1177 B.C.: The Year Civilization Collapsed (Turning Points in Ancient History) (24 page)

The Philistine Pentapolis

Of particular interest are the sites in southern Canaan, including those identified in the Bible and elsewhere as belonging to the so-called Philistine pentapolis, the five major Philistine sites: Ashkelon, Ashdod, Ekron, Gath, and Gaza.

At the end of the Late Bronze Age, the earlier Canaanite cities at Ekron and Ashdod were violently destroyed and replaced with new settlements in which there was an almost complete change in material culture, including pottery, hearths, bathtubs, kitchenware, and architecture. This seems to indicate either a change in population or a significant influx of new people—presumably the Philistines—following the collapse of Canaan and the withdrawal of Egyptian forces from the area.
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Trude Dothan, professor emerita at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and former codirector of the Ekron excavations, located at modern Tel Miqne, describes the end of the Late Bronze Age city at Ekron as follows: “In Field I, the upper city or acropolis, we could follow the total destruction of the last Late Bronze Age Canaanite city by fire. Here the destruction is evident: the remains of a large mud-brick storage building, traces of figs and lentils in storage jars, and a large well-preserved silo are buried under the collapsed mud-bricks…. The new Philistine city lies flush on the destruction of the Late Bronze Age settlement in the upper city and on the open fields of the Middle Bronze Age lower city.”
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A similar situation seems to have arisen at Ashkelon, where recent excavations have documented the transformation of the settlement from an Egyptian garrison to a Philistine seaport sometime during the first half of the twelfth century BC—probably just after the reign of Ramses III, to judge from the several scarabs with his cartouche that have been found. In Ashkelon, however, the transition appears to have been peaceful, at least insofar as one can tell from the limited area that has been exposed to date. The excavators have described the “sudden appearance of new cultural patterns expressed in architecture, ceramics, diet, and crafts, particularly weaving.” They connect these changes to the Sea Peoples, specifically the Philistines, and describe them as the result of migrations from the Mycenaean world.
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However, our understanding of this situation in Canaan at the end of the Late Bronze Age may still be evolving. Although the classic 1995
article on the coming of the Philistines to Canaan by Larry Stager of Harvard University describes the Philistines as “destroy[ing] indigenous cities and supplant[ing] them with their own in the four corners of the territory they conquered,”
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Assaf Yasur-Landau of the University of Haifa has recently taken issue with this traditional picture, as we shall see below.

D
ESTRUCTIONS IN
M
ESOPOTAMIA

Even as far to the east as Mesopotamia, evidence of destruction can be seen at multiple sites including Babylon, but these were clearly caused by forces other than the Sea Peoples. We know specifically that the Elamite army, once again marching from southwestern Iran, this time under the command of their king Shutruk-Nahhunte, caused at least some of this devastation.

Shutruk-Nahhunte had come to the Elamite throne in 1190 BC and ruled until 1155 BC. Although Elam (like the other kingdoms in the region) seems to have been a fairly minor player on the world stage during most of the Late Bronze Age, it was connected to some of the great kingdoms through marriage. Shutruk-Nahhunte was married to the daughter of a Kassite Babylonian king, just as many of his predecessors had been. One had married the daughter of Kurigalzu I back in the fourteenth century BC; another had married Kurigalzu’s sister; and another had married the daughter of Burna-Buriash later that same century. Shutruk-Nahhunte’s own mother was a Kassite princess, as he tells us in a letter that he wrote to the Kassite court, and which the German excavators found at Babylon.
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In that letter, he complains that he had been passed over for the Babylonian throne, despite being fully qualified for the position, including by birth. His indignation is palpable as he writes: “Why I, who am a king, son of a king, seed of a king, scion of a king, who am king for the lands, the land of Babylonia and for the land of E[lam], descendant of the eldest daughter of mighty King Kurigalzu, [why] do I not sit on the throne of the land of Babylonia?” He then threatened revenge, saying that he would “destroy your cities, dem[olish] your fortresses, stop up your [irrigation] ditches, cut down your orchards,” and proclaiming, “You may
climb up to heaven, [but I’ll pull you down] by your hem, you may go down to hell, [but I’ll pull you up] by your hair!”
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He made good on his threats in 1158 BC, invading Babylonia, capturing the city and overthrowing the Kassite king, and then placing his own son on the throne. He also, most famously, brought back to the Elamite city of Susa massive amounts of booty from Babylon, including a diorite stele, nearly eight feet tall, inscribed with the law code of Hammurabi, as well as a victory monument of the even-earlier Akkadian king Naram-Sin, and numerous other items. These were subsequently discovered in 1901 during the French excavations at Susa and sent to Paris, where they are now displayed in the Louvre.
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Shutruk-Nahhunte’s campaign was apparently motivated by his desire for the kingdom and territory of Babylon and Babylonia, and he may well have taken advantage of the turmoil in the Eastern Mediterranean at the time. Quite possibly he knew that there was almost nobody to whom the Kassite king could turn for assistance. The subsequent campaigns in Mesopotamia undertaken by Shutruk-Nahhunte’s son and grandson were very likely also influenced by the fact that the Great Powers of the previous centuries were either no longer in existence or much weakened. However, it is clear that none of the destruction associated with these military activities can be attributed to the Sea Peoples.

D
ESTRUCTIONS IN
A
NATOLIA

In Anatolia at this time, a number of cities were also destroyed. Once again, though, the reason in each case is hard to discern; and once again the Sea Peoples have traditionally been credited for the devastation on the basis of little or no evidence. In some cases, additional excavations by subsequent excavators are now overturning long-held attributions and assumptions. For instance, at the site of Tell Atchana, ancient Alalakh, located near the modern Turkish-Syrian border, Sir Leonard Woolley thought the city of Level I had been destroyed by the Sea Peoples in 1190 BC. However, the most recent excavations, by Aslihan Yener of the University of Chicago, have redated this level to the fourteenth century BC and indicate that the majority of the city was abandoned by 1300 BC, long before the possible encursions of the Sea Peoples.
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Of those Anatolian sites that were brought to ruin just after 1200 BC, among the better known are Hattusa, the capital city of the Hittites on the interior plateau, and Troy on the western coast. In neither case, however, is it certain beyond a doubt that the destructions were wrought by the Sea Peoples.

Hattusa

It is clear that the Hittite capital city of Hattusa was destroyed and abandoned soon after the beginning of the twelfth century BC. The excavators found “ash, charred wood, mudbricks, and slag formed when mud-bricks melted from the intense heat of the conflagration.”
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However, it is not at all clear who destroyed the city. Although scholars and popularizing authors frequently blame the Sea Peoples, largely on the basis of Ramses III’s statement “No land could stand before their arms, from Khatte … ,” we actually have no idea whether “Khatte” in this case was meant as a reference to the Hittites in general or specifically to Hattusa.
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It is also not clear precisely when Hattusa fell, especially since it now seems to have been attacked sometime during Tudhaliya IV’s reign, perhaps by forces loyal to his cousin Kurunta, who may have attempted to usurp the throne.
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As the eminent University of Chicago Hittitologist Harry Hoffner, Jr., has remarked, the usual
terminus ante quem
for the final destruction (i.e., the date before which this must have happened) is based on the statement made by Ramses III in 1177 BC, which would probably place the destruction sometime earlier, perhaps ca. 1190–1180 BC. However, we have no real idea how accurate Ramses’s statement was.
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By the 1980s, Hittitologists and other scholars were seriously suggesting that an older and better-known enemy, namely, the Kashka, who were located to the northeast of the Hittite homelands, had instead been responsible for destroying the city. This group is thought to have also sacked the city earlier, at a time just before the Battle of Qadesh in the early thirteenth century BC, when the Hittites temporarily abandoned Hattusa and moved their entire capital south for a number of years, to a region known as Tarhuntassa.
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This makes much more sense, for as James Muhly of the University of Pennsylvania once wrote, “it has always been difficult to explain how Sea Raiders [i.e., Sea Peoples] destroyed
the massive fortifications … of Hattusa, located hundreds of miles from the sea in what today seems a rather isolated part of the upland plateau of central Anatolia.”
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The archaeological evidence indicates that parts of Hattusa were destroyed by an intense fire, which consumed portions of both the Upper and the Lower City, as well as the royal acropolis and the fortifications. However, it has now become clear that only the public buildings were destroyed, including the palace and some of the temples, and a few of the city gates. These buildings had been emptied out, rather than looted, before being put to the torch, while the domestic quarters in both the Upper and the Lower City show no signs of destruction at all.
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A recent director of the excavations, Jürgen Seeher, suggested that the city was attacked only after it had been abandoned for some time, that the royal family had taken all of their possessions and moved elsewhere long before the final destruction. If so, the Kashka—longtime enemies of the Hittites—are more likely than the Sea Peoples to have been responsible for the actual destruction, though it may well have taken place only after the Hittite Empire had been severely weakened through other agencies, such as drought, famine, and interruption of the international trade routes.
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The same possible explanations may be given for the devastation visible at three other well-known central Anatolian sites reasonably near Hattusa: Alaca Höyük, Alishar, and Masat Höyük. All were destroyed by fire at approximately this same time, though it is unclear whether the Kashka, the Sea Peoples, or someone else entirely was responsible. Mersin and Tarsus, in southeastern Anatolia, were also destroyed, although both later recovered and were reoccupied.
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The site of Karaoglan, which lies not very far to the west of Hattusa in central Anatolia, was also destroyed at this time, with bodies found in the destruction layer, but again it is not clear who was responsible.
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There is relatively little destruction farther to the west in Anatolia. In fact, the Australian scholar Trevor Bryce has noted that “the sites destroyed by fire [in Anatolia] seem to have been limited to the regions east of the Marassantiya river … there is no evidence of such a catastrophe further west. Indications from archaeological excavations are that only a small number of sites of the Hittite world were actually destroyed; the majority were simply abandoned.”
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Troy

The one site in the west that was destroyed by fire early in the twelfth century BC was Troy, specifically Troy VIIA, located on the western coast of Anatolia.
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Although Carl Blegen, the excavator from the University of Cincinnati, dated its destruction to ca. 1250 BC, the devastation has now been redated to 1190–1180 BC by Penelope Mountjoy, a noted expert on Mycenaean pottery.
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The inhabitants of this city simply took the remnants of Troy VIh, which was probably destroyed by an earthquake perhaps as early as 1300 BC, as discussed in detail earlier, and rebuilt the city. Thus, the large houses originally built during Troy VI now had partitioning walls installed and several families living where there had been only one before. Blegen saw the dwellings as evidence of a city under siege, but Mountjoy suggests instead that the inhabitants were trying to recover from the earthquake, with temporary shanties erected among the ruins.
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However, the city did eventually come under siege, as shown by evidence found by both Blegen and the next excavator of Troy, Manfred Korfmann from the University of Tübingen, who dug at the site from 1988 to 2005.

Both excavators found bodies in the streets of Troy VIIA and arrow-heads embedded in the walls, and both were convinced that it had been destroyed in warfare.
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Korfmann, who also located the long-lost lower city at Troy, which all the previous excavators had missed, said at one point: “The evidence is burning and catastrophe with fire. Then there are skeletons; we found, for example, a girl, I think sixteen, seventeen years old, half buried, the feet were burned by fire…. It was a city which was besieged. It was a city which was defended, which protected itself. They lost the war and obviously they were defeated.”
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However, the date of this destruction might make it difficult to argue that the Mycenaeans were responsible, as in Homer’s story of the Trojan War in the
Iliad
, unless the Mycenaean palaces back on the Greek mainland were being attacked and destroyed precisely because all their warriors were away fighting at Troy. In fact, Mountjoy suggests that the Sea Peoples, rather than the Mycenaeans, destroyed Troy VIIA. This would fit well with the mention of the former by Ramses III just three years later, but she presents no substantial evidence to support her hypothesis, which remains speculative.
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