← Empire: World History
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- [00:01]
Anita Anand
If you want access to bonus episodes, reading lists for every series of Empire, a chat community discounts for all the books mentioned in the week's podcast ad, free listening, and a weekly newsletter, sign up to empire club@www.empirepoduk.com.
- [00:20]
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- [01:59]
William Drimple
Well, hello and welcome to Empire with
- [02:02]
Anita Anand
me, Anita Anand, and me, William Duranpool.
- [02:05]
William Drimple
Now, last time we had the wonderful Eric Klein with us, the man I would give up this podcast for if I could go and join his course because it's so fantastic.
- [02:14]
Anita Anand
Be careful. Be afraid, Eric.
- [02:15]
William Drimple
Be afraid. I would, Eric. It's. It is a threat and a promise altogether. But, you know, it was a really interesting. I mean, the reason I find you and this so fascinating is because you're tying together so many things. You know the huge, big ticket stories. We had Troy, we had the Bible, we had the Exodus. Yeah, yeah. Droughts, earthquakes, migrations, battles. All of these things happening together to lead to this huge systemic collapse that we're talking about today. We're going to see how these catastrophes play out kingdom by kingdom, how these Bronze Age civilizations fall like dominoes, one after the other. Eric, thanks so much for coming back. And thank you for not letting us scare you off the last time.
- [02:59]
Eric Klein
You are my pleasure.
- [03:01]
Anita Anand
She's looking very anxious as you sign up for his course.
- [03:06]
William Drimple
I'm giving stalker vibe vibes. I realize it as I'm saying it, but I don't care. I don't care. It is what it is.
- [03:12]
Anita Anand
Anyway, Eric, let me take you out of your predicament and ask you a question. When you look at Medina Habu, which is what just outside of Thebes, right?
- [03:22]
Eric Klein
Yeah. It's on the way to the Valley of the Kings. Yes. It's Ramses III's mortuary temple. Yes.
- [03:28]
Anita Anand
When you go there and you look at those reliefs, do you sometimes feel this isn't just ancient history, this is actually a warning to us today? Do you feel that there's a kind of element of prophecy even in those beautiful ancient reliefs?
- [03:43]
William Drimple
Gosh, that got dark really quickly. Can I just say, basically, subtitled Empire, Are we doomed? Yes, Eric, are we doomed?
- [03:57]
Eric Klein
And did they leave a warning for us? Yes. Well. Well, interesting. I tell you what I do see. I do see a world back then that thought it was too big to fail. Just like we say about us today. Oh, we're too big to fail. They probably thought the same thing. And you know, the people 3200 years ago, back in 1200 BC, they were just as smart as us. They were technologically advanced for their time. They were just as connected. I mean, we're globalized. They were globalized for their time. And yet when push came to shove, when the perfect storm hit, when this series of unfortunate events unfolded, a house of cards collapses. Yeah, they couldn't hold it together, try as they might. And so I see this as a reminder that civilization, it's a choice that we make every day, and that every society in the history of humankind has collapsed either totally or has had to transform so much that you really don't recognize it in its new iteration. So they were not too big to fail. We're not too big to fail. I would be very worried.
- [05:08]
William Drimple
I'm trying to take the. The moral of the story then, is the moral of the story then, Eric, that, you know, they were too interconnected. That was their. Their fragility, that they relied on each other too much. And we should, I don't know, pull up the drawbridges, man the barriers, you know, join maga?
- [05:29]
Eric Klein
I wouldn't go that far.
- [05:30]
William Drimple
I mean, what. What are we meant to learn from this?
- [05:33]
Eric Klein
No, this is an excellent question. And when I'm Lecturing on the sequel book. I end with this point, you know, seven takeaways from the collapse. What do you do if your society has collapsed? But I would say be aware that it could happen to you, that it's happened to everybody else, as I just mentioned, you know, what brings a society up in the first place is often what also takes it down in the end. So their very interconnectedness, their globalization is what propelled them to the great heights that they reached during the late Bronze Age, when you had the G8, right, Mycenaeans, Minoans, Assyrians, Babylonians, Egyptians, Hittites, all of that interconnectedness. When one of them went down, or I would actually say two of them, Ugarit and the Hittites, that was. There you go, there's your house of cards, there's your dominoes. When two of them fell, the rest followed suit. So what brought them up also brought them down. And since I see us as just interconnected today as they were back then, and that is continu. Contributing to our great world these days, that I think we have to beware. What happens if you have supply chain shortages, you know, anything. I mean, think of what's just happened the last 10, 15 years.
- [06:49]
William Drimple
Oh, I mean, the pandemic, you said the pandemic mixed with, you know, a war or mixed with something else, you know. Yeah, you're right.
- [06:55]
Eric Klein
I actually think. I mean, I don't want to be Cassandra or Chicken Little, but every problem they had back in 1177, we have it today, and they collapsed. We're not too big to fail. We've got earthquakes, we've got droughts, we've got famines, we've got migrations, we've got pandemics. You name it, we have the same things they did, and they failed. I just think the past holds a lesson for us if we're willing to listen. So I am a little bit worried because the very interconnectedness of their system is what made it vulnerable. And same thing with us. A ship gets stuck in the Suez Canal for six days and we suddenly don't have toilet paper, right? I mean, we've got that, you know, so I'm. I'm a little worried that the Bronze Age collapse, which, you know, most people have never heard of, they hear of the fall of Rome, they don't know about the Bronze Age collapse. I actually think the Bronze Age collapse holds more potential lessons for us today than one might ever expect.
- [08:00]
William Drimple
I may not have time to do your course in that case, where they're on the brink. I just put something else in the diary.
- [08:08]
Anita Anand
Just read the book.
- [08:09]
William Drimple
Yeah, I mean, yeah, I've read the book, it's fine. Can we sort of look at home in on some of these collapses? Because, you know, the Hittite empire, you're saying, is one of the main blocks.
- [08:19]
Anita Anand
Yeah, let's go right back and. Because it's not again, one of the ones we all know about. I mean, in a sense those of us who grew up in and around London get to see what the Assyrian Empire looked like because all those enormous bulls from Nimrud and Nineveh sitting around the British Museum, ditto Egypt. But the Hittite stuff is less well known and it doesn't immediately bring images to the minds of most of us. Take us through who the Hittites are and therefore.
- [08:46]
Eric Klein
Sure. And I will preface this by saying something I referred to in the previous episode when we ran the computer simulations of what would it have taken to bring all of this down? The computer simulation said the only thing that would bring it all down were if the Hittites and Ugarit collapsed at the same time or if the Hittites and Egypt collapsed at the same time. But we know that Egypt did not completely collapse. We know that. Which means that Hittites and Ugarit is what happened. But notice the Hittites are in both of those scenarios. So the Hittites were a mystery to us until just over 100 years ago. Go. Because they had been lost to history. I mean they're mentioned in, in the Bible, Hebrew Bible, Old Testament, but we didn't know where they were. We couldn't find them archaeologically. And in the meantime there was this civilization, the ancient ruins up in what is today Turkey, Ancient Anatolia. And we didn't know that name. Finally, ah, Sayce Archibald Henry says one of the greatest Assyriologists said, hey wait, that stuff up in Turkey is the Hittites. And he was right, they absolutely were. And in 1906, Hugo Winkler began excavating at the capital city of Hattusas, found the archives that we've referred to. And by 1916 Horazni had deciphered Hittite.
- [10:15]
Anita Anand
And it's Indo European, isn't it?
- [10:17]
Eric Klein
Yes.
- [10:18]
Anita Anand
One of the great experts of Hittite is our friend Maja Jasanov's dad at Harvard. Maya's father has spent his entire life translating cuneiform tablets from Hattushas.
- [10:30]
Eric Klein
Right. So they're using the writing system of cuneiform, right, the wedge shaped Latin for wedge shaped. You can use cuneiform to Write Akkadian and Babylonian and Sumerian and Hittite. So once we're able to read these tablets, then we were able to figure out that the Hittite empire, well, there's the Hittite Old Kingdom and the Hittite empire, but we're talking about the empire here. So almost the exact as the Mycenaeans, about 1700-1200 BC and they managed to conquer most of ancient Anatolia, what is today Turkey.
- [11:06]
Anita Anand
And visually it's a world not a million miles from the Assyrians and the Persians, isn't it? They've all got long beards with sort of curly beards. They've all got the lion gates. Are these things we get again, as in Mycenae, it's kind of bridge between those two worlds almost.
- [11:24]
Eric Klein
Right. In fact, I think the Hittites were on again, off again friends and enemies of the Mycenaeans. And yeah, they both have lion gates at Mycenae and Hattusas and so on. But the Hittites were one of the great powers. I mean, at this time in the late Bronze Age, we have what I just mentioned, the G8, as I call them, the great brotherhood of kings. But among those, the top two were Egypt and the Hittites. And they are fighting, for example, over territory in what we would call the Levant, Canaan, modern day Syria, Lebanon, Israel, Jordan, Palestinian territories. The Egyptians and Hittites are fighting over them. But the Hittites basically own most of modern day Turkey, ancient Anatolia. Militarily, they've got a great bureaucracy, very powerful military, great diplomatic presence, and they're writing everything down. We have historical text. You name it, we've got it. So we now know all about the Hittites.
- [12:28]
William Drimple
Are they making things? Are they growing things? Are they building things? What's their usp? The Hittites?
- [12:33]
Eric Klein
All of the above, yes. They're making their growing. They're doing what every society, every civilization is doing back then. They are trading with everybody else. But there are a couple of things. I mean, the, the Hittite homelands up in the central plateau of Anatolia, there are some things grow and other things they can't. So we see a great trade in things like olive oil. With others, there's a great trade going on in terms of ceramics. We also have. I mean, some of the tin from the ancient world comes from southeastern Anatolia. I mean, some might come from Cornwall, most came from Afghanistan.
- [13:14]
Anita Anand
These are a long way apart, these three sources of tin. Afghanistan, Cornwall and Anatolia.
- [13:20]
Eric Klein
Exactly. Hundreds, if not thousands of miles apart. And think what happens if they're Cut for any reason. Do you talk about supply chain problems? And actually that has been suggested towards the end of the late Bronze Age, that the supply chain for tin might have been cut, in which case you can't make bronze, so you have a problem. But the Hittites are happily working and controlling and doing everything for about 500 years, the whole of the late Bronze Age. But one last thing before we move on, though, you. No, they should not be called the Hittites. That's our name for them. Yeah, that's our mistake. Working from the Bible.
- [14:00]
Anita Anand
So Joe has been telling us we can't call the Phoenicians. The Phoenicians. The Canaanites didn't call themselves the Canaanites, and the Hittites don't call themselves the Hittites Exactly.
- [14:08]
Eric Klein
The Hittites called themselves the Neshites and they spoke Neschian because the initial capital was at Karam Kanesh, which is still around today. And from Kanesh you get Nesha and the Neshites. But by the time we were able to read the tablets and realized that we should call them the Neshaeans and Neshai, they had already been labeled the Hittites. So it's too late now.
- [14:34]
Anita Anand
Eric, we've talked about now this bureaucracy. Everything's looking fine. It goes down slightly differently from Mugarit Ugarit. We talked about people arriving in boats and then arrowheads and bodies in the streets. With the Hittites, there's a kind of slow emptying of Hattushas and it's half empty. When disaster strikes. There is an invasion, but it's already half ruined.
- [14:59]
Eric Klein
Yes, it's one of these things. Like there's a saying, it went really slowly until it didn't. Right. It went very fast at the end, but it was very slow up until then. The problem with the Hittites is that they themselves had internal problems. They were, it's looking now, more and more. They were more vulnerable and fragile than they appeared to the outside observer, if you will. They were having problems within the royal family. The two brothers had fought.
- [15:32]
Anita Anand
This sounds rather familiar to any of us Brits listening to this.
- [15:37]
Eric Klein
You know, there's nothing new under the sun, right? So they had actually abandoned their capital. Hattusas was basically empty, or at least half empty by the time all this was happening. They are still fighting other people. One of the last Hittite kings tries to invade Cyprus. I mean, they are still being Hittites, but they have moved out. And it looks like the capital city of Hattusas when it Is finally invaded and destroyed and burned. It's only partially and it may be that it has nothing to do with the Sea peoples. It may be the Kashka.
- [16:15]
Anita Anand
Who are they? Who are the Kashka?
- [16:16]
Eric Klein
The Kashka are up to the northeast. They had already actually invaded and destroyed
- [16:22]
Anita Anand
Hattusas, modern Armenia and Georgia, that's their area.
- [16:25]
Eric Klein
I don't think it'd be quite that far. It's still in Turkey, but it's up towards the shores of the Black Sea. They were, you know, age old enemies. They had already sacked hattusas back in 1400 BC and it looks like they come back in 1200 as well. We're still finding out more about them. We need to do more excavation up there. But it looks like they're the ones that end the Hittite empire. But I think the Hittite empire would have fallen anyway. The big question for me is, okay, and again, it's very much like the Mycenaeans. The palaces go down, same thing. The, you know, Hatusas goes down. How would the average person, not in the street, but out in the hinterlands, how would the average person have felt about that? And I think, you know, it wouldn't have affected them all that much. Life would have continued on. But, you know, now who are they going to pay taxes to? But in terms of administration and bureaucracy and the army, as I say to people in my lectures, don't be a Hittite. Do not be a Hittite. They are in my lowest category. I do, I have the temerity in the sequel to rank the societies as to how well they did in the aftermath and the Hittites are dead last. Do not be a Hittite.
- [17:41]
William Drimple
Okay, okay. So do not be a Hittite. I want to do what you say. I don't want to be a Hittite. But tell me, did they just disappear overnight after facing all these difficulties or did you have them sort of, I don't know, so little gangs of Hittites going and settling and saying, you know, we are Hittite, but let's whisper it in case we get killed or, I mean, how does it work out?
- [18:00]
Eric Klein
So what had actually happened, and this is absolutely, I think, fascinating is when you have the major empire, if you will, or kingdom of the Hittites collapsing, the satellite areas continue on. And I will have the temerity to compare it to the British Empire. We no longer have. No, yes, I must, I must. We no longer have the British Empire today. Last time I checked, we've still got
- [18:29]
Anita Anand
a couple of places in The Caribbean,
- [18:31]
Eric Klein
which, that you hang on to. Well, there are places though that were former parts of the empire where they still drink tea and play cricket. Right. Which is the vestiges. Same thing with the Hittites, apart from
- [18:47]
William Drimple
tea drinking, cricket playing country. I mean, I don't suppose India would pretend to be sort of Hittite light if you like. You know, they kept bits that they liked but they wouldn't say that they were, they were Britons, do you know what I mean? So did you have then Hittites just evaporate or did they influence other places and you know, go Hittite light? I, I mean just explain, I want to know. I'm worried about them, Eric. This is what it is. I want to know what happens to them.
- [19:14]
Eric Klein
Right, so the Hittites proper in central Anatolia, they do go away. I mean there are remnants of the society that keep going, but they really do go away. And they are overtaken by new groups. The frigid come in, the Urartians start their civilization and they're going to be big in the Iron Age in there. So no more Hittites. But in North Syria where the Hittites had been and had been fighting the Egyptians for control and we had had these proxy wars during the Amarna age in the 14th century, that area keeps going and we get what we call the neo Hittites.
- [19:55]
William Drimple
Hittite light. I knew it. Okay. God, yes.
- [19:59]
Eric Klein
You know, Neo Hittites, meaning the new Hittites, these are the Hittites of the Bible. When the Bible talks about the Hittites, these are the Hittites they know because they wouldn't have known about the Bronze Age. They were gone. But these are the Hittites that the Bible mentions. And these neo Hittites who are up in Northern Syria basically right where it meets Turkey today, this is where you've got Carchemish and various other cities. They keep going. They have the same names. Shupiluluma for example. And I do hope I'm pronouncing that correctly.
- [20:32]
Anita Anand
That was very good. I like that.
- [20:34]
Eric Klein
Yeah. One of these days I want to. This is why I say in my lecture, I want to travel back in time and meet Shupiluliuma, mostly to find out if I'm pronouncing his name correctly.
- [20:43]
Anita Anand
Right.
- [20:44]
Eric Klein
So they keep the names for the Hittite kings. They in fact keep kingship. They keep writing. They're still writing in Luvian, which is used for the royal inscriptions. They keep everything. They are the Hittites, Hittite light, if you will. But they are much smaller. They're smaller city states. Aleppo, Carchemish, all of that.
- [21:06]
Anita Anand
Carchemish was the site which T.E. lawrence dug on as a youth, didn't he?
- [21:11]
Eric Klein
Absolutely, absolutely. I think he might have actually been the photographer there to begin with.
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Anita Anand
That's right.
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Eric Klein
But he was definitely there. Yes. And so there's actually been some wonderful works. James Osborne, University of Chicago, has written an entire book on these Neo Hittite, or now they want to call them Syro Hittite city states or kingdoms. And they come up against the new version of the Assyrians. We have Neo Assyrians and then eventually Babylonian, Neo Babylonians. So the Iron Age, which is in the aftermath of the collapse, everybody's new again. So you've got Neo Whatevers, Neo Hittites, Neo Babylonians.
- [21:52]
Anita Anand
One thing that occurred to me reading your book, Eric, or reading your books, plural, is that the guys who do better, the Neo Hittites and the Assyrians and the Babylonians, are all further inland. They're less likely to be raided from the sea. Is that a feature?
- [22:08]
Eric Klein
Yes, I think so. And actually trying to figure out why some went down and the others didn't or why they went down at different times is part of the mystery that we're trying to figure out. And so, yes, the Assyrians and the Babylonians are much further inland and they are on the banks of the Tigris and the Euphrates. So they've got two major rivers there.
- [22:29]
Anita Anand
So they don't subject to drought like the Egyptians are not subject to drought because they've got the Nile.
- [22:35]
Eric Klein
Not as much. We do know from the Neo Assyrian texts that they are hit by drought, but about a century after everybody else. And even then the drought gets so bad that at one point, one of the texts says that they are eating their own. They are. Cannibalism.
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Anita Anand
Cannibalism. Crikey.
- [22:55]
Eric Klein
So it is delayed. It is delayed. I think there are other factors besides the water, too. They had good leaders that were there at the right time, but the Egyptians did have the Nile. The one thing to notice, we have Egyptians and Hittites as the big two. The big four are Egyptians, Hittites and Assyrians, Babylonians. Of those four, the only one that's not on a major river system are the Hittites. And they are the only one of the four that do go down. So water. Water is important.
- [23:26]
Anita Anand
So more open to rainfall fluctuations and.
- [23:29]
Eric Klein
Yes, right. So water is important.
- [23:31]
Anita Anand
One thing I didn't understand in your book, Eric, was the kind of chronological order. Is it a West to east, Tumble of the dominoes. Does it start with Mycenae, then go to Troy, then to Hattushas and the Hittites, then go to Ugarit and Syria, and finally end up at Egypt? Is that the order, or is Mycenae and Troy collapsing alongside this? What sort of chronological order do you put this all in?
- [24:02]
Eric Klein
I wish I knew. I wish we knew. We can't get that specific that way. Yes. I can tell you my gut feeling. Yes. I think it's coming west to east.
- [24:13]
Anita Anand
You're starting with a drought inland in Europe, which is driving people down into Mycenae. They are then raiding Troy. Troy is then rebelling against Hattushas. All these different okies in boats are then going to Ugarit in Syria and finally ending up at Egypt and Libya.
- [24:32]
Eric Klein
Yes. Though I would start it actually a little bit further west. I would say that the drought in Europe is driving people down also into Italy. And we see now that there is an exodus from northern Italy of as many as 25,000 people, is the latest estimate by Christian Christiansen and other people like that.
- [24:54]
Anita Anand
This summer I went to an Aeolian island site which was also part of this Bronze Age collapse. It was a beautiful evening and gorgeous headland with this sort of perfect water. But when you get there, the archaeology is exactly the same. It's a very prosperous Bronze Age trading settlement selling obsidian. It makes these little gorgeous sort of shiny glass, like black arrowheads and spears, which it's doing very nicely out of and selling over a wide area. And then one day, a bunch of boats turn up, raid it, and it's gone.
- [25:28]
Eric Klein
I think that's kind of the case that we've got here. I am backed up to a certain degree because Ramses iii, in the inscription that we've already talked about, with wives and the kids and the luggage and all of that, actually says no land could stand before them. And then he names them. He says, Hate, Kode, Carchemish, Artsawa, Alashia, on. And we know these places, and they're actually kind of in order. Hatti, those are the Hittites, Carchemish and Kota. That's right. I mean, those are the Neo Hittites. Later, that's where Turkey meets Syria. In today's lingo. Artsua is the western coast of Turkey, south of Troy. And Alasia, of course, Alasia is most likely Bronze Age Cyprus. And so we can see that Ramses says they have come basically west to east. And he actually then says they have set up a camp in Amurru. Now Amurru, we know from other texts, including the Amarna letters back in the 14th century, Amuru is just set south of Ugarit. So we can see that now. We also have these texts at Ugarit that we've mentioned where they talk about the enemy coming. Well, we actually do have a date for the destruction of Ugarit, near as we can figure because there's an Egyptian chancellor mentioned, there's an eclipse that is mentioned. It looks like Ugarit is still existing in 1192, 1191. So the earliest it would have been destroyed is in about 1190. The latest is probably about 1185. So there's about a five year window when Ugarit is destroyed by these ships and invaders that have shown up. However, Ramses III is not invaded until 1177. So even if we take 1190 and go down 1177, that's 13 years. If it's 1185, that's what about eight years. Meaning that the Egyptians had warning of about a decade and in that time they could prepare. I think that is why they beat them because they've had 10 years to get everything ready.
- [27:49]
William Drimple
So they saw the storm coming, coming, coming, coming. It's going to get to us, so we better do some something.
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Anita Anand
And they had the Sea Peoples as mercenaries, so they knew their fighting techniques and their weaknesses and strengths.
- [28:00]
Eric Klein
And that's where it gets even more interesting because people like the Shardana and others, maybe even the Shekelesh, we see them in Egyptian records as early as the 14th century. And they are, as you say, they are mercenaries fighting on both sides. So now when they come back as the enemies, as the Sea Peoples, there are no quantity. And in fact it's been recently suggested, I mentioned before, that there was a land battle and a naval battle. It's been suggested now that the land battle might actually have been fought up in what is now northern Syria and that the Egyptians went on, if you want to call it an offensive defense, let's not wait for them to come to us, let's go and attack them. So it may be that we have the Sea Peoples up by Ugarit 1190 and then by 1177 the Egyptians go
- [28:54]
Anita Anand
up and attack them, which explains why they would also encounter the Israelites whose seed are no more in that first
- [29:01]
Eric Klein
same stele could possibly explain all sorts of things. But I still kind of like the land battle being fought down by the naval battle, which is most likely in the Nile Delta. Either way, this is in part why I think the Egyptians are able to beat the sea peoples in 1177 is because, just as you've asked, we can trace them coming from west to east and then north down south. And the Egyptians are ready and waiting. And it might even have happened in 1207 also, when they came from Libya and were allied with the Libyan chieftain. Again, the Egyptians might have had some time to prepare.
- [29:42]
Anita Anand
So, Eric, if they have warning, is there any signs that the Egyptians are fortifying or anything? Can we see that?
- [29:48]
Eric Klein
Because.
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Anita Anand
Because there are places we see Mycenae fortifying before it collapses. Isn't it Tiryns and Pinos, the Greek cities, fortified, but it isn't good enough. They fall anyway.
- [29:58]
Eric Klein
Yeah, for Egypt, it's hard to tell. We do have a series of Egyptian forts that go up, you know, the way of the sea. But it's much easier to see in places like Mycenae, as you mentioned, where they've reinforced the outer walls, they put up the lion gate, they build a tunnel down to water, and we do see these elsewhere as well. But since the Egyptians are able to basically defend their country before the Sea Peoples ever make inroads into Egypt proper, I think we need to look a little bit further north at what's happening in Canaan and ask if the Egyptians helped to fortify any of the cities like Megiddo or Hazor or others that they controlled up in Canaan. I think that's a better place to look.
- [30:48]
William Drimple
It's a good place to take a break. We've been talking about the places that are collapsing and when and how and in which order they might have done. But what happens to the people in those places? We sort of dealt with the Hittites and where, you know, sort of Hittites have. Have ended up afterwards. But what about the rest of these populations in these huge major cities? Join us after the break.
- [31:11]
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Anita Anand
No surprises.
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Anita Anand
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Eric Klein
this
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- [33:13]
Anita Anand
So Eric has led us through the Bronze Age collapse, this decline and fall of a civilization that in many ways resemble ours. Very globalized, very interconnected. And suddenly, it is no more. Eric in this half, perhaps you'd take us through what happens to all these different citadels and cities and peoples after the collapse.
- [33:33]
Eric Klein
Sure. So if we look at the Mycenaean palaces in Greece, the collapse there, it follows a similar pattern to other places. The problem is, we don't know exactly what happened to them. We know they're destroyed. We don't know who did it. We don't know what did. We don't know why. For example, Mycenae is destroyed around 1200 BC. It looks like it was affected by an earthquake at some point, maybe 1250 BC. But as I've said, that's not enough to stop it. But we do know that by 1200, by 1150, it's destroyed. It has been now suggested that it was an internal rebellion and that that might have been the case for other cities as well. Pylos is Destroyed in about 1200 B.C. it baked the tablets and all of that. Tiryns is damaged. Tiryns is inhabited for maybe another century.
- [34:28]
Anita Anand
Tiryns is close to Mycenae, isn't it?
- [34:30]
Eric Klein
It's the kind of neighboring city just a couple kilometers. And in fact, trying to figure out the relationship between Terrans and Mycenae is an interesting problem we've been discussing for decades now. But here they're both destroyed within a century of each other, and Mycenaean economy ends. You know, the palatial economy ends. Literacy goes away. What they had known went away. By 1050 BC nobody is calling themselves a Mycenaean anymore. It's gone.
- [35:04]
William Drimple
I have a question. We've repeated this a few times in this series. You know, suddenly, overnight literacy disappears. Why. Why do people suddenly not write things down? I mean, why, when, you know, the collapse of a city doesn't mean the knowledge of that writing goes away.
- [35:20]
Anita Anand
Yeah, you'd have thought it's a useful
- [35:22]
William Drimple
skill to have sort of leaving notes by the side of the road. We've gone here, just in case you look. Why does it all suddenly evaporate?
- [35:30]
Eric Klein
Right. I'm glad you asked that. Yes, writing does seem like it would be essential. But writing in the Mycenaean period, which is linear B, which Michael ventress showed in 1950, is an early version of Greek. It was used by the scribes in the palace to record what was going in and coming out of the palace. That was all it was used for. Sheep, olive oil, cows, chariot wheels, tin, copper. Right. No history, no epics, no poems, no pre Homer type things. It is all economic. And that means that when the palaces were destroyed and the palatial economy went away, there was no need for that anymore. And remember, you know, maybe 1% of the population could read or write, and in that particular case, it was the scribes in the palace. No palace, no economy, no scribes. And with that, I would say within a decade, or who knows, they no longer know how to do linear beginning. They can't read or write anymore. And it's going to take until the Phoenicians come to bring the Alphabet.
- [36:48]
William Drimple
Well, that answers that question. And do you think illiteracy is a. Is a driving factor in collapse, or is it actually reinvention that if you don't have these old ways or any Vestige or connection to those old ways, people become more innovative. They become, I don't know, better at doing things without, you know, sort of a courtly language. Is it. Is it almost good that it goes because, you know, people have to look to themselves to do things rather than a palace economy and scribes who tell and what's coming in and what's coming out.
- [37:15]
Eric Klein
Yeah, well, yes and no, I would say. And this is. This is becoming a major area of debate. Some scholars have said one person's collapse is another person's opportunity. Right. And in fact, it's been suggested by Erica Viberg and Martin Finne, who are at Uppsala. They have said that when the Mycenaean palaces went down, like Pylos, like Mycenae, that the ordinary people probably rejoiced because they had been abused. Right. In building things like the Lion Gate, in draining the Copeus Basin, that they had been taken advantage of and delivering
- [37:54]
Anita Anand
the chariot wheels and the wine and the olive oil that Linear B is recording.
- [37:59]
Eric Klein
Exactly, exactly. And the Mycenaeans may have been more fragile and vulnerable than they appeared. And this is also what Joseph Moran, the excavator of Tirans at the moment, he has suggested it, that perhaps the Mycenaean economy and the Mycenaean world was not as solid as it appears, as we have thought, and that not only the peasants might have been rejoicing when the palaces went down, but some of the second and third tier nobles might have been rejoicing. Right. The ones who are not the first sons who are going to inherit everything. Sons number two and number three might have, you know. Yahoo. Thank you, Sea peoples.
- [38:41]
Anita Anand
This is now our choice as a son number four. I'm very much on their side here.
- [38:45]
Eric Klein
Exactly. And those might have also been some of the Mycenaeans that join the Sea Peoples.
- [38:51]
William Drimple
Right, right.
- [38:52]
Eric Klein
It's a possibility.
- [38:53]
William Drimple
The way I thought about it is that it's like the only people who could write were the tax inspectors and the tax officers burned down. And so they don't. They're just not necessary anymore. Everyone could just do what they like. So in a way, it's a liberation, basically. It's a liberation of centralized control.
- [39:12]
Eric Klein
And. And I would agree with that. And then to jump ahead, when the Phoenicians bring the Alphabet, you know, by the 8th century, if not earlier. And by the way, I think the Alphabet came earlier. I think recent publications have shown it might have been as early as the 11th century. That is very liberating because the Alphabet's Much easier to learn and to use than linear B. And now pretty much anybody could do it for any reason. And so I think it was very liberating when the Phoenicians bring back what becomes the Greek Alphabet.
- [39:48]
William Drimple
A more democratic language.
- [39:50]
Eric Klein
Much more democratic.
- [39:52]
Anita Anand
Eric, take us next maybe to Cyprus, because there you also get devastation, don't you?
- [39:57]
Eric Klein
Yes, we do. But there we also get innovation. And one thing I would stress is that that the period after the collapse is usually called the world's first Dark Age, and I would rather call it the Iron Age, as many archeologists have said. And if we look at the adaptive cycle, for instance, which people usually use in biology and environmental science, after every collapse, there's a period of innovation and invention. And that's what I think we should look at in these centuries right after the collapse. And Cyprus is a prime example, because Cyprus is devastating. We do get major Bronze Age sites like Enkomi, like Kyrian. We do see that they are destroyed or have evidence for at least some destruction right around 1200 B.C. now, remember, Cyprus is where the copper came from. Tin. We argue about Afghanistan, Southeast Anatolia, Cornwall. No argument for copper. Copper is from Cyprus. That is what they did as and when the collapse happened. And perhaps copper production was affected. They are the people on Cyprus that become innovative, and one of the things that they do is turn to iron. And it looks now as if they may have been at the forefront that while extracting copper and copper ore, that they figured out how to smelt iron at the same time. And so it does look like the earliest iron weapons and iron tools that start being used in the aftermath of the collapse are on Cyprus. And let me emphasize, you will see on the Internet and such people saying, oh, the sea peoples had iron weapons and that's why they won. And that iron brought an end to the Bronze Age. No, it did not. Iron comes in after the collapse, or at least during it, but it does not contribute to the collapse. It's what you do in this period of innovation and invention afterward. And so Cyprus, even though it is majorly affected, like all the other societies, they immediately pivot. They and the Phoenicians are in my top category as to what to do if your society is affected. And in their case, it's iron. And they also, they take the cities that have been destroyed and they move like 3km away and start a new city.
- [42:31]
William Drimple
Can I ask about another place which we've again referred to as? I mean, we've sort of made it seem as though it's a success story of this collapsing period. That's Egypt, which doesn't collapse, but it doesn't fare well. I mean, it suffers, doesn't it? So just can we talk about that? Because it doesn't by any stretch get away scot free.
- [42:50]
Anita Anand
Despite all the kind of victory proclamations of Medina Habu. There's something rotten in the state of each other.
- [42:58]
Eric Klein
Exactly, exactly. And actually in the first book, the 1177 B.C. i kind of ended leaving the impression that Egypt was one of the ones that did the best. And in fact it's not, as I show in the sequel after 1177. And as I've just mentioned, the Phoenicians and the Cypriots do the best. Assyrians and Babylonians are next best. For reasons that we've talked about with the Tigris and the Euphrates. The Egyptians come in third in my category out of five. And I put them in because it's like here in the United States is what we would have called in previous generations a gentleman. C. Right. They're not. They haven't failed, but they haven't gotten an A. They survive, let's put it that way. The way I put it, I have three different categories. You can transform, which is the best, you can adapt, which is second best, or you can cope. And I think the Egyptians have kind of coped, slash adapted. So I put them in my third category. But it would probably be better to say it survived but that it was like a Pyrrhic victory. Right. They're still there, but they lost control over their foreign territories. They leave Canaan by 11:40, where they've
- [44:18]
Anita Anand
been for a long while.
- [44:19]
Eric Klein
Very long. They had been there since, oh, at least the time of Tutmosis iii when he fought the battle of Megiddo right. Back in the 15th century.
- [44:29]
Anita Anand
400 years earlier.
- [44:31]
Eric Klein
Yeah, 400. Yeah. So they've lost all that they are. They do remain in tenuous contact for trade. They. They're going up into what's now Jordan and such, but their trade networks have been completely disrupted. They are no longer a member of the great powers.
- [44:49]
Anita Anand
They're not an imperial power. They're just retreated back to modern Egypt.
- [44:53]
Eric Klein
Exactly. They've retreated back within their borders. And it does get worse than that because at one point, and we're into now, we've got the 19th dynasty, and then until the 20th and 21st, we're now into the period, period that Egyptologists call the Third Intermediate Period, which is usually described as a period of anarchy and chaos. At one point, there are three if not four different people, each claiming that they are pharaoh of Egypt and each one in a different region of Egypt. So when you compare it to New Kingdom Egypt, 18th Dynasty, right. King Tut, 19th Dynasty, there's no comparison. And so that's why I put Egypt in the middle. But two, two brief comments. One one Egyptologist pointed out to me or said, that's unfair, comparing third intermediate to New Kingdom. That's an unfair comparison. I'm like, why? I'm comparing Iron Age to Bronze Age. That's exactly the comparison. And then I was giving a lecture and I said, egypt in category three. And one graduate student stood up and raised his fist and said, we're number one or nothing. And I said, I guess you're nothing because I'm not going to put you in category one. I might move you up to category two and be equivalent to Assyrians and Babylonians. But I really do think that the Egyptians, they're hanging on by the skin of their teeth. They are surviving, but they are not what they were in the Bronze Age.
- [46:26]
William Drimple
Have we heard she said, who your number one is is because you know, you're dissing left, right and center, every ancient civilization tumbling the Naniel ranking. Who is Eric Klein's number one?
- [46:38]
Eric Klein
Number one are the Phoenicians.
- [46:40]
Anita Anand
We are coming to the Phoenicians in the next episode and we very much looking forward to this.
- [46:44]
Eric Klein
Yeah, the Phoenicians and the Cypriots are my number one, the two of them. And we actually do see, and maybe we'll talk about this in the future, but wherever we see Phoenician goods in the Aegean in we also find Cypriot goods. So the question is, are they working in tandem or are they competitors? Maybe they're competitors who know, but those are my number ones. So, you know, if you're going to survive a collapse, you should be like the Phoenicians or be like the Cypriots, but don't be like the Egyptians.
- [47:15]
William Drimple
And remember, God's sake, not a Hittite. Never a Hittite. I'm actually having T shirts printed up up.
- [47:23]
Eric Klein
But to round it out for those who haven't figured it out yet, in my category four, Mycenaeans and Minoans, they're not as bad as the Hittites, but they're not even as good as the Egyptians. So, you know, to come full circle, like I said, the, the Mycenaeans basically had to start all over again after 10:50. Nobody's a Mycenaean. That doesn't mean that they went away totally. I think the membrane is permeable. So, you know, Bronze Age Mycenaeans and Iron Age Greeks, they're still worshiping Zeus and Hera and Poseidon and Athena. Some stuff makes it through, but they really do have to start over again. That's not the case in Egypt. They did not have to start over again. It's just their government kind of fell apart.
- [48:10]
Anita Anand
So we are going to be looking at Eric's superstars, the Phoenicians in the next episode and also seeing how how the Israelites and the Philistines emerge from this mess of the collapse in the next episode. You don't have to wait. You can join the club@empirepoduk.com for less than a frothy coffee. Anyway, see you next time.
- [48:36]
William Drimple
Goodbye from me, William Drimple and from me, Anita Arnan.
- [48:46]
Eric Klein
Close your eyes.
- [48:47]
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Exhale. Feel your body relax and let go
- [48:51]
Eric Klein
of whatever you're carrying today.
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Well, I'm letting go of the worry
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Eric Klein
that I wouldn't get my new contacts
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in time for this class.
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William Drimple
I got them delivered free from 1-800-contacts. Oh my gosh, they're so fast.
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Eric Klein
And breathe.
- [49:03]
William Drimple
Oh, sorry.
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William Drimple
Oh, sorry. Namaste.
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Eric Klein
1-800-contacts.
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William Drimple
Sip for yourself.
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