Despite constant warfare, there was remarkable cultural continuity with the MBA, although there was a generalized aura of decline across the region, if fewer sites, a dearth of new fortifications, and degenerate (MBA) ceramics are any indication. Incongruently, this was a time of great wealth and cosmopolitanism. Although the Sea Peoples invasion c. 1200 BCE is well Known, scholars investigating socioeconomic factors cite evidences of great wealth differential (elite residences, tombs, luxury items, personal seals), as a potential harbinger of societal breakdown and general urban collapse, a view supported by texts documenting a growing society of disaffected peoples (the Habiru). The sociopolitical and economic impact of empire on vassal states should likewise not be underestimated.
Suzerains and Vassals
Conquest, tribute, trade, control of resources, and ultimately political and territorial hegemony drove the constant warfare of competing empires: Mitanni, Egypt, Hatti (the Hittites). Prospering urban centers on the Euphrates, such as Munbaqa, Tell Brak, and Emar, were in the heartland of Mitanni, while Hittites and Egyptians battled over western Syria. In the south, Egyptian garrison cities (Tell es-Sa‘idiyeh, Tell Beth Shean, Gaza), Egyptian style temples (Beth Shean, Lachish), anthropoid coffins (Beth Shean, Deir el-Balah), and the Amarna texts all converged to substantiate a vassal-suzerain relationship.
Cosmopolitanism
The late fourteenth c. Uluburun and Cape Gelodo-niya shipwrecks off the coast of Turkey epitomize the internationalism of the period: 350 Cypriot copper ingots, Egyptian ebony, Aegean and Levantine pottery, gold, wine amphora, etc. In microcosm, the picture is the same from a family tomb at Gezer (Cave I.10A), among whose contents were an Egyptian glass vase, a Syrian jug, Mycenaean and Cypriot vessels, and a Minoan-style larnax (clay sarcophagus). Imported pottery from Cyprus and Mycenae floods the market.
Extravagant palaces (Megiddo, Alalakh, Ras ibn Hani), sacred precincts (Hazor, Ugarit), monumental sculptures (Megiddo, Hazor, Ugarit), patrician residences (Tell Batash, Megiddo, Ras ibn Hani), bronze Astarte and Baal statues (Hazor, Ugarit), the Megiddo ivories (a 300-piece hoard), lavish underground stone built (corbelled) graves (Tell el-‘Ajjul, Dan, and Megiddo, Ugarit) all attest to glaring wealth differential in the Levant.
Ugarit
Also glaring are palatial economies, for which Ugarit’s (Ras Shamra) fabled palace of 100 rooms is a prime example. This port city is a virtual treasure trove of gold (elite art) and other precious items and sculpture (Baal stela), but, as at Ebla, its enduring legacy was a new language, Ugaritic (Canaanite), the first full-fledged alphabetic (cuneiform) script, and close relative of Hebrew. Textual study has revealed common religious and social traditions with the later Israelites. Upheaval, destruction, the end of empires, and general collapse swept the Mediterranean at the end of the LBA. The culprits? Probably the Sea Peoples, their battles with Ramses III immortalized on his mortuary temple at Medinet Habu.
World History
