Internal Rebellion

Some scholars have suggested that internal rebellions may have contributed to the turmoil at the end of the Late Bronze Age.

Such a scenario might be invoked to explain the destruction at Hazor in Canaan, where there is no evidence for an earthquake, nor is there specific evidence for warfare or invaders.

Sharon Zuckerman has suggested that the destruction of Hazor Stratum IA, dating somewhere between 1230 and the early decades of the twelfth century BC, was caused by an internal rebellion of the city’s inhabitants, rather than an invasion by external peoples.

On its own, the hypothesis of internal rebellions is not enough to account for the collapse of the Late Bronze Age civilizations in the Aegean and Eastern Mediterranean.

Invaders And The Collapse Of International Trade

Even if an internal rebellion were not the outcome, the cutting of the trade routes could have had a severe, and immediate, impact upon Mycenaean kingdoms such as Pylos, Tiryns, and Mycenae, which needed to import both the copper and the tin needed to produce bronze, and which seem to have imported substantial quantities of additional raw materials as well, including gold, ivory, glass, ebony wood, and the terebinth resin used in making perfume.

While natural disasters such as earthquakes could cause a temporary disruption in trade, potentially leading to higher prices and perhaps to what we today would call inflation, more permanent disruptions would more likely have been the result of outside invaders targeting the affected areas. However, who would these invaders have been?

Or is this where we invoke the Sea Peoples?

Rather than the Sea Peoples, the ancient Greeks—ranging from historians like Herodotus and Thucydides in fifth-century BC Athens to the much-later traveler Pausanias—believed that a group known as the Dorians had invaded from the north at the end of the Bronze Age, thereby initiating the Iron Age.

This concept was once much discussed by archaeologists and ancient historians of the Bronze Age Aegean; among their considerations was a new type of pottery called “Handmade Burnished Ware” or “Barbarian Ware.”

However, in recent decades it has become clear that there was no such invasion from the north at this time and no reason to accept the idea of a “Dorian Invasion” bringing the Mycenaean civilization to an end.

Despite the traditions of the later classical Greeks, it is clear that the Dorians had nothing to do with the collapse at the end of the Late Bronze Age and entered Greece only long after those events had transpired.46

Moreover, recent studies now indicate that even during the decline of the Mycenaean world and the early years of the succeeding Iron Age, mainland Greece may still have retained its trade connections to the Eastern Mediterranean.

These connections, however, were probably no longer under the control of the elite classes who had dwelt in the Bronze Age palaces.47 In northern Syria, on the other hand, we have numerous documents attesting to the fact that maritime invaders attacked Ugarit during this time period. Although we have little firm evidence for the origins of these marauders, we cannot dismiss the possibility that they included the Sea Peoples.

In addition, scholars have recently pointed out that many of the city-states in the Eastern Mediterranean, and Ugarit in particular, may have been hard-hit by the collapse of the international trade routes, which would have been vulnerable to depredations by maritime marauders.

Itamar Singer, for instance, has suggested that Ugarit’s downfall may have been due to “the sudden collapse of the traditional structures of international trade, which were the lifeblood of Ugarit’s booming economy in the Bronze Age.”

Christopher Monroe of Cornell University has put this into a larger context, pointing out that the wealthiest city-states in the Eastern Mediterranean were the hardest-hit by the events taking place during the twelfth century BC, since they were not only the most attractive targets for the invaders but also the most dependent on the international trade network.

He suggests that dependence, or perhaps overdependence, on capitalist enterprise, and specifically long-distance trade, may have contributed to the economic instability seen at the end of the Late Bronze Age.48 However, we should not overlook the fact that Ugarit would have been a tempting target for both external invaders and homegrown pirates, as well as other possible groups. In this regard, we should consider again the letter from the Southern Archive, found in Court V of the palace in Ugarit (but not within a kiln), which mentions seven enemy ships that had been causing havoc in the Ugaritic lands. Whether or not these particular ships had anything to do with the final destruction of Ugarit, such enemy ships would have disrupted the international trade upon which Ugarit was vitally dependent.

When such dramatic situations occur today, it seems that everyone has a piece of advice to give. Things were no different back then, during the Late Bronze Age. One letter found at Ugarit, possibly sent by the Hittite viceroy of Carchemish, gives the Ugarit king advice on how to deal with such enemy ships. He begins, “You have written to me: ‘Ships of the enemy have been seen at sea!’ ” and then advises: “Well, you must remain firm. Indeed, for your part, where are your troops, your chariots stationed? Are they not stationed near you? … Surround your cities with walls. Bring (your) infantry and chariotry into (them). Be on the lookout for the enemy and make yourself very strong!”49

Another letter, found in the House of Rapanu and sent by a man named Eshuwara who was the senior governor of Cyprus, is undoubtedly related. In this letter, the governor says that he is not responsible for any damage done to Ugarit or its territory by the ships, especially since it is—he claims—Ugarit’s own ships and men who are committing the atrocities, and that Ugarit should be prepared to defend itself: “As for the matter concerning those enemies: (it was) the people from your country (and) your own ships (who) did this! And (it was) the people from your country (who) committed these transgressions(s) … I am writing to inform you and protect you. Be aware!” He then adds that there are twenty enemy ships, but that they have gone off in an unknown direction.50

Finally, a letter in the Urtenu archive from an official in Carchemish, located in inland northern Syria, states that the king of Carchemish was on his way from Hittite territory to Ugarit with reinforcements, and that the various people named in the letter, including Urtenu and the city elders, should try to hold out until they arrived.51 It is unlikely that they arrived in time. If they did, they were of little use, for an additional, private letter usually thought to be one of the last communications from Ugarit describes an alarming situation: “When your messenger arrived, the army was humiliated and the city was sacked. Our food in the threshing floors was burnt and the vineyards were also destroyed. Our city is sacked. May you know it! May you know it!”52

As noted above, the excavators of Ugarit report that the city was burned, with a destruction level reaching two meters high in some places, and that numerous arrowheads were found scattered throughout the ruins.53 There were also a number of hoards found buried in the city; some contained precious gold and bronze items, including figurines, weapons, and tools, some of them inscribed. All appear to have been items hidden just before the destruction took place; their owners never returned to retrieve them.54 However, even a severe and complete destruction of the city does not explain why the survivors did not rebuild, unless there were no survivors.

Rather than complete annihilation, it may be the cutting of the trade routes, and the collapse of the international trading system as a whole, that are the most logical and complete explanations as to why Ugarit was never reoccupied after its destruction. In the words of one scholar, “The fact that Ugarit never rose from its ashes, as did other LBA cities of the Levant which suffered a similar fate, must have more substantial grounds than the destruction inflicted upon the city.”

However, there is a counterargument to this suggestion.

Ugarit’s international connections apparently continued right up until the sudden end of the city, for there is a letter from the king of Beirut sent to an Ugaritic official (the prefect) that arrived after the king of Ugarit had already fled the city.

In other words, Ugarit was destroyed by invaders and was never rebuilt, despite the fact that the international trade connections were at least partially if not still completely intact at the time of destruction. In fact, what jumps out from the materials in the Rapanu and Urtenu archives is the tremendous amount of international interconnection that apparently still existed in the Eastern Mediterranean even at the end of the Late Bronze Age. Moreover, it is clear from the few texts published from the Urtenu archive that these international connections continued right up until almost the last moment before Ugarit’s destruction. This seems to be a clear indication that the end was probably sudden, rather than a gradual decline after trade routes had been cut or because of drought and famine, and that Ugarit specifically was destroyed by invaders, regardless of whether these forces had also cut the international trade routes.