In the Middle and Late Bronze Age, settlements in Syria and the Levant maintained a certain degree of continuity. Virtually no major new settlement was built in this period and city plans practically remained the same, surrounded by the same fortification walls. In other words, cities did not grow enough to require the construction of new walls, so that the strong walls built at the beginning of the second millennium bc only required a few improvements and some restoration works on the gates. Within these walls, public buildings, and palaces in particular, became larger and richer at the expense of residential areas (Figures 19.1 And 19.2). Temples, both of the tripartite rectangular type and the ‘temple-tower’ type, remained relatively small.
Within this overall continuity, however, there was a general tendency leaning towards settlements located in more fertile and favourable areas, either along the coast or in river valleys. This led to the partial abandonment of settlements located further inland. Therefore, Syrian settlements east of the Orontes and Levantine settlements east of the Jordan River declined, with few exceptions in areas with higher rainfall levels. While in the Early Bronze Age III Syro-Levantine settlements experienced their period of maximum expansion, in the Late Bronze Age these same settlements reached their lowest levels of growth. Areas that had been inhabited for centuries were now abandoned, and only in the Iron Age would people begin to settle in the surrounding hills and mountains. The formerly prestigious Syro-Levantine cities, such as Ebla and Qatna, also visibly declined, and large fields used for intensive agriculture had now become pastureland.
This decline led to a visible increase in animal farming, but a considerable decrease in the number of inhabitants. Animal farming itself was an activity characteristic of smaller communities that did not need to exploit their resources to the full. Combining the available textual and archaeological evidence, it is possible to estimate the number of people living in the area at the time. For some cities we know their perimeters and the size of their residential quarters. Other areas have been surveyed, confirming the overall tendency towards the concentration of people in cities, and providing information for minor settlements existing alongside the larger cities of the region. In this regard, sources from Alalah IV and Ugarit provide reliable information, which can be integrated with further estimates found in the Egyptian evidence.
For instance, the kingdom of Mukish, located in the Amuq Plain, had around 200 villages. These are attested in a number of detailed lists, which provide the number of houses or adult males living there, subdivided into categories. Villages were small and had between three and 80 houses, and between six and 100
Alalah, ISth century 6C.
Ugarit, 14th century BC.
Figure 19.1 Syrian palaces of the Late Bronze Age. Above: Ugarit, fourteenth century bc; Below: Alalah, fifteenth century bc.
Adult males, averaging at around 30 houses and 190 inhabitants per village. Overall, the population living in the countryside included ca. 30,000 people, while the capital Alalah probably added a further 5000 inhabitants. The same can be said for Ugarit, located on the coastal plain near Latakia. In this case, we do not possess many detailed sources. However, it is safe to assume that it had around 200 villages as well, varying in size, but reaching up to a few hundred inhabitants. It has been estimated that the population living in Ugarit’s countryside was around 25,000 people and that the capital had a maximum 10,000 inhabitants.
Figure 19.2 A private household in Ugarit, thirteenth century bc. Above: Reconstruction; Below: Axonometric view with details of the building techniques used.
A stele of Amenhotep II, recording the dozens of people captured or killed, provides a summary in which his ‘prisoners’ amount to around 90,000. This number could not have just included actual prisoners, but the entire population conquered and left in their land as Egyptian subjects. In particular, the stele mentions 15,000 inhabitants in Nuhashe (the area east of the Orontes). This is a reasonable estimate compared to the ones calculated for the more densely populated regions of Mukish and Ugarit. Overall, by comparing the archaeological and textual evidence, it has been suggested that there were around 200,000 people in the Late Bronze Age Levant, and therefore around 750,000 people in the entire Syro-Levantine area.
Apart from this estimate of the total population in the area, there were important local differences. Some city-states were completely imbalanced in their population’s distribution. The city of Tyre, located on an island, was an extreme example of a small city with limited control over its hinterland. However, most coastal states had a large number of inhabitants concentrated in cities, and the rest of the population living in the farming villages, while there were virtually no semi-nomadic groups. The Syrian states located in semi-arid areas (such as Nuhashe) or more mountainous ones (such as Amurru) constituted completely different cases, with fewer inhabitants in the cities and a stronger pastoral, rather than agricultural, component.
Overall, the marked preference for settlements in fertile areas provided more land to pastoral activities. This type of occupation was much more difficult to control for the palace administrations. Moreover, the territories separating cities and agricultural fields, made of forests, hills or steppes, were politically ‘outside’ the control of the state. Consequently, they became increasingly dangerous to cross, especially for merchants and royal messengers, and impossible to control, becoming the preferred refuge for bandits and fugitives.
The lists of villages from Alalah IV provide (as already mentioned in the case of Mitanni) a useful overview on the social structure of the area. The administration divided the population into four categories, which have to be divided into two groups. The first group mainly included the population living outside the palace, divided between the hupsu, farmers and landowners, and the haniahhu, ‘shepherds’ (the term derives from the name of the Haneans) or even poor individuals without lands. The second group was that of palace functionaries, either charioteers (maryannu) or other specialists (ehele). Comparing the various lists available, it can be inferred that the free population amounted to 80 or 90 per cent, of which ca. 85 per cent were farmers and 15 per cent shepherds and poor individuals. Of that 10 or 20 per cent who were palace functionaries, these were mainly ehele, while the maryannu were concentrated in the major cities. In the capital the percentages would have been different, with a prevalence of ehele and maryannu.
Demographic levels must have been low, especially considering the fact that from the Middle to the Late Bronze Age the total population number declined, and dropped even further from the fifteenth and fourteenth centuries to the thirteenth century bc. It is often believed that the reasons for this decline were wars, in particular the wars of the Egyptian kings, and internal struggles. However, there were also socioeconomic factors, such as the overwhelming labour and tribute system, debt slavery, the rising number of fugitives, and the increasing abandonment of entire villages. These were all factors that contributed to these low demographic levels.
In a few cases, one senses a marked difference between families belonging to the palaces, characterised by polygamy and a multitude of children, and farming families, usually monogamous and with few children. Moreover, the gradual deterioration of relations between manufacturers and non-manufacturers would explain the rise in taxes and the resulting breakdown of entire families, from slaves without families to groups of deported people and individual fugitives. Having established the main internal reasons for this decline, it becomes clear that the crisis of the Syro-Levantine area constituted a more passive reaction to the process that had already caused the depopulation of Anatolia, namely, the imperialistic activities of the Hittite state.
World History
