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00:00They used to be a city here, a prosperous Bronze Age port on the coast of present-day
00:14Syria, with palaces and temples, warehouses and factories, markets and shops, streets
00:21and houses, and people, too, in their tens of thousands.
00:26But then, just over 3,000 years ago, Ugarit was destroyed, never to be rebuilt.
00:35Ugarit fell victim to a man-made catastrophe that came from the sea.
00:39A human tide of the dispossessed and the desperate engulfed it and dozens of other Bronze Age
00:45cities from Greece to Syria, from Turkey to Egypt.
00:50The destruction of these once-great centres reduced more than 4,000 years of civilisation
00:56into a layer of ash.
00:59Following the Great Bronze Age collapse, civilisation was down, but not out.
01:05The survivors of the catastrophe would live to fight another day, usually with each other.
01:12In this struggle for survival, the hard power of military muscle and state-sponsored violence
01:17would be pitted against the soft power of trade and exchange in a new and pitiless age,
01:24the Age of Iron.
01:32Collapse of the Bronze Age kingdoms, a sobering reminder of the fragility of this thing that
01:36we call civilisation, but also its tenacity.
01:40For in the new Age of Iron, civilisation would re-emerge, tempered in the flames of conflict,
01:46tougher and more resilient than ever before.
02:17This is Pylos, in the western Peloponnese.
02:25In the late Bronze Age, this part of Greece was on the very fringes of the civilised world.
02:32That way, to the western north, lay mainland Europe, where the tribal ties of kin and clan
02:38still prevailed.
02:40To the south and east, lay Crete, Cyprus, Syria and Anatolia, way-stations on the way
02:46back towards the first cities of Mesopotamia and Egypt.
02:55By the late Bronze Age, these cities already qualified as ancient.
03:00The experiment known as civilisation had been running there for more than 3,000 years,
03:07and was still going strong.
03:13Here in Pylos, civilisation was still relatively new.
03:18The Mycenaeans, as these Bronze Age Greeks were called, had learnt the arts of civilisation
03:24from the Minoans.
03:26Everything from writing and fresco painting, to the workings of a centralised economy,
03:31had found their way west from the stepping-stone island of Crete.
03:38But Mycenaean Greece was no mere pale imitation.
03:42Priest kings and priestesses had ruled from the temple palaces of Crete.
03:47Pylos and the other cities of Bronze Age Greece were ruled by a king in a citadel,
03:53supported by a cast of aristocratic retainers.
03:57Fighters to the very marrow of their boar-tusk helmets.
04:03But these born warriors were about to face the fight of their lives.
04:13By the 13th century BC,
04:15it was clear that all was not well with the Mycenaean kingdoms.
04:19The great fortified citadels from where the Mycenaean kings dominated
04:23their territories were becoming even more defensive,
04:27with higher walls and deeper wells.
04:30A sure sign that they were expecting trouble from someone.
04:38Written records from here at Pylos talk ominously about watchers who guard the sea
04:44and their followers with chariots.
04:46It sounds like an early warning system, naked-eye radar,
04:50the fastest communication system known to the Bronze Age.
04:54But what were these watchers looking for?
04:57And what was this nameless threat coming from across the sea?
05:09The next set of clues in this historical whodunit can be found here,
05:14in Ugarit, the port city on the coast of Syria.
05:19Ugarit was numbered among the great cities of the Bronze Age world.
05:23It had grown fat and fair by acting as a vital link
05:27in the web of trade and diplomacy
05:29that joined the ancient cities of Mesopotamia to the Mediterranean world,
05:34as far as the far-flung cities of Mycenaean Greece.
05:40The artefacts found here tell their own story
05:43about the brilliance and sophistication of a city
05:46which has been described as the Venice of the ancient world.
05:57But sometime around 1200 BC, Ugarit was completely destroyed.
06:09Like Pylos, the ruins of Ugarit have yielded precious written records,
06:14miraculously preserved,
06:16and these give us our first real glimpse
06:19of the agents responsible for a catastrophe
06:22that slowly but surely was engulfing the whole region.
06:33The letters were to and from Amarapi, the last king of Ugarit.
06:39They're fragmentary, but that only adds to their drama.
06:42These are dispatches from the front line of a war for survival,
06:46unleashed by a mysterious enemy
06:49who appeared suddenly from the western seas.
06:58The first to feel the consequences
07:00were the Hittite kings of Anatolia in modern-day Turkey,
07:04a few hundred miles to the north of Ugarit.
07:08Here's a fragment from a letter from the Hittite king,
07:11Suppiluliuma, to Amarapi, king of Ugarit.
07:15The enemy advances against us and there is no number.
07:19Then there's a break in the text here.
07:22Whatever is available, look for it and send it to me.
07:26Now, this is from the king of one of the most powerful states in the region.
07:31You don't need to read between the lines
07:33to sense the panic and desperation in this plea.
07:38This letter is from Amarapi to his father-in-law, the king of Alicia,
07:43in what is now Cyprus,
07:45and it suggests that Ugarit had sent troops to help the Hittites
07:49with disastrous consequences.
07:52My father, behold, the enemy's ships came,
07:55my cities were burnt and they did evil things in my country.
07:59Does not my father know that all my troops and chariots
08:02are in the Hittite country,
08:04and all my ships are in the land of Lourdes?
08:07All my ships are in the land of Luka.
08:09Thus the country is abandoned.
08:11May my father know it.
08:13Seven ships of the enemy that came inflicted much damage upon us.
08:22Seven ships? It's hardly D-Day, is it?
08:25But I think it goes to show
08:27just how vulnerable these Bronze Age cities were,
08:30the disasters, both natural and man-made.
08:33King Amarapi rather touchingly takes time out from his troubles
08:38to try and reassure his mother.
08:41And thou, my mother, be not afraid,
08:43and do not put worries in thy heart.
08:46Which was rather optimistic,
08:48considering things were now very, very bad.
08:51In another letter to a certain Zardin, he doesn't pull his punches.
08:56Our food on the threshing floors is burnt,
08:59and also the vineyards are destroyed.
09:01Our city is destroyed, and may you know it.
09:04That was it for Ugarit. Game over.
09:08Throughout these dramatic letters,
09:10the enemy remains faceless and nameless.
09:13In fact, you get the feeling that Ugarit never really knew what hit it.
09:17But as the threat advanced south and east,
09:20the enemy emerged into plain sight.
09:24At Medned Habu, near Luxor,
09:26on the eastern wall of the mortuary temple of Ramesses III,
09:30you can see what happened
09:32when the ships which had wiped Ugarit off the map
09:35headed south to Egypt.
09:41The enemy was on their way,
09:43and the enemy was on their way,
09:45and the enemy was on their way,
09:47and the enemy was on their way,
09:49and the enemy was on their way,
09:51and the enemy was on their way,
09:53and the enemy was on their way.
09:58King Ramesses is there, gigantic, with his drawn bow,
10:02and flooding around him in a tidal wave of barbaric warriors
10:07with horned helmets and outlandish Mohican hairdos.
10:11According to Egyptian accounts, these are the Sea Peoples.
10:16The Peleset, the Shekelesh, the Habiru,
10:19raiders from Italy, Sardinia, Sicily and the Aegean,
10:23nomads from the desert fringes of the Levant,
10:26savages from beyond the pale of civilisation.
10:33The Egyptians had been troubled by seaborne raiders from the west before.
10:37But in the eighth year of Ramesses's reign, around 1180 BC,
10:42they returned in even greater numbers.
10:44And this time, there was a new and troubling development.
10:48They brought women and children with them.
10:53According to one theory, this was no hit-and-run raid,
10:57but a mass movement of people,
10:59perhaps displaced from their own homes in the west,
11:02and now looking for new lands to settle.
11:09No-one knows for sure what caused the mass migration of the Sea Peoples
11:13in this period.
11:16Explanations range from a natural disaster, a flood, a famine,
11:20an earthquake or a volcanic eruption,
11:23to a cascade of tribal movements that began as far away as China
11:28and spread in a cataclysmic domino effect.
11:32Whatever the explanation,
11:34this tide of humanity swept over the civilised world
11:38and left it in ruins.
11:41According to the version of events recorded here,
11:44Ramesses's armies smashed the Sea Peoples.
11:47But for much of the rest of the civilised world,
11:50this victory over these desperately fierce,
11:53or fiercely desperate invaders, came too late.
11:57In a period of just 50 years, from around 1200 to 1150 BC,
12:03many of the centres of Bronze Age culture
12:06Many of the centres of Bronze Age culture,
12:09from mainland Greece to the Near East,
12:12were snuffed out one after the other.
12:17One by one, their names were added to the roll call of destruction.
12:21In the west, Pelos, Sparta, Mycenae, Athens, Iolkos.
12:27In the east, Hattusha, Tarsus, Carchemish, Alaka and Ugarit,
12:33King Amarapi's doomed city.
12:35Then Katna, Kadesh, Hazur, Lakish,
12:39and Megiddo, or Armageddon,
12:42where archaeologists have only recently discovered the ash layer
12:45that attests to the world that ended here.
12:52These cities hadn't been brought down by the hammer blows of a rival,
12:57but by the attrition of a ragbag of have-nots.
13:02All on the other side of the plate-glass window of civilisation,
13:05but with the desperation and numbers to smash their way through.
13:10The vulnerability of these once-powerful centres
13:14shows that for all its complexity and sophistication,
13:18Bronze Age civilisation was never much deeper or durable
13:23than a layer of gold leaf.
13:27The catastrophe of the Sea Peoples
13:29was one of the great breakpoints in our story,
13:31when the radio goes off the air.
13:33In many areas, writing disappeared, and with it, history.
13:37Agricultural output collapsed, cities were deserted,
13:41populations dwindled.
13:43The connections between people withered, the world shrank.
13:47Artefacts became crude and cumbersome.
13:50In some areas, even oil lamps disappeared.
13:53This truly was the first Dark Age.
13:59In the centuries that followed,
14:01that precious and vulnerable organism called civilisation
14:04would lie dormant,
14:06its complex systems no longer relevant in these new times.
14:11But slowly, it revives.
14:13And when the story of civilisation unfolds for the second time,
14:17it would be into a new world, a harsher world, the Age of Iron.
14:29BELL RINGS
14:39Iron was once a precious metal,
14:41praised in poetry and used in jewellery.
14:44But the techniques for hardening it and transforming it into steel
14:48turned a precious metal into an essential one.
14:53These techniques, pioneered in Bronze Age Anatolia,
14:56were once closely guarded secrets.
14:58But the destruction of the Hittite kingdom by the Sea Peoples
15:01caused the Iron Masters to migrate to other regions,
15:05bringing the secrets of their guild with them.
15:09Unlike copper and tin, the raw materials for bronze,
15:13the ingredients for steel, iron ore and charcoal, were widely available.
15:18Once the secrets of iron-making became known,
15:21the Age of Iron truly began.
15:24Initially used to make tools,
15:26it wasn't long before iron weapons were being made.
15:29Ultimately, iron would democratise warfare,
15:32taking weapons out of the hands of the few
15:35and putting them into the hands of the many.
15:38The political and social consequences of that revolution
15:41would play out in the centuries to come.
15:44But first came the question of who would thrive
15:47in this new, hard-edged Age of Iron.
15:51Who were the winners, the losers and the new powers in the land?
16:14The collapse of the Bronze Age kingdoms
16:16was a bit like the disappearance of the dinosaurs.
16:19With the big beasts out of the running,
16:21a variety of smaller, mammal-like kingdoms
16:24now had their moment in the sun.
16:29Amongst these inheritors were the people responsible
16:32for these rather beautiful votive offerings,
16:35from Byblos, in what is now Lebanon.
16:38They'd been known to history, but not themselves, as the Phoenicians,
16:42and it would be on their narrow shoulders
16:44that many of the achievements of Bronze Age civilisation
16:47would be carried forward into the new Age of Iron.
16:55For a people who don't exactly loom large
16:57in the histories of the ancient world,
16:59the list of Phoenician achievements is pretty impressive.
17:03Pioneering shipbuilding and navigation techniques,
17:06commercial and financial innovations,
17:09the exploration and colonisation of the central and western Mediterranean.
17:14All of these would have a positive effect
17:16on the preservation and eventual revival of civilisation
17:20following the Bronze Age collapse.
17:23But all of these achievements are eclipsed by this,
17:26a technology that, like iron, would transform the ancient world.
17:33This is the sarcophagus of Ahiram,
17:35who ruled in Byblos sometime around 1200 BC.
17:39An inscription running along the top here
17:42is thought to be the world's oldest known example of an alphabet.
17:49Ominously, this was a curse that threatened anybody
17:52who dared to desecrate the tomb of the king.
17:55But, in fact, the development of an alphabet by the Phoenicians
17:59was a blessing which we're still benefiting from today.
18:03MUSIC PLAYS
18:08Earlier writing systems, Egyptian hieroglyphics or Akkadian cuneiform,
18:13were a kind of bureaucratic code based on a complex system of symbols
18:18which stood for things or for syllables of words.
18:22The skills required to use them
18:24were restricted to a class of trained specialists known as scribes.
18:29An alphabet is far simpler.
18:31Each letter indicates the sound of a spoken word.
18:35So learning how to pronounce the alphabet allows you to sound out words,
18:40even if you don't know what they mean.
18:42Alphabet systems are more like speech recording than code-breaking
18:47and are easier to use and teach.
18:49So, just as iron put weapons into the hands of the masses,
18:53so the alphabet took reading and writing out of the hands of a number of people.
18:59It took a narrow clique of specialists and democratised them.
19:08The Phoenician alphabet was made up of 22 letters,
19:11all of which were consonants.
19:13So it means that this inscription has no vowel sounds in it.
19:17So it would have been a bit like a text message
19:20sent by an impatient teenager.
19:22And this made for a very fast and efficient mode
19:25of recording and communication,
19:27exactly what the business-minded Phoenicians wanted.
19:34The Phoenicians were businessmen to their bones,
19:37a tradition that continues today in Lebanon,
19:40where most of the major Phoenician cities were found.
19:45This is Byblos.
19:46In the Bronze Age, before the destruction wrought by the Sea Peoples,
19:50this Phoenician city had been a vassal kingdom of Egypt,
19:54and many of the artefacts and structures found here make clear.
19:58This is the Temple of the Obelisks,
20:00built around 1300 BC, just before the Great Bronze Age collapse.
20:06The obelisk, a symbol of the Egyptian sun god Ra,
20:10is one of the most ubiquitous features of Egyptian religious architecture,
20:14and its presence here tells you all you need to know
20:17about the dominance of Egypt in this period.
20:24But the catastrophe of the Sea Peoples
20:27changed things for everyone, including Egypt.
20:31The walls of Medinet Habu might boast of the total annihilation
20:35of this threat from the sea,
20:37but hard times came to Egypt nonetheless.
20:42When things finally settled down
20:44after two centuries of darkness and confusion,
20:47it's apparent that Egypt's glory days are over,
20:52as the story of Wenamun makes clear.
20:56I think that all leaders of great nations
20:59should read and contemplate the story of Wenamun,
21:03a high temple official from Thebes in Egypt,
21:06who came to Byblos around 1075 BC.
21:10It's a sobering story of what happens
21:13when your international credit rating drops through the floor.
21:17The report of Wenamun
21:19is a first-person account of a temple official
21:22who travelled to Byblos
21:24to acquire one of the region's most sought-after resources,
21:28timber from the legendary cedars of Lebanon.
21:33These days, the mountains of Lebanon
21:36have been more or less cleared of these mighty trees,
21:39but back then, they were a plentiful and vital supply of timber.
21:43Once, an Egyptian pharaoh had only to snap his divine fingers
21:47for a whole forest of cedars to be dispatched south.
21:51But as Wenamun discovered,
21:53since the Sea Peoples, everything had changed.
22:00His journey to Byblos hadn't been an easy one.
22:03It was a long and arduous journey,
22:06but it was worth it.
22:08His journey to Byblos hadn't been an easy one.
22:12Having been robbed along the way,
22:14he was then kept waiting for 29 days,
22:17before eventually being granted a rather grudging interview
22:21by Zakarbal, the prince of the city.
22:24"'What your father did, what your father's father did,
22:27"'you will do too,' declared Wenamun rather grandly.
22:31"'To which the prince of Byblos replied,
22:34"'And I will do it, as long as you pay,
22:38"'for I am not your servant, nor the servant of he who sent you.'"
22:43Clearly, the relationship between Byblos and Egypt
22:46was now strictly business.
22:48Cash on delivery.
22:50And please do not ask for credit, as refusal often offends.
22:59For the trading cities of the Mediterranean coast,
23:02the Bronze Age collapse was like a bonfire of Bronze Age red tape,
23:07and a green light for entrepreneurs in the spirit of free enterprise.
23:12Liberated from the control of kings and distant palaces,
23:16the traders in coastal cities like Byblos
23:19organised themselves into firms,
23:22based around the networks of their extended families.
23:26When the kings did return, their control was no longer absolute.
23:30Instead, they went into business with the merchant princes,
23:34lending them ready cash to underwrite their trading ventures.
23:38For their part, the merchants got a place at the high table,
23:42shaping the political destiny of their cities,
23:45and always with the bottom line in mind.
23:50As we all know, every successful business
23:53is meant to have a USP, or unique selling proposition.
23:57And for the Phoenicians, it was the sea, and their mastery of it.
24:01We already know, from the wrecks of Bronze Age ships,
24:04that the sea was an important route for trade.
24:07But during the Iron Age, the Phoenicians would turn it into a superhighway.
24:22The Phoenicians were blue-water sailors.
24:25Rather than hugging the coast,
24:27navigating cautiously between headland and headland,
24:31they struck out into the great watery unknown,
24:34by day and by night,
24:36guided by the star that bore their name, the Phoenike, or Pole Star.
24:45With their advanced navigation skills,
24:48the Phoenicians began to stitch together a web of trade,
24:52from sea to shining sea.
24:55But what were the Phoenicians carrying
24:57in their distinctive horse-headed boats?
25:01We know from Wen Amun's story
25:03how important the cedars of Lebanon were.
25:06But the Phoenicians had other desirable commodities
25:09to sell to a world that was picking itself up
25:12from the disaster of the Bronze Age collapse.
25:15And one in particular with which they will always be associated.
25:23Why were the Phoenicians called the Phoenicians?
25:26Well, you could say they literally made a name for themselves with this.
25:30This is a murex, a sea mollusk,
25:32which was a source of one of the most precious commodities
25:35of the ancient world.
25:37A powerful dye, famed for the intensity of its colour.
25:41It's known simply as purple.
25:44The Phoenicians had cornered the market in it,
25:47so the Greeks called them by their name for purple, Phoenix.
25:51Hence, the Phoenicians, the Purple People.
26:00MUSIC PLAYS
26:10If you were passing along this coastline 3,000 years ago,
26:13I reckon you'd know that you were heading towards a Phoenician port.
26:17The first clue would be geographical.
26:19A spit of land sticking out to sea, or a sizeable inshore island.
26:23These were the sites which the Phoenicians preferred for their cities.
26:27Amphibious places, half land, half water.
26:33And as you came closer, the telltale sign of the double harbour,
26:38which meant that ships could arrive safely into the port
26:41whichever way the wind was blowing.
26:43And if there wasn't a double harbour, then the Phoenicians built one.
26:47MUSIC PLAYS
26:54And just as you're docking, the wind suddenly changes direction
26:58and you catch the foul stench of the purple works on the outskirts of town,
27:02the source of so much of Phoenicia's exportable wealth.
27:06Welcome to Tyre, which 3,000 years ago was the most successful
27:10and the most powerful of the Phoenician city-states.
27:18Like Byblos and Sidon, Tyre grew fat on trade.
27:23So fat that around 1,000 BC,
27:26it was becoming an important power in the region
27:29and the object of some fear and a lot of envy amongst its immediate neighbours.
27:36In the Bible, the prophet Ezekiel paints a vivid picture of Tyre in its glory days.
27:42In a long and detailed passage, he lists 20 or so cities
27:46and the imports which Tyre received from each.
27:50There's silver, iron, tin and lead from Tarshish.
27:54Some think this is Spain.
27:56Ivory, ebony and saddlecloths from Dedan.
27:59That's in Saudi Arabia.
28:01Spices, precious stones and gold from Sheba.
28:05Wine and wool from Damascus.
28:07The list goes on and on.
28:09Tyre, says Ezekiel, your frontiers are far out to sea.
28:14When you unloaded your goods to satisfy so many peoples,
28:18you enriched the kings of the earth with your excess of wealth and goods.
28:24Isaiah was even less flattering,
28:27accusing Tyre of playing the whore to all the kingdoms.
28:32But the only profits which the merchant princes of Tyre were really interested in
28:37were those that you could tot up at the end of the financial year.
28:43Tyre
29:02To trace the origins of those carping profits back to their source,
29:06you have to travel inland from the thriving port cities of the Mediterranean coast
29:11and head south, the land of one of the most intriguing peoples of the ancient world,
29:16the Jews.
29:19Like the Phoenicians, the Jews have benefited from the Elbow Room,
29:23created by the collapse of the great Bronze Age kingdoms.
29:31According to the Bible, Jerusalem was the capital of the Kingdom of Israel,
29:35founded by King David and inherited by his son, Solomon.
29:42Many archaeologists now wonder just how powerful and unified
29:48Solomon's kingdom really was.
29:51For them, the biblical account was a vision of a golden age,
29:55how things should have been, rather than the way things were.
29:59But both sceptics and true believers are agreed that after Solomon,
30:04there were two distinct Jewish kingdoms in this region.
30:08Israel, or Samaria in the north,
30:11and Judah, whose capital was here in Jerusalem, to the south.
30:15Mammal kingdoms, both of them, beneficiaries of the great Bronze Age collapse.
30:21But in the following centuries, both north and south would suffer the same fate
30:26as all the other small kingdoms in this part of the world,
30:30because the dinosaurs weren't extinct after all.
30:33They were back, but this time clad in iron rather than bronze,
30:37dreaming of a universal empire based on aggressive expansion
30:41and the systematic use of violence and terror.
30:45It's time to meet the Assyrians.
31:07CHEERING
31:25This is Shalmaneser III, king of Assyria during the 9th century BC.
31:31He ruled for 35 years, 31 of which he was at war.
31:36And that's what the Assyrians did, war.
31:39War underpinned their society, their economy and their civilisation.
31:48For an Assyrian king, the greatest attribute wasn't wisdom or justice,
31:53it was melamu, a shimmering radiance that flashed out from his brow
31:58to intimidate his enemies, shock and awe,
32:01without the aid of bunker busters or cruise missiles.
32:06If geography is fate, the Assyrians learnt to overcome theirs.
32:11In the aftermath of the catastrophe of the Sea Peoples,
32:14Assyria found itself with a small triangle of territory
32:18wedged between the plains of Mesopotamia
32:21and the mountains of Iran to the north.
32:23Cramped and landlocked,
32:25it learnt to fight for every square mile of territory.
32:30Raised in the school of hard knocks,
32:32the Assyrians went on to major in the arts of empire building
32:36and aggression, directed against neighbouring kingdoms.
32:41Every year, the Assyrian king would summon his army to Nineveh
32:45and every year, lead it against those unfortunate enough
32:49to lie within striking distance.
32:51It was a kind of harvest, an annual gathering in of plunder and tribute.
32:57The Assyrians respected no gods but their own.
33:00In Babylon and Egyptian Thebes, hallowed temples,
33:04spared for millennia by the scourge of war, were ransacked.
33:08Their gods carried off to be laid at the feet of Ashur,
33:12the Assyrian god of war.
33:15Mere mortals fared far worse.
33:18Impalings, amputations, burnings alive,
33:24flayings alive, disfigurements, mass blindings, mass deportations.
33:29These were par for the course when an Assyrian army took your city.
33:35All the locals could do was cower in the reeds
33:38until the tsunami of violence abated.
33:42But this wasn't mindless violence.
33:44This was carefully directed violence.
33:47Violence as an instrument of state policy, an economy of terror.
33:52Because after the shock and awe came the shekels and the plunder.
34:00A raid by Shalmaneser's father on a kingdom in south-east Turkey
34:04netted the following plunder.
34:0740 chariots complete with trappings,
34:10460 horses, 2,000 cattle, 5,000 sheep,
34:15silver, gold, lead, copper and iron in varying but large amounts.
34:20Fine linen and various pieces of fancy furniture,
34:24including couches made of ivory and inlaid with gold.
34:28The ruler's sister, the daughters of his nobles and their rich dowries.
34:3315,000 subjects who were snatched away and brought to Assyria as slaves.
34:39He also imposed an annual tribute of sheep, grain, gold and silver.
34:46And that was just the proceeds of one of 15 victims
34:50from that year's campaign.
34:52Who says that war crimes don't pay?
35:02Shalmaneser III followed in his father's rapacious footsteps.
35:07His appetite for plunder took him west
35:10to the Phoenician cities of the Mediterranean coast
35:13and south to the Kingdom of Israel.
35:17At the mouth of the Dog River near Beirut,
35:20he erected a monument to himself
35:22and boasted about the tribute he had received from his victims.
35:29You can see what receiving tribute meant
35:32on the famous black obelisk of Shalmaneser in the British Museum.
35:37This is Jehu, the King of Israel,
35:40adopting the position recommended
35:42in the presence of all that dazzling melamu.
35:51If the kings had continued to do this sensible thing,
35:54then the Jews of the ancient world
35:56would probably have been spared a great deal of suffering.
35:59But the kings didn't, so the people weren't.
36:03Jehu's successors decided that it was better to die like lions
36:08than live like sheep.
36:10In 737 BC, the northern Kingdom of Israel
36:14threw off its subservient vassal status
36:17and allied itself with Assyria's great rival, Egypt.
36:22Bad move.
36:24The Assyrians, as a poet would later write,
36:27came down like a wolf on the fold.
36:31Within a decade, the northern kingdom was no more,
36:35its cities destroyed, its territories annexed,
36:38its people deported en masse to Assyria.
36:41The Ten Tribes of Israel became the Ten Lost Tribes,
36:45chewed up by the Assyrian war machine.
36:49But in the brutal ecology of the Age of Israel,
36:54But in the brutal ecology of the Age of Iron,
36:57one kingdom's loss is another kingdom's gain.
37:01With its more powerful northern neighbour wiped off the map,
37:05the southern Jewish kingdom of Judah now came into its own.
37:11Jerusalem quickly grew from an insignificant hill town
37:14into the capital city of an important Assyrian vassal state.
37:20And so things might have continued
37:23if the kings of Judah had kept their lips firmly planted on the ground.
37:31But King Hezekiah had other plans.
37:34Although the terrible fate of the northern kingdom
37:37was still in living memory,
37:39he too made the fateful decision to defy the Assyrians,
37:43to stop paying tribute and to make an alliance with the Egyptians.
37:47He certainly understood the consequences.
37:50This massive wall, 20ft wide in certain places,
37:54was hastily thrown up,
37:56and the houses that stood in its path were demolished to make way for it.
38:01And this was just the start of Hezekiah's defensive strategy.
38:06MUSIC PLAYS
38:15You can't fault Hezekiah for not being prepared.
38:19He also ordered the construction of this subterranean conduit,
38:23a third of a mile long, cut through the bedrock of the city,
38:27designed to carry fresh water from a spring outside the city walls
38:32to a reservoir inside.
38:36So Hezekiah had done all he could.
38:39He'd built his wall, he'd dug his tunnel.
38:42Now all he could do was to wait for the wrath of the Assyrians
38:46to crash down around his ears.
38:58And that's more or less what happened
39:00when King Sennacherib marched into Judah looking for payback.
39:05Except that it didn't happen in Jerusalem.
39:08Sennacherib was more than happy to leave Hezekiah hiding
39:12behind his fancy new wall, like a caged bird,
39:15as one Assyrian text contemptuously put it.
39:19And meanwhile, the Assyrian army marched west
39:22to Hezekiah's second city, Lachish.
39:26What happened next was recorded in gruesome detail
39:30in a frieze that once decorated the palace of Sennacherib.
39:56The city fell, of course, with all the inevitable consequences.
40:00Up here on the western slopes,
40:02archaeologists have discovered a mass grave
40:05containing the bodies of over 1,500 men, women and children.
40:11Some of them possibly the victims
40:13of the terrible atrocities depicted on the frieze.
40:17As for the survivors, the frieze also reveals their fate.
40:22Mass deportation to Assyria,
40:24where the men were put to work in the stone quarries,
40:28raising up monuments to the greater glory
40:31of the mighty Assyrian Empire.
40:46There's a sequel to the story of Hezekiah's death,
40:50There's a sequel to the story of Hezekiah's defiance of Assyria.
40:54When he died, he was succeeded by his son Manasseh.
40:58Manasseh rejected his father's policies,
41:01got down on his knees and declared himself a loyal vassal
41:05of the Assyrian king.
41:07More importantly, he found a way to make himself useful.
41:14The Assyrians were tough, but they weren't psychopaths.
41:17If you gave them something that they wanted,
41:19then they'd let you survive.
41:21Manasseh gave them olive oil.
41:23In fact, he turned the town of Ekron, to the north of here,
41:27into a virtual oil refinery.
41:29Over 100 oil presses have been discovered there,
41:32suggesting the scale of production needed for this little kingdom
41:36to keep the Assyrian beast at bay.
41:48The Jews weren't the only ones
41:50trying to satisfy the demanding Assyrians.
41:53The ever-resourceful Phoenicians also had to raise their game.
41:58And, as we'll see, by doing so, they revived the arts of civilisation
42:03that had been lost for centuries to the west.
42:07When the Assyrians swept into the territory of the Phoenicians,
42:12the merchants of Byblos, Sidon and Tyre
42:15were permitted to continue as before,
42:18but the lion's share of their profits
42:21would be diverted to the Assyrian treasury.
42:24It was a hostile takeover, with no golden parachutes.
42:30On the gates of his palace,
42:32the Assyrian king was waiting for his arrival.
42:35A century later, Sargon II elaborated on the same theme,
42:40decorating the walls of his new city-sized palace in Khorsabad
42:45with a frieze of gold,
42:47a symbol of a new era,
42:49a symbol of a new era,
42:51a symbol of a new era,
42:53a symbol of a new era,
42:55a symbol of a new era,
42:57a symbol of a new era,
42:59a symbol of a new era,
43:01the walls of his new city-sized palace in Khorsabad
43:04with a frieze showing Phoenician Hippoi
43:07delivering Lebanese cedar
43:09in amounts that the Egyptian Wen Amun could only have dreamed about.
43:15But the Assyrians were impossible to please.
43:18As a rule of thumb, the tribute demanded rose 20-fold
43:22with every succeeding generation,
43:25and so the Phoenicians had no choice.
43:28They got on their boats, took to the seas
43:31and started looking for new ways to get rich quick.
43:44They headed west into the Mediterranean.
43:47They went to Cyprus and Malta,
43:49to Italy, Sardinia and Sicily,
43:52to North Africa, Ibiza and Spain,
43:56searching for new markets and new sources of raw materials,
44:00founding ports and trading colonies along the way
44:03and laying the foundations
44:05of what would one day become the Carthaginian Empire.
44:14I'm heading now towards the island of Motia,
44:17but during the time when the Phoenicians built their colony here,
44:20this was actually joined to the mainland by causeway.
44:25Now, all around me here are salt works,
44:28and the Phoenicians tended to build their colonies
44:31post the sources of salt.
44:33It was used not only for the preservation of food,
44:36but also in the dyeing process,
44:39the very famous Tyrian purple.
44:46This small, flat island off the west coast of Sicily
44:50is now given over mostly to scrub and vines.
44:54Motia was once a bustling emporium,
44:57set up by the Phoenicians at the beginning of the 8th century BC.
45:01And the main reason for its existence
45:03was to act as a staging post for the lucrative trade routes.
45:06It went from Greece all the way down to Italy,
45:09then across the western coast of Sicily,
45:11then down to North Africa.
45:13But it also had its own industrial units too,
45:16making not only the famous purple dye, but also pottery.
45:20And here we can see a very fine example of a pottery kiln.
45:27These guys were really into everything.
45:32But though they came in search of profits,
45:35like industrious honeybees,
45:37the Phoenicians carried with them the pollen of civilisation
45:41into regions that had been blighted by the Bronze Age collapse.
45:45And the ones who benefited the most
45:47were the people known to us as the Greeks.
45:52But who were these Iron Age Greeks,
45:54the ones who came after the Bronze Age Mycenaeans?
45:58What was their story?
46:06The Bronze Age collapse had hit the Mycenaean kingdoms hard.
46:10This part of the world had always been on the edge of civilisation.
46:14When the catastrophe of the Sea Peoples happened,
46:17it fell off the edge.
46:19Populations collapsed,
46:21farming reverted from agriculture to pastoralism.
46:24A land of citadels ruled by warrior kings
46:28became a country of tribal villages,
46:31separated from each other, closed in on themselves.
46:35But the Dark Ages weren't completely dark.
46:39The archaeological record contains vivid flashes of light
46:43that suggest that not everything was lying dormant.
47:14If you come to Ischia, in the Bay of Naples,
47:17you can see one of these lightning flashes.
47:20A modest enough artefact,
47:22but one which carries on it the mark of these changing times.
47:28It's known as the Cup of Nestor,
47:31found at a site called Pithecusae,
47:33and it dates from around the 8th century BC.
47:37And scratched on its side is a poem.
47:44It says,
47:46I am Nestor's cup, good to drink from.
47:49Whoever drinks this cup empty,
47:51straightaway desire for beautiful crowned Aphrodite will seize him.
47:56Now, I'm sure many of us will recognise the headiness
47:59that comes from knocking back a glass of wine,
48:02but the Cup of Nestor makes a more sober point.
48:05This little poem was written in Greek, using an alphabet.
48:10Before the Bronze Age collapse,
48:12Greek was written down in Linear B,
48:14an unwieldy system that used more than 200 signs and symbols,
48:19which was really only good for bookkeeping.
48:22But here we are, just a few centuries later,
48:25with Greek speakers using a concise and efficient alphabet,
48:29with less than 30 characters, to write poetry.
48:33So, clearly, at some point during the Dark Ages,
48:36the Greeks have received enlightenment from someone.
48:43The getting of wisdom is all about the company you keep.
48:47On Ischia and elsewhere, we know that the Greeks were rubbing shoulders
48:51with the inventors of the alphabet, the Phoenicians.
48:55Both groups had come here to exploit the region's iron,
48:59silver and tin mines,
49:01and seemed to have ended up as partners rather than rivals.
49:05This allowed the Greeks to sit at the feet of the Purple People
49:10and to relearn the lost arts of civilisation.
49:16Just a few centuries after that simple poem
49:19was scratched on the side of a cup,
49:21a Greek named Herodotus wrote a monumental,
49:24multi-volumed work called The Histories,
49:26in which he acknowledged the debt that the Greeks owed to the Phoenicians
49:30for giving them the alphabet.
49:32Later historians have added further items to that debt of honour.
49:36The cultivation of vines and olives,
49:38interest-bearing loans and banking, weights and measures,
49:42and even political institutions such as kingship
49:45were all said to have been brought to the west
49:47by the industrious Phoenicians.
50:00But the Greeks were inveterate tinkerers,
50:03instinctive improvers of other people's ideas.
50:07They took the Phoenician alphabet one stage further,
50:10devising five new letters which reproduced vowel sounds as well.
50:16No longer restricted to the abbreviated text-speak
50:20of the Phoenician alphabet,
50:22the Greek alphabet became a more expressive tool,
50:25better at capturing the melodies and rhythms of speech,
50:29poetry as well as cargo manifests.
50:37But the charming frivolity of Nestor's cup
50:40gives no clue as to what came next.
50:43A piece of writing so monumental and so profound
50:48that it would shape the destiny of the Greek-speaking world.
50:57Rage.
50:59Sing of the rage of Achilles' goddess,
51:02sing of the rage of Achilles' goddess,
51:05that ill-fated killer, Peleus' son,
51:08who cost the Achaeans so dear,
51:11sending to hell so many brave souls,
51:14mighty warriors turned into carrion,
51:17a feast for dogs and birds.
51:23The unmistakable war music of the Iliad,
51:2616,000 lines of hexameter verse,
51:29the plunge you straight into the strife and havoc
51:32which is said to have happened here, in front of the walls of Troy,
51:36some 3,200 years ago.
51:46The very first word of the Iliad is menen, rage.
51:50And that's what it explores with unflinching clarity and insight.
51:54The rage of men fighting for vengeance, honour and personal gain,
51:59for victory and survival,
52:02but also for the intoxicating adrenaline rush
52:05that comes with the licensed savagery of war.
52:13Achilles hacked at his collarbone just below the neck,
52:16driving in deep the double-edged blade hard to the hilt,
52:20and down like Chaon fell,
52:22his face in the dust, his black blood flooding out to soak the earth.
52:27Achilles grabbed his foot and tossed him into the river,
52:30and away he went, downstream, sped by stinging words.
52:35Go, then, down to the fishes.
52:38Lie there with them.
52:40Let them suck the blood from your wounds and arrange your funeral rites.
52:52Homer is the name attached to this poem without precedent.
52:57He is variously described as its author, composer, performer or compiler.
53:04But was he one man or many?
53:07An individual genius, a tradition or a guild of poets?
53:12Claimed by seven different cities as their native son,
53:16Homer has been called the Cheshire Cat of world literature,
53:20always disappearing.
53:26What we do know is that sometime between 750 and 700 BC,
53:31the Iliad was written down using the new technology,
53:35the Greek alphabet.
53:37The language, though Greek,
53:39was like nothing that had been heard before or since.
53:43It was a jumble of different dialects.
53:46In the English language poem,
53:48written in Texan, Jamaican, Scots and South African,
53:52it was also a jumble of weapons technologies,
53:54battle tactics and political institutions,
53:57taken from periods both ancient and modern.
54:01However, to the Greeks, it must have made sense.
54:04Over 180 manuscripts of the Iliad have survived.
54:08That's more than twice the number of its sister epic, the Odyssey.
54:12A crude but telling measure of a work's popularity and relevance.
54:19One reason for the centrality of the Iliad to the Greeks
54:23is that it gave them a mirror in which they could see themselves
54:27and the kind of societies they were creating.
54:30Alongside all the blood and guts,
54:32the Iliad poses profound questions about the nature of society,
54:37the qualities of leadership,
54:39the rules by which people consent to be governed.
54:46Well-walled Troy, with its lofty gates, wide streets and fine towers,
54:52is in many ways the ideal city-state to which the Greeks aspired.
54:57And Hector, the noble warrior,
54:59who fights and dies for the survival of his city,
55:02is the champion of civilisation and the real hero of the Iliad.
55:07It's the Greeks, the wolves at the gates,
55:10who are troubled and troubling.
55:12They wrangle over the reasons why they're there,
55:15the justness of their cause and the motives of their leaders.
55:19And it's this that puts the politics as well as the poetry into the Iliad.
55:31According to legend, this is where the Greek camp was.
55:35The black ships drawn up on the beach near the mouth of the Skamander River.
55:40A rampart and ditch surmounted by wooden walls thrown up around them.
55:45A makeshift, vagabond place compared to well-walled Troy.
55:52This is where Achilles, the hero, sulked in his tents,
55:56where Agamemnon blustered and strutted,
55:59trying to maintain his authority as high king.
56:02This is where Wily Odysseus, the unscrupulous aristocrat, plotted and schemed.
56:08And it was here, too, that a debate took place that asked,
56:12but did not answer, a question that would preoccupy the Greeks
56:16in the centuries to come.
56:23The Greek army was assembled to hear their master's decision
56:27about whether or not the siege would be abandoned and they'd be going home.
56:31They were there to listen, approve and obey,
56:34but one of their number dared to speak out.
56:39Thucydides was just a common soldier, a spear-carrier,
56:43one of the poor, bloody infantry,
56:45and it's clear that Homo disapproves of him.
56:48He describes him as a hunchback, bandy-legged
56:51and as the ugliest man who ever came to Troy.
56:54But although spoken through broken teeth, his words were fluent and flowing
56:59and he abused Agamemnon, the high king,
57:02and demanded an immediate evacuation.
57:05With morale at a low ebb, this was a critical moment in the long war.
57:12It's Odysseus who puts a stop to this subversive rant.
57:15Who are you to wrangle with kings, he demands,
57:18before beating Thucydides with his rod of office?
57:21The mutinous moment passes, the siege carries on,
57:25but the question still hangs in the air.
57:28Who are you to wrangle with kings?
57:33The generations of Greeks that came after the heroes of Troy
57:37would give many different answers to that question,
57:40and in doing so would change their world forever
57:43and also lay the foundations for our own.
57:46Planet Earth heads to the depths of the ocean here on BBC HD tomorrow night at seven,
57:50but back to tonight now and we're catching up with the Mad Men next.