The Mediterranean and Middle East, 2000-500 b. c. e

The Cosmopolitan Middle East, 1700-1100 b. c.e.

The Aegean World, 2000-1100 b. c.e.

The Assyrian Empire, 911-612 b. c.e.

Israel, 2000-500 b. c.e.

Phoenicia and the Mediterranean, 1200-500 b. c.e.

Failure and Transformation, 750-550 b. c.e.

Diversity and Dominance: Protests Against the Ruling Class in Israel and Babylonia

Environment and Technology: Ancient Textiles and Dyes

Ancient peoples’ stories—even those that are not historically accurate—provide valuable insights into how people thought about their origins and identity. One famous story concerned the city of Carthage° in present-day Tunisia, which for centuries dominated the commerce of the western Mediterranean. Tradition held that Dido, a member of the royal family of the Phoenician city-state of Tyre° in southern Lebanon, fled with her supporters to the western Mediterranean after her husband was murdered by her brother, the king of Tyre. Landing on the North African coast, the refugees made

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Carthage (KAHR-thuhj) Tyre (tire)

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Friendly contact with local people, who agreed to give them as much land as a cow’s hide could cover. By cleverly cutting the hide into narrow strips, they were able to mark out a substantial piece of territory for Kart Khadasht, the “New City" (called Carthago by their Roman enemies). The photo at the beginning of this chapter shows the harbor at the heart of the city. Later, faithful to the memory of her dead husband, Dido committed suicide rather than marry a local chieftain.

This story highlights the spread of cultural patterns from older centers to new regions, as well as the migration and resettlement of Late Bronze Age and Early Iron Age peoples in the Mediterranean lands and western Asia. Just as Egyptian cultural influences helped transform Nubian society, influences from the older centers in Mesopotamia and Egypt penetrated throughout western Asia and the Mediterranean. Far-flung trade, diplomatic contacts, military conquests, and the relocation of large numbers of people spread knowledge, beliefs, practices, and technologies.

By the early first millennium b. c.e. many of the societies of the Eastern Hemisphere were entering the Iron Age: they had begun to use iron instead of bronze for important tools and weapons. Iron offered several advantages. It was a single metal rather than an alloy, and there were many potential sources of iron ore. Once the technology of iron making had been mastered— iron has to be heated to a higher temperature than bronze, and its hardness depends on the amount of carbon added during the forging process—iron tools were found to have harder, sharper edges than bronze tools.

These advantages were not discovered all at once. The Hittites of iron-rich Anatolia had learned to make iron implements by 1500 b. c.e. but did not share their knowledge. Some scholars believe that, in the disrupted period after 1200 b. c.e., blacksmiths from the Hittite core area migrated and spread the technology. Others speculate that metalworkers who could not obtain copper and tin turned to dumps of slag (the byproduct of bronze production) containing iron residue and found that they could create useful objects from it. As its usefulness became recognized and techniques were perfected, iron came to be used on an ever wider scale, though bronze also continued to be used.

The first part of this chapter resumes the story of Mesopotamia and Egypt in the Late Bronze Age, the second millennium b. c.e.: their complex relations with neighboring peoples, the development of a prosperous, “cosmopolitan" network of states in the Middle East, and the period of destruction and decline that set in around 1200 b. c.e. We also look at how the Minoan and Mycenaean civilizations of the Aegean Sea were inspired by the technologies and cultural patterns of the older Middle Eastern centers and prospered from participation in long-distance networks of trade. The remainder of the chapter examines the resurgence of this region in the Early Iron Age, from 1000 to 500 b. c.e. The focus is on three societies: the Assyrians of northern Mesopotamia; the Israelites of Israel; and the Phoenicians of Lebanon and Syria and their colonies in the western Mediterranean, mainly carthage. After the decline or demise of the ancient centers dominant throughout the third and second millennia b. c.e., these societies evolved into new political, cultural, and commercial centers.