Timescapes Map Pack 4 – Dominance and Decline – The Late Bronze Age
The Late Bronze Age saw the decline of Babylon and the consolidation of four main powers: the Hittites, The New Kingdom of Egypt, the Hurrian Mitanni dynasty and Middle Assyria. The Mitanni would presently be eclipsed by the Hitittes, whose struggle with Egypt for possession of Canaan and the Levant would dominate the 13th century BC. The end of the Late Bronze Age saw the collapse of all these, and many more, powerful kingdoms in the wave of devastation known as The Bronze Age Collapse.
Timescapes Map Pack 4 – The Late Bronze Age
1595 BC: THE HITTITES – THE DESTRUCTION OF BABYLON
The Hittites, Indo-European immigrants, arrived in Anatolia sometime around the turn of the 2nd millennium BC, gradually assimilating the existing inhabitants, the Hatti and the Hurrians. Over the next 800 years they assumed control of most of central and eastern Anatolia. At the beginning of the 16th century BC, the Hittite empire had become so powerful that its army marched a thousand miles to capture Babylon, the greatest city of Mesopotamia, and depose its Amorite rulers. The Hitties did not linger however, returning to their heartland and leaving the Kassites to occupy and rebuild Babylon.
Timescapes Map Pack 4 – The Late Bronze Age
1460 BC: EMPIRES OF EGYPT AND MITANNI
During the 16th and 15th centuries BC, aggressive Hittite expansion resulted in both the destruction of the Syrian kingdom of Yamḫad and the fall of Amorite Babylon.
However, the Hittites could not sustain political control over the huge area they had destabilised, allowing two major powers to fill the consequent political vacuum: Egypt, whose ambitious king Thutmose III extended Egyptian rule over the whole of the Levant, central Syria and Cyprus, and the Mitanni, apparently an Indo-European warrior class, who dominated most of Mesopotamia and northern Syria.
In southern Mesopotamia, the ancient lands of Sumer were divided between the Kassite rulers of Babylon and the Sealand Kings. In the Aegean, the powerful culture of Mycenae ruled Greece and was soon to assume control over the previously dominant culture of Minoan Crete.
Timescapes Map Pack 4 – The Late Bronze Age
1300 BC: EMPIRE OF THE HITTITES – RISE OF MIDDLE ASSYRIA
By the beginning of the 13th century BC, the Hittites had regained dominance in the Near East, assimilating the bulk of the Mitanni empire and eastern Anatolia. The ascension of the Assyrian king Adad-Nirari I, the first of three powerful rulers, signalled the beginning of the Middle Assyrian Empire.
Timescapes Map Pack 4 – The Late Bronze Age
1200 BC: THE BRONZE AGE COLLAPSE – THE SEA PEOPLES
The 12th century BC was the stage for one of the most important and enigmatic events of the ancient world, the phenomenon that has come to be known as The Bronze Age Collapse.
During this period, almost all of the powerful kingdoms of the Near East experienced decline, if not total destruction. Nearly all the great cities and palaces of the Mycenaeans, Hittites, Syria and the eastern Mediterranean kingdoms were destroyed.
History has tended to blame the piracy of the mysterious Sea Peoples for this chaos, although the causes were probably far more complex, possibly including forced migrations of entire populations due to climate change.
