REVIEW BY SARAH GRIFFITHS
In his 2014 book 1177 BC: The Year Civilization Collapsed (reviewed in AE 85) Eric Cline charted the ‘perfect storm of calamities’ that led to the sudden collapse of the thriving interconnected Bronze Age civilisations. In this equally gripping sequel, Cline considers the immediate aftermath, exploring how, over the next 500 years, civilisations responded, and asking why some societies endured while others disappeared.
Egypt, Israel, and the southern Levant are considered in the first chapter, beginning with the assassination of Ramesses III (c.1155 BC), as Egypt faced 200 years of low Nile floods, drought, and famine. Egypt as a nation survived the collapse, but would never again rise to the heights of power seen in the New Kingdom. In the Levant, the retreat of the Egyptians and the sacking of the major cities by the Sea Peoples led to the emergence of the Israelites, who were able to take advantage of the power vacuum.
The Assyrians and Babylonians (Chapter 2) fared well initially, but when drought, famine, and plague finally caught up with them, it would take the Assyrians two centuries to recover – and the Babylonians even longer. By contrast, the Cypriots and Phoenicians (Chapter 3) flourished following the Collapse – proving to be ‘resilient as well as innovative’: the Phoenicians won control of the Mediterranean trade routes, while the Cypriots exported iron goods and technology. The Hittites (Chapter 4), however, ‘failed to navigate the change to the Iron Age’, although some constituent areas were able to weather the storm. The Mycenaeans of Greece and Minoans of Crete (Chapter 5) also disappeared by the end of the 11th century BC; it would be more than 600 years before Classical Greek culture emerged.
