Maritime Worlds Collide: Agents of Transference and the Metastasis of Seaborne Threats at the End of the Bronze Age

Abstract

Primary sources from the end of the Bronze Age have long been read as suggesting a time of chaotic transition, particularly with regard to threats from the sea that the established powers had no means of combatting. While the scale and severity of seaborne attacks seems to have increased in the late 13th century, these were not in themselves new phenomena, as a state of maritime threat seems to have been a constant for coastal polities and mariners in the Late Bronze Age eastern Mediterranean. However, a combination of internal and external factors in the late 13th and early 12th centuries combined to make these attacks more effective than they had been in the past, and polities more vulnerable to them. These included the rapid spread of improvements in maritime technology, particularly from the Aegean and the Levant, via high–intensity ‘zones of transference’, as well as an increase in the scale of ship­–based combat operations, due in part to the displacement of people during the Late Bronze Age collapse. This paper addresses this in two parts, beginning with the ‘background’ evidence for a constant state of maritime threat in the centuries leading up to the end of the Bronze Age, and concluding with the ‘foreground’ evidence for zones of transference and the transmission of groundbreaking elements of naval technology in the years surrounding the Late Bronze–Early Iron Age transition.

ORCID

Jeffrey P. Emanuel http://orcid.org/0000-0003-1889-6629

Notes

1 We note here that Singer (2011, 66-67) discounted this possibility, instead arguing that “Ugarit did not possess a separate military fleet…[r]ather, some of the commercial ships were used in times of war for the transportation of troops and for fighting the enemy”.

2 Ivories are a prime example of this type of object, as they were highly portable, easy to recut, and could therefore be used (and reused) in multiple contexts (Hitchcock and Maeir in press).

3 The “international style”, which was driven by palatial elites and made up of, in Feldman's words, “hybridized elements that cannot be associated with any one culture”, or, more directly, “suppression of obvious regional affiliation”, helped to create and foster a “hybridity of imagined community” among elites in the Late Bronze Age eastern Mediterranean (Feldman 2002, 17; 2006, 71, 89).

4 Sauvage (2012, 156, 160–161), on the other hand, disagrees with the notion of private vessel ownership and purely private trade developing prior to the collapse of the palaces, though the elite-centric nature of our written records are a likely source of bias in that direction. She writes: “Des commandants avaient la charge de navires qu'ils devaient mener à bon port. Ces personnages ont été trop souvent vus comme les propriétaires de leur embarcation, à cause de la désignation du navire commandé comme: «ton bateau». Or, nous avons vu que cette association entre personne et objet n'est pas obligatoirement un signe de propriété. Le métier d'armateur, quant à lui, serait une conception plus modeme, car aucune attestation de vente ou de location de bateaux entre particuliers n'existe dans le corpus de textes maritimes et économiques pourtant relativement important au Bronze recent. Cette simple constatation suggere que les commandants de navire n’étaient pas de simples particuliers, mais qu'ils travaillaient pour le pouvoir en place, comme c'est attesté en tout cas à Ougarit et en Égypte” (Sauvage 2012, 290).

5 Because of the likely Levantine provenience of the vessels pictured here, we place this image in the Levant in the map of vessels mentioned in the text (Fig. 5).

6 The shift in sternpost orientation from vertical or outward–curving to inward–curving can be seen as early as LH IIIC on the Skyros vessel, as well as on the Helladic ship model graffiti from the Dakhla Oasis in central Egypt (Wachsmann 2013, fig. 2.12). We should also note a seal impression on an amphora handle from Tell Tweini (Bretschneider and Van Lerberghe 2010, ill. 30) of what seems to be a galley with visible oars and a mast with forestay and backstay (but, like the Kynos and Skyros vessels, no yard or sail visible). While the seal was dated to the Late Bronze II in the excavation's publication (Bretschneider and Van Lerberghe 2010, 33), the shape and size of the bow protrusion and the inward­­–turned stempost finial are much later features according to the current understanding of galley morphology. Further study of this representation is necessary to determine its proper place in the corpus of Late Bronze and Iron Age ship imagery. 

7 For the authoritative analysis of the “lunates” appearing belowdecks on Kynos A as a crew of rowers, see Wachsmann (1998, 131–134).

8 As has been well–documented, Medinet Habu provides an excellent example of the dubious sourcing and historicity of pharaonic records. Some of the grandiose recountings of Ramesses III's deeds and accomplishments were likely plagiarised from his namesake, Ramesses the Great, and perhaps from Ramesses’ successor Merneptah, while others—including battles in Nubia and against the Hittites, and perhaps one of his multiple Libyan campaigns—are unlikely to have taken place at all (Nims 1976; Lesko 1992; Manassa 2013, 250). It is thus problematic that so much of our knowledge of the Sea Peoples is derived from these inscriptions and reliefs, particularly if they are not approached with sufficient judiciousness.

9 N.B. This is an example provided for consideration within the present analysis; Wachsmann (2013), in his analysis of the Gurob model, did not go so far as to suggest that it proved an Aegean origin for the Sherden.