Destructions In North Syria

The letters from the House of Urtenu showed that there was very little indication of trouble, apart from the mention of enemy ships in one letter, and that the trade routes seemed to be open right up until the end.

The same was true in Emar, on the Euphrates River far to the east in inland Syria, where it has been noted that “the scribes were conducting normal business until the end.”23

However, Ugarit was destroyed, apparently quite violently, during the reign of King Ammurapi, most likely between 1190 and 1185 BC.

It was not reoccupied until the Persian period, approximately 650 years later.24 The excavators report “evidence of destruction and fire throughout the city,” including “collapsed walls, burnt pisé plaster, and heaps of ashes,” with a destruction level that reached two meters high in places.

The destruction is believed to be caused by enemy attack rather than an earthquake, as had previously been suggested by Schaeffer, and that there was violent fighting in the city, including street fighting.

This, she says, is indicated by “the presence of numerous arrowheads dispersed throughout the destroyed or abandoned ruins,” as well as the fact that the inhabitants—eight thousand, more or less—fled in haste and did not return, not even to collect the hoards of valuables that some had buried before leaving.

The most conclusive evidence of the date was a letter found within the House of Urtenu. The letter was sent to Ammurapi, the king of Ugarit, by an Egyptian chancellor named Bey who, we know from Egyptian sources, was executed in the fifth year of Pharaoh Siptah. Siptah was the penultimate pharaoh of the Nineteenth Dynasty in Egypt, who ruled ca. 1195–1189 BC, that is, just a few years before Ramses III of the Twentieth Dynasty.

The letter is dated before Bey was executed in 1191 BC, which means that the destruction of the city cannot have taken place before this date. Thus, the destruction of the city is usually dated to 1190–1185 BC, though technically it could have been even later.

A recent article has pointed out that this date can now be corroborated, on the basis of an astronomical observation found on another tablet at Ugarit. This records an eclipse of the sun that can be dated to January 21, 1192 BC, which also means that the city cannot have been destroyed before this date.27

Contrary to previous popular accounts concerning the end of Ugarit,28 we probably cannot use the famous letter from the Southern Archive, found in Court V of the palace at Ugarit, either to date the destruction or to identify the destroyers. This was the letter that Schaeffer thought had been found in a kiln, before its dispatch to the king of Cyprus. It begins: “My father, now the ships of the enemy have come. They have been setting fire to my cities and have done harm to the land.” According to the original report, it was found in a kiln, along with more than seventy other tablets, where it had been placed for baking. The excavators and other scholars initially hypothesized that the enemy ships had returned and sacked the city before the urgent request for assistance could be dispatched, and this is the story that has been repeated over and over in scholarly and popular accounts from the past several decades. However, a recent reexamination of the findspot by additional researchers now indicates that it was not found in a kiln after all, but rather was probably stored within a basket that had fallen from the second floor after the building was abandoned.29

As a result, although the letter can be used to discuss the presence of enemy ships and probably invaders, it is not clear whether it dates to the final days of Ugarit or to some slightly earlier period. And even if it is a reference to ships of the Sea Peoples, it is possible that it dates to the first wave of invaders, those who attacked Egypt in 1207 BC, rather than to the second wave who fought against Ramses III in 1177 BC.

The site of Emar in inland Syria, with which Ugarit was in contact, was also destroyed at approximately the same time, in 1185 BC, as we know from the date given on a legal document found there. However, it is not clear who caused the destruction at Emar. Tablets found there refer to unnamed “hordes” but do not point specifically to the Sea Peoples, as various scholars have noted.30

The site of Ras Bassit, located on the northern border of Ugarit, was also destroyed at approximately this same time. The excavators believe it was an outpost of Ugarit and state that by approximately 1200 BC it was “partly evacuated, partly abandoned, then set on fire, just like the other sites of the region.” They attribute this destruction to the Sea Peoples, but the attribution is not definitive.31

A similar situation has been described at Ras Ibn Hani, on the coast just to the south of Ugarit, which is thought to have been a secondary residence of the Ugaritic kings during the thirteenth century. The excavators and others envision this site as having been evacuated shortly before the destruction of Ugarit and then destroyed by the Sea Peoples. At least part of the site was immediately reoccupied, as was Ras Bassit, and it is on the basis of the pottery found in these reoccupation levels that the destroyers, and reoccupiers, of both sites are identified by the excavators as the Sea Peoples, a matter that we shall discuss further below.32 Perhaps the best, and certainly the most recent, evidence for widespread destruction at this time has been found at Tell Tweini, the site of the Late Bronze Age harbor town of Gibala within the kingdom of Ugarit, located about thirty kilometers south of the modern city of Lattakia. Here, the site was abandoned after a “severe destruction” at the end of the Late Bronze Age. According to the excavators, “The destruction layer contains remains of conflicts (bronze arrowheads scattered around the town, fallen walls, burnt houses), ash from the conflagration of houses, and chronologically well-constrained ceramic assemblages fragmented by the collapse of the town.”33

By dating this destruction layer using “stratified radiocarbonbased archaeology” and “anchor points in ancient epigraphicliterary sources, Hittite-Levantine-Egyptian kings and astronomical observations,” the excavators say that they have finally been able “to precisely date the Sea People invasion in [the] northern Levant,” and to “offer the first firm chronology for this key period in human society.”34 The radiocarbon dates from the widespread ash layer (Level 7A) came back from the lab as dating specifically to ca. 1192–1190 BC.35 However, while they may well have dated the destruction of this Late Bronze Age site, the excavators have offered only circumstantial evidence that the destruction was wreaked by the Sea Peoples, as we will discuss below.

It is also relevant to point out that this date (1192–1190 BC) is fully thirteen to fifteen years before Ramses III meets the Sea Peoples in battle in 1177 BC. Even the destructions elsewhere that are dated to 1185 BC are still eight years before the culminating conflict. Perhaps we should be wondering just how long it would have taken such a proposed migratory group to make its way across the Mediterranean, or even just down the coast of the Levant to Egypt. This, though, would obviously depend upon their organizational ability, means of transportation, and ultimate goals, among other factors, and cannot readily be answered.

Finally, we should also consider a site farther to the south, Tell Kazel, which was located in the region of Amurru, and which may have been the site of ancient Ṣumur, Ṣ the capital city of that kingdom. The site was destroyed at the end of the Late Bronze Age and the excavators have plausibly hypothesized that the Sea Peoples destroyed it, especially insofar as Ramses III specifically mentions it (that is, Amurru) in his Sea Peoples inscriptions.

Yet, in the occupation level just prior to the destruction, the excavators have identified what appears to be locally produced Mycenaean pottery and other indications of new inhabitants from the Aegean and Western Mediterranean.36 Thus, Reinhard Jung of the University of Vienna, who has studied this pottery, has hypothesized that “prior to the large Sea Peoples’ destruction, smaller groups of people arrived by ship at Tell Kazel and settled together within the local population.” He sees this as a pattern of small-scale immigration from the Aegean, but with indications that some of the people involved had earlier roots in southern continental Italy.37 If correct, this is an indication of the complexity of the period and of the people potentially involved, even to the point that destructions caused by the second wave of Sea Peoples, ca. 1177 BC, may have impacted earlier immigrants from the same origins who had already arrived and settled in the Eastern Mediterranean, perhaps during or after the original Sea Peoples incursions in the fifth year of Merneptah, back in 1207 BC.

During this same period, in the twelfth century BC, a number of cities and towns were destroyed in southern Syria and Canaan. Just as in north Syria, it is not clear who destroyed them or when exactly they were destroyed, although in the destruction level at the small site of Deir ‘Alla in Jordan, a vase with the cartouche of the Egyptian queen Twosret was found. She was the widow of Pharaoh Seti II and is known to have ruled from 1187 to 1185 BC. Thus, the destruction can probably be dated to shortly after this time. The same holds true for the site of Akko, in what is now modern Israel, where a similar scarab of Twosret was found in the destruction debris.38 Other evidence of destruction can be seen at Beth Shan, where Yigael Yadin’s excavations uncovered a violent end to the Egyptian presence at the site.

Perhaps the best known among the sites in this area with evidence of destruction are Megiddo and Lachish. However, the nature and timing of the collapse in this region are still much debated. Both cities seem to have been destroyed several decades later than would otherwise be expected from the timing at the sites previously discussed, for both Megiddo and Lachish appear to have been destroyed around 1130 BC rather than 1177 BC.40 Megiddo

At Megiddo in the Jezreel Valley of modern-day Israel, the site of biblical Armageddon, some twenty cities have been found layered one on top of another. Of these, the seventh city, with two phases labeled VIIB and VIIA, was violently destroyed either in the thirteenth and the twelfth centuries BC, respectively, or perhaps in a single destruction in the twelfth century.

Traditionally, ever since the University of Chicago excavators published the findings from their excavations at the site during the years 1925–39, it has been accepted that Stratum VIIB ended sometime between 1250 and 1200 BC, while the succeeding city of Stratum VIIA ended sometime around 1130 BC. In these strata were found the remains of a Canaanite palace, or perhaps the remains of two palaces, one built upon the ruins of the other.

According to the Chicago excavators, the Stratum VIIB palace ‘‘suffered violent destruction so extensive that the Stratum VIIA builders deemed it more expedient to level off the resulting debris and build over it than to remove it all as was the procedure in previous rebuilding undertakings.” The rooms “were filled with fallen stone to a height of about a meter and a half … charred horizontal lines found here and there on the walls of the rooms to the north of the court … supply a general floor level throughout the palace.”41 The Stratum VIIA palace, built directly on top, was then thought to have lasted until about 1130 BC.

Recently, however, David Ussishkin, a Tel Aviv University archaeologist and the recently retired codirector of the Megiddo Expedition, has convincingly suggested that the Chicago excavators had misinterpreted the levels. Rather than two palaces, one atop the other, he believes we should understand this structure as a single two-story palace, renovated slightly during the transition from VIIB to VIIA, about 1200 BC. There was only a single destruction, he says—a great fire that destroyed the palace at the end of Stratum VIIA. According to Ussishkin, what the Chicago archaeologists thought was the “VIIB palace” was simply the basement or lower story of the palace, while the “VIIA palace” was the upper story. The main city temple (the so-called Tower Temple) was also destroyed at this time, but the most recent excavations at the site indicate that much of the rest of the city survived; it appears that only the elite areas were torched at this time.

This Stratum VIIA destruction is usually dated to ca. 1130 BC, based upon two objects inscribed with Egyptian cartouches found associated with the debris. The first is an ivory pen case inscribed with the name of Ramses III, which was found among other ivory treasures within a room in the palace, in a context sealed by debris from the destruction of the palace.43 This would imply that the destruction had taken place sometime during or after the time of Ramses III, about 1177 BC or thereafter.

The ivory pieces found in this room within the palace are among the best-known objects recovered from the site of Megiddo. They include fragmentary boxes and bowls, plaques, spoons, disks, game boards and game pieces, jar lids, and combs, among numerous other items. They are on display at the Oriental Institute at the University of Chicago and the Rockefeller Museum in Jerusalem. It is unclear why these ivory pieces were originally collected together, and why they were in this particular part of the palace. Nevertheless, they have received a great deal of attention over the years, for the ivories themselves and the scenes inscribed upon them exhibit a truly globalized style, now commonly called the International Style, which is also seen elsewhere at sites like Ugarit and Mycenae. The distinctive style combines elements found in Mycenaean, Canaanite, and Egyptian cultures, thereby creating hybrid objects unique to, and typifying, this cosmopolitan age.

The second object of relevance from Megiddo is a bronze statue base inscribed with the name of Pharaoh Ramses VI, who ruled a few decades later, ca. 1141–1133 BC. This was not found in a secure archaeological context, but rather was found beneath a Stratum VIIB wall in the residential area at the site. As Ussishkin notes, this is not a reliable context, since Stratum VIIB was much earlier in time than Ramses VI. This means that the statue base must have been deliberately buried in a hole dug by a later inhabitant, either during the VIIA period or even during the following Iron Age VIB-A city. The base is usually attributed to Stratum VIIA by archaeologists, but this is merely a guess.45 These two objects, of Ramses III and VI, are always discussed together in relevant publications, and thus the destruction of Megiddo VIIA is dated after the reign of Ramses VI, or about 1130 BC. However, since the bronze statue base of Ramses VI is not found in a good context, it should not be used to date the ending of Megiddo VIIA. On the other hand, the ivory pen case of Ramses III was indeed sealed within the destruction layer of VIIA and therefore can confidently be used to provide a limiting date before which the city could not have been destroyed, that is, before the reign of this pharaoh. This would indeed fit well with evidence of destruction at several other sites throughout the Near East discussed in these pages.

However, archaeology is a continuously evolving field with new data and new analyses requiring the rethinking of old concepts. In this regard, ongoing studies involving radiocarbon dating of remains found within the destruction of VIIA now are indicating that a date of 1130 BC, or possibly even later, is likely to be correct after all. If this proves to be accurate, it would mean that Megiddo was destroyed more than forty years after the Sea People came through the region in 1177 BC.46 In any event, as Ussishkin has noted, “Lack of written sources leaves [open] the questions of who was responsible for the destruction of Stratum VIIA … the city may have been successfully attacked by invading Sea People groups, by Levantine Canaanite elements, by the Israelites, or by a force combined from different groups.”47 In other words, at Megiddo, we have the same situation as seen at the relevant level at Hazor, described above, where the elite parts of the city were destroyed, but those responsible for the destruction cannot be identified.