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duchessofreadin's review against another edition
5.0
A truly fantastic read! I love anything history, and Dr. Cline caught my attention a few months ago when I started watching an Archaeology course that he has on The Great Courses. When I saw this book, and a new one that he is going to be releasing this year, I knew I had to read them both.
Step back into the pages of history, and get a truly insightful look into some of the ancient Civilizations, possible reasons for their collapse, and so much more.
I look forward to reading more from Dr. Cline!!
Step back into the pages of history, and get a truly insightful look into some of the ancient Civilizations, possible reasons for their collapse, and so much more.
I look forward to reading more from Dr. Cline!!
ralac71's review against another edition
informative
reflective
slow-paced
4.25
It’s an easy to read academic look at Bronze Age civilizations at about the time of their collapse. I’m intrigued by the enigmatic “Sea Peoples” that were touched on and will look for something on them.
tomstbr's review against another edition
3.0
Fascinating bit of history. Basically, the Ancient Middle East/Mediterranean world collapsed not due solely to some large horde of 'sea people' but rather a combination of local climate change, earthquakes, economic collapses and eventually waves of marauders/migrants. A bit like our world now.
This world was super connect and I learned a lot about the allegiances and trade and quite a bit of late Egyptian history. Here are some cool quotes:
"Hammurabi’s law code, which is the first to contain the saying “an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth” later made famous by the Hebrew Bible, does not mention any penalties for returning items such as shoes."
"As I have said elsewhere, if one were to search for a historical event with which to link pre-Homeric traditions of Achaean warriors fighting on the Anatolian mainland, the Assuwa Rebellion, ca. 1430 BC, would stand out as one of the largest military events within northwestern Anatolia prior to the Trojan War, and as one of the few events to which the Mycenaeans (Ahhiyawans) might tentatively be linked via textual evidence such as the Hittite letter KUB XXVI 91 mentioned above. We might well wonder, therefore, whether it was this incident that was the historical basis for the contemporary Hittite tales of Mycenaean (Ahhiyawan) warriors or mercenaries fighting in Anatolia, and which generated the stories of earlier, pre–Trojan War, military endeavors of the Achaeans on the Anatolian mainland."
"Akhenaten was Amenhotep III’s successor, probably serving as coruler with his father for a few years before Amenhotep died in 1353 BC. Soon after assuming sole power, Akhenaten implemented what is now called the “Amarna Revolution.” He closed down the temples belonging to Ra, Amun, and other major deities, seized their vast treasuries, and generated for himself unrivaled power, as the head of the government, military, and religion. He condemned the worship of every Egyptian deity except Aten, the disk of the sun, whom he—and he alone—was allowed to worship directly."
"We know a lot about Suppiluliuma from the Hittite records, especially one set of tablets written by his son and eventual successor, Mursili II, containing what are known as the Plague Prayers. It seems that Suppiluliuma died, after a reign of about thirty years, of a plague that had been brought back to the Hittite homelands via Egyptian prisoners of war who had been captured during a war fought in northern Syria. The plague ravaged the Hittite populace. Many members of the royal family died, including Suppiluliuma"
"We know that the battle was particularly vicious, and that both sides could have won it at one point or another. We also know that it ended in a stalemate, and that the dispute between the two powers was eventually resolved by the signing of a peace treaty.13The most dramatic part of the engagement came after the Hittites sent out two men—Shoshu Bedouin, as we are told in the Egyptian account—to spy on the Egyptian forces, but deliberately in such a way that the men were almost immediately captured by the Egyptians. Under torture, presumably, the spies yielded their contrived disinformation (perhaps one of the first documented instances in human history) and told the Egyptians that the Hittite forces were not yet in the vicinity of Qadesh but were still farther to the north..."
"Thus, most secular archaeologists favor an alternative date of 1250 BC for the Exodus, which ignores the biblical chronology but makes more sense from an archaeological and historical point of view. It makes more sense because the date falls during the reign of Ramses II, the pharaoh who completed the biblical cities of Pithom and Rameses. It also corresponds to the approximate date for the destructions of a number of cities in Canaan by an unknown hand and allows as much as forty years for the Israelites to wander around in the desert before entering and conquering Canaan, as the biblical account describes, and yet still have them arrive in time to be mentioned by Pharaoh Merneptah in his “Israel Stele”—an inscription that dates to 1207 BC and is the earliest mention outside the Bible of an entity known as Israel.."
"Two decades later, Christopher Monroe cited Liverani’s work and suggested that the economy of the Late Bronze Age became unstable because of its increasing dependency on bronze and other prestige goods. Specifically, he saw “capitalist enterprise”—in which he included long-distance trade, and which dominated the palatial system present in the Late Bronze Age—as having transformed traditional Bronze Age modes of exchange, production, and consumption to such an extent that when external invasions and natural catastrophes combined in a “multiplier effect,” the system was unable to survive. In writing about the situation at the end of the Late Bronze Age in his book Scales of Fate, Monroe describes the interactions of the various powers in the Aegean and Eastern Mediterranean as an “intersocietal network,” which agrees with the picture presented here. He points out, as I have, that this period is “exceptional in the treaties, laws, diplomacy, and exchange that created the first great international era in world history."
This world was super connect and I learned a lot about the allegiances and trade and quite a bit of late Egyptian history. Here are some cool quotes:
"Hammurabi’s law code, which is the first to contain the saying “an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth” later made famous by the Hebrew Bible, does not mention any penalties for returning items such as shoes."
"As I have said elsewhere, if one were to search for a historical event with which to link pre-Homeric traditions of Achaean warriors fighting on the Anatolian mainland, the Assuwa Rebellion, ca. 1430 BC, would stand out as one of the largest military events within northwestern Anatolia prior to the Trojan War, and as one of the few events to which the Mycenaeans (Ahhiyawans) might tentatively be linked via textual evidence such as the Hittite letter KUB XXVI 91 mentioned above. We might well wonder, therefore, whether it was this incident that was the historical basis for the contemporary Hittite tales of Mycenaean (Ahhiyawan) warriors or mercenaries fighting in Anatolia, and which generated the stories of earlier, pre–Trojan War, military endeavors of the Achaeans on the Anatolian mainland."
"Akhenaten was Amenhotep III’s successor, probably serving as coruler with his father for a few years before Amenhotep died in 1353 BC. Soon after assuming sole power, Akhenaten implemented what is now called the “Amarna Revolution.” He closed down the temples belonging to Ra, Amun, and other major deities, seized their vast treasuries, and generated for himself unrivaled power, as the head of the government, military, and religion. He condemned the worship of every Egyptian deity except Aten, the disk of the sun, whom he—and he alone—was allowed to worship directly."
"We know a lot about Suppiluliuma from the Hittite records, especially one set of tablets written by his son and eventual successor, Mursili II, containing what are known as the Plague Prayers. It seems that Suppiluliuma died, after a reign of about thirty years, of a plague that had been brought back to the Hittite homelands via Egyptian prisoners of war who had been captured during a war fought in northern Syria. The plague ravaged the Hittite populace. Many members of the royal family died, including Suppiluliuma"
"We know that the battle was particularly vicious, and that both sides could have won it at one point or another. We also know that it ended in a stalemate, and that the dispute between the two powers was eventually resolved by the signing of a peace treaty.13The most dramatic part of the engagement came after the Hittites sent out two men—Shoshu Bedouin, as we are told in the Egyptian account—to spy on the Egyptian forces, but deliberately in such a way that the men were almost immediately captured by the Egyptians. Under torture, presumably, the spies yielded their contrived disinformation (perhaps one of the first documented instances in human history) and told the Egyptians that the Hittite forces were not yet in the vicinity of Qadesh but were still farther to the north..."
"Thus, most secular archaeologists favor an alternative date of 1250 BC for the Exodus, which ignores the biblical chronology but makes more sense from an archaeological and historical point of view. It makes more sense because the date falls during the reign of Ramses II, the pharaoh who completed the biblical cities of Pithom and Rameses. It also corresponds to the approximate date for the destructions of a number of cities in Canaan by an unknown hand and allows as much as forty years for the Israelites to wander around in the desert before entering and conquering Canaan, as the biblical account describes, and yet still have them arrive in time to be mentioned by Pharaoh Merneptah in his “Israel Stele”—an inscription that dates to 1207 BC and is the earliest mention outside the Bible of an entity known as Israel.."
"Two decades later, Christopher Monroe cited Liverani’s work and suggested that the economy of the Late Bronze Age became unstable because of its increasing dependency on bronze and other prestige goods. Specifically, he saw “capitalist enterprise”—in which he included long-distance trade, and which dominated the palatial system present in the Late Bronze Age—as having transformed traditional Bronze Age modes of exchange, production, and consumption to such an extent that when external invasions and natural catastrophes combined in a “multiplier effect,” the system was unable to survive. In writing about the situation at the end of the Late Bronze Age in his book Scales of Fate, Monroe describes the interactions of the various powers in the Aegean and Eastern Mediterranean as an “intersocietal network,” which agrees with the picture presented here. He points out, as I have, that this period is “exceptional in the treaties, laws, diplomacy, and exchange that created the first great international era in world history."