Bronze Age Collapse
Violent, sudden and culturally disruptive phenomena, expressed by the collapse of economies, societies, factors of influence and stability in the Aegean, Anatolia and Levant territories, which were replaced after a hiatus by the isolated village cultures of the Dark Age period of history was defined by historians as Bronze Age Collapse.
The Egyptian Nineteenth Dynasty (about 1292 – 1185 BCE)
When Civilization Collapsed
In 1208 BCE Libyans and five other groups—the Shardana, Shekelesh, Akawasha, Lukka and Tursha—invaded the Nile Delta. An inscription on a wall erected by the Egyptian pharaoh Merneptah in the temple of Amun at Karnak describes the Libyans’ allies as “northerners” or “of the Countries of the Sea.” So modern scholars have come to call these invaders the Sea Peoples.
In the beginning of our article about Canaan, we must to bear in mind some archeological findings about the so-called Canaanite area that held true throughout the Middle – Late Bronze Ages and beyond:
Amorites the Oldest Canaanites
The Amorites (Sumerian MAR.TU, Akkadian Tidnum or Amurr?m, Egyptian Amar, Hebrew ’em?rî) refers to a Semitic people who occupied the country west of the Euphrates from the second half of the third millennium BCE. The term Amurru refers to them, as well as to their principal deity.
Religious cosmologies are ways of explaining the history and evolution of the universe based, at least in part, on the acceptance of principles that cannot or need not be justified on the basis of accepted scientific arguments. Most frequently, such theories begin by positing the existence of a gods (or god) who created and/or maintain(s) the universe.
The Iron Age
The Iron Age in the Ancient Near East is believed to have begun with the discovery of iron smelting and smithing techniques in Anatolia or the Caucasus in the late 2nd millennium BCE (circa 1300 BCE) [1] .
The use of iron weapons instead of bronze weapons spread rapidly throughout the Near East by the beginning of the 1st millennium BCE. Anatolians had begun forging weapons out of iron, which was a superior metal to bronze by 1500 BCE at the latest.
The Sea Peoples – Who is Who ? [1 from 2]
The Danuna – Denyen – Danaos - Achaeans
The Danuna (or Denyen), a significant contingent of the “Sea Peoples,” are represented in Egyptian, Hittite and classical sources. The evidence for their origins, ethnic identity and eventual fate is complex and controversial.
Manetho, a priest who wrote a history of Egypt in the third century BCE, placed Joseph’s entry into Egypt and his rise in the early part of the reign of the Hyksos king, Apophis. The Hyksos were expelled, and then Moses called them back to help the later Israelites escape from Egypt (see the Hyksos articles).
