ZEV RADOVAN / ALAMY STOCK PHOTO
For some, the end was sudden—invaders sacked their city or an earthquake brought down the house upon its occupants. For others, it was a catastrophe in slow motion, with drought impacting crops and famine decimating the population. Nobody in the Aegean or eastern Mediterranean escaped the effects of the Late Bronze Age collapse, in the decades after 1200 BC. Virtually everyone was affected in some way, shape, or form. Life as they knew it, and as they had known it for centuries before, changed irrevocably. Those who survived the calamities had to adapt, carry on, find some way to persist—even as the drought continued, the trade routes disappeared or became prey to bandits and raiders, and basic resources became scarce.
In my new book, After 1177 B.C.: The Survival of Civilizations, I examine what it might have been like for the survivors, back when their Bronze Age world was collapsing and in the immediate aftermath. What did they do or fail to do? Did anyone at the time know they were in the middle of a collapse? How did they regroup and recover? Or did they? Did they adapt or transform? Or did they simply go under, to be replaced by new states and new societies?1
Among the peoples that emerged in this era of survival and transformation were the ancient Israelites. As BAR readers know, the questions of how and when the Israelites established themselves in the land of Canaan are complex and controversial. Some scholarly hypotheses involve the biblical story of the Exodus and a military conquest of Canaan by the Israelites, resulting either in a genocide or a more peaceful integration such as variously described in the books of Joshua and Judges. Other possibilities envision the Israelites as nomads or semi-nomads peacefully infiltrating the area, as peasants from the highlands who revolted against Canaanite overlords, or as elements within Canaanite society that only gradually developed into “Israelites.” Recent discussions have revolved around anthropological considerations of Israelite ethnicity, especially in comparison to the other peoples (like the Philistines) who emerged in the region during the same period.
No matter which theory individual scholars subscribe to, we know for certain that an inscription on a victory monument of Pharaoh Merneptah, found by William M.F. Petrie in 1896, claims that the Egyptians defeated a people called “Israel,” who were living in the land of Canaan by about 1207 BC. We also know that, regardless of the antecedent events and the means by which they entered the picture, the initial Israelite settlements were established by the end of the 12th century and quickly exploded in number during the early 11th century. That much has been attested courtesy of a multitude of archaeological surveys that have been conducted in the central hill country since the 1960s.
ZEV RADOVAN / ALAMY STOCK PHOTO
Given those facts, and regardless of whether they had been languishing in the Sinai for several decades or were already present in the land but “invisible” or had been infiltrating the land slowly over centuries, the Israelites may have simply taken advantage of the havoc brought on by the Late Bronze Age collapse at the end of the 13th and beginning of the 12th centuries. In the southern Levant, the political and military vacuum created by the retreat of the New Kingdom Egyptian empire, and the destruction of the various Canaanite cities, would have meant that the Israelites could have moved into areas that they could not normally have occupied under their own power. As a result, the Israelites would have been able to take over all or most of Canaan by the end of the 12th century.
YOSEF GARFINKEL / SKYVIEW
Although speculative, this scenario plausibly provides the “how” that is missing from most of the hypotheses mentioned earlier about the emergence of a people called “Israel” in the land of Canaan. For those who believe in the miraculous hand of God, there is no need to investigate further, but for the rest, it remains a viable question as to how else the Israelites could have possibly attacked and successfully captured the imposing Canaanite city-states. Under normal circumstances, they are unlikely to have been able to do so, at least on their own. However, once the so-called “Sea Peoples” of the Aegean world invaded the Canaanite coast as part and parcel with the other calamities (drought, famine, rebellion, etc.) that brought the Canaanite culture to its knees, and once the Egyptians had retreated from the region, the Israelites may have been able to occupy the ruins of the larger cities and take over some of the lesser towns all by themselves. If that was the case, then it is likely that biblical writers subsequently gave complete credit for the capture and destruction of the Canaanite cities to the Israelites without even mentioning the role of the Sea Peoples; the writers knew the latter only in terms of the biblical Philistines who caused such trouble for Saul and David over the course of their reigns.
However, all of this also brings into focus the question of resilience and cultural survival in the aftermath of the Late Bronze Age collapse; the answer depends on how one interprets the available data. For instance, if the Israelites had indeed been in the region for some time and simply came down from the highlands, then we could potentially separate them out as another Bronze Age culture that proved to be resilient and innovative while morphing eventually into the United Monarchy. If, however, they had recently migrated into the region by whatever means, such as the Exodus (for those who date it to c. 1250 BC), then they would be viewed as newcomers taking advantage of the chaos that followed the collapse, which would be a different story altogether.
ZEV RADOVAN / ALAMY STOCK PHOTO
And what about the Canaanites who had been living in the southern Levant during the Bronze Age? What happened to them? Were they annihilated by the invading Israelites, as the Book of Joshua would have us believe? Or were they assimilated into early Israel and other neighboring peoples, as the Book of Judges describes? Rather than being killed off, I see them more likely as having been assimilated into the new kingdoms that emerged in the region, including Israel and Judah, as well as Philistia, Edom, Ammon, and Moab. But does that mean they were resilient and able to adapt to the new situation, or does it mean they lacked resilience and were overcome by these shifting circumstances?
Although individual Canaanites (and even small communities) may have been resilient to a certain extent, Canaanite society and individual Canaanite city-states ceased to be uniquely identifiable as the transition to the Iron Age continued in the southern Levant, even as they undoubtedly influenced the new kingdoms that arose in the region. This could be interpreted as either transformation and high resiliency on the one hand or as assimilation into the new kingdoms and low resiliency on the other. However, just as we no longer see identifiable Myceneans or Minoans in the Iron Age Aegean, so too we no longer generally talk about Canaanites in the Iron Age Levant. We, rather, talk about Israelites, Judahites, Ammonites, Edomites, Moabites, and so on. I argue, therefore, that the Canaanites exhibited a low degree of resilience and assimilated into the new small kingdoms, albeit with some cultural survivals and influences.
Ancient Israel’s rise during the early Iron Age will continue to be a flash point for discussion. Not only is there still debate as to how and when the Israelites entered the land of Canaan, but it is also open to deliberation whether the Canaanites (1) failed to navigate the era’s changes and were assimilated into the new kingdoms, or (2) were successfully transformed and actually formed a significant portion of the population within these newly established kingdoms.
To conclude, we should ask one final set of questions as well: Does this story of the events that took place 3,000 years ago hold any lessons for today? Is there an easy answer for what to do if our own civilization collapses? If we see problems that continue to affect our society, will we transform, or will we merely try to adjust to the situation? Or, worse still, will we choose to do nothing and risk a cascading failure and systemic collapse, repeating what happened more than three millennia ago? We’ll have to leave it to future scholars for a detailed analysis on how we responded…and whether we were successful or not.
In the wake of the Late Bronze Age collapse, change swept over the eastern Mediterranean world. In the southern Levant, the once-formidable Canaanite city-states yielded to the rise of new kingdoms, including biblical Israel. Explore this historic transformation and the ways in which various peoples adapted to the shifting realities of a changed world.
