Bringing to life a vibrant multicultural world, he draws a sweeping panorama of the empires of the age and shows that it may have been their very interdependence that hastened their dramatic collapse. Eric Cline tells the gripping story of how the end was brought about by multiple interconnected failures, ranging from invasion and revolt to earthquakes, drought, famine, and the cutting of international trade routes. The pharaoh's army and navy defeated them, but the victory so weakened Egypt that it soon slid into decline, as did most of the surrounding civilizations. In 1177 B.C., marauding groups known only as the Sea Peoples invaded Egypt. Those myths inspired the Classical Age that eventually emerged.From acclaimed archaeologist and bestselling author Eric Cline, a breathtaking account of how the collapse of an ancient civilized world ushered in the first Dark Ages Homer sang of Achilles, Troy, and Odysseus. In the dark centuries that followed the end of the Bronze Age, romantic myths grew of how wondrous the world had once been. The interlinked collapses played out over a century as central administrations failed, elites disappeared, economies collapsed, and whole populations died back or moved elsewhere. May you know it!” In some regions there were also devastating earthquakes.

We will all die of hunger.” “Our city is sacked. Voices in the letters: “There is famine in our house. But the violence was probably set in motion by extensive drought and famine reported in tablet letters from the time. There were indeed invasions-they might have been soldiers, or refugees, or civil war, or all three. (8th Year of Ramses III) when Egypt barely defeated a mysterious army of “Sea Peoples.” Who were they? Do they really explain the general collapse, as historians long assumed?Ĭline thinks the failure was systemic, made of a series of cascading calamities in a highly interdependent world. For Cline the defining moment was the battle in 1177 B.C. It was one of history’s most globalized times. The tin required for all that bronze (tin was the equivalent of oil today) came from Afghanistan 1,800 miles to the east. The density of their connection can be learned from trade goods found in shipwrecks, from Egyptian hieroglyphs and wall paintings, and from countless well-preserved clay-tablet letters written between the states. They grew to power over two millennia, but they collapsed simultaneously almost overnight. In those centuries eight advanced societies were densely connected-Egyptians, Assyrians, Babylonians, Canaanites, Hittites, Cypriots, Minoans, and Mycenaeans. Archaeologist Cline began by declaring that the time he would most like to be transported to is the Late Bronze Age in the Mediterranean-the five centuries between 17 B.C.

1177 B.C. by Eric H. Cline