1177 B.C

This book was informative but proved to be a frustrating read. Historian Eric Cline presents a detail assessment of the complex factors at play which led to the collapse of the Late Bronze Age, an early interconnected “global” system that included Mycenaean Greece, New Kingdom Egypt, the Hittites, Canaanites, Assyrians, and others. This system was connected through trade in tin and copper (required to smelt bronze) across the Eastern Mediterranean.

What I found frustrating was Cline’s tendency to repeat himself through the work. Many of the chapters are arbitrarily divided into numerous subheadings or, rather than taking a sweeping thematic approach, present a plethora of case-by-case studies that inevitably repeat some information. I’ve generally found this type of “ancient” history incredibly frustrating. The fact that we lack a wealth of extant source materials inevitably leads to the hedging of interpretation (Well, we don’t know this; It could have been this, or that, or this, or that) with most historians afraid to take a leap of faith and present the most plausible narrative. That was the case in this volume. I kept wanting Cline to provide a straightforward, coherent narrative that explained this systems collapse with it being implied that all interpretation is subject to change at the availability of new material. Instead, only the last chapter details the “collapse” and, even then, with an enormous amount of hedging and hand-wringing.

It's rare that I write a review on Goodreads and even rarer that don't finish a book—I feel a sense of defeat—but I could not finish reading 1177 B.C.. I made it through part three before deciding to cut my loses and close the book. Many reviewers have gone into some of the reasons I could not bring myself to finish. In the end, I felt misled. 1177 B.C. presents itself as telling a colorful story of the history of the fall of the Bronze Age and how we can learn lessons from it today, but what I got was a dry enumeration of facts and research. I expected a narrative similar to that of 1492 by Charles Mann, but 1177 B.C. reads more like a text book with scattered phrases and connecting statements to make it seem like the author is telling a story (i.e., "as we shall see below," and "back to our main story"), but my impression is that these phrases were added later in an attempt to lighten up a rather dry text.

If you're expecting a colorful, first-person narrative that presents Bronze Age history in context, muses on the origin of the Sea Peoples, and relates the fall of the Bronze Age and its subsequent "dark age" to the modern era, then 1177 B.C. is not for you. If you'd like a dry telling of the facts and figures of the late Bronze Age, including a summary of the archeological evidence, then 1177 B.C. fits the bill.

Somehow, in mid-January 2017 I watched Dr Eric Cline’s lecture to the famed Oriental Institute at the University of Chicago on February 25, 2015.

It was really great—you know how some books and some topics, an author can satisfy all your curiosity in an hour-long talk? There was some risk of that with this talk, but my wonderful library system delivered an audiobook version of this book narrated by Andy Caploe, who must have gotten some instruction in the pronunciation of Late Bronze Age names like Suppiluliuma the Hittite king, Burna-Buriash the Kassite-Babylonian king, and Shutruk-Nahhunte the Elamite because it was wonderful to hear these names and now be able to pronounce them.

I am so happy I was able to go through the entire book because of the details are absolutely fascinating and gorgeously-presented. Cline emphasizes in the beginning that it’s important to understand what collapsed circa 1177 BCE, and spends the majority of the book doing that, thereby painting a beautiful portrait of flowing international goods, culture, letters, royal spouses, and more between Egypt, the Mitanni, the Hittites, the Mycenaeans, Crete and Cypress, Canaan, Babylonia, Libya, Nubia, and more. Spending a few days immersed in our reconstruction of this cosmopolitan world was a moving experience for me.

A smaller part of the book details not so much the collapse as how we can know anything about what ended it all, the specific archaeological details that were pieced together to get that picture, and the way people have understood the collapse over the years. This part is also fantastic. Far too many history books and podcasts summarize the results of archaeological or textual analysis without getting into the gritty details of what constituted that analysis.

My favorite example of Cline’s detailed exposition of specific archaeological excavations is when he discussed the Uluburun and Cape Gelidonya shipwrecks (which went down sometime in the 1200s and 1300s) excavated by George Bass, whose team invented underwater archaeology. Cline gave enough juicy details about the excavations here that I was moved to get my hands on George Bass’ “A History of Seafaring”, a large and well-illustrated book that was alas published before the Uluburun wreck was first discovered by (get this) a sponge diver but after the field was well-established by Bass and his colleagues.

The last part of the book is about why, and as the least interesting, most fluid, and most unknowable part of the whole story, thankfully occupies the least space. Cline says it in more words, but the reason why this cosmopolitan urban world order collapsed is because, well, shit happens.

Finally, I’ll share my hot tip for successful audiobook consumption. I usually don’t do audiobooks these days because I drive, and I can’t take notes during a drive. However, I managed to borrow the ebook as well as the audiobook, and thankfully my work and family duties are relaxed enough that I’m able to spend a few minutes after arriving at my destination to skim the parts I just listened to on my ebook reader to make notes and highlight the most striking points. This way, I got the best of both worlds—excellent pronunciation guidance and a dramatic reading, as well as an annotated text.

I am really looking forward to Dr Cline’s forthcoming book, “Digging Up Armageddon” about the history and archaeology of Megiddo, where twenty cities have been found, built over three thousand years! If you’re on Twitter, it’s worth following him.