Customer Reviews

Collapse of the Bronze Age: The Story of Greece, Troy, Israel, Egypt, and the Peoples of the Sea

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Although this is a history book with lots of names and dates,it is written in a flowing style and comes together nicely. There is no stilted language here. Combing through a massive amount of research material, Robbins has consolidated the information. He then makes educated conclusions about the events leading up to the collapse of mighty civilizations such as Troy, Egypt, Greece, the Hittites and others. People tend to think the Bronze Age ended when the ancients developed hotter fires and iron could be smelted, resulting in better tools or weapons. Wrong! There were cataclysmic internal and external forces working on the civilizations, resulting in their demise or diminution. Humor is sprinkled throughout the book, enhancing the pleasure of reading it. Some of the author's conclusions such as the reasons for the decline of Mycenaean Greece and the origin of the people of Israel are controversial or even counter to some current beliefs. However these conclusions are so well reasoned that they are difficult to dispute. Combining fragmentary written historical accounts,archaeological artifacts, language analysis, myths/legends, oral transmission of history, and other methods Robbins has written a fascinating account.

Robbins' "Collapse of the Bronze Age" is a thorough, solidly written survey of the history of the Eastern Mediterranean in about the 12th and 11th centuries BCE, stretching from Mycenaean Greece to Egypt. Robbins presents contending theories about what happened to cause the destruction of so many Greek cities, caused the Hittite Empire to collapse, and nearly ended the ancient realm of Egypt. Unlike some writers, Robbins shuns sensationalist interpretations, frequently warning the reader to judge archaeological evidence cautiously, citing numerous examples where a superficial interpretation of archaeological finds is contradicted by reliable historical sources.

Robbins does not supply final answers to many of the questions asked, but he does provide a good framework for the intelligent reader to continue to explore those questions and seek answers for him- or herself.

This book doen not have an author's profile as such, but has the flavor of the "informed amateur" in the best sense -- a non-professional who immerses himself in a number of different specialties and then integrates them in a way that a specialist in any one of them can't. In this case, the subject is the interactions among the various peoples of the eastern Mediterranean at the end of the Late Bronze Age, ending in a collapse of civilization as great as that of Europe at the end of the Roman Empire. Pulling this together involved mastering subjects whose specialists usually don't communicate with each other much -- Egyptologists, Near Eastern archaeologists, Levantine archaeologists, Aegean archaeologists, and Old Testament scholars. Robbins does this easily and in a very readable, even exciting style. He has also produced what I as an archaeologist feel is a great contribution to our understanding of the ancient world.

When I first got this I thought it looked like an overgrown class handout. Production values look like a good quality xerox copy self-published. The content is wonderful, however. This book is a great introduction. It's a very readable, accessible, narration of attempts to piece together the mystery of a fascinating period. Coverage spans the Mediterranean with focus on Hittite, Mycenaen, Minoan, Cannanite, Assyrian, and Egyptian cultures. The end of the Bronze Age covers a period where the the whole balance of world power shifts and a major ancient powers (the Hittites, and Mycenaen Greek) disappear completely and others, such as Egypt and the Assyrians suddenly contract and lose power. This the time period where the Jews rise to power in Palestine. It is a fascinating period, a link between the roots of civilization and the classical world. There's little hype - Robbins takes us back to the evidence at every turn. What unfolds is the mystery and drama of archeology in action. Not only does this give a good introduction to late bronze-age world, but it gives a great insight in the operation of archeology itself.

Written in a clear but not breezy fashion. The author offers plausible theories on the Greek dark ages the collapse of other civilizations of the Eastern Mediterranean and the problem of "the Sea People". The problem of who the Sea People were and where they came from had been a thorny problem to archeologists until recent years. A well researched book using current archeological evidence.
Scholarly but approachable.

This book is only tangentially concerned with the Near East Bronze Age as it waxed and waned in the Fertile Crescent (Iraq, Jordan, Israel, and Egypt) as well as its cultural extensions into the Anatolian highlands and the Aegean Region (including Greece). And it is not focused on the "Collapse of the Bronze Age." As Robbins makes clear the Bronze Age of the Near East transitioned into the Iron Age imperceptibly and, to the people involved seamlessly. Rather the book has a number of interesting stories that are tied together only by location (the Eastern Mediterranean), time period (the transition from the Bronze to Iron Age), and the mysterious phenomenon of the Peoples of the Sea movement.

Robbins focuses particular attention to the dissolution or collapse of the proto-Greek Mycenaean Society and the Anatolian based Hittite Society. He uses both events to illustrate that the transition of the Bronze Age into the Iron Age was accompanied by a good deal of social disorder, movements of peoples, and collapse of empires. While archaeologists and historians are in general agreement that the ending of the Near Eastern Bronze Age was a time of social and political upheaval, they disagree about why this was so. In this book, Robbins comes down on the side of migration-invasion and disruptions by the so-called Peoples of the Sea. He does also note however that natural disasters clearly could have had a role as well, particularly in Greece. He also discusses the destruction of the seldom mentioned advanced civilization of Cyprus which occurred during this same period. And, in a rather long aside, he also discusses the origins of the Jews and the occupation of Canaan by the tribes of Israel. Presumably because this also occurred around the end of the Bronze Age and the Israelites also had to cope with the Peoples of the Sea.

This book has some good tales to tell, but appears to lack focus. It is filled with digressions and expositions on matters not directly related to the social collapses of the late Bronze Age. On the other hand Robbins brushes over relevant information such as the Island of Crete where the Bronze Age began for the Aegean region and whose civilization defused to mainland Mycenae. And Cretan society also was disrupted at the end of the Bronze Age. Yet his only concern with Crete has to do with origins of the Peoples of the Sea. He also ignores the Mycenaean Linear A and B scripts which tell a good deal about these proto-Greeks and their way of life. In short this is an interesting book that could have been much better.

Exhaustive, complete, and clear-eyed. This is the one for an excellent overview of all the conflicting theories concerning the Sea Peoples and the collapse of the region's civilizations. Robbins has no axe to grind, and no simple answers, but follows the evidence to his conclusions, rather than trying to squeeze facts so they fit into a preconceived idea.

This book serves as an excellent introduction to the Bronze Age. It has a number of pictures, is told in a more or less narrative style, and keeps the readers interest throughout. It introduces you to countries and characters who you would never hear of otherwise. Apart from the Mycenaeans made famous by Homer, and the Egyptians who have earned their own fame through their brilliant structures, there are also the Hittites and their perpetual enemies the Assyrians. The only problem is that the author doesn't provide footnotes. I'd kinda like to know where some of this information is coming from, especially when the events of the period are so controversial. He also doesn't always make clear what parts are conjecture and what parts fact. Still, I don't think there can be a more interesting guide to this era. Highly recommended.

The style of not requiring footnotes and no in-text references makes this more of an historical novel. Footnotes are omitted
and references are held to a minimum so the reader may be confused with so many contradictory opinions with scant basis to sustain such opinions.
It reads like a novel with common sense points of view that may be true or not true. This pleasant reading of the past with scarce hard evidence makes it difficult to reach any meaningful conclusions.
In many cases such as on pag. 240, the author mentions
''archaeological evidence'' without specifying what he means by such archaeological evidence or at least cite the source from which the author reaches such conclusions about the existence
of whatever evidence there is. The lack of proper footnotes and references weakens the conclusions.
Then on page 223, there is the observation that ''early archaeological finds may lead to a theory that seems to explain
the limited evidence, as times goes on the theory begins to be accepted as fact and presented as fact as doubts and uncertianties are suppressed. Later more evidence or a reexamination of old evidence by new eyes, leads to doubt.
As noted earlier, archaeology sometimes seems to move from certianty to uncertainty. Thus the Greek conquest with destruction of
Cypriote cities, once so certain, is now much less so.''

Buyers of this book should beware that it is self-published, and needs editing. Aside from the spelling errors ("court marshal" for "court martial") and meandering prose style, some of the arguments seem weak. For example, we're told that the number of villages in Greece declined after the fall of Mycenae, and that the population of Europe declined after the Black Death of the Middle Ages; therefore, the fall of Mycenae might have been accompanied by the plague. The author doesn't say whether this is a widely held opinion, or merely his own speculation; and without any biographical information about the author, it's hard to know what's reliable in the book, and what's not.