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In the years between 1200 and 1180 BC there must have been military conflicts
in the eastern Mediterranean which surpassed anything imaginable up to
that time. Almost all regions and virtually all peoples were involved
in the fighting, in the course of which many mighty states perished. Those
years of crisis mark one of the most epoch-making periods in the development
of Western civilisation: the transition from the Bronze Age to the Iron
Age. Never before, and hardly ever since, have there been such far-reaching
upheavals in the cultural development of humanity.
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The golden age before
1200 BC |
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Before the years of crisis, the political, economic and military equilibrium
between the mighty kingdoms of Egypt, Anatolia and Babylonia allowed the
lands of the eastern Mediterranean to achieve rapid cultural development.
Stable state structures, consisting of an aristocratic ruling class and
a finely structured feudal society, fostered not only rapid development
in craftsmanship and architecture, but also industrial overproduction. In
the harbour cities of Cyprus, Syria and the Lebanon, there was a flourishing
trade in wares from the eastern Mediterranean, the Aegean, the Black Sea,
central Europe and the Middle East. In that cultural golden age, the thirteenth
century BC, the Egyptian Pharaoh Ramses II, who reigned for over sixty years,
built the impressive temple complexes of Luxor and Abu Simbel. The legendary
city of Troy on the Hellespont, the entrance to the Black Sea, was at the
height of its cultural flowering. In the heart of Anatolia, Hattusa, the
capital of the Hittite empire, rose to become one of the most important
political centres of the ancient East. And in Greece, the immense fortresses
of Mycenae and Tiryns were built. |
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The collapse |
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The collapse of these civilisations began around the year 1200 BC. Even
before that, there had already been some political unrest. In Greece and
Anatolia, great fortresses were built. Then there was a governmental crisis
in Egypt, and soon after that, a wave of destruction began to engulf the
region, to which most urban centres, together with their palaces, fell
victim. The Anatolian city of Hattusa - and with it the Hittite empire
- was extinguished overnight. Troy was destroyed by fire, and despite
partial rebuilding sank into insignificance. In Syria and Palestine, dozens
of trading cities were destroyed. In Mycenae, Tiryns, Pylos and other
places on the Greek mainland, the palaces of the archaic kings fell victim
to a wave of general devastation. Mycenaean Greece drifted on aimlessly
for a few generations, and finally disappeared from the scene.
After the upheaval of 1200 BC, there was neither a rebuilding of the
destroyed palaces and settlements, nor did the attacking powers profit
in any way from the destruction they had unleashed. The war plunged the
Mediterranean world into a period of economic and political insignificance
which lasted for several centuries and is generally known as the "Dark
Age". Miserable social conditions caused life to degenerate into a mere
struggle for existence; there was no room for any high cultural or artistic
achievements. Mass migrations of a size never seen before accompanied
the political collapse.
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The beginning and end
of writing |
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A precondition for the economic boom in the Bronze Age (around 3000-1200
BC) - but also a product of that boom - was the extensive spread of writing.
In Egypt, the Pharaohs directed their scribes to write endless praises
of their naturally magnificent deeds and virtues for posterity. In the
Hittite empire, by contrast, particular care was taken to record complicated
religious customs in detail. And the feudal society of Greece concentrated
on the practical matter of recording taxes and customs duties. It is at
least partly due to these early written documents that even today, a vague
memory of a kind of Golden Age at the end of the Bronze Age has survived.
In Greece, however, the collapse at the beginning of the Iron Age was
so profound that even the knowledge of writing itself disappeared for
around four hundred years. During that time, the people of Greece built
their simple dwellings in the shadow of the great Mycenaean palaces and
used the ceramics and metal tools of their forebears, without themselves
knowing how to produce such things.
More on this topic can be found in: Zangger, Eberhard, Ein neuer Kampf
um Troia ("A new struggle for Troy"), Knaur, Munich, Germany, 1996.
Dr. Eberhard Zangger, born 1958, has studied and undertaken research in
geology and archaeology in Kiel, Stanford and Cambridge. He participates
as the supervising scientist in many international archaeological research
projects.
The German news magazine Der Spiegel commented: "Zangger sets
out to bring together the hitherto ill-understood transformations from
the Bronze to the Iron Age for the first time into an immense historical
panorama."
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