Exploring the Ancient Near East and Egypt: A Journey through Lands, Waters, and Lifeways
Leaping from an understanding of Geographical Time aspects of topography and climate comes an appreciation of what those geographical elements produced, namely resources for security, sustenance, and labor. These can be referred to as the products of lands and waters, creating lifeways for individuals and societies, and as geographical time changes slowly, so the products of these changed over time as humanity furthered their own knowledge of the world around them, including resources for security, such as those pertaining to housing, clothing, and defense, to resources for sustenance, such as fertile soils, fresh water, and foodstuffs, to resources for industrial needs, including clay, stone, wood, and volcanic materials.
Geographical and Chronological Limitations
Before these can be understood, certain limitations need to be set upon both the geography and the chronology of the ancient Near East, otherwise one can always add just a little more, constantly broadening the scope. It should be noted that Egypt is not always included in the Near East, except when its empires extended into Asia (van de Mieroop 2015: 1), but as Egyptian history intersected with the Near East regularly, it is included here. Generally speaking, the Near East consists of roughly two million squared kilometers (Liverani 2014: 17) and as such is a rather large geographical area.
Geography
Thus, the ancient Near East, what some refer to as the Fertile Crescent, is defined geographically as the area from the Zagros and Elburz Mountains in the east, following the Tigris and Euphrates rivers north to right before the Caucasus, bending around to the Black Sea, and then finally down the eastern Mediterranean. In modern terms, the Near East includes the countries of Israel, Lebanon, Syria, part of Turkey, Iraq, and Iran (Snell 1997: 1), but probably also Jordan, Palestine, Cyprus, and Armenia (Mark 2022).
Chronology
Diachronically, the ‘history’ of the ancient Near East can be confusing. Some scholars delimit the ancient Near East in terms of linguistics, beginning with the advent of writing and ending with the foundations of the linguistically invasive Persian Empire, thus extending from ca. 3500 to ca. 500 B.C. (Liverani and Tabatabai 2014: 7), separating ‘ancient’ from both the prehistoric and the preclassical or classical eras. Still others (Mark 2022) date the ancient Near East from about the Calcolithic Period, or Copper Age, until the conquest by Muslim Arabs, thus from ca. 5000 B.C. to ca. A.D. 700. Although a complete history of the ancient Near East must commence at the beginning of time, mentioning the earliest archaeological examples rather than limiting the starting point, for the purposes of this study, that starting point will begin with a brief overview of the Stone Age. As for when the ancient Near East ends and the next era begins, it seems prudent not to include invasive cultures, those from outside sources that heavily influenced the ancient world, including the Persian, Greek, and Roman cultures, and therefore this study will end at the foundations of the Persian Empire.
This broad geographical area and rather long timeframe necessarily includes very many different people groups and cultures. Because so many different peoples and cultures existed over the span of the scope of this study, this work will be limited to major geographical areas and specific, key cultural groups. These groups will include the Canaanites/Phoenicians, Egyptians, Akkadians, Elamites, Assyrians/Babylonians, and of course the Israelites, but these will not include the Hittites, Ammonites, Moabites, Edomites, or Philistines, except when directly related to the former groups. By limiting the scope of this work, a broad overview of the ancient Near East as it relates to the Biblical world may be understood. Perhaps later editions may include these lesser known groups.
Ancient Near Eastern Resources
The resources used differed between archaeological ages. Materials used in the Stone Age may or may not have been used in the Bronze Age. Below is a breakdown of these resources from the Stone Age into the Iron Age.
The Stone Age in Material Perspective
The concept of an “Ugh, ugh” cave dweller should not only be ignored but forgotten altogether. The “Stone Age” in the ancient Near East and beyond, although beginning in the Paleolithic which is believed to have contained the product of the evolution of mankind from his “non-homo-nomenclated” ancestors, was extremely complex with societal programs, burials, foods, and other lifeways. Paleolithic art in Sicily at the Addaura cave is not only impressive, but it is arguably better than very many today could attempt, containing evidence of extremely complex beliefs and rituals, and these from “cave men.”
This is not to argue that Stone Age cultures were technologically advanced. In fact, although socially complex, life in the Stone Age was harsh, often environmentally brutal. The difficult climatological changes likely delayed technological advances as it limited growth, major advances only taking place once the climate began to stabilize at the beginning of the Neolithic Period (Warden et al. 2017: 4). Nonetheless, humanity survived and progressed in spite of the hardships.
Stone Age Housing, Agriculture, and Clothing
One must understand that the Stone Age in the Near East was a point in time on the heels of environmental change, including alternating periods of warm and dry conditions and cold and humid climates (Issar and Zohar 2007: 81) stemming from the end of the ever changing glacial ages (Butzer 1995: 123). Because of these alternations, early human activities in the region were sparse, but as the climate began to stabilize, so the habitat of wild grasses expanded (Miller and Wetterstrom 2000: 1124), allowing for a greater ease in collection, eventually giving way to sedentary, non-cave-dwelling communities (McIntosh 2005: 53).
This move from caves to manufactured dwellings developed from need (Ojaie and Seresti 2023: 84), as was the case in the move from the Zagros Mountains to the fertile plains of Mesopotamia (Riehl, Zeidi, and Conard 2013: 65) where crops could be maintained but cave dwelling was no longer an option. This concept matches the general move of most, if not all, civilizations from caves to non-cave dwellings, mainly the desire to be closer to one’s fields (Holloway 2000: 7) for both ease of maintenance and protection, whether those be wild fields that became domesticated or even specific grazing fields where meat could be harvested.
Over time, fields of wild cereals would become domesticated, eventually resulting in purposefully planted fields and the beginning of horticulture (Riehl 2014: 7). Houses were then often built of clay and wood, sometimes with stone foundations (McIntosh 2005: 53), and although villages did exist, many of these early houses can be thought of more as farmsteads rather than villages (cf. Leighton 1999: 71-72), a sedentary family’s struggle against nature.
This move toward agriculture brought about other changes as well, such as those involving clothing. Before agriculture, living in the harsh climate of a glacial environment meant that clothing came primarily from animal skins (Aishwariya 2018: 270), complex clothing being formed by cutting animal hides into desired shapes with stone blades, piercing them with bone awls, and then sewing them together with bone needles (Gilligan 2018: 66-68). With the now abundant fibrous materials from agricultural surplus in a post glacial environment, other forms of clothing components could be created, such as linen from flax and felt from wool (Aishwariya 2018: 271). To make life even easier, the loom was created (Grömer 2016: 6), making the weaving of materials more practical and officially developing new standards for clothing designs.
Interestingly, one argument concerning agriculture is that rather than textiles being a result of agricultural surplus, the move to agriculture came about in order specifically to obtain the fibrous materials needed for which to create clothing. In the post-glacial climate, when the temperatures were warmer and the humidity higher, clothing made from non-porous skins created a sweat or moisture problem (Gilligan 2023: 562), and as textiles were used in the last glacial period to insulate leather garments as a type of thermal protection outside of the shelter (Siennicka et al. 2018: 3), the move to textiles alone was already an option (Gilligan 2023: 562).
Stone Age Foods
The period in Near Eastern history where the domestication of animals, adaptation of agriculture, and the rise of villages takes place is often referred to as the Neolithic Revolution (Storfjell et al. 1996: 73), and this brought about a consolidation of domesticated species of both plants and animals, resulting in a demographic rise in the region (Riehl 2014: 7). This was a cereal based economy (Riehl 2014: 6), the main caloric intake coming primarily from emmer, einkorn, wheat, and barley, but protein could be gained from pulses, such as chickpeas and lentils (Miller and Wetterstrom 2000: 1125). Additionally, by the Chalcolithic, olives became important for their oil, and grapes had been introduced from the Caucasus (Issar and Zohar: 2007: 108).
In addition to proteinic pulses, animal flesh provided protein. It is not understood to what extent animals made up the diet of primitive humanity, but ethnoarchaeological studies show that hunter-gatherer tribes today consume a ratio of about 30% animal and 70% vegetable, though this changes to an almost complete animal diet in extremely cold regions (Singh and Singh 2023: 1). One can assume that glacial diets included plenty of meat, and as the switch to agriculture occurred, domestication took place, including animals such as sheep and goat early on and then pig and cattle later (McIntosh 2005: 55). As early domesticators unconsciously chose what animals to keep, the shift in habitat automatically created drastic generational changes in the species, ultimately resulting in genetic mutations away from aspects vital to survival in the wild and toward domestic traits seen today (Zohary et al. 1998: 129).
By the end of the Stone Age, irrigation technologies were created in lower Mesopotamia to maximize the agricultural yield (Nieuwenhuyse 2012: 136). This increased yield then resulted in even more people coming to the land, and this, then, resulted in a gradual process of social, ideological, and even economic change (Nieuwenhuyse, Cruells, and Mateiciucová 2017: 3).
Stone Age Tools
The introduction of farming also brought about new tools and needed resources, such as the development of sickles and heavier grinding stones, but also baskets, pits, or other types of facilities needed to store the excess goods for later consumption (McIntosh 2005: 53). One of the most important developments at this time was the creation of pottery, the construction of which is specifically linked to agricultural need, particularly allowing for both short term and long term storage of agricultural goods that simply could not had been stored in other ways (Rice 2015: 10). This major invention of mankind then splits the Neolithic period, marking Pre-Pottery Neolithic from Pottery Neolithic (Nieuwenhuyse et al. 2017: 3), establishing a new societal nomenclature for scholars today.
Becoming agriculturally focused societies, certain types of tools diminished in use, such as arrowheads used in hunting, while agriculturally-related tools grew in number (Issar and Zohar 2007: 75). In fact, it is believed that the process of harvesting crops may have played a role in what plants to domesticate, those morphotypes of non-shattering types being preferred over those of shattering types (Mazzucco et al. 2017: 511). In smaller villages, these new tools, as well as pottery, were crafted by the families who used them, but in larger communities the demand for these tools led to the development of specialists who focused on the manufacture of specific types of tools (McIntosh, 2005, p. 59), whether stone, bone, or ceramic. These newly acquired skills, referred to as Craft Specializations, then led to better quality items, objects that could not be created on the household level (Hendrickx 2011: 93).
Bronze Age Advances
Whereas throughout much of the Stone Age, individual families struggled for resources, in the Bronze Age, there is a broader communal struggle for survival. As harvests varied from year to year, individual farmsteads were only scarcely viable (Paulette 2015: 20), thus creating a need for individuals to combine their resources, developing into the first villages, towns, and even cities. In Mesopotamia, this transition occurred earlier than elsewhere, noting societal changes accelerating during the very end of the Stone Age (Rothman 2004: 76). Continuing the irrigation technology first implemented earlier, the city of Uruk, in southern Mesopotamia, and the region around it became more agriculturally productive than other regions, resulting, by the Late Uruk period, in a rapid increase of settlements being established in the area as differing peoples migrated into the land in order to participate in the abundance. Due to the administrative and economic advances that needed to be developed to maintain order, the first state-level societies were created (McC. Adams and Nissen 1972: 87), and these included the organization of temple-based religions (Costello 2012: 123).
By the end of the fourth millennium B.C., these major changes are found throughout the Near East. In Egypt, as well as in Mesopotamia, literate civilizations developed, including complex governmental systems and hierarchies of social, religious, and administrative classes, organizing, for the first time, large scale public initiatives such as monumental architecture (Mazar 2009: 91).
Bronze Age Villages and Cities
While the first state-level societies were created in Mesopotamia quite early on (McC. Adams and Nissen 1972: 87), in the Levant, this move from small unwalled villages to walled cities took much longer, beginning in Early Bronze I (Greenberg 2013: 4) and only finally reaching the point of Mesopotamian-style cities during Early Bronze III (Greenberg 2013: 273), including fortifications and public buildings (Damick and Woodworth 2015: 604).
In Egypt, the Early Bronze period includes early urbanization (Pedersen, Hein, and Anderssen 2010: 123), though, as in Mesopotamia, these urban centers existed independently from each other in the beginning (Mączyńska 2013: 58). The beginning of the third millennium B.C. saw a transformation in society from individual ruling communities to the first true territorial state headed by divine kingship (Stevenson 2016: 422), including the first dynasties of Egypt. The first king to bring the entirety of the land together, at least according to later Egyptian records, is Narmer (Anđelković 2011: 25), though the joining of Egyptian polities occurred much earlier, and the founding of the kingdom was much more complex than just one man.
Bronze Age Agriculture and Animal Husbandry
Key to Bronze Age developments are the dual agricultural spheres of cultivation and husbandry. From the Stone Age, the Levant, Mesopotamia, Anatolia, and Cyprus became intertwined with each other (Twiss 2007: 24) as agriculture spread across the region. In the Levant, agriculture, along with horticulture and herding (Greenberg 2013: 270), was the basis of all Bronze Age societies (Kamlah and Riehl, 2021: 193), and although there is question as to the origin of agriculture in the Levant (cf. Marchi et al. 2022: 1851), it is likely that many of the material cultural differences between the Chalcolithic and Bronze Age originated from new peoples moving into the region, or at least from cultural contact (Mazar 2009: 92-93). Specifically, Bronze Age changes to agricultural methods appear to have stemmed from a two-fold cultural contact with the outside. First, contact between Mesopotamia and the northern Levant is clear (Yacobi and Gopher 2023: 437), pulling Mesopotamian ideals into the Levant. Second, cultural affinities between the southern Levant and the Kura-Araxes tradition of the Caucasus suggest a Caucasian presence in the Levant at the beginning of the Bronze Age (Agranat-Tamir et al. 2020: 1150), these migrants bringing with them new traditions adapted from early trade with the Uruk expansive trade network that existed during the end of the Stone Age (Rothman 2015: 9192). In fact, the Levant continuously at this time received the cultural effects of Mesopotamian events (Ben-Tor 1992: 56), even if these came secondarily through other cultures.
Of those new agricultural methods, irrigation, first being developed in Mesopotamia and used extensively there (McIntosh 2005: 56), although practiced earlier in the Levant became widely adopted in the Early Bronze Age (Philip 2008: 19). Additionally, the plough, first created in Mesopotamia to improve cultivation (McIntosh 2005: 62), allowed for extensive cultivation in the Levant (Philip 2008: 19). Fruit trees, too, being domesticated around the same time that agriculture began (Fuller and Stevens 2019: 278) and existing earlier than the Uruk period (Fuller and Stevens 2019: 273), gained a heavy emphasis in the Levant during the Early Bronze Age. It would appear that the Mesopotamian ripples greatly influenced the Levantine cultures.
Unfortunately, throughout the third millennium B.C., much of the northern hemisphere (Riehl 2017: 245) entered into a drying phase, culminating at its driest around 2000 B.C. (Ur 2015: 75). Throughout the millennium-long Early Bronze Age in Mesopotamia, it is estimated that between five and ten major climatic events occurred causing droughts that lasted six years or longer (Paulette 2012: 169), and the fact that these cities survived these times is a testament to their leadership.
Of note, barley, the crop of choice in ancient Mesopotamia, is both drought and salinity resistant (McMahon 2013: 470), and although whether a king or simply observant farmers chose this crop is unknown, it was up to the centralized government to store and maintain agricultural surpluses (Paulette 2012: 171). Grain storage became key for survival (Paulette 2015: 2), and just as in Mesopotamia, other regions would need strong central governments to continue existence. In Egypt, this would lead to the Old Kingdom. In the Levant, the centralized authorities developed into types of proto-city-states where cities held sway over their peripheral territories, leading to competition, and ultimately to attempts to expand territorial influences (Finkelstein 1995: 48) during a time in which resources simply were not stable.
These climatic changes played a major role in the demise of the Old Kingdom in Egypt (Bárta 2013: 29), and the same can be said of the Akkadian Empire in Mesopotamia (Ur 2015: 75). Though rainfall throughout the Chalcolithic and Early Bronze Age increased in the Levant (Rosen 1995: 33), rain-fed agriculture is notoriously inconsistent, and the Early Bronze Canaanites at this time simply could not compensate for the long-term climatic changes occurring (Rosen 1995: 40), bringing a climactic end to the southern Levantine proto-city-states as well (Höflmayer 2017: 3).
Bronze Age Tools and Other Useful Objects
Because of the climate catastrophe throughout the Early Bronze Age, major advances became necessary for survival. One of these advances was the emergence of literacy in and around Mesopotamia (Miller and Wetterstrom 2000: 1126), literacy acting as a necessity for administrative centers (Woods 2015: 17) where record keeping allowed for better supervision and oversight of the dwindling resources. In fact, it is from these records that historians today are able to understand ancient practices, administrative hierarchies, and even beliefs (Topçuoğlu 2015: 29).
By the Middle Bronze Age, which has been termed by some as the “Dawn of Internationalism” (Ilan 1995: 297), the Levant came to use consistently the potter’s wheel, which had been around with sporadic use in Mesopotamia since the fourth millennium (Doherty 2013: 112). The rather primitive slow-wheel had been utilized in the Levant throughout the Early Bronze Age, but with a growing population during the Middle Bronze Age, the fast-wheel, which had been used to mass-produce pottery during the Uruk Period in Mesopotamia (Issar and Zohar 2007:122), was adapted to use in the Levant, creating a new repertoire of advanced and sophisticated pottery (Dever 1987: 161) and creating something of a standardized material culture (Killebrew et al. 2013: 10). Along with the fast wheel came better clay refining techniques, different firing temperatures, more consistent inclusions within the clay, and a change in the application of an external slip upon the ceramics, ultimately creating more varied and finer vessels (Uziel 2011: 52).
Lessening the time it takes to create pottery ultimately led to flourishing local industries such as working with gypsum and the development of bone and ivory inlays (Sparks 1991: 45), and as these craft specializations were developed, there came an increase in international trade (Kan-Cipor-Meron 2018: 2), including both tin and ceramics (Dever 1987: 161), and even more technological progression (Killebrew et al. 2013: 2).
Perhaps a characterization of the Late Bronze Age is that of multiple confrontations. While the Middle Bronze Age began on the heals of the Early Bronze drying phase, the Late Bronze Age saw its own climactic issues, such as a shift in annual precipitation that caused a continual strain upon the regions inhabitants over several generations and was the likely cause of the collapse of the Mycenaean palatial system (Drake 2012: 1866). As the Late Bronze Age became more of a period of internationalism (Skourtanioti et al. 2020: 1158) than the previous Middle Bronze Age, so conflicts occurred throughout the Near East, particularly between the Hittites, Mittanians, Egyptians, and Assyrians (Matthiae 2015: 5), all major civilizations at the time.
Something occurred at the end of the Bronze Age that changed the entire Near East, specifically the Bronze Age Collapse. This collapse of civilization occurred over a period of time generally understood to extend from ca. 1315-1190 B.C. and is seen as the collapse of the Palatial System (Drake 2012: 1862) introduced by the Mycenaeans and the collapse of those civilizations that in turn were affected by palatial systems. As one civilization collapsed, the remnants then placed pressure on their neighbors, causing war, devastation, and furthering the climatological stress of major drought that all groups already felt (cf. Gabriel 2003: 182).
The Iron Age Move Toward Empires
By the Iron Age, the entirety of the Near East and Egypt had gone through a series of transmutations from the use of stone apparatuses as primary tools to states with imperial ambitions. It would appear that the move from familial struggles for resources in the Stone Age to communal struggles for resources in the Bronze Age would find a culmination in state struggles for resources in the Iron Age, even if those resources belonged to other states. By the imperial age, strategies for resource exploitation included simply conquering a people and taking their resources.
Iron Age Kingdoms and Empires
As was common throughout the region, the period began after the collapse of the previous period. In this case, the Iron Age began in response to the Bronze Age Collapse, allowing for the establishments of a series of small states, if only for a few centuries (Porter 2016: 373). In the Levant, these small states included Ammon, Moab, and Edom in the Transjordan (LaBiana and Younker 1995: 404) and Israel and Philistia in the Cisjordan (Yasur-Landau 2012: 468). To the north, the Phoenician coast, although never a true state, had, for the most part, survived the collapse (Markoe 2005: xx).
In Mesopotamia, the Iron Age saw the rise and fall of several empires, the armies of which would eventually conquer the lesser Levantine states mentioned above. Perhaps the most important of the Mesopotamian empires during this time were the Neo-Assyrian and Neo-Babylonian Empires, powers that would spread across the Near East and squeeze the Levant between themselves and Egypt, a state that would enter into its Third Intermediate Period during this time.
Iron Age Trade and Mercantile Reorganization
During the Bronze and Iron Age transition, destructions are seen from the Black Sea to Egypt and the major Mediterranean trade network founded by the Mycenaeans had collapsed. The collapse of these major trade networks, and the smaller trading sites that supplied resources to the greater ones (cf. Knapp, Russell, and van Dommelen 2021: 93), necessarily meant that those sites dependent upon foreign materials, such as copper and tin, also experienced a failed economy (Cline 2014: 148-49). In the eastern Mediterranean, sites such as Ugarit and Tell Sukas in the north, Hazor and Akko in the south, and Enkomi in the west on the island of Cyprus were destroyed (Cline 2014: 110-111), but resting peacefully in the middle of these sites was the Phoenician coast, and sites such as Tyre and Sidon appear to have survived the desolation (Millek 2022: 1). It was Tyre, the Phoenician city-state, that would go on to replace the lost Bronze Age trade emporia.
It should be noted that Phoenicia is not a state or nation; instead, like Sumer, it is a geographical region, in this case a region along the Mediterranean coast in the Northern Levant between Mt. Carmel and Arvad (Beyl 2013: 15) somewhat secluded from the world due to a large mountain range to the east (Aubet 2001: 17). The land of Phoenicia occupied a rather strategic place in the eastern Mediterranean, linking Europe, Asia, and Africa (Kharrat et al. 2020: 12), and this link was utilized quite early, Eleventh and Tenth Century Phoenician pottery appearing in Cypriot graves at Kition, Amathus, and Paphos (Nijboer and van Der Plicht 2006: 35). Interestingly, a Phoenician settlement at Huelva, Spain, known to the Greeks as Tartessos (Canales, Serrano, and Llompart 2006: 26), dates quite early, possibly as early as the mid 900s B.C. (Nijboer and van Der Plicht 2006: 35), roughly to the time of Solomon, and Necho II of Egypt may have, according to Herodotus, requested that the Phoenicians circumnavigate Africa ca. 600 B.C. (Histories 4.42).
Tyrian ships were able to export cedar, wine, honey, balm, spices, olive oil, cereals, fruits, and more, and the Phoenicians helped to propagate chicken, donkeys, cats, and even rabbits, as well as spreading plants cultivars such as citrus, reed, flax, and pomegranate (Kharrat et al. 2020: 12). Living on the semi-periphery of both Egypt and Assyria, the Phoenician cities could trade with these great societies and beyond (Scott 2019: 35), collecting resources along the way from newly established Phoenician settlements who no doubt gathered resources from indigenous groups.
Phoenician ships spread across the sea, establishing multiple settlements with good harbor at sites all across the Mediterranean (Aubet 2001: 310), possibly a move taken to counter the growing Greek colonization of places such as Sicily (Tribulato 2012: 15). One such site, Carthage, shows evidence of tithes paid to the temple of Melqart in Tyre (Markoe 2005: 121), thus enriching Tyre as well as themselves, Tyre becoming the key economic core of the Phoenician coast (Scott 2019: 35).
The Phoenician cities remained quite comfortable in their northern Levantine homeland early on, and their mutual economic treaty with the then combined nation of Israel under the famed King Solomon no doubt enriched both regions. It was not until the later Assyrian Empire demanded tribute that the Phoenicians truly felt the pressure of the outside world (Monroe 2018: 232). In fact, as the Assyrian Empire expanded their territorial control, the Assyrians had to rely on external sources to meet their own demands, depending on eastern Mediterranean cultural groups such as Arab, Philistine, and Phoenician traders to gather the needed resources from far off regions such as Spain, Nubia, Arabia, and Afghanistan (Herrmann and Tyson 2018: 18). Interestingly, it was likely the Phoenicians who brought the ninth century Assyrians, through Tiglath-pileser I, into a technological modernity (Monroe 2018: 256-57).
Unfortunately for the Phoenician coastal cities, Assyrian expansion into the general Phoenician area of the Levant meant that Assyria would begin to change its relationship with Tyre from trade partner to overlord. With this change in status, Assyria required the Phoenicians now simply to pay the Assyrians (Boyes 2012: 38) rather than mere exchange, and as Assyria conquered parts of the Southern Levant, namely the northern nation of Israel, and replaced the people there with peoples from around the conquered empire (Dixon 2013: 306), the Phoenician cities could now see first-hand what denying the Assyrians could look like.
The Move to Iron
Notedly, iron innovation in the Levant appears at least somewhat to have been a result of the Bronze Age collapse, particularly as iron-bearing people groups moved into the Near East after or during the Bronze Age Collapse. Consistent iron working, originating in Anatolia (Bebermeier et al. 2016: 156) likely by the Hittites (Gabriel 2003: 183), was then adapted by the Sea Peoples, who had helped Egypt in their attack on the Hittites (Dothan 1995: 1267-68) but who had been in the Anatolian region since the Late Bronze Age, being referred to by the Hittite king as boat people (Demand 2011: 200). Iron use in the Levant was then transplanted from Anatolia shortly after 1200 B.C. (Ojewole 2014: 39) through the migration of the Sea Peoples, in particular, the Philistines (Erb-Satullo 2019: 557-58), changing the shape of warfare forever.
Of note, meteoric iron had already been worked sporadically by the beginning of the 4th millennium (Bebermeier et al. 2016: 153), and instances of meteoric iron weapons are clear, such as the famed iron dagger of Tutankhamun (Erb-Satullo 2019: 563-64) and likely the iron club of Areïthoös, mentioned in the Iliad (Woudhuizen 2006: 25). Iron only became commonly used by the 10th century, though bronze was still the predominant metal (Bunimovitz and Lederman 2012: 103), and it was not until ca. 600 B.C. that iron saw widespread use in the Near East (Erb-Satullo 2019: 559).
The move to iron working appears to have been an economic change as iron ore was commonly available (Gabriel 2003: 225), though this is debated (Erb-Satullo 2019: 581). Previously, copper was made available through trade, primarily with Cyprus (Mazar 1990: 264) as Egypt held control over copper mines in the Negev and the Sinai (Bietak 2007: 417). The collapse of the trade economy at the end of the Bronze Age (Cline 2014: 148-49) meant that metal tools and weapons, rather than a return to stone, necessarily were to be made from more available materials. This may be due to either a lack of trade or possibly an aversion to it as some polities may had desired a decrease in foreign reliance (Erb-Satullo 2019: 582).
Unfortunately iron materials were more difficult to work (Canevaro 2012: 146). Whereas copper or bronze objects could easily be cast, iron, having a much higher melting point, existing in a more impure form, and having a stronger affinity to oxygen, often needed to be forged one item at a time (Saravanan 2017: 516). Thus, the move to iron, which ended up being stronger than bronze only after proper treatment (Erb-Satullo 2019: 559), including cold tempering, folding, and hammering (Gabriel 2003: 138), was likely not a search for a better material (Erb-Satullo 2019: 559) but rather a move based on need (Bebermeier et al. 2016: 169).
Check out the Bible Land Explorer!
[This is a lecture written for the course 'ARCH 209: Literature of the Ancient Near East,' taught Spring 2025 at God's Bible School and College, a regionally accredited College in Cincinnati, Ohio. Bibliographical material will be posted under Research on this site.]
Comments