Book Review: 1177 B.C.

(short) Book Review: A book that may be of some interest....

(Review by  A. Bernard Knapp)

1177 B.C.: The Year Civilization Collapsed
Eric H. Cline, Princeton University Press   237pp

"1177 B.C. seeks to explain the complexities that brought an end to the Late Bronze Age (LBA) in the eastern Mediterranean. The protagonists are the ‘Sea Peoples’, best known from contemporary Egyptian documents, and the main problem is the extent to which they were responsible for archaeologically attested destructions extending from the Aegean in the west to

Mesopotamia in the east. Cline sets the stage, literally, with a prologue and three ‘acts’ covering, respectively, the 15th, 14th and 13th centuries bc. Acts 1 to 3 provide a series of vignettes – e.g., the Trojan War, the Exodus, the battle of Qadesh – cleverly woven together .....

Cline’s story embraces the dramatis personae (kings, queens, pharaohs), as well as the merchants, ships and mariners involved in the extensive trade relations that characterised the 300-year-long ‘international age’ leading up to the ‘apocalyptic disaster’. In two eye-opening charts, Cline outlines the social network of relationships attested in Egypt’s Amarna Letters and the individuals involved in the correspondence of the merchant Urtenu at Ugarit in Syria. 

 The precise dates (including the title) are best guesses from a limited set of viable radiocarbon dates, some anchor points in documentary sources and circular reasoning, but it’s probably the best we can do at present."

The Sea Peoples are thought by some to be the Philistines.... And Samson said, Let me die with the Philistines. Judges 16:30

But then  again.....

And further, by these, my son, be admonished:

of making many books there is no end;

and much study is a weariness of the flesh.

Ecclesiastes 12:12