Timeline of the Late Bronze Age Collapse
The collapse of the Late Bronze Age powers of the eastern Mediterranean, from the Egyptian–Hittite peace of about 1259 BCE through the Sea Peoples and the falls of Hattusa, Ugarit and the Mycenaean palaces to Assyria's wars with the Mushki and Arameans from about 1112 BCE.
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- 17 events ~1259 BCE – ~1112 BCE
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~1259 BCE: Ramesses II and Hattusili III make peace
Ramesses II of Egypt and the Hittite king Hattusili III agreed to peace, mutual aid against attack and the return of fugitives. Ramesses had fought Hattusili's brother Muwatalli II at Kadesh about fifteen years earlier. The treaty survives in Egyptian inscriptions at Karnak and the Ramesseum and in Akkadian clay tablets from Hattusa, preserving both kingdoms' versions of their agreement.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egyptian%E2%80%93Hittite_peace_treaty~1250 BCE: Mycenaean citadels strengthen their walls
After a first wave of destruction in mainland Greece, which burned Thebes and buildings outside the citadel of Mycenae, Mycenaean centers apparently fortified themselves. Mycenae nearly doubled its walled area and built the Lion Gate as its main entrance, Tiryns, Midea and Athens added Cyclopean walls, and some citadels cut protected passages down to underground water supplies.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lion_Gate~1210 BCE: Hittite lands face grain shortages
Texts of the late 13th century BCE refer to food shortages in Hittite lands: grain was shipped to Hatti from Egypt under Merneptah and from Mukish in northern Syria, and a pharaoh's letter to Ugarit quoted its king: "In the land of Ugarit there is a severe hunger." How severe and widespread the shortages were is debated; a 2023 tree-ring study from Gordion in central Anatolia points to dry conditions from about 1232 to 1192 BCE.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ugarit#Destruction~1208 BCE: Merneptah defeats Libyans and northern allies at Perire
In his fifth year the pharaoh Merneptah defeated an invasion of the western Nile Delta led by the Libyan chief Meryey, whose forces included Ekwesh, Teresh, Lukka, Sherden and Shekelesh, groups now counted among the Sea Peoples; Sherden also served in Egypt's own army. A victory stele of the same year, found by Flinders Petrie in 1896, is generally read as containing the earliest known mention of Israel.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Perire~1200 BCE: Suppiluliuma II fights sea battles off Cyprus
Suppiluliuma II, the last securely attested Hittite great king, recorded victories over Alashiya, generally identified with Cyprus, in battles at sea and on land; his father Tudhaliya IV had already claimed the island's conquest. They are among the earliest sea battles on record. Whether the enemy was Cypriot or raiders based on the island is unclear, and some historians think the Hittite fleet came from Ugarit.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C5%A0uppiluliuma_IIearly 12th century BCE: Hittite court abandons Hattusa
The Hittite capital was emptied by its court and administration, perhaps over several decades, and fire destroyed what remained only later; who set it is unknown. Suppiluliuma II disappears from the record and the empire broke apart, though a branch of the royal line ruled on at Carchemish, where Kuzi-Teshub took the title Great King. Juniper tree rings from Gordion record a severe drought around 1198 – 1196 BCE.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hattusa~1190 BCE: Ugarit is sacked and abandoned
Ugarit, a wealthy trading kingdom on the Syrian coast and a Hittite vassal, fell to an assault that left arrowheads in its streets, and its site lay forgotten until 1928. In letters from its last years King Ammurapi told the ruler of Alashiya that enemy ships had burned his towns while his troops were away in Hatti. A letter from the Egyptian chancellor Bay shows him still reigning in the 1190s; radiocarbon dates from Gibala, a port in his kingdom, suggest about 1192 – 1190 BCE.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ugarit~1190 BCE: Second destruction ends Mycenae as a power
Fires destroyed the palace at Mycenae; the citadel was reoccupied on a smaller scale but never again housed a literate palace administration. Tiryns and Midea were destroyed too: a 2018 study questioned the long-popular earthquake explanation, and more than 50 arrowheads in the debris at Midea suggest an assault. The later Greek tradition of a Dorian invasion has little firm archaeological support.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mycenae#Decline~1185 BCE: Emar on the Euphrates is destroyed
Emar, a trading city on the great bend of the Euphrates in Syria, subject to the Hittite king of Carchemish, was destroyed: its temples and monumental buildings burned while its houses were emptied and left standing. Its fall is dated to the second year of the Babylonian king Meli-Shipak, put at 1187 BCE in some reckonings. Who destroyed it is unknown.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emar~1180 BCE: Pylos palace burns, baking its archive
Fire destroyed the palace at Pylos in Messenia, seat of a Mycenaean kingdom, and the site was largely abandoned. The heat baked and preserved more than 1,000 clay tablets and fragments in Linear B, shown by Michael Ventris in 1952 to record an early form of Greek; some mention "watchers guarding the coast" but name no enemy. With the palaces gone, writing vanished from mainland Greece until the alphabet arrived in the 8th century BCE.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pylos#Mycenaean_Pylos~1180 BCE: Troy VIIa falls to an apparent attack
The last Late Bronze Age city at Hisarlik in northwest Anatolia, generally identified with the Hittites' Wilusa, burned with signs of enemy attack, including scorch marks, bronze arrowheads and fire-damaged human remains, after the main Mycenaean palaces had fallen. It was rebuilt as Troy VIIb on a reduced scale. No definitive evidence links this or the earlier destruction of Troy VI to a Greek siege like the Trojan War of legend.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Troy#Troy_VIIa~1177 BCE: Ramesses III repels the Sea Peoples
In Ramesses III's eighth year, dated from about 1188 to 1175 BCE in different chronologies, Egypt defeated Peleset, Tjeker, Shekelesh, Denyen and Weshesh on land in Djahy and at sea in the Nile mouths. His Medinet Habu temple claims "no land could stand before their arms", naming Hatti, Carchemish and Alashiya, though Carchemish survived. The name Sea Peoples comes from Emmanuel de Rougé's 1855 reading of these texts; their identities and roles as migrants, raiders or both remain debated.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Delta~1175 BCE: Philistines settle on the coast of Canaan
A new material culture with Aegean-style pottery appeared at Ashkelon, Ashdod and Ekron on the southern coast of Canaan, with little sign of destruction; the Peleset of Egyptian texts are generally identified with the Philistines. Ancient DNA from Ashkelon, published in 2019, found European-related ancestry in early Iron Age burials that faded within two centuries. Some radiocarbon evidence would put the arrival decades later.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philistines~1158 BCE: Elam sacks Babylonia and ends Kassite rule
Shutruk-Nakhunte of Elam raided Kassite Babylonia and carried monuments from Sippar and other cities to Susa, among them the victory stele of Naram-Sin, which he inscribed with his own name; the Code of Hammurabi stele found at Susa in 1901 is thought to have been taken too. About 1155 BCE his son Kutir-Nahhunte deported Enlil-nadin-ahi, last king of a Kassite dynasty more than three centuries old, and Elam carried off Babylon's statue of Marduk.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shutruk-Nakhunte~1157 BCE: Deir el-Medina tomb builders go on strike
In the 29th year of Ramesses III, variously dated between about 1159 and 1152 BCE, the royal tomb builders of Deir el-Medina, their grain rations overdue, stopped work and sat down behind the temple of Thutmose III, shouting "we are hungry". The scribe Amennakht recorded the protest on a papyrus now in Turin, often cited as the earliest recorded strike; late rations and strikes recurred under later kings.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ramesses_III#Economic_turmoil~1140 BCE: Egypt loses its last strongholds in Canaan
Egyptian garrisons in Canaan, still held under Ramesses III, were given up over the following decades, many of them abandoned without destruction. The last trace of Egyptian presence there is the name of Ramesses VI on a statue base from Megiddo; his reign is dated to about 1145 to 1137 BCE in one common chronology. The loss of Asian revenues deepened Egypt's economic strain.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ramesses_VI~1112 BCE: Tiglath-Pileser I repels the Mushki
Assyria came through the crisis weakened but intact, and Tiglath-Pileser I opened his campaigns by defeating the Mushki, who had occupied Assyrian districts on the upper Euphrates and whom some scholars link with the Phrygians. He fought repeated wars against Aramean tribes and marched to Byblos, Sidon and Arvad on the Mediterranean, but Aramean pressure grew late in his reign, and after 1056 BCE Assyria withdrew toward its heartland.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiglath-Pileser_I