Destruction and the End of the Late Bronze Age in the Eastern Mediterranean

• Applicant: Dr. Jesse Michael Millek
• Subject Area: Egyptology and Ancient Near Eastern Studies
• Term: from 2017 to 2021
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 391398475

For decades scholars have searched for an answer to why the great kingdoms of the Late Bronze Age in the Eastern Mediterranean collapsed around 1200 BC. Many of the theories they devised featured the usual suspects, warfare brought on by invading armies, peasants rising up against their overlords, devastating climate change, natural disasters like massive earthquakes, or a combination of all of these. For each of these theories, the destruction of both major cities and small towns play an integral role in illustrating the devastating events which gripped the region at the end of the Bronze Age. However, despite the lists and maps which depict the massive destruction wave which took the region by storm, the destruction events have never been examined under a critical eye. The purpose of this research is to answer one main question, “Does the evidence for destruction events in the Late Bronze Age Eastern Mediterranean support collapse theories based on widespread simultaneous destruction?” I will do this by examining for the first time 59 destruction events in the Aegean, Anatolia, Syria, and Cyprus using an innovative methodology to find what might have caused the destruction and how extensive the damage really was.

• DFG Programme: Research Fellowships
• International Connection: USA
• Host: Professor Dr. Gary Beckman