The Oxford History of the Biblical World (11 page)

In the centuries between 2300 and 2000, Palestine was largely home to pastoral nomads, but during the twentieth century
BCE
, a revival of the region’s urban life led to the reoccupation of most of the old Early Bronze Age cities and the founding of several new ones. Most cities were fortified with huge ramparts that required constant remodeling and reinforcement throughout the Middle Bronze Age. For the most part the cities did not approach the size of the large towns of northern Syria, with only one real exception—Hazor, which at 72 hectares (180 acres) was larger than Ebla. Most Middle Bronze Canaanite towns covered less than 20 hectares (50 acres). As in the Early Bronze Age, Palestine remained on the periphery of the predominant cultures of the Near East, but it was neither isolated nor unsophisticated.

The revival in Canaan coincides with a similar upsurge in Egypt. The end of the third millennium had constituted a period of political and economic disintegration for the ancient land of the Nile, but Egypt’s disruption ended about 2000
BCE
, when the country was reunited under the rule of the pharaohs of Dynasty 12. Archaeological evidence from various sites in Palestine indicates that the revival of Egypt brought a restoration of Egyptian trade into Canaan. Byblos, on the Lebanese coast, had been the primary trade port for Egypt during much of the third millennium, and it became such again. But unlike the situation during the Early Bronze III period (2700–2300
BCE
), when the Egyptians’ sea trade with Byblos had simply obviated their need to import goods overland through Canaan, during the Middle Bronze Age a considerable Egyptian economic influence spread all over the land.

Middle Bronze Age Canaan has yet to produce any significant literary remains. Accordingly, written historical sources are confined to documents from surrounding states, especially Egypt. We gain some sense of the political makeup of the region from the Execration Texts, Egyptian magical texts that name potential enemies of Egypt. The lists were written on bowls or figurines, which were then broken as part of a ceremony believed to render the enemies helpless. Among the foes named in these texts are numerous Canaanite princes, the rulers of small city-states, none of which compared in extent or power to those in Syria.

The close connections between Egypt and Canaan took a surprising turn as the Middle Bronze Age unfolded. Excavations in the Nile Delta have shown that as early as the nineteenth century, large numbers of Canaanite immigrants began to settle there, building towns similar to those in Canaan. Tell ed-Dab’a, ancient Avaris, is such a town. By the mid-seventeenth century, the Semitic population in the delta had managed to gain political control of much of northern Egypt, with Avaris as their capital. During the next century (1650–1550) their domination widened, encompassing most of Lower and Middle Egypt. Only partially did they assimilate Egyptian cultural characteristics. The Egyptians called these nonnative kings
heqaw khasut,
“rulers of foreign lands,” a designation rendered into Greek during the first millennium as “Hyksos.” This extraordinary period, when northern Egypt became virtually an extension of Canaan, finally ended when the native Egyptian rulers of Thebes (Dynasty 17) launched a revolt against the Hyksos and eventually reestablished native political authority over the north. Following the reunification of Egypt, the rulers of Dynasty 18 carried the attack into Canaan itself in a series of military campaigns. Egypt’s emergence as a new imperial power was one of the major forces that brought the Middle Bronze Age to a close in Canaan.

We cannot leave our discussion of Middle Bronze Age Canaan without noting that this region produced one of the most important innovations in the history of civilization. About 1700
BCE
, someone in Canaan, needing a notational system to keep records but lacking time or opportunity to master either of the complex writing systems available at the time, Akkadian or Egyptian, created the alphabet. This brilliant achievement would revolutionize the development of writing and literacy throughout the Western world. The new script used drawings of common objects, but they designated only the first sound of the name of each object. Since Canaanite, like most languages, had only about thirty sounds, a compact, easy-to-learn system of writing had been invented. This is the beginning of what is popularly known as the Phoenician alphabet
(Phoenician
is the Greek word for
Canaanite),
the ancestor of every Western alphabet, including the one you are reading now.

During the Late Bronze Age (1550–1200
BCE
), new imperial powers emerged in the Near East. Each sought to dominate Syria-Palestine, motivated partly by that region’s strategic location in the trade network. One of these newcomers, Mitanni, took shape in northeastern Syria itself and came to control all of northern Syria for nearly two
centuries. The second primary power was the revived Egypt, which under the pharaohs of the New Kingdom (1550–1069) ruled an empire that encompassed all of Palestine and southern Syria and contended for control of central Syria, a goal that naturally brought it in conflict with Mitanni. The third state, Hatti in central Turkey, did not emerge as an interregional power until the rise of King Suppiluliumas in the mid-fourteenth century. Once on the scene, however, Hatti replaced Mitanni as the master of northern Syria and as Egypt’s primary rival. Syria-Palestine thus served as both arena and object of conflict between the northern states and Egypt.

Aleppo, the old capital of Yamhad, sank to lesser status after its destruction by the Hittites in the early sixteenth century. It managed, however, to retain some importance during the Late Bronze Age. To the northeast of Aleppo was Carchemish, a well-fortified city located at a strategic crossing of the Euphrates River, which came to play an important part in the political drama of the period.

Northwest Syria was divided into several states, including Mukish, with its capital at Alalakh, Ugarit on the coast, and Niya and Nuhashe in the interior. Farther south, three important cities lay on or near the Orontes River—Tunip, Qatna, and Qadesh/Kinza. These cities formed the buffer zone between the spheres of influence of the northern and southern powers; each had to play dangerous political games, striving either to maintain its independence or to choose one imperial power as its protector. To their west lay the area known as Amurru, another bone of contention between the great powers. Several important coastal cities, including Arvad, Sumur, Gubla (Byblos), Beruta (Beirut), Sidon, and Tyre, played an active commercial role during this period. Between the Lebanon and the Anti-Lebanon mountain ranges were the states of Tahshi in the north and Amqa in the south. The area around Damascus—at an earlier date called Apum—was now known as Upi. Amqa and Upi marked the northernmost bounds of the area regularly controlled by Egypt throughout the Late Bronze Age. In Canaan proper the land was divided into more than a dozen small, weak city-states, none of which had any political clout, with Hazor, Shechem, Megiddo, Gezer, and Jerusalem as the most prominent.

The end of the Middle Bronze and beginning of the Late Bronze Age saw the expansion of an important population group known as the Hurrians in northern Syria and, later, as far south as Canaan. Mitanni, in northeast Syria, dominated by Hurrians, became the most significant Hurrian power of the period, controlling the northern half of the Near East by the early fifteenth century. Despite its great importance, however, we know little about Mitanni. Its capital city, Washukani, is one of the few major capitals that remain as yet unidentified, and only a few Mitannian documents have been found in the archives of other cities. It is clear, however, that after 1470, Mitanni, under King Saushtatar, extended its sway over all of northern Syria to the Mediterranean, as well as eastward through Assyria. The states of central Syria as far south as Qadesh, on the southern end of the Orontes, may also have become Mitannian vassals.

While Mitanni was becoming established in northern Syria, Egypt was beginning its expansion from the south. Having expelled the Semitic-speaking Hyksos from the delta, the Egyptians apparently began to see both the economic and the political value of controlling an empire. The first three kings of Dynasty 18—Ahmose, Amenhotep I, and Thutmose I—moved quickly to seize control of the Canaanite city-states in
Palestine. Thutmose I (1504–1492) marched his troops all the way to the Euphrates River in the second year of his reign.

Thutmose III (1479–1425) brought Egypt to its greatest power during the New Kingdom. In a series of campaigns he managed to impose Egyptian control over Canaan, as well as most of southern and central Syria. His first campaign brought Thutmose up against a large coalition of Canaanite and Syrian city-states led by the central Syrian city of Qadesh. The enemies clashed in a famous battle in the Jezreel Valley in northern Canaan. After a brief skirmish, the coalition members hastily retreated into the fortified town of Megiddo, which Thutmose besieged. After seven months the trapped rulers surrendered, all then being forced to pay a heavy tribute and to take an oath of loyalty. Thutmose’s inscriptions claim that the coalition was composed of 330 princes, but this is an exaggeration. A more realistic number is found in the temple of Amun at Karnak, containing a list of 119 towns whose rulers are said to have been captured in the siege of Megiddo. More likely, this list enumerates all the towns and villages that came under Thutmose’s control as a result of the campaign, whether or not their rulers had capitulated at Megiddo. Canaan was now firmly in Egyptian hands.

His appetite whetted, Thutmose began his efforts to secure control of Syria as well. He built a fleet of ships that allowed him to sail his army to the Syrian coast, thus saving the men a grueling march through Canaan. Three campaigns against the powerful city-states of Tunip and Qadesh/Kinza succeeded only partially, but they prepared the way for Thutmose’s greatest military achievement in his thirty-third year, when he and his army marched to the vicinity of Carchemish in northern Syria and crossed the Euphrates, meeting only minor resistance from Mitanni.

But control of the kingdoms of Syria was always tenuous for the Egyptians, and Thutmose found himself fighting in northwest Syria during several subsequent years. At his death the Syrian states quickly rebelled, obliging his successor Amenhotep II (1427–1400) to lead three campaigns into Syria to enforce Egyptian control. But these came early in his reign; during his latter years Amenhotep appears to have given up. Under Thutmose IV a peace treaty between Egypt and Artatama of Mitanni presumably delineated each empire’s sphere of influence in Syria. Evidently both sides realized that an equilibrium had been achieved, for the treaty was renewed by the successors of the two kings, Amenhotep III of Egypt and Shuttarna II of Mitanni. The boundaries between the two states probably coincided with those that were in force later during the mid-fourteenth century. Coastal Syria as far north as Ugarit came under Egyptian control, along with southern Syria—the Damascus region, the Biqa Valley of Lebanon (Amqa), and the lands of Qadesh and Amurru. Qatna and the northern states, including Niya and Nuhashe, fell within the Mitannian orbit.

Shuttarna of Mitanni probably saw good reason to keep the peace with Egypt because he was threatened on two sides by growing powers. In the late fifteenth century Assyria, which had been under Mitannian control for about a century, became increasingly independent. And in Anatolia, the Hittites briefly repeated their earlier attempt to extend their influence into northern Syria; they were not successful, and by the end of the fifteenth century they were fighting for their lives against enemies in Anatolia itself. Still, they could not be counted out, and Shuttarna did not need any complications in his dealings with the Egyptians.

The final king of independent Mitanni was Tushratta, a younger son of Shuttarna. Despite coming to his throne in an irregular way, he maintained his authority securely for several years. He continued cordial relations with Egypt, sending his daughter Tadu-Hepa to marry Amenhotep III in a gesture reaffirming the close ties between the two countries. But relations with Amenhotep IV (Akhenaten) deteriorated after Akhenaten sent Tushratta wooden statues covered with gold foil, not the solid gold statues that Amenhotep III had promised.

Mitanni’s downfall was, however, at hand. Tushratta was not prepared to face the extraordinary recovery of Hatti shortly after the great king Suppiluliumas came to its throne. Suppiluliumas was a remarkably able soldier and an astute politician. He saw Mitanni as his primary rival for control of Syria and set about forming alliances to weaken Tushratta’s position. Eventually he marched his army directly into Mitanni and attacked its capital, Washukani. Tushratta apparently had no means to resist the Hittite advance and fled his capital before Suppiluliumas arrived. Meeting no Mitannian opposition, the Hittite king turned westward and promptly conquered all of northern Syria except for Carchemish.

Suppiluliumas was apparently prepared to stop with the conquest of the states in the Mitannian sphere of influence, but the king of Qadesh/Kinza, a vassal of the Egyptians, attacked the Hittite army. Suppiluliumas easily defeated the Qadeshite army and then marched southward, taking over Qadesh and perhaps also Amurru. By the end of Suppiluliumas’s reign, then, all of central Syria, as well as the coast, lay under Hittite control, including the former Egyptian vassals of Ugarit, Amurru, and Qadesh. Such a violation of Egyptian territory would not go unchallenged for long.

Tushratta, the king of Mitanni, meanwhile, met his end, creating further instability. One of his own sons murdered him. With Assyrian help a puppet ruler, Shuttarna III, took control of what was left of Mitanni. Outraged, the Hittite king Suppiluliumas within a short time sent an army under his own son to place Shattiwaza, another son of Tushratta, on the throne as a Hittite vassal.