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The End of an Epoch

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 January 2009

Extract

‘The last two centuries of the second millennium saw the disappearance of the highly developed civilisations which had, up to then, been flourishing in several lands in the near East, including Egypt, the Aegean area, and Anatolia. Their place was taken by other cultures, none of which seems to have been on the high level which had been maintained previously, and it would be far from the truth to suggest that the peoples who had been dominant earlier in the eastern Mediterranean area merely lost ground culturally. For they did, in fact, do much more. They almost faded out of sight, at least for a time. Such a deep change, simultaneous in several lands, is not likely to have been due to purely local causes. Consequently, the presence of some overriding factor may be suspected, a political event of such magnitude that it could affect a vast area.’

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1962

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References

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page 122 note 3 Tiglath-Pileser died that year, and Assyria collapsed in complete disorder for more than a century. We may remember that the army of Sennacherib was destroyed by plague when he invaded Palestine (701); and when in 655 Assurbanipal had to return from the subjugation of Egypt to suppress a revolt at home the whole of Assyria was swept by a disastrous plague from which it never recovered. Is it possible that Tiglath-Pileser brought more home from Carchemish than the ‘tribute’ which he had demanded?

page 122 note 4 1 Sam. xxxi.

page 122 note 5 The Israelites had had a sharp reminder only a few years earlier. Smith, W. R. (Lectures on the Religion of the Semites, 2nd ed. [London, 1894], 372)Google Scholar writes that cremation was adopted in dealing with plague, but his reference (Amos vi. 10) does not support this. Many commentators have condemned the passage in 1 Sam. xxxi as corrupt, a convenient way of disposing of what is not understood. Cremation is not mentioned, but is clearly implied, in 1 Chron. x.

page 123 note 1 2 Sam. xxiv. 15.

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page 123 note 7 ii. 141.

page 123 note 8 Precisely the same story is told of the Cretan Teucer and the foundation of the ‘temple’ of Apollo Smintheus in the Troad: οἱ γ⋯ρ μ⋯ες παρ⋯ Κρ⋯σι σμ⋯νθοι καλο⋯νται, Tzetzes ad Lyc. Alexandra 1307.Google Scholar

page 124 note 1 v. 4. 6.