I would assume that I don’t have to expound on the thought behind the term, but I’ll say briefly for those to whom it may be new, that it was a term connected to the gradual division of the Balkan Peninsula during the 19th century. The area there had been under the control of the Ottoman Empire for quite a long time, but as the empire gradually declined into ultimate dissolution, it’s former land holdings were divied up into many smaller states that were then often in conflict with one another.
As you no doubt see then, this is how Braudel views the early Iron Age, at least in the areas of Asia Minor, the Aegean, the Levant, and to a lesser extent Egypt and North Africa. Rather than just list the changes to these regions, we’ll see them develop as we talk about the maritime-related events of the period.
Fascinating as this this concept of “Balkanization” may be, and as descriptive and useful as it can be to the historian, it makes a discussion of the period more difficult because it simply multiplies the pieces of which we have to keep track. Thus, I think at least to start here we’ll talk of the larger regions at play to help us get an idea of the broad strokes, and then we can get into the nuance with that established.
The Aegean after the Bronze Age
Let’s start with the Aegean to the north and west. We made clear that this area saw widespread trouble during the collapse, so much so that a portion of the Mycenaeans seemed to have joined up with the Sea Peoples and eventually landed in the Canaan, the Philistines as they came to be known. Even though the Aegean saw drastic reduction, a few areas held out a remnant of early Greek culture. Athens, for example, was not wholly abandoned and small remnants seem to have holed up in the cities that possessed stronger walls and a better water supply. There they remained to subsist and slowly, gradually regain their strength. They don’t factor much in the story again for at least 150 years though, so let’s move to now look at Asia Minor as a whole.
Much of this landmass had been controlled by the Hittites, but as we also saw last episode, the Hittites were basically wiped out in the course of the Late Bronze Age Collapse. Therefore, Asia Minor and the northern part of the Levant were the areas where the Early Iron Age “Balkanization” found fertile ground. In place of the great Hittite Empire sprang up many smaller kingdoms, a group that many scholars simply call the Neo-Hittites or Syro-Hittites for convenience’s sake. I don’t have a whole lot to say about this group yet other than to say that in their fragmented form, they spanned over a lot of territory. I’ll post a map to help flesh the areas out visually, but the main point for me is that this rather unstable group of kingdoms that emerged from the aftermath of the collapse sat to the north of the area that we now see as being home base for the Phoenicians.
The Levant after the Bronze Age
We’ll get more into the emergence of the Phoenicians and all the historical debate behind them, the name, all of it. For now, take a look at the map to see how they are basically the meat in the middle of the Early Iron Age geography sandwich. The Neo-Hittites to the north, but you’ll also remember that some of the Sea Peoples settled in Canaan, but the Hebrews of the Old Testament made that area their home in the general period after the collapse. To the east, Mesopotamia was still there, much weakened, but the Assyrians were still in the middle of the region there and retained a relative measure of power which they attempted to expand from time to time. They’ll factor into the story as we move forward, but again for now, it’s time to turn the focus on the Phoenicians.
In the north of the Levant, you may remember that the city of Byblos had been a major trade center for over a thousand years already as we now sit at around 1100 BCE, give or take a few decades. The three main cities that are always mentioned in conjunction with Phoenicia are the trio of Byblos, Tyre, and Sidon, hopefully those names are familiar to you. They all three came into existence long before the Bronze Age Collapse, all three of them emerging from the collapse surprisingly intact. This was a large part of the reason that Phoenicia was in prime position to grow so quickly after the collapse, especially when compared with the many regions that saw varying degrees of destruction.
Ultimately though, the origins of these cities are shrouded in misty prehistory. We find more sure footing in saying that Byblos and Sidon were the frontrunners before the Collapse, but after the collapse they began to decline somewhat. Not nearly as much as most other cities did, but in relation to Tyre, most certainly. Tyre, however, managed to assert itself and at around 1000 BCE, Tyre became the leading city in the emergent Phoenician bloc.
That is getting a step or two ahead of the curve here though, because prior to the emergence of Tyre and how it can serve as a perfect example of the rise of the Phoenicians, we have another perfect picture about how the region of Phoenicia and the Levant became more independent as a result of the Bronze Age Collapse.
The Report of Wenamun
To set the stage for this example and its relevance, we have to again go back to the before the collapse for just a moment. If you’ll remember, we talked on several occasions about Egypt’s relationship with the Levant. The pharaohs sent out many a ship to retrieve cedar wood from Byblos, but it seems that a large portion of the trade flowed the other way too, from the Levant, down into the Nile Delta and beyond. At one point in the Late Bronze Age, not too long before the collapse kicked into high gear really, Egypt was pushing north, attempting to gain control of territory in the southern Levant region. As you well know now, that didn’t pan out for them. The widespread collapse shockwaves pushed Egypt back, far back actually. By the end of the Collapse we saw how Ramesses was forced to repel at least one major invasion, perhaps more.
That all led to the situation that we opened with today, that Egypt was greatly weakened by 1100 BCE, that the south of the Levant was home to the resettled Sea Peoples and Hebrews, in addition to a number of other small tribes who’d been there all along. The north was under the control of the Neo-Hittites and company, and the Phoenicians were sandwiched in the middle, ready for their big moment. Right at this time in history, we have a story that seems almost tailor-made to show us how Egyptian influence had dwindled to their north, and how new players had assumed the stage, ready to write their own rules.
The story is referred to by several names, but I’ll call it the “Report of Wenamun,” for reasons that will become clear. There is some debate about the specific date to affix to this story, but a broad range puts it somewhere between 1100 BCE and 1050. This puts the events of the story about 100 years after the Sea People’s invasion, a century after the collapse. Rather than get into the various theories held to by academics, let’s recount the gist of the story. I will go ahead and record the translation of this story in its entirety as a supplemental episode, it should end up being about 20 minutes long or so as that story isn’t too long.
From the outset of the story we’re told that it concerns the voyage of Wenamun, who is called the Elder of the Portal of the Temple of Amun. He’s a priest of the temple then, and we’re told that the High Priest has charged Wenamun with overseeing a voyage to Byblos to fetch timber for the “great noble bark of Amun-Ra.” We talked a lot in the first half of Season 1 about the place of boats within the Egyptian religious mindset, with that place having probably come about because of the centrality of the Nile to the very existence of Egypt’s culture. Commonly, religious barks would fall into two categories: a portable bark such as could be displayed within the temple of a particular god or carried during the land portion of the god’s procession festival, and a full-sized, sea-worthy bark that could be used as a festival ship for the relevant festival during which the god was recognized. The episode art for this episode is actually a photo of the sacred bark of Amun-Ra as it is depicted at Seti I’s temple in Abydos. I’ve posted a high-res copy of the whole scene from the temple, in all its beautiful color, so find that in the show notes if you like.
Now we aren’t explicitly told in Wenamun’s report whether he was supposed to retrieve timber for the portable bark or the fully operational bark, but I would imagine that for a trip all the way up to Byblos he would have been smart to grab enough timber to build both. Who knows though, and as we’ll see here soon, things didn’t pan out well for Wenamun or for the “great noble bark of Amun-Ra,” perhaps that’s why an alternate name that is sometimes attached to the story is “The Misadventures of Wenamun.”
After Wenamun accepts his task at the story’s open, we’re told that he sets out from the Nile Delta port city of Tanis, where Smendes was at that point in history. Egyptologists hotly debate the chronology, but Smendes was the pharaoh that founded the 21st Dynasty. He seems to have originated from the Nile Delta area, (Lower Egypt) so it makes sense that he would’ve been in Tanis and would’ve been the go to guy for help in setting the journey to Byblos into motion.
After Wenamun leaves the relative familiarity of Egypt, the story starts to get interesting. Right away, he makes a stop at a port town called Dor, a site that’s been identified in archaeological digs and is located on the Mediterranean in the north of modern-day Israel. At the time Wenamun made a stop-over at Dor, it wasn’t controlled by the Hebrews though, he tells us that it was ruled by a prince of the Tjeker people, a man named Beder. The Tjeker should sound familiar to you, they made up a fraction of the Sea Peoples over a century before Wenamun met their prince, so this is a good support for the idea that some of the Sea Peoples had resettled in the Levant after the collapse had slowed down.
Wenamun Meets the Tjeker
If we were to take the picture of the Sea Peoples that Ramesses painted back when he claimed to have repelled their invasion, then we’d have to view the Tjeker as the savage outsiders and Egypt as the cultured perennial power. It’s a remarkable revelation from this story that we get exactly the opposite. While at Dor, one of Wenamun’s men absconds with a lot of gold and silver, half a kilo of gold and over two kilos of silver. In a understandable reaction, Wenamun goes to Beder, the Tjeker prince, and pleads for assistance in tracking down his traitorous crewman and the stolen gold.
Again, if we were to take the Egyptian picture of the former Sea People Tjeker, then he should have happily assisted, considered it an honor to help out the great Egyptian priest, perhaps even his duty as a possible former subject of Egypt. Beder’s actual response is pretty cheeky, he looks at Wenamun and says to his face, “Are you joking?” You can likely imagine how things progress from there. I’ll save the details for the supplemental episode, but in the end, Wenamun leaves Dor, sails north past the Phoencian city of Tyre, and heads for Byblos. On the way though, he seizes a large amount of silver from a Tjeker ship he happens across, saying that he’ll keep it until they get him back the money that his own man stole from him. Needless to say, the Tjeker did not remain on amicable terms with Egypt after that, if they were even there beforehand. Beder’s snarky response seems to indicate that any iota of Egyptian sway over their neighbors to the north had disipated totally after the collapse.
Wenamun at Byblos
Unfortunately for Wenamun, and in a seemingly unexpected turn from his perspective, he arrived at Byblos, dropped anchor in the harbor, and was promptly told to leave. The prince of Byblos had likely heard about Wenamun’s treatment of the Tjeker and the seizure of the their silver as revenge for Wenamun’s hurt feelings. There are other reasons for Wenamun’s reception by the prince, but after some back and forth they finally get down to brass tacks and start negotiating over the cedar wood for the bark of Amun-Ra, the whole reason that Wenamun is in Byblos.
The translated paragraph from this text reads like this, the first question coming from the prince of Byblos:
"On what business have you come?” Wenamun responds: "I have come in quest of timber for the great noble bark of Amen-Re, King of Gods. What your father did, what the father of your father did, you too will do it."
The prince fires back:
"True, they did it. If you pay me for doing it, I will do it. My relations carried out this business after Pharaoh had sent six ships laden with the goods of Egypt, and they had been unloaded into their storehouses. You, what have you brought for me?”
The dialogue that follows demonstrates the reality that Egypt is no longer in charge, its influence does not reach to the north as it once did. In fact, the prince mentions the fact that Egyptian trade with the Levant was once carried out on the vessels of Egypt, which may have indeed been true to some extent. At this point though, he says that Egypt’s reduced levels of trade isn’t even carried out by the Egyptians, it’s done by the merchants of the Levant, by this point we could safely call them Phoenicians even, the traders of Byblos and Sidon. Egypt’s fleet, its reputation, and its political sway had all dipped to historic lows. This is only confirmation of what we’ve already talked about really, so let’s continue with the story.
Eventually the prince of Byblos concedes a little ground, allowing Wenamun to send seven finished timbers back down to Egypt. It wasn’t really much a concession to be honest, the prince treated these seven timbers as a signal that he would play ball, but Wenamun could only use them to secure an advance to finance the rest of the timber that he would need to build the ship. Wenamun came to Byblos expecting gifts from a subject prince, tribute almost, but he was greeted with rejection of Egypt’s authority and the negotiation of a business deal.
A Storm Diverts Wenamun to Cyprus
In the end, Wenamun gets the requisite timber for the “great noble bark of Amun-Ra,” and after some more argument with the prince of Byblos and some heckling courtesy of the locals, Wenamun gets under way back to Egypt. If you haven’t felt that the events so far give rise to the alternate “Misadventures of Wenamun” title, then you may be pleased to know that as soon as Wenamun sets sail from Byblos, his ship is engulfed in a storm that blows him off course. He manages to survive the storm intact, but he ends up hitting land on the island of Alashiya, or Cyprus, another place that’s cropped up quite a bit.
Somehow, the islanders take Wenamun for a pirate, yet more evidence of Egypt’s fall from prominence in the greater part of the Mediterranean. Almost no one on the island speaks Egyptian, and Wenamun is saved by one local who does speak Egyptian and acts as interpreter for Wenamun as he pleads with the princess for protection. I’m sad to say that it’s at this point the story is cut off in the surviving texts. We’re not sure if Wenamun falls into more misadventure or if he makes it back home to deliver the timber for the sacred bark.
I’m no expert on ancient Egyptian literature, but those who are say that it’s entirely possible that Wenamun did make it home safely. The story is often called the “Report of Wenamun” because it is structured as an administrative report. That being the case, it’s a somewhat safe assumption to think that Wenamun made it home to actually write the report, what with the underlying hints of an Egyptian superiority complex and all.
Analyzing the Journey of Wenamun
The story was apparently quite popular in ancient Egypt and I think it remains interesting today. Our talk of the story should be tempered with the knowledge that there is a sharp divide amongst modern scholars about many aspects of the story and its origin. For starters, it was once thought that this story was a fully historical account of a guy named Wenamun and his mishap-riddled voyage. I’d say that the prevailing thought today is that the story was not historical, but was rather a work of literary fiction, focused on a tight plot, flashy dialogue, and complete with some imagery and ideas about politics, religion, and culture. It certainly does seem to be a polished story, a bit too polished for something that was originally an administrative report about a single journey.
There is a middle-ground theory that is alluring to me, but that is really impossible to substantiate to any degree. This theory is that Wenamun’s journey was originally written down as an administrative report and that a later scribe found the report, copied it down for his own reasons, and that it eventually found its way to someone who refashioned it into a work of literature, polished it up a bit. Some have even proposed the idea that the initial copying down of the original manuscript, which appears to have happened over a century removed from the events of the story, may have been done in preparation for another voyage to Byblos. All of that is, however, if the original events were even real to begin with.
Our focus here isn’t on the story itself though, I just thought it was important to note. Whether the events of the story were real or not, the relative timeframe during which the story was written is the same, and we can assume that the author would have been painting an accurate picture of the status of the world even if the story was intended to be fictional. He must have had some knowledge of Byblos and the northern areas to even be writing about them. Beyond that, the story isn’t all that kind to Egypt’s self-image either, so that is another finger on the scale in favor of it being an accurate portrayal of the status of the world in 1050 BCE even if the story is made-up.
I’m going to put a pin in it here for today, as I think that Wenamun’s story gives us a great context from which to begin our proper look at the Phoenicians next time. This episode is a bit short, but think of as a transition into the next era of maritime history, an era that will give us a lot of material on the Phoenicians and Greeks.
In researching the story of Wenamun, I found this wonderfully done comic strip version of the story, put together by a writer named Rolf Potts and illustrated by his nephew Cedar Van Tassel. It is a wonderful balance of portraying the story accurately and finding the humor within the original text, I think you’ll enjoy it if the original text seems a bit lifeless to you.
Comic Strip-Style Wenamun
Check out the entire comic strip version of "The Misadventures of Wenamun" at The Common.
Sources
- Abulafia, David, The Great Sea: A Human History of the Mediterranean (2013).
- Braudel, Fernand, Memory and the Mediterranean (1998).
- Casson, Lionel, The Ancient Mariners: Seafarers and Sea Fighters of the Mediterranean in Ancient Times (1959).
- Casson, Lionel, Travel in the Ancient World (1974).
- Miles, Richard, Carthage Must Be Destroyed: The Rise and Fall of an Ancient Civilization (2010).
- Paine, Lincoln, The Sea and Civilization: A Maritime History of the World (2013).
- Sacred Barks and Divine Rest Stations, in The Karnak Great Hypostyle Hall Project, U. of Memphis.
- The Report of Wenamun.
- Winand, Jean, The Report of Wenamun: A Journey in Ancient Egyptian Literature, in Ramesside Studies in Honour of K. A. Kitchen, pp. 541–560 (2011).
