[Avodah] The Bronze Age Collapse

Micha Berger via Avodah avodah at lists.aishdas.org
Tue Sep 20 13:37:38 PDT 2016


I recently encountered the idea multiple "coincidental" times, so now
I am wondering about it.

Seems that somewhere around 1207 - 1177 BCE (judging from Egyptian
records), there was a widespread collapse of Bronze Era civilations. To
quote wikipedia <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Late_Bronze_Age_collapse>:

   The Late Bronze Age collapse was a transition in the Aegean Region,
   Southwestern Asia and the Eastern Mediterranean from the Late Bronze
   Age to the Early Iron Age that historians believe was violent, sudden
   and culturally disruptive. The palace economy of the Aegean Region and
   Anatolia that characterised the Late Bronze Age was replaced, after
   a hiatus, by the isolated village cultures of the Greek Dark Ages.

   Between c. 1200 and 1150 BC, the cultural collapse of the Mycenaean
   kingdoms, the Hittite Empire in Anatolia and Syria, and the New
   Kingdom of Egypt in Syria and Canaan interrupted trade routes and
   severely reduced literacy. In the first phase of this period, almost
   every city between Pylos and Gaza was violently destroyed, and often
   left unoccupied thereafter: examples include Hattusa, Mycenae, and
   Ugarit. According to Robert Drews: "Within a period of forty to fifty
   years at the end of the thirteenth and the beginning of the twelfth
   century almost every significant city in the eastern Mediterranean
   world was destroyed, many of them never to be occupied again".

   The gradual end of the Dark Age that ensued saw the eventual rise of
   settled Syro-Hittite states in Cilicia and Syria, Aramaean kingdoms
   of the mid-10th century BC in the Levant, the eventual rise of the
   Neo-Assyrian Empire, and after the Orientalising period of the Aegean,
   Classical Greece.

And:
    Robert Drews describes the collapse as "the worst disaster in
    ancient history, even more calamitous than the collapse of the
    Western Roman Empire."

Historicans are still arguing as to what caused it -- the orthodoxy a
century ago was the invation of the Sea People, whomever there were;
or it could have been climate change, volcanoes, drought, other
migrations or raids, being overtaken by iron-based societies or
other military tech, a "general systems collapse" etc...

The obvious question: By most chronologies, this ould be late Yehoshua
early Shofetim. (As for the Sea People theory, the Pelishtim take over
Azza in 1100 BCE or so.)

Is there anything in Tanakh about this? Could this be the reason why
we fractured from centralized authority (Yehoshua) to lots of local
cheiftans (Shofetim)?

Tir'u baTov!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger             I thank God for my handicaps, for, through them,
micha at aishdas.org        I have found myself, my work, and my God.
http://www.aishdas.org                - Helen Keller
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