THE CHRONOLOGY OF THE EARLY PALACE PERIOD (c. 2000–1700 b.c.)

The first palaces in Crete were built soon after the turn of the millennium. Could there be a more obvious mark than this for the beginning of an epoch? With them Minoan civilization rose from its prehistoric beginnings and attained the rank of an advanced civilization. But did it really even now enter the realm of history? Names, personalities and direct written sources are lacking. On the other hand the historical setting of this civilization cannot be disputed. It finds expression in its involvement in contemporary and subsequent events of Mediterranean history. Monuments consequently play a greater part than actions and people in providing a picture of this period, and the archaeological interpretation of these monuments is of cardinal importance. The Greeks later associated this period with the figure of Minos in their mythology. Any attempt to separate the historical and the mythical features of Minos is hopeless, but his name has rightly been given to this civilization which we can discern in the strange light of early history.

The palaces stood for about 600 years. After their destruction in about 1400 b.c. they were not rebuilt. The Palace Period can be split into an earlier and a later stage in terms of stratification and architectural developments. The present chapter is concerned only with the earlier stage of the Palace Period.

SOURCES

History begins in Anatolia with the records of the Assyrian trading colonies, described in the first volume (ch. XXIV) of this work. The period covered by these documents, hardly more than two centuries in all, closes with the disappearance of the colonies not long after 1780 b.c. The art of writing appears to have been temporarily lost, for it was an entirely different form of cuneiform script that was introduced by the Hittites about a century later. Of the many thousands of baked clay tablets unearthed by the German excavators on the site of the Hittite capital at Boǧazköy since work started in 1906, and constituting the Hittite royal archives, only a handful can be dated by their script as early as the seventeenth century b.c. However, many historical texts of this date have come to light in the form of later copies, inscribed like the greater part of the archives during the fourteenth and thirteenth centuries b.c., and such copies can be used confidently as a first-class source for much of the earlier period. Statements contained in them about events already past at the time of the original inscription are of course of less certain value, but in default of other relevant evidence they cannot be ignored.

THE RULE OF THE MILITARY KING

Out of the struggles to regain her independence and her ascendancy over the warlike nations of Western Asia, Egypt during the Eighteenth Dynasty emerged, for the first time in her history, as a predominantly military state under the rule of a king dedicated from early youth to the leadership of his army and navy and to the expansion and consolidation of his empire by force of arms.

Elevated while scarcely more than a boy to the rank of commander-in-chief of the armed forces, the heir apparent to the Egyptian throne under Tuthmosis I and his successors devoted a considerable portion of his early years to training himself in the arts of war. Proficiency as an archer, a charioteer, and a ship-handler, achieved under the supervision of his father's veterans, ranked high among the qualifications demanded of the future king and were the accomplishments in which throughout his life he took his greatest pride. Experience in actual combat followed shortly after the young ruler's accession to the throne, an occasion almost invariably seized upon by the princes of Nubia and Asia to revolt against their Egyptian overlord. Following the conquests of Tuthmosis III one or two campaigns usually sufficed to restore order throughout the empire and eliminated the need for further show of force on the part of the pharaoh. Nevertheless, the military point of view remained with the king throughout his reign and profoundly affected the nature of his government and the internal conditions of the land which he governed.

THE CAMPAIGNS OF KAMOSE

The literary tradition of the New Kingdom, represented by the Story of Apophis and Seqenenre, suggests that the clash between the Hyksos and the native Egyptian kings of the Seventeenth Dynasty occurred in the reign of Seqenenre (II ?), as the result of deliberate provocation on the part of the Hyksos ruler. The first sentences of the story tell the condition of Egypt at the time: Seqenenre rules in the Southern City (Thebes), while Apophis rules in Avaris; the whole of Egypt pays tribute to the Hyksos. Egypt is described as a divided land, and there is no suggestion that the whole of Egypt is occupied by the Asiatics. The evidence in support of a total occupation is slender and inconclusive; even the famous description of Hyksos devastation in the inscription of Hatshepsut in the Speos Artemidos specifies only that ‘the Asiatics were in Avaris in the Northland, roving foreigners being in the midst of them’.

It is generally assumed that the lost portion of this story described a struggle between the Hyksos and the Egyptians, the outcome of which may have been a limited victory for the Egyptians. It is also assumed that Seqenenre was killed in the course of this struggle, the evidence in support of this assumption being the shattered skull of the king's mummy. The fragmentary beginning of a New Kingdom romance is, however, an uncertain foundation on which to build an historical edifice.