The second millennium B.C. remains one of the most poorly known of all of the archaeological periods on the Persian plateau. Older excavations and limited surveys, summarized in several important articles and books, have yielded scattered information about pottery styles and burial practices. The limited nature of this information has encouraged a renewal of field work relating to the second millennium during the past decade. As a result, there is now sufficient new evidence to permit a tentative restructuring of some aspects of the interpretative problems involved, particularly in regard to the western and northern border areas of the plateau. In these areas many of the cultural patterns dating to the early second millennium had their inception in the third millennium, and had disappeared, or had been greatly modified, by the end of the first quarter of the second millennium. Many of the cultural patterns which then developed were in turn terminated in the third quarter of the millennium by the onset of the new ethnic movements and major political changes of the beginning Iron Age.

THE LATE THIRD AND EARLY SECOND MILLENNIA B.C.

During the late third and early second millennia b.c. the Persian plateau was divided into distinct cultural areas as indicated by the distribution of ceramic tradition: the Gurgan Grey Ware in Gurgan province in the north-east; the Giyān IV–III Painted Ware in eastern Luristān; and, between the two, the Yanik

HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

With the establishment of the Eighteenth Dynasty, written evidence for events in Palestine becomes available to a far greater extent than ever before. The Egyptian rulers extended their power up the Mediterranean coast and into Syria, and the records of their campaigns contain many mentions of identifiable sites. There is therefore the possibility of interpreting events suggested by the archaeological evidence in the light of the written evidence, and in this way providing a historical framework. Another effect of the restoration of Egyptian power was a considerable development of trade in the eastern Mediterranean, and the appearance of foreign pottery and other objects is often of chronological assistance.

The first event that is likely to have affected Palestine was the expulsion of the Hyksos by Amosis (1570–1546 B.C.). The capture of the Hyksos capital Avaris came early in his reign. According to Manetho, this was followed by the exodus of a great number of the Asiatic Hyksos. Amosis's next step was to reinforce his position by a campaign in southern Palestine, in which the major event was the capture of Sharuhen after a siege of three years. It is suggested that Tell el-Fār'ah (South) is to be identified as Sharuhen. Such a length of siege does not suggest that Amosis's expedition was on a large scale. These events may have taken place in the first seven to ten years of the reign. It is probable that Amosis did not penetrate into northern Palestine until late in his reign.

ISOLATION OF MINOAN–MYCENAEAN LITERACY

If some fairly high degree of literacy, and at least a modest production of literature, are to be expected in an original and in other respects notable culture, such as the Minoan in its great days, then the Minoan culture must be considered odd. As with all peoples before a certain measure of literacy is attained, doubtless there was ‘oral literature’, but about Minoan oral compositions nothing much can be inferred. When at length writing had been learned, at least writing for some purposes, the writing down of creative literature seems not to have been one of the purposes. Of written literature, indeed, not one scrap survives, nor is there any evidence pointing to the existence of any written literature. Oral compositions may well have been common right down to the end. Certainly there was no high degree of literacy.

For the understanding of this, many necessary facts are known only partially, and many more are lost. Theory too is weak. About literacy itself, generally, as a phenomenon, knowledge is rudimentary. There is no published study that has both scope and value. We know little of what to expect, how to understand. This is particularly true of the earlier stages. Until enough is known so that sharp delimitations are possible, it seems best to include a wide range of graphic expression and communication.

SYRIA IN THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY B.C.

The march of Murshilish I and his Hittite army down the Euphrates, and pillage and destruction of Babylon, in the early years of the sixteenth century, marked the end of an epoch, and ushered in an era of great political change. Governments were overthrown and dynasties ended, and in the confusion which ensued, new peoples moved into the area which at one time used to be known as the Fertile Crescent. During the seventeenth century, a time when archaeology shows a decline in civilization and almost no written evidence has survived, the ethnic map of the Ancient Near East was redrawn, new city states were founded, and old ones declined and were abandoned, or grew prosperous and increased their territory. Though the changes appear sudden, they must have happened gradually, and had begun much earlier. Chief and most vigorous of the newcomers were the Hurrians, whose appearances in the Near East as early as the third millennium have already been mentioned.

From their homeland in the southern Caucasus and the mountains of Armenia these vigorous warriors had spread gradually south and west during the course of the third millennium and the first centuries of the second; they are found as the ruling class at Urkish in the time of the Akkadian kings, and this hilly region somewhere south of Diyarbakr remained a stronghold of Hurrian civilization throughout their history. In the mythological text known as the Song of Ullikummi, Urkish is named as the seat of Kumarbi, one of the great deities of the Hurrian pantheon.

EVENTS OF HAMMURABI'S REIGN

The sixth of his line, Hammurabi was the inheritor of a kingdom established by a century of peaceful succession, unimpaired by major calamities, but hardly grown beyond the pale which his ancestor Sumuabum had reserved for himself amid the tide of Amorite invaders. In the general equilibrium of weakness Babylon had lost its upstart character, but had gained little else than recognition as an abiding feature in a world of close horizons. Even the fall of Isin, to which the predecessor of Hammurabi had contributed, did not result in any apparent increase of Babylon's territory or importance, all the fruits being gathered by Rim-Sin of Larsa. The first five kings of Babylon ventured seldom abroad, and their date-formulae, which are virtually the sole authority for their reigns, show them occupied mainly in religious and defensive building, and the clearing of canals.

What extent of territory was controlled by the predecessors of Hammurabi is defined only by the places where tablets dated in the reigns of these kings happen to have been found. Most prominent among these is Sippar represented under all the early kings of Babylon; then Dilbat and Kutha, sometimes Kish, which however at other times was independent. In the date-formulae occur as conquests some more distant towns such as Kazallu, Akuz, Kar-Shamash, Marad, and Isin, after its fall. It was never, before Hammurabi himself, more than a diocese of about fifty miles radius about the capital city, and even this by no means tightly compacted, but subject to invasions and erosions on all its bounds.

THE CHRONOLOGY OF THE LATE PALACE PERIOD (c:. 1700–1380 B.C.)

The palaces at Cnossus and at Phaestus were destroyed time and time again, but on each occasion they rose more splendid than before, bearing witness to the resilience and optimism of the inhabitants. Any traces of defensive building disappeared at an early date, which shows that the catastrophes were due not to enemy attacks but to natural causes. After an earthquake about 1700 b.c. the palaces were rebuilt, but this in itself is not an indication of the end of a period. Indeed a similar catastrophe occurred about 1575 b.c. at Cnossus, and it was at this point that Evans placed the division between Middle Minoan and Late Minoan, thereby coinciding with a general historical break which occurred with the expulsion of the Hyksos from Egypt, the beginning of the Eighteenth Dynasty and the New Kingdom in Egypt. It is tempting to assign the seventeenth century in Crete to the preceding phase, but this gives a distorted picture.

It is vital to understanding of the Early Palace Period to realize that during it the Minoans made their own decisive entry into the circle of the civilized world. Their rise had been based on their isolation and their ships, and they had become a seapower by contemporary standards. The eastern states had then no interest in disputing the position of Crete, and the Aegean world from which she had emerged was as yet no match for her.

SHAMSHI-ADAD I

Scarcely thirty years ago the figure of Hammurabi, the unifier of Babylonia, still stood out in striking isolation. In fact, at the time he ascended the throne another centralized empire already occupied the whole of northern Mesopotamia: it was the personal creation of Shamshi-Adad I, to whom recent discoveries have made it possible to give his place in history.

Whereas Hammurabi had inherited a considerable territory from his father, Shamshi-Adad had more modest beginnings. He belonged to one of the numerous nomad clans which had infiltrated into Mesopotamia after the break-up of the Third Dynasty of Ur. His father, Ila-kabkabu, ruled over a land bordering on the kingdom of Mari, with which he had come into conflict. It is not well known what happened next. According to one version, the authenticity of which is not certain, Shamshi-Adad made his way into Babylonia, while his brother succeeded to Ila-kabkabu. Later on he seized Ekallatum; the capture of this fortress, on the left bank of the Tigris, in the southern reaches of the lower Zab, laid the gates of Assyria open to him. The moment was propitious, for Assyria had only lately regained her independence, having previously had to submit to Naram-Sin of Eshnunna, who had advanced as far as the upper Khabur. But Naram-Sin's conquests had been ephemeral: on his death, Assyria had shaken off the yoke of Eshnunna, only to fall beneath that of Shamshi-Adad. Once installed on the throne of Ashur, the latter soon set about extending his dominion in the direction of the West.

In a previous chapter the nomadic way of life of the inhabitants of Palestine during the period roughly equivalent to the First Intermediate Period of Egypt was described. It was sharply differentiated from the Early Bronze Age, for instead of people living in walled towns there was a population quite uninterested in town life, bringing with them new pottery, new weapons and new burial practices, of types best explained as those of nomads. In Syria there is a similar break, and there are many links to show that the newcomers in the two areas were connected. In Syria, there is documentary evidence to suggest that these nomadic intruders were the Amorites, and it can thus be accepted that it was at this time that the Amorites, described in the Biblical record as part of the population of the country, reached Palestine.

The break at the end of this period of nomadic occupation is as sharp as that at its beginning. Towns once more appear, and there are once more new burial practices, new pottery, new weapons, new ornaments. There is a most surprising lack of any objects or practices which, where the archaeological evidence is sound, can be shown to carry through from the earlier stage to the later. It is for this reason that it seems misleading to apply to the stage of nomadic occupation the term Middle Bronze I, as was done when the evidence of the period was first becoming apparent, though this is still used by many archaeologists in the United States and Israel.

THE DYNASTY OF THE ‘GRAND REGENT’ RULERS IN ELAM

To posterity the history of Persia at the time when the First Dynasty of Babylon held sway in Mesopotamia seems to narrow itself down to the history of Elam, and indeed almost down to the history of Susiana, the Elamite plain which bordered on Mesopotamia. Whatever took place in the mountainous parts of the country at this time remains shrouded in impenetrable obscurity. From the whole of Persia not a single archaeological monument has come down to us for this period, not even from Susiana. From only one Elamite ruler during the Early Babylonian period has a record in the Elamite language survived. Apart from this our sources from the country itself (leaving aside certain indications in Elamite inscriptions of the later, ‘classical’ period of the thirteenth to the twelfth centuries) consist of 837 clay tablets, written in Akkadian and in many cases damaged. Of these, somewhat more than half are legal documents, the remainder commercial texts; nearly all come from Susa, only a few from Mālamīr (possibly the ancient Khukhnur).

In view of this state of affairs with regard to the sources, the main task of the next section in this chapter must be to trace a picture of the legal system in ancient Elam. However, the records in question also provide important information about its political history, in so far as the Elamites often took oath by invoking the reigning princes.

THE NATURE OF THE EVIDENCE

In attempting a history of the Mycenaean age we are still largely confined to the history of material culture, to the generalized story of the establishment of settlements, to their destructions and rebuildings, which are often dated only in terms of the successive styles of pottery used by the inhabitants. From the ruins of houses and palaces we can reconstruct their appearance when stone, brick, and timber were new; we can in patches see what fresco pictures brightened their walls. Fragments of carved ivory give hints of the adornment of wooden furniture long since burned or rotted into ashes and dust; some weapons, tools and vessels of metal survive, though most when outworn would have gone for scrap to the melting pot, unless laid underground with the dead; and though tombs may be robbed, we do sometimes, if rarely, find in them vessels or ornaments of gold or the more corruptible silver. We have, moreover, in various materials, these peoples’ own picture of themselves and their activities; we can, from their precious objects, their houses and fortifications and their monumental tombs, assess at least in degree their wealth and power, their pride and their fears, in this world and the next; we can trace from objects of commerce—or from such of them as are less perishable—how far they travelled and traded, what other cities of men they knew; to the extent that history is the account of ‘what it was like to be there then’, we can write their history.

THE LAST YEARS OF THE TWELFTH DYNASTY

When, in 1798 B.C., King Makherure Ammenemes IV ascended the throne of Egypt his father and grandfather before him had ruled the land for the greater part of a century. It is inevitable that he himself should have been well advanced in age at the time of his accession and it is hardly surprising that his reign, including a period of co-regency with his father, did not exceed ten years. In spite of its brevity, an understandable absence of brilliant achievement, and a slight falling off in the quality of the works of art produced, the reign shows little evidence of a serious decline in Egyptian prosperity and prestige. The monuments of Ammenemes IV are fairly numerous and frequently of excellent workmanship. They include a small, but handsome, temple at Medīnet Ma‘ādi in the Faiyūm which he and his father together dedicated to the harvest-goddess Renenutet. At Semna in the northern Sudan the height of the Nile was recorded in the king's fifth regnal year, and at Sinai working parties of Years 4, 6, 8, and 9 have left testimonials of continued activity in the turquoise mines.

Syria evidently acknowledged Egypt's ascendancy as of old. Beirut has yielded a gold pectoral and a small diorite sphinx of Ammenemes IV and in the tomb of Prince Ypshomuibi of Byblos were found a gold-mounted obsidian casket and a fine grey stone vase with his cartouches.

THE OLD HITTITE KINGDOM (CONTINUED)

In this chapter we take up again the history of the Hittite Kingdom from the moment when an usurper first assumed the throne by violent means. Owing to the recovery in recent years of a well-preserved contemporary text we have been able to follow the events of at least part of the reign of Khattushilish I in considerable detail. The figure of this ancient ruler dominates the period of the Old Kingdom, down to the accession of Telepinush, principally on account of this much fuller documentation. For his successors we are dependent almost entirely on the Edict of Telepinush, described above; but following the murder of Murshilish I, even this precious document becomes mutilated, and though no less than seven paragraphs were devoted to the reign of his successor, Khantilish I, as compared with only three to Khattushilish, little consecutive sense can be made from them. Khantilish had been a cup-bearer and was married to a sister of Murshilish named Kharapshilish. It is likely, therefore, that Khantilish was a man of about the same age as his predecessor. The narrative of Telepinush is concerned to stress the impious and monstrous nature of the act of blood committed by Khantilish and his son-in-law, Zidantash, rather than to present the history of his reign in an objective manner. It even omits to mention that he became king, but this fact can hardly be doubted, since his wife is referred to as the queen.

THE NATURE OF THE MIDDLE CYPRIOT PERIOD

The transition from the Early to the Middle Bronze Age in Cyprus is a most difficult process to define, for the later period evolves from the earlier without cultural break or natural disaster to provide a landmark. Although very few settlement sites have been investigated, it seems clear from the evidence of cemeteries which were used both in E.C. and M.C. that the transition in material culture was gradual. Probably the least unsatisfactory way of drawing the distinction between the two periods is by recognizing the decorated pottery known as White Painted II ware as diagnostic of M.C. I. Other material aspects of M.C. I are almost indistinguishable from those of E.C. III.

The Middle Cypriot period has been divided into three phases, I, II and III. M.C. I appears to have lasted from c. 1850 b.c. until c. 1800, while M.C. II covers the period c. 1800–1700; estimates for the duration of M.C. III vary between c. 1700–1600 and c. 1700–1550 b.c. The opening date is fairly closely tied to Minoan chronology in view of the imported Early Minoan III (Middle Minoan la) bridge-spouted jar from a tomb at Lapithos identified as transitional E.C. III A–B, and the Middle Minoan II Kamares cup from a late M.C. I tomb at Karmi. The date of the end of the M.C. period is determined by the contexts in Palestine and Egypt in which the earliest L.C. objects have been found; in Egypt, these are no earlier than the 17th Dynasty, and a date in the middle of the sixteenth century b.c. for the end of the M.C. period seems desirable.