For more than three hundred years during the Late Bronze Age, from about 1500 BC until just after 1200 BC, the Mediterranean region played host to a complex international world in which Egyptians, Mycenaeans, Minoans, Hittites, Assyrians, Babylonians, Cypriots, Trojans, and Canaanites all interacted. They created a cosmopolitan world-system, with flourishing cities such as Mycenae, Hazor, Troy, Ugarit, Hattusa, Babylon, and Thebes, such as has only rarely been seen before the current day. It may have been this very internationalism that contributed to the apocalyptic disaster that ended the Bronze Age. When the end came just after 1200 BC, as it did after centuries of cultural and technological evolution, the civilized and international world of the Mediterranean regions came to a dramatic halt in a vast area stretching from Greece and Italy in the west to Egypt, Canaan, and Mesopotamia in the east. Cities and towns, large empires and small kingdoms, that had taken centuries to evolve, all collapsed rapidly. With their end came the world’s first recorded Dark Ages. It was not until centuries later that a new cultural renaissance emerged in Greece and the other affected areas, setting the stage for the evolution of Western society as we know it today. Dr. Eric H. Cline is Professor of Classics and Anthropology, former Chair of the Department of Classical and Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations, and current Director of the Capitol Archaeological Institute at The George Washington University, in Washington DC. A Fulbright scholar, National Geographic Explorer, and NEH Public Scholar, Dr. Cline holds degrees in Classical Archaeology, Near Eastern Archaeology, and Ancient History, from Dartmouth, Yale, and the University of Pennsylvania. An active field archaeologist who is the former co-director at Megiddo (biblical Armageddon) and the current co-director at Tel Kabri, he has more than 30 seasons of excavation and survey experience in Israel, Egypt, Jordan, Cyprus, Greece, Crete, and the United States. Dr. Cline has written (authored, co-authored, or edited) a total of sixteen books, which have been published by prestigious presses including Princeton, Oxford, Cambridge, Michigan, and National Geographic. He is a three-time winner of the Biblical Archaeology Society’s “Best Popular Book on Archaeology” award (2001, 2009, and 2011). He also received the 2014 “Best Popular Book” award from the American Schools of Oriental Research for his book 1177 BC: The Year Civilization Collapsed, which is an international best-seller and was also considered for a 2015 Pulitzer Prize. In addition, he has also authored or co-authored nearly 100 academic articles, which have been published in peer-reviewed journals, festschriften, and conference volumes. At GW, Dr. Cline has won both the Trachtenberg Prize for Teaching Excellence and the Trachtenberg Prize for Faculty Scholarship, the two highest honors at the University; he is the first faculty member to have won both awards. He has also won the Archaeological Institute of America’s “Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching” Award and been nominated three times for the CASE US Professor of the Year. He has also appeared in more than twenty television programs and documentaries, ranging from ABC (including Nightline and Good Morning America) to the BBC and the National Geographic, History, and Discovery Channels.
ፍትህ ለሁሉም / Justice for All