Bronze Age Multi-Site Destructions (A Preliminary Review) Robert M. Porter Introduction I shall consider the events at or near the ends of the Early Bronze, Middle Bronze and Late Bronze Ages, attempting to update Claude Schaeffer's major work [1]. The full title, in English, of Professor Schaeffer's book is 'Stratigraphy Compared and Chronology of West Asia (3rd & 2nd Millennia BC)'. It is still often quoted for its details although its main thesis was not well received by most scholars, Velikovsky being an exception. Schaeffer proposed several waves of destruction throughout the Near East, some of which he attributed to earthquakes. The areas covered included Anatolia, Syria, Palestine, the Caucasus, NW Iran and he also touched on Egypt and Mesopotamia. In this preliminary review I shall stay within the Fertile Crescent, concentrating on Syria (which was Schaeffer's home ground), for it provides the link between Mesopotamia and Egypt. To establish the historical relationships between destructions, Schaeffer considered the archaeological finds and stratigraphy at numerous sites. He amassed an enormous amount of such data which is why his book continues to be quoted although getting on for 50 years old. For many of the sites he tabulated the strata, illustrating the successive styles of pottery and metalwork and noting any dateable inscriptions. Then, for each region he compared sites, tabulating them side by side, linking them up according to equivalent archaeological styles and dateable finds and marking on the destruction levels. Finally he produced Table IX, giving an overall inter-regional comparison of some of the main sites. Thick horizontal lines were used to indicate notable breaks: from time to time these appear to be very widespread, e.g., around 1600 BC a break was marked right across the table at almost every site. But I shall deal first with the two rather intermittent destruction horizons round about the end of the Early Bronze Age. The End of the Early Bronze Age When I agreed to present a talk at the Cambridge Conference I was under the happy delusion that Schaeffer and Mandelkehr had done most of the work for me. Unfortunately, but not surprisingly in view of its age, Schaeffer's work needs considerable updating. In his first article for SIS, now over ten years old, Moe Mandelkehr followed Schaeffer to a certain extent. Mandelkehr proposed a major event, or series of events, at c.2300 BC (in the generally accepted chronology), which corresponded to Schaeffer's first wave of destructions. His thesis was partially published in three issues of Review under the title 'An Integrated Model for an Earthwide Event at 2300 BC' [2]. Mandelkehr's evidence ranged right round the globe and his theory also involved earthquakes, but he never stated the fundamental cause. I am told that he had in mind a collision with a minor astronomical body. On my own chronology, the Exodus and Conquest come at this period, but that does not necessitate widespread upheavals - except in Egypt and Palestine. Unfortunately, I have no explanation to offer as to a physical cause for disasters in other areas: I can only attempt to summarise the evidence. It is, of course, very tricky to accurately link destructions this far back in history. Also, destructions can occur for a wide variety of reasons. 1. EB Ugarit We will start at Ras Shamra, whose ancient name was Ugarit (this was Schaeffer's own main excavation project). The site has been excavated intermittently for about 60 years and excavation reports continue to appear from time to time. Ras Shamra is a major tell close by the north Syrian coast and well situated as a trading centre. It is on the northern fringe of what might be called 'the Canaanite area'. The Early Bronze Age was not its most impressive period but there does seem to have been a walled town according to the small test excavations that have reached down to the Early Bronze levels. That town was given the period name 'Ugarit Ancient 2' and it was destroyed by fire, at least partly. This, and the contemporary series of site destructions, were dated by Schaeffer to a time equivalent to the end of the Old Kingdom in Egypt [3], which he dated c.2300 BC (see Table 1). The end of the Old Kingdom is nowadays normally dated c.2180, thus knocking over a century out of the following archaeological periods. The next period at Ugarit partly continues the pottery styles of Ugarit Ancient 2, so it was named 'Ugarit Ancient 3'. Some parts of the summit produced only a few burials dug into the debris of Ancient 2, but elsewhere there were some architectural remains and an olive oil press. Thus there seems to have been continued occupation but on a reduced scale. Schaeffer suggested about 300 years for this period followed by a further destruction, but the chronology here is grossly overstretched due to his extended Egyptian chronology. We do not know what brought about the end of this final poor phase of the Early Bronze Age at Ugarit. On the top of the tell, above the debris of Ugarit Ancient 2, was found a layer of clayey soil which was attributed to weathering of the mud brick remains of Ancient 2 and/or wind blown accumulations in which vegetation had grown up. The evidence seems to suggest a significant period of abandonment. Into this clayey soil layer were dug the graves of a new type of people who buried their dead with metal ornaments rather than pottery. Schaeffer called these people 'porteurs de torques', i.e., wearers of solid metal neck bangles or 'torque wearers'. No architectural traces seem to relate to them. They belong early in Schaeffer's 'Ugarit Middle 1' period. [*!* Image: Torque and toggle-pin of 'Ugarit Middle 1' (after Schaeffer [5], fig. 47)] 2. EB Byblos Moving south down the coast to Byblos we get a sequence which has both similarities and differences. Byblos had very strong links to Old Kingdom Egypt as is attested by inscriptions in Egypt and by objects found at Byblos, many inscribed with Egyptian royal names which continue well into the reign of Pepi II, the last significant king of the Old Kingdom. Although Byblos is a very important site, its main excavator, Dunand, never wrote it up properly yet he did record the position of everything on a 3-dimensional grid. An attempt to turn this back into stratified archaeology was subsequently made by a Ph.D student, Muntaha Saghieh, whose book, Byblos in the Third Millennium BC [4], is now the basis of the site's EB stratigraphy although, as she herself emphasised, there is a limit to the accuracy that such an exercise can achieve so long after the excavation. Her conclusions are not too far removed from Schaeffer's, although he seems to have inserted a non-existent 'Byblos Ancient 3' period to match his Ugarit Ancient 3. Saghieh's Strata K III and K IV are equivalent to Schaeffer's Byblos Ancient 2, which ended in a fiery destruction. It is highly likely that this destruction coincided, roughly at least, with the collapse of the Old Kingdom. Aside from the inscriptional evidence (which breaks off at Pepi II), final EB Byblos pottery styles are found in Sixth Dynasty tombs. These pottery styles do not continue after the destruction layer. Prior to the destruction Byblos was an important walled city with a number of temples, the largest of which was the Baalat-Gebal (Batiment 40), i.e., Goddess of Byblos temple. This temple and much of the rest of the city was destroyed by fire, leaving a layer of ashes and burnt stones. The town was rebuilt as Schaeffer's 'Byblos Middle 1' (Saghieh's J), again with several temples. The so-called 'Syrian Temple' (Batiment 2) arose on the ruins of the Baalat temple. Whereas the Old Kingdom temples had some Egyptian features, the new ones were of other types, some of which Saghieh likens to Megara. She sees the destruction as an invasion of newcomers with links mainly to Anatolia and north Syria. The new styles of pottery also seem to point northwards for their origins. The newcomers went in for metalwork, which was found in graves and in foundation deposits for the new temples. Included were some of the same styles of torques and pins that Schaeffer had found at Ugarit in graves in the layer of clayey soil above the EB destruction. Therefore, Schaeffer seems right to link Byblos Middle 1 with Ugarit Middle 1. Surprisingly, these torques and associated 'toggle-pins' are also found as far away as France [5]. Perhaps we should envisage an outflow of metalworking people from Anatolia or the Balkans spreading both southeast to Byblos and northwest to Europe, or perhaps just long distance trading links. Schaeffer inserted, between Byblos Ancient 2 and Middle 1, his 'Byblos Ancient 3', against which he put in his Table IX 'Rareté de vestiges' - i.e., nothing much there. The question is, does this period really exist or has he inserted it to have something to put next to his Ugarit Ancient 3 and to fill out his overstretched chronology? At Ugarit there did seem to be a significant time break as indicated by the accumulation of the clayey soil layer, but at Byblos such evidence was lacking and both Dunand and Saghieh have concluded that there was no significant break in occupation. It seems that the destructions of Byblos Ancient 2 and Ugarit Ancient 2 did not coincide, but rather that Ugarit Ancient 3 was contemporary with Byblos Ancient 2 (see Table 2). Some of the pottery tends to confirm this, e.g. the Metallic Combed Ware store jars [6]. The change of culture at Byblos suggests an invasion. [*!* Image: EB metallic combed ware store jars and Khirbet Kerak ware bowl (after Schaeffer [1], pl. 13)] 3. EB Hama Inland from Ugarit, behind the coastal mountains, is the valley of the Orontes and the city of Hamath or Hama. Here Schaeffer's chart actually fails to show a destruction which fits his theory, probably because he was working from preliminary reports. Hama is another major site with many levels extending from the Neolithic to the Iron Age. Schaeffer set the destruction at the end of Hama's Period K equivalent to his destruction at the end of Ugarit Ancient 2, with the following Hama J paralleling both Ugarit Ancient 3 and Middle 1. What Schaeffer did not know was that there was an excellent destruction layer at Hama halfway through J at the end of J5, which would match his end of Ancient 3. In support of the Hama K = Ugarit Ancient 2 link is the use at both sites of a type of pottery called 'Khirbet Kerak ware', which is an attractive but poorly fired red and black burnished ware probably originating in eastern Anatolia and found all the way south to Palestine. However, further excavation reports have appeared, more pottery comparisons have been made and it is now usual to equate the first half of Hama J with Ugarit Ancient 2 although Hama J does not have the Khirbet Kerak ware. I have my doubts about this and prefer to stick with Schaeffer's Hama K = Ugarit Ancient 2 equation, or to compromise and put Ugarit Ancient 2 overlapping Hama K and J. EGYPT date BC BYBLOS UGARIT HAMA BRAK OLD KINGDOM destruction ANCIENT 2 Town Baalat Temple destruction ANCIENT 2 Town destruction K destruction V destruction 2300 FIRST INTERMED. PERIOD ANCIENT 3 non-existent? destruction ANCIENT 3 Village? with oil press destruction J IV Building of Naram-Sin destruction 2000 MIDDLE 1 Town Syrian Temple Torques MIDDLE 1 Cemetery of 'Torque Wearers' III Table 1: Schaeffer's Syrian EB Destruction Levels 4. EB Ebla North of Hama and also inland from Ugarit is Tell Mardikh, a site not excavated in Schaeffer's time, now known to be ancient Ebla from the archive of cuneiform tablets found in the destruction of its Palace G. This destruction was not of the whole town but mainly of the palace. The pottery of Ebla periods IIB1 and IIB2 (i.e., before and after the palace destruction), corresponds well with Hama Period J - also with its destruction halfway through. Prominent among the pottery recovered are goblets decorated with grooved or painted rings and referred to as 'caliciform'. Khirbet Kerak ware is no longer found in Ebla IIB or Hama J. Ebla offers us the opportunity to link across to events in Mesopotamia. The Palace G destruction was at first thought to be the work of the Akkadian king Naram-Sin, grandson of Sargon the Great, since he claimed the destruction of Ebla (the texts are actually later) and because the chronology seemed to fit. However, the lack of mention of Akkad in the palace archives, or of anything to do with Akkad, forced the conclusion that Palace G must have been destroyed at or before the time of Sargon himself. Sargon is known to have reached this area. It is also of interest that there was found in the palace debris an inscribed alabaster of Pepi I, of the early Sixth Dynasty of Egypt, probably imported via Byblos. This puts Sargon slightly later than expected relative to Egypt. Our archaeological links, if correct, put him later still, right at the end of the Old Kingdom. Having set Sargon in the sequence it is now possible to link to events in Mesopotamia, where the fall of his Akkadian Dynasty is followed by a fairly brief interlude when the Gutians invaded from the east. They in turn were followed by the Third Dynasty of Ur civilisation which lasted about a century before it too crumbled. 5. EB Brak It is worth mentioning at this point another of the sites in Schaeffer's table which helps to confirm the link. Tell Brak in northeast Syria or northern Mesopotamia has a large building in its Stratum IV (also Stratum 4 of the recent excavations in Oates' area CH adjacent to the building) which was built by Naram-Sin, who conveniently implanted his name on some of the bricks. The inelegantly named 'smeared-wash' pottery of this level matches that in Ebla IIB2. It is one of the few types of ceramic which seems to penetrate across the Euphrates. Note that the link is not the same as Schaeffer's but that Brak IV has moved one step later relative to Hama. Presumably the fall of the Akkadian dynasty is roughly contemporary with the widespread destructions corresponding to the ends of Ebla IIB2, Hama J, and numerous other sites in north Syria. Before I started this research I would have expected these destructions to correspond to the end of the later Third Dynasty of Ur, but the unexpected result has been this unavoidable late placement of the Akkadians. Possibly I could put Naram-Sin slightly later and attribute to him the destruction of Ebla IIB2, since he is claimed to have destroyed Ebla. [*!* Image: Link to original image] EGYPT PALESTINE BYBLOS UGARIT HAMA EBLA BRAK MESOPOTA. OLD KINGDOM Dynasty 6 destruction EB II/III destruction K III/IV (or ANC 2) destruction ANCIENT 2 (or IIIA2) destruction K destruction IIA V (or CH6) destruction Sargon Naram-Sin Guti Ur III J8-J5 destruction IIB1 Pal. G destr. ANCIENT 3 (or IIIA3) FIRST INTERMED. PERIOD MB I (or EB IV) J (or MID 1) destruction MIDDLE 1 J4-J1 IIB2 destruction IV (or CH5-4) destruction MIDDLE KINGDOM MB II H (or MID 2) MIDDLE 2 H III III Table 2: The End of the Early Bronze Age in the Fertile Crescent 6. EB Palestine Having concentrated on the detailed archaeology of north Syria we can deal with Palestine fairly quickly. Schaeffer's work here was based on reports that were preliminary or have long since been superseded and his Palestine table is best ignored. (Interestingly, Early Bronze III in Palestine would not now be considered to be equivalent to Schaeffer's Bronze Ancient 3 but rather to his Bronze Ancient 2. I think that, in reality, Palestinian EB III is equivalent to both Bronze Ancient 2 and 3 of Schaeffer [7]). The Early Bronze city state civilisation comes to a fairly abrupt end and is succeeded by a non-urban period variously known as EB IV or EB-MB or MB I or Intermediate Bronze. I believe this archaeological style was already in existence prior to the end of the EB cities, hence the angled line on the chart [*!* Image: Figure 2]. Many sites seem to have been abandoned rather than destroyed [8]: although there is no proof that these site desertions were contemporary with one another, it seems probable. In my own theory, this change would be due to the Israelite Conquest [9]. The end of EB III is normally set about one Dynasty before the end of the Old Kingdom (a chronology partly influenced by high radiocarbon dates from Palestinian sites), but some authorities, including Schaeffer, have always put it right at the end of the Old Kingdom. The new third edition of Chronologies in Old World Archaeology [10] also adopts this position, citing a type of store jar found at Byblos and in Palestine and in late Sixth Dynasty tombs in Egypt [11]. Mandelkehr adopted the predominant view of the time in placing the EB destructions at the end of Dynasty V, but since he was not too concerned to prove a specific event but rather a series of events fairly close together [12], this was not a problem for him. He seemed to envisage the upheavals as mainly due to earthquakes, although Schaeffer's destructions at this time were not necessarily attributed to this cause [13]. 7. Old Kingdom Egypt In Egypt, the end of the Old Kingdom was followed by a very troubled time when central authority completely broke down, as is vividly described by the scribe Ipuwer in 'the Admonitions of an Egyptian Sage' [14] and in 'the Prophecy of Neferti' [15]. Powerful local rulers arose at Heracleopolis and Thebes and eventually Egypt was reunited by the Thebans as the Middle Kingdom. 8. Summary: End of Early Bronze Age Unfortunately Schaeffer's two waves of destructions have now become three. As for the first, too little information is available. The second, including the end of the Old Kingdom, the destruction of Byblos and the end of the Palestinian Early Bronze city states, does not seem to offer any coherent cause. The third may be attributable to earthquake since there seems to be very widespread destruction in Syria at this time [16]. These destructions are followed by new types of pottery, presumably representing an invasion. Either these new people caused the destructions or, if the destructions were caused by earthquake, they took advantage of the chaos and fallen walls and just marched in. The invaders, whoever they were, built enormous earth rampart enclosures around some of the rebuilt cities, perhaps using the old population as slave labour. This phenomenon is well documented at Ebla, for example [17], and is found at various sites eastwards across northern Syria and northern Mesopotamia, and southwards at places such as Qatna, Hazor and Yavneh Yam in SW Palestine. I believe the largest is at Qatna and is about 1 km square. It is not clear whether they all date from the same period. A brief word on climatic change. This may have been part of the cause of the upheavals and is dealt with in one of Mandelkehr's articles [18]. It is very hard to tie in his dates because the evidence has been presented according to various dating systems; historical or archaeological or carbon dated, the latter calibrated or uncalibrated, and with or without correction factors for old carbon in the case of water-laid sediment cores. Also a change to greater aridity in one area may result in wetness somewhere else. Prior to the period we are interested in there seems to have been a major climatic change some time around the beginning of dynastic history, say 3000 BC as a conventional historical date. This is sometimes referred to as the transition from the Atlantic climate to the Sub-boreal. Roughly speaking, prior to this there was big game hunting in the Sahara, afterwards it became desert. Later, somewhere around the time we are interested in at the end of the Early Bronze Age, there seems to be a lesser climatic change towards dryness which had serious consequences for many people groups. The archaeological evidence from northern Sinai and the Negev shows that the MB I culture there was the last widespread occupation of the area. It therefore represents the period at which dryness set in. The End of the Middle Bronze Age This is where most Velikovskians will be looking for an Exodus catastrophe, and at first glance, they would seem to be in luck. The most prominent of Schaeffer's breaks, stretching right across his Table IX, comes between the Middle and Late Bronze Ages c.1600 BC. At every site there is a hiatus. It is necessary to consult the text for the lengths of these hiatuses but typically they are 100 to 150 years. Schaeffer admitted that he did not know the cause but suggested perhaps a climatic change [20]. There is a rather different but very straightforward explanation for these hiatuses. It was not a global catastrophe but simply a catastrophic mistake in the chronology! Schaeffer rightly linked the Egyptian Middle Kingdom to his Ugarit Middle 2 and to Middle Bronze levels at other sites, and he rightly linked his Ugarit Recent and other Late Bronze site levels to the Egyptian New Kingdom. Just as there is a hiatus in Egyptian history called the Second Intermediate Period, there is also a hiatus in the history of all sites that are Egyptologically dated. It is the same story as for the later Third Intermediate Period; add a few extra centuries into Egyptian chronology and it fouls up everywhere else as well. I have argued elsewhere that the Second Intermediate is largely illusory [21], the result of Sothic Dating. Other archaeologists, recognising the artificial nature of Schaeffer's hiatuses, have sought to close the gap by lowering the dates of the Middle Bronze strata, claiming that the Egyptian Middle Kingdom remains in Asia were all brought back as trophies by returning Hyksos. Schaeffer himself recognised that the stratigraphic evidence was puzzling, for at Ugarit he seemed to have continuity of occupation of some houses from MB to LB right across his long hiatus, with only minor building alterations [22]. One wonders if the lack of Late Bronze levels at Byblos, despite the abundance of New Kingdom artefacts, was again due to buildings continuing in use from Middle to Late Bronze. Nevertheless, this does not mean that there is no scope for catastrophism at this time. There was a Second Intermediate Period in Egypt, although a brief one, and there are multiple destruction levels in Syria and Palestine. As with the end of Early Bronze, a big problem is to try to sort out exactly which strata at the various sites are contemporary. There is no clear cut stylistic change from Middle Bronze to Late Bronze I except in certain luxury and imported wares. John Bimson has long since pointed out that the use of Bichrome pottery as a marker for the Late Bronze I period has its dangers [23]. If no Bichrome ware is found it could indicate that the site was deserted in Late Bronze I, or that there was no Bichrome in use at that site, or simply that the excavators dug in the wrong places to find any Bichrome. John will be pleased to know, if he does not already, that archaeology is catching up with his idea. William Dever, no less, has said the same thing in a recent BASOR article [24], although he did not give John a reference. A less well known archaeologist, Stephen Bourke, has been quite prolific in his references to Bimson - but that is not my reason for mentioning him. He recently received his PhD for a thesis titled 'The Transition from the Middle to the Late Bronze Age in the Northern Levant: The Evidence from Tell Nebi Mend, Syria' [25]. Part of his thesis has been published in the latest Levant [26], but there he only briefly suggests the possibility of a great earthquake [27]. Tell Nebi Mend is the site of ancient Qadesh where later on Ramesses II fought his famous battle with the Hittites. Bourke covers the stratigraphy and pottery of the Middle Bronze II and Late Bronze layers and is concerned to show that there is continuity from Middle to Late Bronze - no long hiatus. However, he does acknowledge destruction levels both at Qadesh and at other sites with which he compares the stratigraphy. He finds that one destruction event in particular is common to many sites in Syria and Palestine, that this destruction comes at the Middle to Late Bronze transition, and that it is probably caused by a major earthquake. He points out the impossibility of conventional theories which attribute such destructions to Egyptian and Hittite armies - they did not have tanks and bulldozers! Bourke accepts the historical/archaeological date for the volcanic eruption of Thera (and the associated earthquake) at the beginning of the 18th Dynasty, as opposed to the apparent scientific dating over a century earlier. He therefore suggests the associated earthquake as the probable cause of the wave of destructions. My own position on this is that I like the theory but I am not sure where in the 18th Dynasty the destructions come, because I believe the Late Bronze I period is completely overlapped archaeologically with Middle Bronze material. Bourke also recognises this archaeological overlap, so I suppose I should agree with him. On the subject of earthquakes, aside from the one in Japan in the week of the Conference, last year there was a relatively minor earthquake in Cairo which was felt as far away as Jerusalem. There was another soon after the Conference (early August 1993) when tremors were experienced from Sudan to Israel. David Amiran has tabulated earthquakes in Palestine in the AD period [28]. Major earthquakes occurred on average about once a century but were usually localised in their worst effects. We have an account of a very widespread quake in AD 551 which severely affected parts of the Byzantine Empire: "... on the 9th day of July, a great and terrible earthquake occurred throughout the regions of Palestine, Arabia, Mesopotamia, Syria, and Phoenicia, to such an extent that it caused Tyre, Sidon, Beirut, Tripoli, and Biblos to receive great damage, and many thousands of people perished. Further, at the city of Bo[trios], a large part of the mountain which is adjacent to the sea, ... was separated and displaced into the sea. And it produced a suitable port for receiving many large ships which the former port of that city would not hold. The Emperor sent, however, great sums of money for the ruins of those cities to be repaired. The water also withdrew for a mile out to sea, by reason of which many ships were sunk to the deep, and thereafter, ... it drew itself back into its permanent hollow." [29] Earthquakes may be coming back into fashion with archaeologists. Dever has found evidence of one in his own excavations at Gezer which he attributes to the biblical earthquake in King Uzziah's time c.760 BC [30]. Bourke, in developing his thesis, suggested that some of the destructions attributed to Pharaoh Shishak c.925 BC may have been due to earthquake [31], either that or else Shishak was another Pharaoh with bulldozers. (On a reduced chronology the so-called Shishak destructions should be downdated and probably represent Uzziah's earthquake). Having briefly been diverted into the Iron Age, we should now return to the final wave of Bronze Age destructions. The End of the Late Bronze Age At this time, conventionally c.1200 BC, the 'Sea Peoples' are believed to have destroyed Ugarit, which was never rebuilt as a major town. At the time of the destruction correspondence on clay tablets was left baking in the oven. These and other letters speak of famine, war and pirates in the Hittite empire, of which Ugarit was a part. The king of Ugarit writes that he has no ships to spare because his navy is fighting elsewhere and his own coasts are being raided. The Hittite empire was overwhelmed and its capital Hattusas was destroyed and abandoned. The Sea Peoples proceeded south to attack Egypt but were defeated by Ramesses III. In Palestine, the Late Bronze Age changes to Iron Age I but this was a minor evolutionary change, not the major one suggested by the change of nomenclature. Iron Age IA could just as well be called Late Bronze III. In 1966, Rhys Carpenter [32] suggested that the fall of the Mycenaean civilisation, which also occurred c.1200 BC, was due to drought. His theory was later given added credibility by an article in Antiquity [33], the authors of which included leading climatologists. It has also recently been taken up by Mike Baillie [34]. Baillie's interest stemmed from a series of 20 unusually narrow tree rings in his Irish bog oaks dated 1159-1140 BC in dendrochronology years. The 1159 BC event in NW Europe has been neatly tied scientifically and archaeologically to the third major eruption of the Icelandic volcano Hekla [35]. Whilst it is proven that the end of the Scottish Bronze Age was due to Hekla, it is not yet proven that the Near Eastern events were related, but it does seem probable in the light of recent knowledge on how major volcanic events can affect climate worldwide. Baillie went so far as to suggest, based on Chinese historical evidence, that Thera and Hekla 3 were related to the rise and fall of the Shang Dynasty. Hence, his article with the amazing title 'Do Irish Bog Oaks Date the Shang Dynasty?' [36]. Here perhaps I am also entitled to a little wild speculation: on my chronology Hekla 3 would correspond to the time of King Ahab and the three year drought which ended in Elijah's contest with the prophets of Baal on Mount Carmel [I Kings 18]. Concluding Comment There is no obvious need to suggest a cosmic origin for the Hekla 3 eruption. Nor is there for Thera, except perhaps as a cause for Baillie's suggestion of a 'gravitational trigger' for a series of eruptions, one of which was Thera [37]. For the Early Bronze Age destructions we have Mandelkher's still unpublished theory that the cause was a minor astronomical body. Velikovsky's theory of massive planetary disruption in the Bronze Age appears unnecessary, aside from its impracticality. Addendum Since the Cambridge Conference additional information on the end of the Early Bronze Age has come from Tell Leilan, a major site in NE Syria [38]. The excavators analysed the soil at Leilan and elsewhere and concluded that the disruption at the end of the Akkadian Period, soon after Naram-Sin, was due to increased aridity of the climate. The site was abandoned at that time and remained unoccupied for a long period. Associated with the soil changes were tephra particles, apparently from a Turkish volcano. References 1. C. F. A. Schaeffer: Stratigraphie Comparée et Chronologie de l'Asie Occidentale (Oxford, 1948): reviewed by G. Gammon in SIS Review IV:4 (1980), pp. 104-108. 2. M. M. Mandelkehr: 'An Integrated Model for an Earthwide Event at 2300 BC: Part 1: The Archaeological Evidence', SIS Review V:3 (1980/81), pp. 77-95; idem: 'Part 2: The Climatological Evidence', C&C Review IX (1987), pp. 34-44; idem: 'Part 3: The Geological Evidence, C&C Review X (1988), pp. 11-22. 3. Schaeffer: op. cit., p. 534. 4. M. Saghieh: Byblos in the Third Millennium BC (Warminster, 1983). 5. C. F. A. Schaeffer: Ugaritica II (Paris, 1949), pp. 110-111. 6. L. Stager: in R. Ehrich (ed.): Chronologies in Old World Archaeology (Chicago, 1992), p. 39. 7. S. Mazzoni: in BASOR 257 (1985), p. 16, n.17 - her Syrian EB IV is Schaeffer's 'Bronze Ancient 3'. 8. S. Richard: in BASOR 237 (1980), p. 12. 9. R. M. Porter: 'Early Bronze Age Exodus/Conquest', C & C Review XIV (1992), pp. 45-49. 10. R. Ehrich: op. cit. [6]. 11. ibid: p. 39. See also above under 'EB Byblos'. 12. Mandelkehr: op. cit. [2a], p. 77. 13. Schaeffer: op. cit. [1], p. 563. 14. See, conveniently, J. A. Wilson: 'The Admonitions of Ipu-wer', ANET, pp. 441-444. 15. idem: 'The Prophecy of Neferti', ANET, pp. 444-446. 16. Saghieh: op. cit. [4], pp. 116-7; cf. Mazzoni: op. cit. [7], p. 16, n. 11. 17. P. Matthiae: Ebla (London, 1977), pp. 43, 118-9. 18. Mandelkehr: op. cit. [2b]. 19. E. Anati: in BAR 9:4 (1985), p. 57; S. Richard: op. cit. [8], p. 25; A. Rosen: in P. de Miroschedji: L'urbanisation de la Palestine... (Oxford, 1989), pp. 247-255. 20. Schaeffer: op. cit. [1], p. 564. 21. Porter: op. cit. [9], p. 48. 22. Schaeffer: op. cit. [1], p. 19 and plate V. 23. Most recently, J. J. Bimson: in C & C Review XV (1993), pp. 47-48. 24. W. Dever: in BASOR 288 (1992), p. 16. 25. S. Bourke: 'The Transition from the Middle to the Late Bronze Age in the Northern Levant: The Evidence from Tell Nebi Mend, Syria' (Institute of Archaeology, London University 1992). 26. S. Bourke: in Levant 25 (1993), pp. 155-195. 27. ibid: pp. 191-2. 28. D. Amiran: in IEJ 2 (1952), p. 50. 29. Theophanes' Chronographia, quoted from BASOR 260 (1985), p. 44. 30. W. Dever: in EI 23 (1992), pp. 27*-35*; idem: in BASOR 289 (1993), pp. 43-6. 31. Bourke: op. cit. [25], p. 285. 32. R. Carpenter: Discontinuity in Greek Civilisation (Cambridge, 1966) 33. R. Bryson, H. Lamb & D. Donley: in Antiquity 48 (1974), pp. 46-60. 34. M. G. L. Baillie: in Endeavour 13:2 (1989), p. 81. 35. 'Time of Darkness', a BBC 2 'Horizon' programme shown 26.6.89, updated and shown again 23.3.92. 36. M. G. L. Baillie: 'Do Irish Bog Oaks Date the Shang Dynasty?', Current Archaeology 117 (1989), pp. 310-313. 37. M. G. L. Baillie: ISIS lecture October 1990, 'Dendrochronology and Thera: The Scientific Case for a 17th Century BC Eruption', JACF 4 (1990/1991), pp. 24-5. 38. H. Weiss et al.: 'The Genesis and Collapse of the Third Millennium North Mesopotamian Civilization', Science 261 (1993), pp. 995-1004, also p. 985. _________________________________________________________________ \cdrom\pubs\journals\review\v1993cam\045age.htm