The Bible Unearthed: Archaeology's New Vision of Ancient Isreal and the Origin of Sacred Texts (14 page)

In the midst of the euphoria—almost at the very moment when it seemed that the battle of the conquest was won for Joshua—some troubling contradictions emerged. Even as the world press was reporting that Joshua’s conquest had been confirmed, many of the most important pieces of the archaeological puzzle simply did not fit.

Jericho was among the most important. As we have noted, the cities of Canaan were unfortified and there were no walls that could have come tumbling down. In the case of Jericho, there was no trace of a settlement
of any kind in the thirteenth century
BCE
, and the earlier Late Bronze settlement, dating to the fourteenth century
BCE
, was small and poor, almost insignificant, and unfortified. There was also no sign of a destruction. Thus the famous scene of the Israelite forces marching around the walled town with the Ark of the Covenant, causing Jericho’s mighty walls to collapse by the blowing of their war trumpets was, to put it simply, a romantic mirage.

A similar discrepancy between archaeology and the Bible was found at the site of ancient Ai, where, according to the Bible, Joshua carried out his clever ambush. Scholars identified the large mound of Khirbet et-Tell, located on the eastern flank of the hill country northeast of Jerusalem, as the ancient site of Ai. Its geographical location, just to the east of Bethel, closely matched the biblical description. The site’s modern Arabic name, et-Tell, means “the ruin,” which is more or less equivalent to the meaning of the biblical Hebrew name Ai. And there was no alternative Late Bronze Age site anywhere in the vicinity. Between
1933
and
1935
, the French-trained Jewish Palestinian archaeologist Judith Marquet-Krause carried out a large-scale excavation at et-Tell and found extensive remains of a huge Early Bronze Age city, dated over a millennium before the collapse of Late Bronze Canaan. Not a single pottery sherd or any other indication of settlement there in the Late Bronze Age was recovered. Renewed excavations at the site in the
1960
s produced the same picture. Like Jericho, there was no settlement at the time of its supposed conquest by the children of Israel.

And what about the saga of the Gibeonites with their pleading for protection? Excavations at the mound in the village of el-Jib, north of Jerusalem, which a scholarly consensus identified as the site of biblical Gibeon, revealed remains from the Middle Bronze Age and from the Iron Age, but none from the Late Bronze Age. And archaeological surveys at the sites of the other three “Gibeonite” towns of Chephirah, Beeroth, and Kiriath-jearim revealed the same picture: at none of the sites were there any Late Bronze Age remains. The same holds true for other towns mentioned in the conquest narrative and in the summary list of the kings of Canaan (Joshua
12
). Among them we find Arad (in the Negev) and Heshbon (in Transjordan), which we mentioned in the last chapter.

Passionate explanations and complex rationalizations were not long in coming, because there was so much at stake. Regarding Ai, Albright suggested that the story of its conquest originally referred to nearby Bethel, because
Bethel and Ai were so closely associated both geographically and traditionally. In the case of Jericho, some scholars sought environmental explanations. They suggested that the entire stratum representing Jericho at the time of the conquest, including the fortifications, had been eroded away.

Only recently has the consensus finally abandoned the conquest story. As for the destruction of Bethel, Lachish, Hazor, and other Canaanite cities, evidence from other parts of the Middle East and the eastern Mediterranean suggests that the destroyers were not necessarily Israelites.

The Bible’s geographical focus is almost entirely on the land of Israel, but in order to understand the magnitude of the events that took place at the end of the Late Bronze Age, one must look far beyond the borders of Canaan, to the entire eastern Mediterranean region (
Figure 10
). Digs in Greece, Turkey, Syria, and Egypt reveal a stunning story of upheaval, war, and widespread social breakdown. In the last years of the thirteenth century
BCE
and the beginning of the twelfth, the entire ancient world went through a dramatic transformation, as a devastating crisis swept away the Bronze Age kingdoms and a new world began to emerge. This was one of the most dramatic and chaotic periods in history, with old empires falling and new forces rising to take their place.

Beforehand—as late as the mid-thirteenth century
BCE—
two great empires ruled the region. In the south, Egypt was at its peak. Ruled by Ramesses II, it controlled Canaan, including the territories of modern Lebanon and southwestern Syria. In the south it dominated Nubia, and in the west it ruled over Libya. The Egyptian empire was engaged in monumental building activity and participated in lucrative trade in the eastern Mediterranean. Emissaries and merchants from Crete, Cyprus, Canaan, and Hatti frequented Egypt and brought gifts to the pharaoh. Turquoise and copper mines in Sinai and the Negev were exploited by Egyptian expeditions. There had never been such an expansive or powerful empire in Egypt. One needs only to stand before the Abu Simbel temple in Nubia or the famous temples of Karnak and Luxor to feel the grandeur of Egypt in the thirteenth century
BCE
.

The other great empire of the region was centered in Anatolia. This was the mighty Hittite state, which was ruled from its capital, Hattusha, east of the modern Turkish capital of Ankara. The Hittites controlled Asia Minor and northern Syria. They reached remarkable heights in architecture, literature, and warfare. The immense city of Hattusha, with its stupendous fortifications and rock-cut temple, gives modern visitors a sense of the Hittites’ greatness.

The two empires—Egyptian and Hittite—bordered each other in Syria. The inevitable clash between them came at the beginning of the thirteenth century. The two formidable armies met at Kadesh on the Orontes River in western Syria. On one side was Muwatallis, the Hittite king; on the other side stood the then young and inexperienced Ramesses II. We have records of the battle from both sides and both claim victory. The truth was somewhere in the middle. Apparently the battle ended with no clear winner and the two great powers had to compromise. The new Hittite king, Hattusilis III, and the now battle-hardened Ramesses II soon signed a peace treaty that pronounced friendship between the two powers and renounced hostilities “forever.” It was sealed with the symbolic act of Ramesses taking a Hittite princess as his bride.

The world created by this Egyptian-Hittite stalemate offered increasing opportunities for another great power, in the West. It was a strong force not because of military might but because of maritime skills. This was the Mycenaean world, which produced the famous citadels of Mycenae and Tiryns and the opulent palaces of Pylos and Thebes. It was the world that apparently provided the romantic background to the
Iliad
and the
Odyssey;
the world that produced the famous figures of Agamemnon, Helen, Priam, and Odysseus. We are not sure if the Mycenaean world was ruled by one center, such as Mycenae. More probably it was a system of several centers that each ruled large territories: something like the city-states of Canaan or the polis system of classical Greece, but on a much bigger scale.

The Mycenaean world, which was first revealed in the dramatic excavations of Heinrich Schliemann in Mycenae and Tiryns in the late nineteenth century, started revealing its secrets years later, when its Linear B script was deciphered. The tablets found in the Mycenaean palaces proved that the Mycenaeans spoke Greek. Their power and wealth apparently came from trade in the eastern Mediterranean.

The island of Cyprus—known at that time as Alashiya—also played an important role in this world of the thirteenth century
BCE
. It was the main producer of copper in the eastern Mediterranean and a gateway to the trade with the Levant. Impressive structures built with ashlar blocks show how prosperous the island became at that time.

The Late Bronze Age world was characterized by great power, wealth, and active trade. The now famous shipwreck of Ulu Burun, found off the coast of southern Turkey, gives a hint of the boom times. A ship carrying a cargo of ingots of copper and tin, logs of ebony, terebinth resin, hippopotamus and elephant ivory, ostrich eggshells, spices, and other goods was sailing along the coast of Asia Minor sometime around
1300
BCE
when it apparently went down in a storm. Underwater excavations of the wreck and recovery of its rich cargo have shown that this small vessel—certainly not exceptional at the time—plied the lucrative routes of trade in the entire eastern Mediterranean, with lavish artifacts and consumer goods picked up in every port of call.

It is important to keep in mind that this world was not just an ancient version of a modern Common Market, with each nation trading freely with all the rest. It was a world that was tightly controlled by the kings and princes of every political region, and carefully watched over by Egypt and the other great powers of the time. In this world of order and prosperity for the Bronze Age elites, the suddenness and violence of their downfall would have certainly made a lasting impression—in memory, legend, and poetry.

The view from the palaces of the city-states of Canaan may have looked peaceful, but there were problems on the horizon, problems that would bring the whole economy and social structure of the Late Bronze Age crashing down. By
1130
BCE
, we see a whole different world, so different that an inhabitant of Mycenae, or of No Amon (the capital of Egypt, today’s Luxor), or of Hattusha from
1230
BCE
would not be able to recognize it. By then, Egypt was a poor shadow of its past glory and had lost most of its foreign territories. Hatti was no more, and Hattusha lay in ruins. The Mycenaean world was a fading memory, its palatial centers destroyed. Cyprus was transformed; its trade in copper and other goods had
ceased. Many large Canaanite ports along the Mediterranean coast including the great maritime emporium of Ugarit in the north were burnt to ashes. Impressive inland cities, such as Megiddo and Hazor, were abandoned fields of ruins.

What happened? Why did the old world disappear? Scholars who have worked on this problem have been convinced that a major cause was the invasions of mysterious and violent groups named the Sea Peoples, migrants who came by land and sea from the west and devastated everything that stood in their way. The Ugaritic and Egyptian records of the early twelfth century
BCE
mention these marauders. A text found in the ruins of the port city of Ugarit provides dramatic testimony for the situation around
1185
BCE
. Sent by Ammurapi, the last king of Ugarit, to the king of Alashiya (Cyprus), it frantically describes how “enemy boats have arrived, the enemy has set fire to the cities and wrought havoc. My troops are in Hittite country, my boats in Lycia, and the country has been left to its own devices.” Likewise, a letter of the same period from the great king of Hatti to the prefect of Ugarit expresses his anxiety about the presence of a group of Sea People called Shiqalaya, “who live on boats.”

Ten years later, in
1175
BCE
, it was all over in the north. Hatti, Alashiya, and Ugarit lay in ruins. But Egypt was still a formidable power, determined to make a desperate defense. The monumental inscriptions of Ramesses III at the temple of Medinet Habu in Upper Egypt recount the Sea People’s purported conspiracy to ravage the settled lands of the eastern Mediterranean: “The foreign countries made a conspiracy in their islands. . . . No land could stand before their arms. . . . They were coming forward toward Egypt, while the flame was prepared before them. Their confederation was the Philistines, Tjeker, Shekelesh, Denyen, and Weshesh, lands united. They laid their hands upon the lands as far as the circuit of the earth, their hearts confident and trusting: ‘Our plans will succeed!’ “

Vivid depictions of the subsequent battles cover an outside wall of the temple (
Figure 11
). In one, a tangle of Egyptian and foreign ships are shown in the midst of a chaotic naval engagement, with archers poised to strike the ships of their enemies, and dying warriors falling into the sea. The seaborne invaders look very different from the Egyptians, or from representations of Asiatic people in Egyptian art. The most striking feature in their appearance is their distinctive headgear: some wear horned helmets, others strange feathered headdresses. Nearby, depictions of an intense land battle show Egyptians engaging the Sea People warriors, while families of men, women, and children riding wooden ox carts for an overland migration watch helplessly. The outcome of the land and sea battles, according to Pharaoh Ramesses III’s description, was decisive: “Those who reached my frontier, their seed is not, their heart and their soul are finished forever and ever. Those who came forward together on the sea, the full flame was in front of them. . . . They were dragged in, enclosed, and prostrated on the beach, killed, and made into heaps from tail to head.”