Ugarit was an important centre of trade, active since the third millennium; it fell for a time under Egyptian suzerainty, and one of its kings, Niqmadu, married into Pharaoh’s family. The city supplied Egypt with cedar-wood from the mountains of Lebanon – supplies of timber within Egypt were scanty. It acted as a bridge between the Mesopotamian world, from which it adapted its curious cuneiform alphabet, and the eastern Mediterranean lands – the Nile Delta, the Aegean, Crete (named as Kabturi in the Ugaritic tablets), and in particular Cyprus, 100 miles away, which functioned as a transit point to which goods from Egypt and the Greek lands were transferred.18 Tablets in a Cypriot syllabic script have been found at Ugarit, suggesting that merchants from Cyprus lived in the city. The inhabitants of Ugarit were of very varied origins: there were mercenaries known to the Egyptians as maryannu, or ‘young heroes’, who came from Anatolia and the Greek world; there were administrators whose names are not local ones – the region around Ugarit was inhabited by speakers of Canaanite, the language out of which Phoenician and Hebrew evolved. A special official was appointed to look after the affairs of the foreign merchants, who were subject to restrictions on their right of residence and on their right to acquire houses in Ugarit. Minoan influence was felt in the art of Ugarit, to judge from an ivory box cover of the thirteenth century BC, portraying a goddess in a style that combines local features with those typical of Minoan artists.19 Ugarit had a vibrant literary culture, and a number of the religious poems preserved on clay tablets display striking similarities to later Hebrew religious poetry. These contacts also had a revivifying effect on the art of the Aegean world. Once Knossos had been absorbed, the Mycenaean world had more to offer: the craft works of the Cretans, as well as items produced in Greece itself which now matched in mastery their Minoan models; the fine textiles of Crete too – the word ri-no which appears on the Linear B tablets is an early spelling of the classical Greek linōn, ‘linen’. By now it is possible to think of little colonies of traders and settlers of Aegean origin, living in the port towns of the eastern Mediterranean; and along with the merchants and their goods, mercenaries arrived with their arms and armour. While trade was beginning to transform the character of the eastern Mediterranean, it was warfare that would alter it decisively, to the detriment of trade and the high cultures of these lands, ushering in (as will be seen) a long winter.
So far, more attention has been paid to impoverished Sicilian villagers than to the subjects of the Pharaohs, and their relative absence from the discussion needs an explanation. Following the unification of the marshlands of Lower Egypt with the long strip of naturally irrigated land bordering the Nile, the Egyptians created a complex, city-based society; as early as the third millennium, with the building of the pyramids, they showed themselves able to organize massive labour forces. The works of art produced for the royal court, including magnificent objects made of gold and semi-precious stones, surpassed the finest works crafted in Minoan Crete. The influence of Egyptian art on the techniques, if not the subject-matter, of Cretan fresco painting is not in doubt; Egyptian objects were treasured in the early Greek world; the political influence of Egypt was felt along the shores of Canaan and Syria, notably at Byblos. The search for staple necessities such as tin, wood and copper prompted the Egyptians to extend their influence into and beyond Sinai. And yet, when thinking of Egyptian maritime trade, it is the links to the south that come to mind first of all: trading expeditions down the Red Sea towards the land of Punt, in the late second millennium, bringing luxuries such as ivory and ebony to the court of the Pharaohs.20 Although some Pharaohs did build extensively in Lower Egypt – the Bible recalls the construction of a great store city named after Ramesses – the focus of their power in the period after about 1570 BC was generally Upper Egypt, though Ramesses (in ancient Egyptian, Piramesse) did serve as Egyptian capital at a point in the thirteenth century when the Pharaohs were actively pursuing their interests in Canaan and western Asia, and sought a base closer to their theatre of operations.
The year 1570 marks the expulsion of the Hyksos dynasty, who had ruled Lower and Middle Egypt for over a century. These rulers were later reviled as crude Asiatics (their exact identity remains a mystery); however, it was they who introduced important innovations into Egypt – chariots and bronze armour.21 Whether they conquered Egypt in an armed invasion or trickled into the country and eventually seized power, they possessed a technological advantage over the native Egyptians; and they maintained ties with their neighbours in Syria and Crete, which was vital if they were to obtain the supplies they needed for their military machine. The end of Hyksos rule ushered in a period of extraordinary artistic vitality, best known from the discoveries in the tomb of Tutankhamun. Even when, around 1340 BC, the heretic Pharaoh Akhenaten built a new capital for his sun-god at Tell el-Amarna, he chose a site relatively close to the traditional centres of Pharaonic power in Upper Egypt. For the ancient Egyptians, the waters that mattered most were neither the Mediterranean nor the Red Sea, but the Nile; the Mediterranean was their horizon, and (though they drew on the resources of the eastern Mediterranean) Pharaonic Egypt cannot be described as a Mediterranean power, politically or commercially. It was only with the foundation of Alexandria in the fourth century BC that a major city was created on the shores of the Mediterranean, looking outwards to the Greek world. But in this period foreign merchants came to Egypt more often than Egyptian ones travelled overseas; the sailors depicted on reliefs at Sahure, dating to about 2400, are mostly Asiatic, and the design of sea-going vessels seems to have been copied from Levantine models – some may have been able to navigate upriver as well, functioning as warships as well as trading vessels. The overall impression is that the Egyptians relied on outside agents to build, manage and sail their ships, at least across the Mediterranean.22
The term ‘Great Green’ appears in Egyptian texts of this period, but it was used for a number of waters – Lake Fayyum was one, the Nile another; occasionally it was used to describe the Red Sea. In the second half of the second millennium BC the term Y-m was very occasionally used for the sea, including the Mediterranean, and the word itself was of Semitic origin (yam is ‘sea’ in Hebrew). The Mediterranean did not have such significance for them that it was assigned its own distinctive name.23 There were ports in the Delta which were visited by shipping bound to and from Syria, such as Tjaru (Tell Hebua) at the end of the eastern arm of the Delta; it had been used by the Hyksos and was then rebuilt by the new rulers of the Eighteenth Dynasty. In the fifteenth century BC, under Thutmose IV, Tjaru was the seat of a governor who was also given the title ‘royal messenger in all foreign lands’, and one of his responsibilities was the exploitation of turquoise mines in the Sinai desert. Turquoise adorns much Egyptian jewellery of this period. But Tjaru also functioned as a base for trade with the outside world, as is demonstrated by finds of pottery originating in Syria and Cyprus, lands rich in the timber the Egyptians craved. More important, though, was Avaris, also in the eastern Delta. As early as the eighteenth century BC the population included many settlers of Canaanite origin, including soldiers, sailors and artisans. The Hyksos made it into their capital, and under their rule it occupied a space measuring over 200 square kilometres. The end of Hyksos rule did not spell the end of Avaris.24 The palace constructed there after the fall of the Hyksos was decorated with frescoes in the Cretan style, further evidence of the ties between the Keftiu of Knossos and the court of the Pharaohs.25
Another port, one which grew in importance, was Tanis; from here an Egyptian emissary from Karnak in the deep south was sent on a frustrating mission to the Canaanite king of Byblos in the early eleventh century. His task was to secure a supply of timber, to be used to rebuild a river boat dedicated to the high god Amun; he was ‘Elder of the Portal’ or senior administrator of the god’s temple. This man, Wenamun, left a report of his journey of which a copy on papyrus survived in an Egyptian tomb; there he described setting out from Tanis on 20 April 1075.26 From the beginning h
e faced problems: the Nile Delta was to all intents independent of the weak Pharaoh Ramesses XI, and the local ruler, Smendes, did not feel it was worth the trouble of commissioning a ship to take Wenamun to Byblos, so he placed him on board the vessel operated by a local sea captain named Mengebet, who was about to set out on a trading expedition with a Syrian crew. The route taken followed the coastline, and they put in at Dor, south of present-day Haifa; this was a centre of the so-called Tjekker, one of the ‘Sea Peoples’ who will be discussed shortly.27 There the governor was polite (he gave Wenamun bread, wine and meat). However, a sailor in Mengebet’s crew was tempted by the fat treasure Wenamun had brought with him to pay for the timber: this consisted of several pounds’ weight of silver and some golden vessels weighing over one pound. He carried all Wenamun’s assets away with him, and disappeared. Wenamun went to the governor to complain; of course, the governor said, if the thief had been a man of Dor, he would have indemnified Wenamun, but all he could do was launch an investigation. This investigation lasted nine exasperating days, but nothing was found, and Wenamun decided his only option was to continue his journey northwards. On arriving at Byblos he managed to find nearly the amount of silver he had lost, squirrelled away on Mengebet’s ship; this was evidently someone else’s property, but he ungraciously insisted he would keep it until the owners of the boat recompensed him for the theft of his own goods by one of their crewmen.
The ruler of Byblos, Zekerbaal, was even more unhelpful than that of Dor. He would not receive Wenamun, whose messages sent up from the port received the terse reply that he should go away; ‘the chief of Byblos sent to me saying, “Get out of my harbour!” ’28 This was repeated day after day, for twenty-nine days. September arrived; Wenamun was worried that he would not be able to leave until sailings resumed in the spring (so evidently there was a close season, which applied even to coast-hugging journeys along the coast of Canaan). Later on, the king reminded Wenamun that he had once kept similar emissaries waiting for seventeen years! Wenamun decided to reserve space on a ship that was ready to leave, for Mengebet had moved on to his next port of call and had left him behind. And then suddenly, while the royal court was sacrificing to Baal, one of the king’s courtiers experienced a vision, and in the fervour of the moment the excited king decided that he must see the messenger of the Egyptian high-god Amun. This, at least, was the official explanation, but Wenamun thought the aim was to separate him from his property, miss his sailing, and pillage his silver while he was in the royal presence. Still, Wenamun had little choice; the papyrus describes how he entered the king’s upper chamber, where Zekerbaal sat, ‘and when he turned his back against the window, the waves of the great sea of Syria were breaking against the rear of his head’.29 The king showed no politeness to Pharaoh nor to the high priest of Amun; he berated Wenamun for not being able to produce his credentials, which had been left behind at Tanis, and he dismissed Egyptian sailors as incompetent fools by comparison with his fellow-Syrians. The king insisted that twenty ships of Byblos traded with Egypt, and as many as fifty ships of Sidon, though Wenamun expressed the official Egyptian view that, by trading with Egypt, they were not really foreign vessels but ships sailing under the protection of Pharaoh. Thus there were constant attempts to score points, and the king clearly relished the opportunity to insult Egypt and its rulers at a time when they were weak. He admitted that earlier kings had supplied wood just as requested, but he expected payment; he ordered the accounts of the kingdom to be brought to him – an interesting sign of the sophistication of administration – and he proved from the accounts that the Egyptians had sent large quantities of silver in the past.30 Wenamun lost his temper and began to berate the king for his disrespect to the great land of Egypt and to the king of the gods.
Wenamun knew, though, that angry words would achieve nothing, and sent a message to Egypt asking for handsome gifts for Zekerbaal. The Egyptians took his request seriously. They sent a mixture of luxury items such as gold and silver vases and supplies of basic materials such as ox-hides, linen, fish, lentils, rope and 500 rolls of papyrus, on which Zekerbaal would be able to record yet more financial accounts.31 Still, what Wenamun was asking for was not to be given lightly. The king assigned 300 men and as many oxen to fell and move the timber. Zekerbaal processed down to the shore to watch it being loaded, and sent Wenamun signs of his new goodwill: wine, a sheep and a female Egyptian singer to console him. Wenamun was allowed to depart on a ship manned by sailors from Byblos. He escaped pirates from Dor who tried to capture his vessel, but then it was driven by storms to Cyprus, where the inhabitants pounced upon him, and he was only saved from death by the kindly queen.32 The surviving text does not go further. However, the whole tale has the flavour of a series of excuses for a mission that ended in failure – it is far from clear whether the wood arrived in Egypt. Of course, this account does not portray everyday trading contacts across the eastern Mediterranean; but it is extraordinarily precious as the first account of a trading voyage, and of the political difficulties which would ever after ensnare those who tried to conduct business at the courts of foreign rulers.
The Egyptians were the wealthiest power in the region, but they had serious rivals. The emergence of the Hittite empire in central Anatolia, with its formidable metal resources, threatened Egyptian interests in Syria. Ramesses II aimed to recover influence in the region, waning since the troubled reign of the heretic Pharaoh Akhenaten; the Hittites responded by mobilizing their allies, who included vassals in western Asia such as the Lycians and the Dardanians (a term Homer later used for the Trojans). Thousands of chariots were committed to battle at Kadesh in July 1274; although Ramesses, typically, claimed the contest as a great Egyptian victory, even so boastful a Pharaoh could not hide the massive destruction on both sides, for the Hittites had begun the battle by wiping out large segments of the Egyptian army.33 By 1258 both sides at last admitted that the outcome had been at best a draw, and a treaty between them defined the boundaries of their spheres of influence in Syria, drawing a line near Damascus and creating half a century of stability. However, the battle of Kadesh can be seen as the beginning of a cataclysmic cycle of interlocked events, including the fall of Troy (supposedly ninety years later), the destruction of the Mycenaean strongholds and, not least, the arrival of the mysterious ‘Sea Peoples’.
4
Sea Peoples and Land Peoples,
1250 BC–1100 BC
I
Both the fall of Troy and the Sea Peoples have been the subject of a vast literature. They were part of a common series of developments that affected the entire eastern Mediterranean and possibly the western Mediterranean too. Troy had been transformed at the end of the eighteenth century BC with the building of the most magnificent of the cities to stand on the hill of Hisarlık: Troy VI, which lasted, with many minor reconstructions, into the thirteenth century BC. The citadel walls were nine metres thick, or more; there were great gates and a massive watchtower, a memory of which may have survived to inspire Homer; there were big houses on two floors, with courtyards. The citadel was the home of an elite that lived in some style, though without the lavish accoutrements of their contemporaries in Mycenae, Pylos or Knossos.1 Archaeological investigation of the plain beneath which then gave directly on to the seashore suggests the existence of a lower town about ten times the size of the citadel, or around 200 square kilometres, roughly the size of the Hyksos capital at Avaris.2 One source of wealth was horses, whose bones begin to appear at this stage; Homer’s Trojans were famous ‘horse-tamers’, hippodamoi, and even if he chose this word to fit his metre, it matches the archaeological evidence with some precision. In an age when great empires were investing in chariots, and sending hundreds of them to perdition at the battle of Kadesh (or, according to the Bible, in the depths of the Red Sea), horse-tamers were certainly in demand.
Opinion divided early on the identity of the Trojans. Claiming descent from Troy, the ancient Romans knew for sure that they were not just a branch of t
he Greek people. Homer, though, made them speak Greek. The best chance of an answer comes from their pottery. The pottery of Troy is not just Trojan; it belongs to a wider culture that spread across parts of Anatolia. The Trojans acquired a little Helladic pottery from Greek lands, but only 1 per cent of the finds from Troy VI and VIIa consists of Mycenaean pottery (including local imitations). All the evidence suggests that they were members of one of the peoples who had developed on the outer edges of the Hittite world and spoke a language close to Hittite, Luvian, the language of the peoples who lived along the western flank of Anatolia and, as has been seen, possibly the language of the Linear A tablets from Crete.3 The Hittite archives leave no doubt that they corresponded with the Hittite king, but none of their own correspondence has survived; only one minute written text has been found, a seal in Luvian hieroglyphs from the level of Troy VIIb (late twelfth century, though the seal itself may be older); its wording indicates that it belonged to a scribe and his wife.4 Troy was an outpost not of Mycenae but of the Hittite world. Globally, it was not a place of enormous consequence; regionally, however, it occupied a commanding position on the trade routes of the northern Aegean, and for this reason it became a desirable prize.5
In the thirteenth century the Hittite rulers became increasingly anxious to maintain some degree of influence on the Mediterranean shores of Anatolia. They aimed to outflank the Egyptians, with whom they were competing for control of northern Syria; but they were also wary of other rivals, the kings of Ahhiyawa, that is, the high kings of Mycenae. Troy itself was a little out of the way, but its military aid could be useful, and it has been seen that the aid of western Asiatic vassals was summoned at Kadesh. Flashpoints between the Ahhiyawans and the Hittites included Milawanda or Miletos, once a centre of Minoan trade and now, at least intermittently, a Mycenaean ally on the coast of Asia Minor. Infuriated by this alliance, the Hittites descended on the city in 1320 BC and destroyed it.6 The coast of Asia Minor was thus a troubled frontier zone, a region where allegiances changed back and forth and where Mycenaean warriors liked to interfere.
The Great Sea: A Human History of the Mediterranean Page 7
