Shortly after 1200 bc, the entire political system of the Near East, which had been relatively stable for centuries, collapsed rather abruptly. This collapse was due to the arrival of foreign invaders from the west. Modern historiography has been initially satisfied with the external and migratory explanation of the crisis. However, it then started to question the extent to which the explanation was sufficient to justify such a large-scale decline and subsequent reorganisation. The crisis of the twelfth century bc completely reshaped the political organisation, the distribution of settlements, the material culture, the social relations and the ideologies of the Near East.
The change was so drastic that in the nineteenth century (ad) the division of the early history of humankind into technological epochs considered the crisis of the twelfth century bc as the watershed moment between the Bronze and Iron Age. It is now a well-accepted fact that the clash of invaders against the powerful states of the time had devastating effects and drastic consequences precisely because these states were to a certain degree already weakened. External factors (migratory in particular) certainly played an important role. However, they are now either reformulated in their scale (such as the number of Sea Peoples), or reinterpreted as internal factors (nomads), which are considered to be effects rather than causes, or even constitutive aspects rather than ultimate reasons for this collapse.
With regards to each individual region, the demographic crisis that affected Late Bronze Age communities has already been mentioned. The semi-arid Transjordan and Upper Mesopotamian plateaus reverted to a predominantly nomadic lifestyle. Anatolia and Syria experienced the abandonment of large cities, and settlements began to be concentrated in the fertile valleys. Finally, in Central and southern Mesopotamia the population was virtually halved. Therefore, the fundamental basis of this crisis must have been due to internal factors (such as low birth rates, since other demographic factors were already low), and closely linked to low production levels and several social problems.
These internal demographic issues must have been worsened by certain political developments. Although human and material resources were decreasing, palaces refused to lower their expectations and their needs, which actually increased. On the contrary, palaces began to weigh even more on the population, leading to the ultimate decline of an entire class of people that was already experiencing severe economic difficulties. The conquest of entire regions forced to pay tributes, the widespread deportations and increasing international competition (which was also military) were all means through which the strongest states attempted to compensate for their own crisis. However, they inevitably transferred these problems to the weakest regions.
Wars, deportations, depopulations and production crises led to famines and pestilences, which became an endemic problem in the Late Bronze Age. The available documentation reports that these issues were particularly prominent in the mid-fourteenth century bc and the end of the thirteenth century bc. The desperate cries for grain of the last Hittite rulers to their remaining vassals, or the Egyptian intervention ‘to maintain the miserable land of Hatti alive’, both describe an exceptionally severe crisis. Moreover, the dendrochronologic sequence from Gordion records a sequence of particularly dry years around 1200 bc. This would explain the severe famine affecting an already weakened Anatolia. In Lower Mesopotamia, the progressive collapse of the network of canals led to an agricultural crisis. The latter left the marshes and semi-arid areas to semi-nomadic pastoral activities. Alongside the agricultural decline and the spectacle of formerly great cities reduced to empty walls in the steppes, was a crisis of commercial caravans. These caravans met increasing difficulties in crossing ever-expanding areas outside palace control (the latter being unable to deter or punish robbers).
Demographic and production difficulties grew at the same pace as the overall social crisis of the time. From a logical and chronological point of view, this social crisis can be considered the fundamental reason for the entire collapse. For instance, there was the above-mentioned increase of private individuals losing their lands and the subsequent intensification of debt slavery. The decline of family and village solidarity led to the enrichment of the palace elite and the subsequent ruin of the rest of the community. This led to the separation of members of the same family (especially wives and sons given away as debt slaves), forcing people coerced into debt slavery (or just about to be) to flee. The decline of the village population into a class of slaves therefore greatly contributed to the demographic decline, the lack of motivation in production and the decreased acceptance of royal authority.
It has already been noted how Late Bronze Age kings were rather indifferent to the economic difficulties of the farming population. They therefore ceased to commission remission edicts and even took advantage of the situation by acquiring more wealth, in a blind strategy aimed at achieving results quickly. In this task, kings were also supported by an equally blind elite solidarity. Even within the family, the end of the traditional sense of communal solidarity was expressed by the addition of clauses obliging sons to assist and obey their parents in order to gain a share of the inheritance. In all fairness, this overall situation was to a certain extent coherent. At least from an individual perspective it demonstrates a clear attempt to gain a larger percentage of a set of resources that were decreasing in number. However, from a wider perspective, this same situation emphasises the negative effects of an attitude that, despite being aware of the obvious need to maintain the minimum levels of survival and political freedom, still ignored these concerns. This deliberate negligence was meant to maintain a mechanism centred on the concentration of surplus in the hands of the elite.
The enormous gap existing between the ruling elite and the rest of the population also had an impact on an ideological level. The king ceased to portray himself as a good father of his people, in favour of a more heroic depiction of himself. The latter emphasised his strength and military prowess, as well as his refined and international taste. As a result of this change, the population ceased to recognise the king as the protector of those in need, ensuring justice and fairness to his people. The population could neither rebel nor forge an alternative social organisation, due to the lack of the necessary prerequisites, means and ideology. The only reaction available was therefore to flee, leaving behind all those intolerable difficulties in search of a new life elsewhere. The rise in the number of fugitives was so dramatic that it forced states to seal a network of inter-state agreements aimed at searching, capturing and returning those who escaped. Consequently, people ceased to escape to other states, and preferred to hide in areas outside palace control, making the steppes and mountains their ideal refuge.
These areas were mainly used by transhumant pastoral groups, who were seen by those in palaces as robbers, simply because they were able to live outside palace control, assaulting caravans and protecting fugitives. Consequently, tribal groups became an alternative to the unjust state administrations, a model of non-palatial social organisation impossible to find in the now declining villages. The compromised communal solidarity supporting the palace was in some cases even substituted by a solidarity against the palace. For individual fugitives, or small groups of them, this new communal life required constant movement and a life in hiding. When entire villages moved from palace dependence to tribal solidarity, however, then entire communities virtually ‘became habiru’ without having to leave their lands. They therefore avoided the excessive political and economic impositions simply by shifting their allegiance, changing their solidarity and obedience, and depriving their former states of material as well as human resources.
World History
