The Late Bronze Age: the first international system

The Late Bronze Age, roughly 1500 to 1200 BCE, produced something new in human history. For the first time, a group of large states in the eastern Mediterranean and the Near East dealt with one another regularly, on agreed terms, over long distances. They wrote letters. They exchanged gifts. They married their children into each other's families. They signed treaties. They traded metals, glass, and luxury goods across thousands of kilometres. Historians often call this arrangement the first international system. In this lesson we will see how it worked, what evidence shows us, and where scholars disagree about it. The collapse of this world belongs to the next lesson. First, some words we need. A state is a political unit with a government that claims authority over a territory. A great power is a state strong enough to deal with others as an equal and to shape events beyond its borders. Diplomacy is the management of relations between states, usually by messengers and negotiation. A primary source is evidence that comes directly from the time being studied, such as a letter, a tablet, or a shipwreck. A secondary source is a later work by a historian who studies those primary sources. History depends on the difference between the two. A note on dates. Every date in this lesson is approximate. The chronology of Egypt and Mesopotamia is debated. Scholars speak of a high, a middle, and a low chronology, and these differ by several decades. So when we say about 1259 BCE, we mean a date that most historians accept as close, not one that is fixed to the year. Who were the great powers? Scholars usually count five or six. The first was Egypt, in the period called the New Kingdom, ruled by the 18th and 19th Dynasties. A dynasty is a line of rulers from one family. Egypt was rich in gold, which came from Nubia to the south. The second was Hatti, the Hittite kingdom, centred in Anatolia, which is the large peninsula that is now most of Turkey. Its capital was Hattusa. The third was Mitanni, a kingdom in northern Syria and northern Mesopotamia. It was strong until the middle of the 14th century BCE, then declined. The fourth was Babylonia, ruled by a dynasty called the Kassites. The fifth was Assyria, which rose to major power status from the 14th century and absorbed much of what had been Mitanni. Some scholars also count Elam, to the east of Mesopotamia, in the group. There were also important states that sit uneasily in this list. Alashiya is usually identified with Cyprus. It supplied copper and was treated with respect by the great kings. The Mycenaean Greeks, who lived in palace centres such as Mycenae and Pylos, traded widely. Hittite texts mention a land called Ahhiyawa, which many scholars link to the Mycenaean Greeks. But this is debated. Some historians think Ahhiyawa was a major kingdom and a real rival of Hatti in western Anatolia. Others are more cautious about how far it can be matched with the Greek mainland, and about how powerful it was. The honest answer is that the texts mention it, but they do not settle the question. Now to our best source. In 1887, local people digging at a site in Egypt called Tell el-Amarna found a cache of clay tablets. This was the site of Akhetaten, the capital built by the pharaoh Akhenaten in the middle of the 14th century BCE. About 350 tablets survive. They come mostly from the reigns of Akhenaten and his father, Amenhotep III. Together they are called the Amarna letters. They are a kind of diplomatic archive, a collection of official letters kept by the Egyptian foreign office. Their language is remarkable. Most are not in Egyptian. They are written in Akkadian, using cuneiform. Cuneiform is a writing system made by pressing a wedge-shaped reed into wet clay. Akkadian was the language of Mesopotamia, but it had become the diplomatic lingua franca of the whole region. A lingua franca is a common language that people with different native tongues use to communicate. So a pharaoh in Egypt, a king in Babylon, and a Hittite king could all write to one another in a language that was native to none of them. Scribes had to be trained for years to do it. This shows how deliberate and organised the system was. It needed shared rules, shared tools, and specialists. The letters fall into two main groups. The first is correspondence between the pharaoh and the other Great Kings. The second is letters from vassals. A vassal is a ruler who is subordinate to a stronger ruler, who owes him loyalty and tribute, and who usually keeps his local throne in return. Egypt had vassals in Canaan and Syria. These were local city rulers, such as Rib-Hadda of Byblos, Abimilki of Tyre, and Labayu of Shechem. Their letters are full of appeals and accusations. Rib-Hadda wrote again and again asking Egypt to send troops and supplies against enemies, and he accused neighbouring rulers of disloyalty. Other vassals accused him in turn. We must be careful here. Each writer was making a case for himself. These are not neutral reports. They are the claims of people trying to win favour and protect their own position. The letters between the Great Kings are the most revealing. These rulers called one another "brother." This was not just politeness. It marked equal status. A Great King was a brother to other Great Kings. A vassal was a "servant." The language of family created a kind of club, and membership mattered. Kings greeted each other, asked after one another's health, and asked about each other's horses and chariots, and many letters begin that way. But the brotherhood was not always warm. The letters are full of complaints. The Babylonian king Burnaburiash wrote to the pharaoh, and other kings wrote similarly, about gold. A king might say that the gold he had been sent was less than promised, or that it had been of poor quality when it was melted down. Kings asked for more gold, since Egypt was seen as having it in huge amounts. Some wrote that gold was as common in Egypt as dust. They also complained about being kept waiting, about messengers being held too long, and about slights to their dignity. Here we see that the system ran on prestige. Honour was a form of currency. A king who was treated badly might lose standing at home as well as abroad. Marriage was one of the main tools. A king would send a daughter to marry another king, and this created a bond between two royal houses. But the exchange was not symmetrical. The Amarna letters show that Egypt was reluctant to send its own princesses abroad. The Babylonian king asked for an Egyptian bride, and the reply, as it is preserved, was that no daughter of the pharaoh had ever been given to anyone. Egypt would take foreign brides, but it was unwilling to give its own. This tells us that even among "brothers," there was a ranking, and Egypt placed itself at the top. Foreign kings also complained that their daughters, once sent to Egypt, disappeared from view. One Babylonian letter complains that no one could say whether the king's sister, sent to Egypt long before, was alive or well. The pharaoh's side replied, in effect, that the Babylonian envoys had not recognised her. These exchanges suggest worry, suspicion, and the difficulty of verifying anything over great distance. Gifts were another core practice. Gift exchange meant that kings sent one another valuable goods, and expected something of similar value in return. On the surface it looked like generosity between brothers. In practice it worked like trade, managed by the state, with strict expectations. The letters list the items: gold, silver, chariots, horses, lapis lazuli, which is a deep blue stone mined far to the east in what is now Afghanistan, ebony, linen, and fine oils. When a gift disappointed, the sender complained. Some scholars see gift exchange as a way of moving goods while avoiding the open language of buying and selling, which would have seemed beneath a king. Others stress that it was real economic exchange with political meaning. Both views can be true. The system also relied on messengers. Envoys travelled for weeks or months, carrying tablets and gifts, and often returning with a reply and goods. They were protected by custom. If a messenger was killed or robbed, it was a serious matter, and kings wrote to demand compensation. The Babylonian king once complained that his merchants had been killed in Canaan, which was under Egyptian control, and he asked the pharaoh to punish those responsible and to pay for the loss. That shows the system had a sense of responsibility. A great king was held answerable for what happened in the lands he claimed. War was part of the system too. The most famous clash was the Battle of Kadesh, around 1274 BCE, between the pharaoh Ramesses II and the Hittite king Muwatalli II. Kadesh was a city in Syria, a contested zone between the two powers. Both armies relied on chariots. A chariot was a light two-wheeled vehicle pulled by horses, carrying a driver and an archer. It was an elite technology. It needed trained horses, skilled craftsmen, and specialist warriors. The kingdom of Mitanni was especially linked with chariot warfare, and its warrior aristocracy was called the maryannu. Over time the technology spread across the region. Kadesh is a good lesson in reading sources. Ramesses II had the battle recorded on temple walls in Egypt, with grand reliefs and a long poem, and he presented it as a great victory in which he personally saved his army. Yet the Hittites also treated it as their success, and the outcome appears to have left Syria largely under Hittite influence. So the battle was at best a draw for Egypt, and many historians think it was no triumph at all. Here is a fine example of why a historian cannot simply accept a king's own account. Monuments were propaganda, meaning information shaped to support a ruler's image. A scholar must compare them with other evidence. After years of tension, the two powers made peace. Around 1259 BCE, Ramesses II and the Hittite king Hattusili III agreed a treaty. It is one of the best-known documents of the ancient world. We have it in two forms. Egyptian hieroglyphic versions were carved at Karnak and at the Ramesseum, the pharaoh's temple. A version in Akkadian, on clay, was found in the Hittite capital at Hattusa. The texts are not identical, which suggests each side prepared its own version. They declare peace between the two lands, promise mutual defence against enemies, and provide for the return of fugitives. Later the two courts strengthened the bond by marriage, when a daughter of Hattusili III went to Egypt as a bride of Ramesses II. This treaty shows that the great powers could, in practice, accept limits on their ambitions. Both gained something. Egypt secured its northern border. Hatti, facing a growing threat from Assyria to the east, secured its southern one. The Hittite archives at Hattusa preserve many more treaties, mostly with vassals. These follow a pattern. They begin by reviewing the history of the relationship. They list the obligations of the vassal, and they call on gods as witnesses. Texts from Ugarit give us a close look at one such vassal. Ugarit was a wealthy port city on the Syrian coast. It had earlier been tied to Egypt, but later it came under Hittite overlordship. Overlordship means the authority of a stronger ruler over lesser ones. Its archives, written in several languages and scripts, including Akkadian and a local alphabetic script, show a state that paid tribute, supplied troops and ships when requested, and also hosted merchants from many lands. Now to trade, which was the material foundation of the whole system. Bronze is an alloy, meaning a mixture of metals, made mostly of copper with a smaller part of tin. It was the key metal for tools, weapons, and prestige objects. The problem was geography. Copper and tin are rarely found together. A large share of copper came from Cyprus, which is probably the land of Alashiya. Tin was harder. The sources are debated. Some scholars point to Central Asia, including regions of what is now Afghanistan or Uzbekistan. Others suggest additional sources elsewhere. What is certain is that tin travelled very long distances to reach the palaces of Mesopotamia, Syria, and the Aegean. Any state that wanted bronze needed access to both metals. That requirement alone created a web of dependence across the region. The best physical evidence is the Uluburun shipwreck. Sponge divers found it off the southern coast of Turkey, and a team led by George Bass of the Institute of Nautical Archaeology excavated it over many seasons. It dates to the late 14th century BCE. The ship carried about ten tons of copper in the form of ingots, plus tin, so the main ingredients for bronze were on board together. It also carried glass ingots, Canaanite jars filled with goods such as resin, ivory, logs of a dark wood, gold, and objects from many cultures. Glass was a prized new material, often treated as a luxury comparable to precious stones. The wreck shows that goods from Cyprus, Canaan, Egypt, and the Aegean could end up on one vessel. Another wreck, at Cape Gelidonya, is slightly later and also carried metal. These finds are valuable because they are not royal propaganda. They are physical remains of actual commerce. Yet there is a question about who owned such cargoes. Was the Uluburun ship a royal vessel, sent by a king as part of gift exchange? Or was it a merchant's venture? Scholars disagree. Some see palaces controlling most long-distance trade, so that even merchants served the crown. The evidence from the Aegean supports part of that picture. Linear B tablets, which are the written records of Mycenaean palaces such as Pylos, record storage and redistribution of goods in great detail. A palace economy is one in which a central palace collects, stores, and hands out goods and labour. But at Ugarit, texts mention merchants who seem to have worked partly on their own account. So the likely truth is a mixture. Palaces were huge actors, but private traders also existed, and the balance varied from place to place. Mycenaean pottery turns up in Cyprus, the Levant, and Egypt. This is useful evidence. Pottery breaks, but its pieces last for thousands of years, and styles can be dated and traced to their source. When archaeologists find Mycenaean pots far from Greece, they learn that goods, and perhaps people, moved along these routes. Technology helped bind the system. Iron existed, but it was rare, and before about 1200 BCE it was mostly used for prestige items. Bronze remained the key metal. This is important for the next lesson, because it means states relied heavily on trade routes that carried tin and copper. Now the debates. Some scholars question whether "international system" is the right phrase, since nations in the modern sense did not exist. Others use the idea of a "world system," borrowed from the sociologist Immanuel Wallerstein, who described a core of rich regions dominating a periphery that supplied raw materials. Applying this to the Bronze Age is contested. Critics say that ancient states did not have the same kind of market economy, and that the periphery here sometimes held great power, as Cyprus did with copper. Historians also debate how equal the brotherhood was. The language was equal, but behaviour often was not. And they argue over chronology, and over Ahhiyawa. The standard studies of the diplomacy are Raymond Cohen and Raymond Westbrook's collection, Amarna Diplomacy, published in 2000. Eric Cline and others have emphasised the interconnection of the age, and also its fragility. When many states depend on one another for essential goods, a shock in one place can spread to all. That idea leads directly into the collapse. So what did the Late Bronze Age system achieve? It created shared rules, a shared language of diplomacy, and regular contact among rival powers. It turned trade into a political matter. It made the great kings aware that they lived in a world larger than their own kingdoms. Yet it also made them dependent. Their palaces needed the same metals, and their prestige needed the same exchange of gifts. In the next lesson, we will see what happened when that dependence met crisis, and how this connected world came apart.