One starry night over the Nile, the Egyptian god of the Moon, Khonsu, began his nightly
journey over the heavens.
It was the end of the Bronze Age, and the God saw constant upheaval and change.
The Bronze Age Collapse was one of history’s most mysteriously catastrophic apocalypses.
During this time, the grand civilizations of the eastern Mediterranean were almost entirely
wiped clean, with the Hittite Empire ceasing to exist and the palaces of Mycenaean Greece
either destroyed or abandoned.
However, when Khonsu turned towards his homeland, Egypt, he saw with glee that it had not disappeared.
Egypt managed to survive most of these upheavals but had also changed, entering its Third Intermediate
Period.
Thus, the question arises: why did Egypt weather the upheavals of the Late Bronze Age?
Welcome to our video on why Egypt survived the cataclysmic end of the Bronze Age and
how Egyptian civilization adapted and evolved in its wake.
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BEHIND THE DUAT: EGYPT AND THE MEDITERRANEAN: Before we begin, we must first contextualise
the world of the Late Bronze Age before its collapse.
During this period, a highly sophisticated network of trade existed between states across
the Mediterranean, with a core in the Near East, Asia Minor, and Egypt.
While wars between these states did occur, their relationship was primarily peaceful
and productive, defined by the trade of highly luxurious goods, such as lapis lazuli from
the Indus Valley, and the free movement of people, evidenced by the presence of Minoan
paintings and artefacts in Egyptian villas and tombs.
During the end of the Bronze Age, several upheavals took place in what has been described
as the Bronze Age collapse.
Many empires, like the Hittites, collapsed, while others, like the Mycenaean Greeks, heavily
declined.
This has been attributed to diseases, climate change or the so-called Sea Peoples.
Many scholars have described this as a systems collapse, but the perseverance of some regions
has added nuance to academic debate, such as Cyprus and Sicily, where trade seems to
have increased despite the destruction of city centres.
On the eve of the Bronze Age Collapse, Egypt was experiencing a golden age under the New
Kingdom, having become a massive empire that had expanded into Libya, Palestine, Syria,
and Nubia.
The New Kingdom saw kings like Akhenaten and Ramesses II, who made seminal changes to Egypt’s
history and way of life.
Egypt’s New Kingdom was a period of literary, scientific, and cultural achievements and
aggressive militant imperialism.
Eventually, various crises within the country led to the Third Intermediate Period, which
corresponded with the Bronze Age collapse and led to the end of the Egyptian Empire
and the emergence of a smaller, more decentralised Egyptian kingdom.
However, as tumultuous as this period was, it was not an era of decline or of cultural
poverty.
As such, we will investigate the transition and what happened and try to interpret why
Egypt faced crises but was not utterly obliterated.
JUDO-CHOPPING APOPHIS UNDER THE FULL MOON: WHAT ACTUALLY HAPPENED AND HOW EGYPT MADE
IT: Throughout the Bronze Age Collapse, most Eastern
Mediterranean Empires were in a state of prolonged territorial retreat.
The Hittite kingdom seems to have faced secessions and rebellions.
In fact, inscriptions of the last Hittite king speak of widespread desertion within
the army, and bodyguards not being helpful to the king.
In Greece, many population centres, chief among them the palaces of Mycenae, were abandoned
in several waves.
This trend was also true for Egypt.
After reaching an imperial high point during the reign of Ramesses II, Egypt began a slow
and at times tumultuous decline.
Many kings, most of them called Ramesses due to Imitating Epic Ancestors Syndrome, ruled
Egypt until the 21st Dynasty began, at which point Egypt had lost most of its outlying
provinces and become a decentralised state.
And yet, Egypt lived on, while its main geopolitical rival, the Hittites, collapsed entirely, never
to rise again.
So why did Egypt survive while her Imperial peers in the Mediterranean crumbled?
One reason may be Egypt’s unique resilience in withstanding invasions.
While scholars debate how cohesive the so-called Sea Peoples were as a group, we know that
they relentlessly raided the coastlines of the Near East and Egypt.
It seems that the Hittites, mired by internal rebellions and civil wars, were unable to
put up a unified front against these marauders.
Egypt, on the other hand, was able to withstand invasions from the west.
Some evidence is found in the Medinet Habu records, from the homonymous site opposite
modern-day Luxor.
Here, we see descriptions of campaigns in Libya and Nubia, with the former apparently
having been in cahoots with some Sea Peoples.
In one of the records, we see the following proclamation:
‘Behold!
I am before you, my son!
Lord of the Two Lands!
I have set your power throughout the Nine Bows, awe of you in the hearts of their chiefs;
I have opened for you the roads of Temehu-land, and I tread them ahead of your horses!
The Perfect God, the mighty king!
With great strength like Montu, beloved one the likeness of Min, Strong-armed like the
son of Nut, greatly dreaded, mighty and Awful, His battle-cry resounds in the foreign lands,
an angry lion when he sees him that attacked him; His arrow never misses in millions of
encounters, Robust in his own being, he considers a myriad like one, He appears on the battlefield,
the likeness of Ba’al, his flame, consumes the Nine Bows!
(The March to Battle (M-H I, pl. 17))
While these records were clearly written to glorify the Pharaoh, they nevertheless serve
as a primary source that attest to raids, attacks and piracy which characterised the
threat Sea Peoples posed for two centuries during the Late Bronze Age.
Egypt, with its long tradition of sophisticated statecraft and mobilisation of resources,
appears to have been capable of withstanding these raids.
While the Hittite defence was hobbled by civil war, the Egyptians remained unified despite
the insidious politicking going on in its royal court.
Internal political strife rarely seemed to destabilise the Egyptian state.
For example, one Pharoah, Ramesses III was killed in what is called the Harem Conspiracy,
a plot devised by his wives to dispose of him and install their preferred successor.
Despite this, the conspirator’s main goal failed, for it was not their candidate, but
Ramesses III’s official successor, Ramesses IV, who ascended to the throne.
This appears to have occurred due to the fact that other factions outmanoeuvred the conspirators,
and after Ramesses IV’s ascension, he tried and executed the conspiratorial faction.
Beyond Egypt’s political stability, its sheer size also contributed to its ability
to weather the Bronze Age Collapse.
Although Egypt’s ability to amass resources and stabilise their ministries of state were
strained during the collapse, they showed more resilience than, for instance, the palace
complexes in western Greece which, unlike Egypt, were not vast Kingdoms but mere city
states, and had far less resources to go on.
As such, both the economic and the political systems of Egypt had enough capabilities to
weather the two centuries of crises in the broader region.
In terms of other factors, such as climate change, we do see evidence of drought hitting
Egypt, which led to shortages, which led to rioting among the general population.
However, we must remember two things.
One is that Egypt has a relatively stable water supply due to the presence of the Nile.
The other is that these climatic changes happened over time and as such, their ripple effects
were more likely to have only caused disruptions, rather than total social collapse.
Additionally, Egypt was prepared for crises and could also muster resources to endure
them.
Records suggest that even in its Levantine frontier provinces, Egypt was prudent enough
to plan for droughts and store food in case of an emergency.
The major shifts during the Bronze Age also have to do with economic disruptions.
Egypt’s cohesive state structures also ensured ideological legitimacy.
Religious upheavals did not seem to happen in Egypt, and as we will see later, decentralisation
occurred based on major cities with rich temple complexes.
While access to certain goods like lapis lazuli reduced for many in the Near East, it is also
the case that new industries or trade routes became more prevalent, such as trade with
the Western Mediterranean.
This has led some archaeologists like Susan and Andrew Sherratt, to suggest that previous
networks became too complicated for regions such as the palatial centres in Crete, and
as such either Empires or city-states took their place.
Egypt was already an empire, and was by the end of the Bronze Age, had a sophisticated
network of centres and specialists present in regions such as Canaan, with local centres
building networks connecting local economies to the broader Imperial system.
Egypt did eventually retreat from its Levantine possessions, and even decentralised itself
in periods of turmoil at the beginning of the Third Intermediate Period.
But its own core remained relatively intact, showing that the ruling class relinquished
the Levant, and freed up some of its resources for metropolitan usage.
We can thus see that Egypt had resources to adapt to the new regional order, but that
it did so at cost to its own empire.
It is this tense balance between survival but also decline due to stress that characterises
Egypt’s transition into the Iron Age.
By comparison, the Mycenaean palatial centres in the western part of Greece went from exercising
complete control over the lives of the workers in their employ to losing legitimacy and being
slowly abandoned.
Egypt’s larger size as well as ability to weather internal conflict ensured that it
could endure both raids from Sea People pirates and from various environmental disruptions
such as droughts.
CRESCENT KINGDOM: HOW WAS EGYPT TRANSFORMED?
When a crisis occurs, things do not stay the same, and Egypt was no different.
Egypt’s New Kingdom ended with multiple short reigns of Pharaohs of the Twentieth
Dynasty, and eventually entered what is called the Third Intermediate Period.
During this time, the Empire disappeared as Egypt abandoned it's outlying provinces and
retreated into the Nile basin.
Even within its Nile heartland, Egypt’s regions fragmented, coming under the rule
of various dynasties of Egyptianized foreigners.
The background to this lies in the rise of competing regional elite, one in Tanis surrounding
Smendes I, and one in Thebes surrounding the High Priests of Amun.
These essentially divided Upper and Lower Egypt.
It is here that Egypt shifted from the strong, Imperial state of the New Kingdom to a more
regionally dependent polity, more prone to decentralisation.
The 21st Dynasty only lasted for about a century, from 1077 BCE - 973 BCE.
During this era of transition, the social fabric of Egypt began to change.
Religious hierarchies were maintained to an extent, but there was an intriguing shift
in the role of women.
The role of celibate priestesses of Amun, the so-called Hemetnetjer-en-Amun or God’s
Wife of Amun, became sought after by Egyptian princesses.
Female priesthood became a position of high prestige, and was even depicted in the same
level as Gods in religious imagery.
Other shifts show that women had tombs of their own and sometimes were even more important
than their husbands in terms of rank, as seen in the Medinet Habu tombs.
This, of course, does not mean that patriarchy was abolished in Egypt, but the economic shifts
appear to have enabled elite women to assert some autonomy in the domestic and even ritual
sphere.
Other changes in religious life were also occurring during this period.
For example, intriguing shifts were occurring in mummification.
For instance, the canopic jars showing the four sons of Horus used to store organs were
given a symbolic value, as mummifiers preferred to keep them inside mummies now.
False eyes were also added to mummies for possible ritual as well as cosmetic effects.
During the twilight of the 21st Dynasty, another shift in Egypt’s social fabric became present:
the increasing multi-ethnic nature of the country.
From the dawn of history, up to the present day, Egypt has been a multicultural place,
but the Twenty-Second Dynasty actually came from migrants from Libya who had settled in
Egypt, and began to rule in a tribal patrimonial way.
These elites had some Libyan features in their customs and culture, like in their headgear,
but were otherwise fully Egyptianized in how they ruled the country.
This speaks to the contradictions of Third Intermediate Period Egypt; the stability of
certain institutions like the Pharaoh and the Temples, albeit in a very different configuration
and in an ethnically diverse elite arena.
The Libyan rulers initially reunified the state, only for it to fragment into two regions
again and reunify under another Dynasty, the Twenty-Third Dynasty.
The successors to the Twenty-Third Dynasty, aptly called the Twenty-Fourth Dynasty, only
had two pharaohs before Amun’s southern temples provided Egypt’s new Dynastic rulers.
This was the Twenty-Fifth or the Cushite Dynasty, coming from modern-day Sudan.
These rulers came from Napata, the dynastic centre, which was a centre of worship for
Amun.
The skilful founder of this Dynasty, a certain Piye, claimed descent from Ra and favour from
Amun, and in a lightning bolt campaign using horses that would make Genghis Khan proud,
ensured his control over both Upper and Lower Egypt.
The Cushite Kings were relatively stable at first and ruled for almost a century from
746 BCE - 656 BCE.
They were already submerged in Egypt’s culture and as such, the stability of their dynasty
was assured.
The main shifts in culture during Cushite rule appear in which cults were preferred
by the Cushite Kings.
Ptah, a deity linked to creation and pottery-making, became more prominent, and the so-called Nubian
pyramids became prevalent in Nubia and southern Egypt.
We also see changes in animal worship, as we find a few noteworthy tombs of horses like
the one in Tombos near Khartoum.
These burials suggest horses increased in value both as social and economic capital.
However, things were brewing in the northeast, and as the 7th Century BCE loomed, Assyria
would rise once more.
The following kings, Shebitku and Shabaka, continued fighting up until the Nile Delta,
only to face the wrath of Assyrian incursions into Egypt itself.
Their successor, Taharqa, sponsored resistance to Assyria in the Levant and faced further
assaults into Lower Egypt.
The Assyrians proved too powerful for him, coming as south as Thebes, and Taharqa fled
to his homeland and died.
His successor, Tantamani, managed to regain the land up to Memphis, but the Assyrian vassal,
Psamtik I, managed to send mercenary fleets which conquered Upper Egypt, ending the Third
Intermediate Period and beginning the Late Period.
By the end of the Third Intermediate Period, Egypt was very different from the end of the
Bronze Age.
While it survived where its Bronze Age rivals did not, it had changed religiously and socially
while remaining stable.
When the world system of the Bronze Age reigned supreme over the Mediterranean, Egypt ruled
over the Levant and attracted trade from afar.
Egypt in the Iron Age was more decentralised and more prone to outside pressures, but had
managed to weather incredible challenges, and was profoundly transformed.
Egypt’s state structures were so useful that future rulers would use them to administer
Egypt from abroad and continue to inspire the likes of Herodotos and Alexander.
NEW MOON (NOT THE VAMPIRE ONE): CONCLUSION: As the Moon rose once more in 656 BCE, the
God Khonsu looked at the Iron Age Mediterranean.
Greek and Phoenician colonies adorned the sea like diamonds, while Persia and Assyria
seemed united forever, in vast endless space.
When he turned towards his homeland of Egypt, he smiled once more.
Egypt had changed so much, but it had remained the same nonetheless.
Partially by chance, partially by choice, Egypt had survived a major shift and had been
transformed, but was still breathing as a country and society.
And it continues to breathe to this day as a vibrant, lively country with endless history.
Khonsu sat down to play yet another game of Senet, the ancient game of the Egyptians,
confident that no matter how many moons would come and go, and no matter how she changed,
Egypt would always be there to greet him with each Moon-rise.
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