hwaexcel.blogg.se - 1177 B.C. by Eric H. Cline

Whatever the instrument(s) it did an extremely thorough job, laying waste to a vast area of land, and stunting civic life for centuries until we see the rise of new states such as in classical Greece (Athenians, Spartans) and their enemies the Persians in the East. Or perhaps a better analogy is that the knife, the candlestick, the lead pipe, spanner and pistol are all lying around but it is currently impossible to say with certainty which were responsible, or in what order they were applied to the victim. We can see the body in the Conservatory but there is no knife, candlestick or lead piping lying around to help us. The reason the story is so interesting is that we don’t know exactly what happened, just whatever it was must have been really really bad.

Egyptians - a shadow of their former greatness.Įric H Cline explains what we know of what happened in 1177 B.C.: The Year Civilization Collapsed.

It took up to 500 hundred years before comparable political complexity was seen again. Everywhere else was full of rural bumkins with scarcely a duck-shaped ivory cosmetic container between them.Īnd yet in just a few decades around the year 1177 BCE, these “advanced” civilisations simultaneously collapsed: burnt, abandoned, destroyed. This was where there was writing (and reading), significant cities and populations, and where people made Bronze.

The haves and the have notsĪs far as Europe and the Middle East was concerned these empires were civilisation. Mycenaen Greece, the genesis of the Illiad, Agamemnon, Achilles and the rest of that murderous crew was a flourishing martial empire from about 1750 BCE to 1050 BCE, existing alongside and competing with the other flourishing empires of the Eastern Mediterannean: the Hittites in Turkey and northen Syria the Egyptians in Egypt, Israel, Jordan and southern Syria the Assyrians to the East the Ugarit mini-state on the coast. The palace itself was constructed from massive stone blocks and was clearly built to dominate and impress. Built on a commanding outcrop and flanked by two steep hills, from the top we could see the undulating farmland and olive groves stretching away for miles, with just a glimpse of the sea on the Eastern horizon.

Although I gazed only for a brief moment because our then six year old son ran off into the museum and I had to run after him, that brief instant transported me back 3,200 years ago into the Late Bronze Age - a world of kings, warriors, cities and gold.Ī few days later we rented a car and gazed upon the alleged palace of Agamemnon at Mycenae, a magical place to visit, which even the six year old’s mini tantrum 1 couldn’t distract from. Last summer I gazed upon the face of Agamemnon, or at least Agamemnon's alleged gold mask at the National Archaeological Museum in Athens.