Introduction

The early 12th century BC often reads like an ancient apocalypse. The great powers of the Late Bronze Age fractured. The Hittite Empire, a superpower sprawling across Anatolia and modern Syria from about 1600 BCE, seemingly vanished into the dust in 1180 BCE. We picture burning cities. We imagine a sudden, violent end.

But this picture is incomplete. The famous "collapse" was not uniform across the Near East. Instead, it was a complex, often traumatic transformation. It depended entirely on who you were, where you were, and when you were there. To understand who survived the destruction of Hattusa and the Land of Hatti, we must first look at what failed.

The Abandoned Heartland

For decades, historians believed that hostile invaders, often linked to the mysterious Sea Peoples, violently destroyed the Hittite capital of Hattusa. The archaeological evidence, however, tells a more complicated story. The city did burn, but archaeologists now know the royal court largely abandoned it first (Bryce, 2005). The elites packed their treasures and fled.

Why did they leave? A lethal combination of systemic failures doomed the central Anatolian highlands. Prolonged droughts devastated local agriculture (Cline, 2014). This was no ordinary drought. This was a mega-drought lasting up to 300 years, stretching from about 1250 BCE until about 850 BCE. We know this from pollen samples taken from dried up lakes, lagoons, and rivers. Inside deep cave systems, stalagmites stopped growing.

We know there were severe famines in Hatti. Even the Egyptians recorded this Anatolian disaster. An inscription by the Egyptian Pharaoh Merneptah, carved at Karnak, boasts about his generosity. He states that he sent massive grain shipments in ships "to keep alive that land of Hatti" (Cline, 2014). As best we can tell, this grain was shipped between 1210 and 1208 BCE.

On a tablet (text Bo 2810) written in the Hittite language and found at Hattusa, is a draft of a letter from the Great King to a subordinate prince (Hoffner, 2009). "Do you not know that there was a famine in my lands?" (Klengel, 1974)

The king issued a blunt command. He orders his officials to secure grain immediately. They must transport it to Ura, a port on the Mediterranean (Hoffner, 2009).

Scholars generally attribute the tablet to the reign of Tudhaliya IV or his successor, Suppiluliuma II (Hoffner, 2009) so it was written between 1210 and 1190 BCE. By this time the Great King was losing control of his territory. The drought was transitioning from a temporary crisis into a permanent catastrophe.

A Matter of Life and Death

It was not long before hostile neighbours severed urgently required grain shipments from the coast. We have the ‘Matter of Life and Death’ text RS 20.212, found in a private archive in Ugarit. Here, the Hittite king wrote directly to the ruler of Ugarit. He demanded an emergency shipment of roughly 450 tons of grain (Cline, 2014). The king ordered Ugarit to provide merchant ships at once. They had to sail to the agricultural region of Mukiš (along the Orontes River in modern day southern Turkey), load the grain, and rush it to the Hittite port. He stressed the utter panic of the situation. He repeated a terrifying phrase twice in the letter, "It is a matter of life and death!" (Singer, 1999)

Migrations and Invaders

If you have drought and famine, then you also see migrations. Hundreds of people moving around the landscape looking for less arid lands on which to grow their crops. We know some of those migrants arrived in Ugarit in ships because the same letters that talk about famine also mention enemies. In fact, in one particular text, which is written by the king of Ugarit, he says, “The enemy has landed. They have overrun one of my port cities and they are now advancing on Ugarit itself. Please send help.” Whether the ‘enemy’ were the infamous Sea Peoples or not was not stated.

The ‘enemy’ at Ugarit were not the only aggressors. In the north were the Kaska tribe. The Kaska were a fierce tribal confederacy living in the Pontic Mountains near the Black Sea. For centuries, they practised transhumance (the seasonal movement of livestock between mountain pastures and lowland valleys).

As the Late Bronze Age climate deteriorated, these northern mountains became increasingly arid. The Kaska pushed south. They abandoned their standard seasonal raids to migrate permanently into Hittite lands. They needed immediate access to the Hittite agricultural plateau. Textual evidence shows constant Hittite military campaigns desperately trying to push them back (Bryce, 2005). Ultimately, the Kaska breached the northern defences. Archaeologists broadly agree that it was Kaska migrants who likely burned Hattusa shortly after the royal court fled.

Then there were the Phrygians. Assyrian and later Greek records speak of the Mushki, commonly identified as the Phrygians. They crossed the Hellespont from the Balkans directly into Anatolia. Why did they move? The shifting climate was a primary driver. A sudden, prolonged drop in global temperatures reduced crop yields across Europe (Drake, 2012). The Mushki moved into the vacuum left by the dying Hittite state. They did not necessarily destroy the empire, they occupied the less arid river valleys after the central administration collapsed.

Immigrants are one thing, invaders come into another category altogether. The Middle Assyrian Empire, southeast of Hatti, smelt blood in the water. Assyria was heavily militarised and rapidly expanding. Under their ruthless King Tukulti-Ninurta I, the Assyrians challenged Hittite supremacy over trade routes. Around 1237 BCE, the two superpowers clashed at the Battle of Nihriya.

The Assyrians utterly crushed the Hittite forces on the battlefield (Singer, 1985). Hatti permanently lost control of the eastern copper networks. After the battle, Assyria annexed key border territories, drastically reducing the Hittite agricultural base, exacerbating the drought/famine problem for the Hittites.

We have direct textual proof of this geopolitical disaster. A frantic letter from the Hittite king demands emergency military aid against the encroaching Assyrians (Cline, 2014).

Throw in an earthquake or two, such as the one that destroyed Troy 6 around 1300 BCE and you have what modern historians call a polycrisis, a cascading failure of interconnected systems. Which is a fancy word for what my mother would have said, “It’s just one thing after another.”

The administratively bloated Hittite state could not cope with a polycrisis. Yet, the fall of Hattusa was not the end of the Hittites. While the Anatolian highlands burned and starved, the lights stayed on in the northern Syrian provinces. The great cities of Carchemish and Aleppo faced the same polycrisis, but they did not collapse.

Disambiguating Syria and Levant

To be historically precise, the nation of "Syria" did not exist in 1200 BCE. Neither did the "Levant." If you asked a merchant where he lived, he would not name a country. He would name his city. He was a man of Halab (Aleppo) or a citizen of Kargamiš (Carchemish).

When ancient diplomats needed a broader regional name, they referred to a patchwork of local kingdoms. The coast was Amurru. The inland plains were Nuhashshe. The river valleys were Mukish.

The local population in these territories was a complex ethnic mix. The urban merchants, farmers, and artisans were predominantly Amorites and Hurrians. However, a Luwian-speaking elite, originally from Anatolia, ruled over them. Therefore, when we refer to these "Syrian" survivors, we actually mean a hybrid indigenous population governed by a pragmatic, transplanted Hittite ruling class. They were defined by their cities, not by modern borders. To avoid confusion and complicated explanations, I will continue to use the geographical terms, Syria and Levant.

How Carchemish and Aleppo Survived the Hittite Collapse

It remains one of the most frustrating archaeological mysteries of the Late Bronze Age. When the central government in Hattusa collapsed, the top elite did not die in the flames. They vanished.

The excavation trenches reveal a deliberate, highly organised evacuation. The royal scribes methodically packed up critical treaties and sensitive diplomatic correspondence. The elites loaded their portable wealth, their families, and their religious idols into wagons. Then, the last known Hittite king, Suppiluliuma II, walked out of the capital with his royal court.

Where did they go? We do not know. Perhaps they fled south to secondary administrative centres. Perhaps they marched out to fight a final, unrecorded battle (Bryce, 2005). Whatever happened, the historical trail goes completely cold. The supreme royal line evaporated. They ceased to be rulers and became ghosts.

The ghostly silence created an opportunity for a select few. While the top tier of the Hittite elite disappeared into the Anatolian dust, the second rank survived. The cadet branches of the royal family, the provincial viceroys, faced the same polycrisis, but they chose adaptation over retreat.

Carchemish: A River Fortress

Carchemish sat strategically on the western bank of the Euphrates River. It was an economic powerhouse. For generations, a cadet branch of the Hittite royal family ruled the city. Suppiluliuma I, the great 14th-century Hittite conqueror, had originally installed his own son there as viceroy. This move transformed Carchemish into the administrative capital of the Syrian territories. The city controlled the highly lucrative overland corridors and riverine trade routes connecting Mesopotamia to the Mediterranean.

When the central imperial administration failed around 1190 BCE, the viceroy of Carchemish was a man named Kuzi-Teshub. He did not flee. He did not wait for orders that would never come. He saw his chance and promoted himself from ‘King’ to ‘Great King’.

With Hattusa in ruins, Kuzi-Teshub was the highest-ranking survivor of the direct royal bloodline.

To piece together Kuzi-Teshub’s audacious political survival, archaeologists rely on two distinct types of evidence. We have the fragile clay seal impressions found at Lidar Höyük, located in southeastern Turkey on the east bank of the Euphrates River (now at the bottom of the Atatürk Dam Lake). We also have massive, monumental stone inscriptions discovered further north at surviving Neo-Hittite cities. Together, they tell a brilliant story of political propaganda.

The Lidar Höyük Sealings: Stamping Authority

At Lidar Höyük, excavators found a collection of bullae (small lumps of clay used to seal shipments of goods). A merchant or official would tie a rope around a jar, press wet clay over the knot, and stamp it with a royal seal.

These specific clay lumps were stamped with Kuzi-Teshub's personal seal. The text, written in Luvian hieroglyphs functioned as an ancient business card. It listed his name and his royal lineage, directly connecting him to the legendary Hittite conqueror Suppiluliuma I. Most importantly, the seal brazenly declared him the Great King (Hawkins, 1988).

By finding these clay tags at a key river crossing on the Euphrates, we know exactly what Kuzi-Teshub was doing. He was managing regional trade. He was not just claiming a phantom title, he was using it to conduct imperial business and control the economy.

The Monumental Stones: Carving a Dynasty

If the clay seals handled daily trade, the monumental stone inscriptions handled legacy. We find these massive carved stones at allied cities like Malatya (ancient Melid), located further up the Euphrates.

What were these stone monuments about? They were pure, unadulterated political propaganda. They were generally not commissioned by Kuzi-Teshub himself, but by his sons and grandsons. As the new rulers of these regional cities, they had an urgent need to legitimise their power (Bryce, 2012).

They achieved this by erecting massive stone reliefs showing themselves worshipping the traditional gods. Alongside these images, they carved long genealogical texts in Luvian hieroglyphs (the pictorial script used for Hittite public monuments). The text invariably traced their bloodline back to one man, Kuzi-Teshub, the Great King.

Before the discoveries at Lidar Höyük, historians thought these grandsons were simply exaggerating. They assumed Kuzi-Teshub's descendants gave him the title posthumously to make their family look more regal. The mud seals at Lidar Höyük proved the stones were telling the truth. He really did claim the supreme title while he was alive (Hawkins, 1988).

The Message of Continuity

These inscriptions, both the mud and the stone, served a psychological purpose. When a superpower collapses, local populations panic. Trade routes freeze. Rebellions erupt. The elite must project stability and continuity to survive.

By stamping Great King on trade goods at Lidar Höyük, and by carving it into stone monuments across the surviving Syrian provinces, this cadet branch sent a clear, unified message. The empire had not fallen; it had merely shrunk. The royal bloodline was intact. The gods were still satisfied. Business, as they say, would continue as usual.

Aleppo: City of the Storm God

Further west lay Aleppo. If Carchemish was the administrative heart of Hittite Syria, Aleppo was its soul. It was the ancient religious centre of the region, home to the temple of Tarhunza, the mighty Storm God. The Hittite princes of Aleppo maintained deep cultural and theological prestige. In a polycrisis, religion offers social cohesion.

What does the archaeology tell us? When we dig into the early 12th century BCE layers at the Citadel of Aleppo, the silence is deafening. We see no fiery destruction layer. There are no shattered weapons or abandoned treasuries.

Instead, the excavation trenches reveal continuity. The temple of the Storm God remained active and well-maintained (Kohlmeyer, 2000). Pottery styles, cultic rituals, and local administration carried on uninterrupted (Bryce, 2012). The religious and civic elites kept the city running. They insulated themselves from the chaos ravaging the north.

The Mechanics of the Transformation

Why did these Syrian hubs survive while the Anatolian heartland starved and was rent asunder? The evidence points to three distinct structural advantages.

Hattusa relied heavily on a fragile network of Mediterranean cabotage (short-range coastal shipping). When pirates and migrants severed those maritime routes, the capital starved. Carchemish, however, dominated inland river networks. They quickly turned away from the dying Mediterranean. They leaned into their overland trade with Assyria and inland Syria.

The Syrian plains certainly suffered from the regional mega-drought. However, they were not trapped on a dry, high-altitude plateau like the elites in Hattusa. Carchemish utilised the mighty Euphrates, while Aleppo drew on the local Quweiq river basin. Reliable river irrigation provided a safety net.

Because they possessed undeniable Hittite royal blood, the Syrian viceroys maintained absolute ideological control over their subjects. Kuzi-Teshub did not need Hattusa's military backing to justify his right to rule. The local populations accepted his authority because it was already well established.

Might is Right

It is one thing to have full granaries during a regional famine. It is quite another to keep them when surrounded by starving, desperate armies.

Why did a tidal wave of violent migrants, opportunistic raiders, and hostile empires not wash over Carchemish and Aleppo? How did they defend their wealth?

The survival of these Syrian cities was not just a matter of lucky geography or good bookkeeping. It required a pragmatic military strategy. To protect their agricultural buffering and trade networks, Kuzi-Teshub and the elites of Aleppo relied on four defensive shields.

The Coastal Buffer Zone

First, we must look at the infamous Sea Peoples. These maritime marauders devastated the eastern Mediterranean. They burned wealthy coastal hubs like Ugarit to ash. However, they were fundamentally a naval and coastal phenomenon (Cline, 2014).

Marching a coalition of ship-born raiders hundreds of miles inland across hostile, arid terrain to lay siege to Aleppo or Carchemish is a logistical nightmare. The coastal cities absorbed the brunt of the Sea Peoples' violence.

The Garrison State

Carchemish was not just a trading post. It was a heavily fortified military garrison. When the Hittite conqueror Suppiluliuma I captured the city in the 14th century BCE, he deliberately transformed it into the supreme military headquarters for all Syrian operations (Bryce, 2005).

Consequently, when the central empire collapsed, Kuzi-Teshub did not have to hastily raise a militia. He inherited an intact, professional standing army. He possessed formidable chariot divisions and massive defensive walls. Migrants looking for easy plunder do not attack heavily armed, fortified regional capitals. They attack unprotected villages. Kuzi-Teshub made his city a hard target.

Co-opting the Outlaws: The Habiru

What about the Habiru? These were not a specific ethnic group, but a dangerous social class of stateless outlaws, runaway slaves, and mercenaries who roamed the Levantine margins. During times of imperial weakness, they frequently raided caravans and harassed cities.

However, Kuzi-Teshub probably did what smart Bronze Age rulers always did with the Habiru, he likely hired them. A strong, wealthy king with full granaries does not fight mercenaries, he puts them on the payroll. As new semi-nomadic tribal groups, such as the early Arameans, began to push into the region, the Hittite elites did not try to annihilate them. Instead, they slowly integrated them. They hired Aramean tribesmen as soldiers and labourers. Over the following centuries, these cities seamlessly blended Hittite and Aramean cultures (Bryce, 2012). They managed migration rather than fighting it.

The Assyrian Implosion

Finally, there was the terrifying Middle Assyrian Empire to the east. As we saw at the Battle of Nihriya, the Assyrians were rapidly expanding. The Euphrates River formed a massive natural moat protecting Carchemish, but why did the Assyrians not cross it and finish the job?

The answer lies in a serendipitous fluke of history. Just as the Hittite central administration was collapsing, the Assyrian war machine abruptly stalled. Their ruthless king, Tukulti-Ninurta I, had grown deeply unpopular at home. Around 1197 BCE, he was assassinated by his own son (Bryce, 2005).

This sparked a devastating Assyrian dynastic crisis. The empire plunged into internal chaos and rebellion. Assyria temporarily stopped expanding westward precisely when Kuzi-Teshub needed breathing room. The predator next door was too busy fighting itself to attack the surviving Hittites.

After the Transformation

Ultimately, we must rethink the Late Bronze Age Collapse. For cities like Carchemish and Aleppo, it was not an apocalypse. It was a transformation. The massive, top-heavy imperial network underwent de-complexification (the shedding of bloated administrative layers). The empire broke apart into smaller, highly resilient city-states.

These survivors became the wealthy Neo-Hittite kingdoms of the Iron Age (Bryce, 2012).

The Heirs to the Empire

When the dust finally settled on the Late Bronze Age, the geopolitical map of the Near East was totally redrawn. The monolithic Hittite Empire was gone. In its place stood a fractious network of smaller, fiercely independent city-states.

We call them the Neo-Hittite kingdoms. They carried the cultural DNA of Hattusa deep into the Iron Age. They wrote in Luvian hieroglyphs, worshipped the ancient Storm God, and fiercely defended their trade routes. For over four centuries, these regional powerhouses thrived.

Carchemish (Modern: Karkamış/Jerablus, Turkey-Syria border)

Carchemish was the undisputed heavyweight of the successors. Straddling the Euphrates, it remained the gold standard of Hittite royal legitimacy until the Assyrians finally annexed it in 717 BCE.

Melid (Modern: Arslantepe/Malatya, Turkey)

Located further north along the Euphrates, Melid became a fortress of Hittite tradition. Here, Kuzi-Teshub’s grandsons carved their monumental stone reliefs to project power and continuity.

Kummuh (Modern: Samsat/Adıyaman province, Turkey)

Kummuh was strategically positioned at a river crossing. It controlled lucrative trade arteries. Centuries later, this wealthy territory morphed into the classical kingdom of Commagene.

Tabal (Modern: Cappadocia region, Turkey)

This was not a single city, but a sprawling, powerful confederacy of Neo-Hittite states. Famed for its horses and silver mines, Tabal dominated the rugged central Anatolian plateau.

Patin / Unqi (Modern: Tell Tayinat, Hatay, Turkey)

Patin was situated in the fertile Amuq Valley. It guarded the gateway between the Mediterranean Sea and the inland Syrian trade networks.

Gurgum (Modern: Kahramanmaraş, Turkey)

Gurgum became a wealthy northern kingdom in the Taurus Mountains. It managed the overland passes connecting Anatolia directly to northern Syria.

These kingdoms did not just survive the apocalypse, they built a new world upon its ashes. They traded, they fought, and they adapted. Over time, they intermarried with incoming Aramean tribes to create a dynamic, hybrid culture (Bryce, 2012).

Aleppo: The Strangest Survival of all

But what of poor old Aleppo? Here we have one of the strangest stories of survival of the Bronze Age transformation.

Immediately following the Late Bronze Age collapse, Aleppo experienced a political absorption. In the 11th century BCE, a powerful, newly formed kingdom called Palistin (sometimes read as Walistin) swept across the region (Bryce, 2012).

Palistin should not be confused with the region of Palestine in the southern Levant, though they share a fascinating root. Both territories were likely settled by splinter groups of the same Sea Peoples faction, the Peleset (the Philistines). Palestine a century earlier in the 12^th century BCE. The exact origin of the Kingdom of Palistin is one of the most exciting and hotly debated mysteries in modern Near Eastern archaeology.

In the 11th century BCE, a powerful warlord named Taita conquered the region around Aleppo and the Amuq Valley (Bryce, 2012). Taita was not a native Hittite. Archaeological evidence strongly suggests his people were migrants, likely tied to the infamous Sea Peoples, specifically the Peleset (the Philistines).

Yet, Taita did not destroy the local culture. He absorbed it. This is a process historians call syncretism (the blending of different cultural and religious traditions). Taita carved his massive royal monuments using traditional Luwian hieroglyphs. He rebuilt the temple in Aleppo to worship Tarhunza, the ancient Hittite Storm God (Emanuel, 2015). The foreign migrants became the new Hittite elite. They adopted the administrative playbook of the empire they replaced.

Therefore, when the Aramean pastoralist tribes began moving into Palistin, the ruling elite knew exactly what to do. They opened the doors. The state needed farmers, soldiers, and merchants to maintain its wealth. The rulers of Palistin co-opted the Aramean tribes rather than fighting a futile, expensive border war.

It was a brilliant short-term survival strategy. However, it became a fatal long-term trap. The Arameans were not a conquering army looking for a single decisive battle. They were a slow, unstoppable demographic tide. By the dawn of the 10th century BCE, they out-populated the ruling Palistinian elite.

The Aramean Takeover

By the 10th century BCE, the Arameans were no longer just the hired help. Through force of numbers, steady settlement, and intermarriage, they became the dominant cultural force. The Arameans did not conquer the Northern Levant. They absorbed it slowly. They founded a brand-new kingdom called Bit Agusi (Bryce, 2012). An Aramean tribal dynasty took total control of the Aleppo region.

Here is why Aleppo falls off the map of great political capitals. The Aramean kings of Bit Agusi realised Aleppo was too steeped in ancient Hittite religion. They wanted a fresh political start. Therefore, they moved the political and military capital to a city called Arpad, located further north.

A City of Gods, Not Kings

Aleppo was effectively demoted. It lost its royal court. It lost its armies. However, the Aramean kings were extremely pragmatic. They knew the Temple of the Storm God in Aleppo was too famous and too lucrative to abandon. They kept Aleppo intact as a sacred pilgrimage centre.

This is the ultimate story of Syrian survival. Carchemish survived by remaining a heavily armed, rigid Hittite fortress. Aleppo survived by being incredibly flexible. It allowed itself to be absorbed by Palistin, and then by the Aramean kingdom of Bit Agusi. Aleppo surrendered its political crown, but it kept its religious soul.

The Burden of History: Aleppo Today

It is impossible for a historian not to feel a profound sorrow for Aleppo and its citizens through the ages They tried so hard, repeatedly achieved a plateaux of peace and prosperity when chaos surrounded them, only to have it taken from them time and again. Tragically, the resilience of Aleppo, and many other towns and cities in the Middle East, has been tested repeatedly right up to the modern day.

If the survivors of the Bronze Age Collapse could look upon Aleppo today, they would recognise a painfully familiar cycle of destruction. During the Syrian Civil War, the Battle of Aleppo (2012 – 2016 CE) reduced vast swathes of this ancient metropolis to rubble. High-explosive artillery and barrel bombs shattered the famed, UNESCO-listed Old City. Factions even used the great Citadel as a military base. Combatants fired through ancient arrow slits while modern explosives cracked its medieval walls.

Then, in February 2023, the earth itself fractured. A massive 7.8 magnitude earthquake struck the region. It collapsed thousands of buildings already fatally weakened by a decade of relentless siege and poor infrastructure.

Yet, beneath the geopolitics, the proxy wars, and the rubble, the true tragedy remains human. The ordinary citizens of Aleppo do not want to be a fortress. They do not want to be a symbol of imperial resistance, nor a pawn in endless factional conflicts. The modern population simply wants what the ancient farmers and merchants of the 12th century BCE wanted. They want to rebuild their homes, trade safely in their legendary markets, and finally live in peace.

References and Further Reading

Bryce, T., 2005. The Kingdom of the Hittites. New edition. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Bryce, T., 2012. The World of The Neo-Hittite Kingdoms: A Political and Military History. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Cline, E.H., 2014. 1177 B.C.: The Year Civilization Collapsed. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Drake, B.L., 2012. 'The influence of climatic change on the Late Bronze Age Collapse and the Greek Dark Ages'. Journal of Archaeological Science, 39(6), pp. 1862-1870.

Emanuel, J.P., 2015. 'King Taita and His "Palistin": Philistine State or Neo-Hittite Kingdom?'. Antiguo Oriente, 13, pp. 11-40.

Hawkins, J.D., 1988. 'Kuzi-Tešub and the "Great Kings" of Kargamiš'. Anatolian Studies, 38, pp. 99-108.

Hoffner, H.A., 2009. Letters from the Hittite Kingdom. Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature.

Klengel, H., 1974. ''Hungersjahre' in Hatti'. Altorientalische Forschungen, 1, pp. 165-174.

Kohlmeyer, K., 2000. Der Tempel des Wettergottes von Aleppo. Münster: Rhema-Verlag.

Singer, I., 1985. 'The Battle of Nihriya and the End of the Hittite Empire'. Zeitschrift für Assyriologie und Vorderasiatische Archäologie, 75(1), pp. 100-123.

Singer, I., 1999. 'A Political History of Ugarit'. In: W.G.E. Watson and N. Wyatt, eds. Handbook of Ugaritic Studies. Leiden: Brill, pp. 603-733.

The Battle of the Horns of Hattin was a significant battle that broke the field army of the Kingdom of Jerusalem. Following the death of King Baldwin IV, Guy of Lusignan was crowned king. Guy was highly unpopular and was considered to have poor leadership skills. This would prove to be a deadly combination in an already strained situation for the Crusaders.

When Saladin attacked Tiberias, Guy abandoned his stable position at Sepphoris and marched his army to relieve the city. The march was a gruesome ordeal for the Crusader army. Without access to water and under the harsh sun, the Crusaders became dehydrated, demoralized, and weak.

Saladin did not rush into battle. Instead, he waited for the Crusaders to exhaust themselves, constantly harassing them with hit-and-run tactics. The Crusaders eventually halted near the Horns of Hattin, which provided a good terrain advantage but lacked the water they desperately needed.

Under constant harassment from Saladin's mounted archers, the Crusaders attempted to break through but failed, as the main bulk of the army remained trapped. Here, they would make their last stand as the remaining Crusader forces lost cohesion and surrendered. Guy was captured along with several other high-ranking nobles.

The significance of this loss was catastrophic for the Crusaders. With the main army destroyed, the Crusader states and their cities were left vulnerable. Jerusalem would eventually fall to Saladin as panic spread across the Crusader states, prompting the Third Crusade. The relic known as the True Cross was also captured by Saladin, depriving the Crusaders of an object of immense religious and psychological value.

The Battle of Hattin is a lesson in the importance of logistics and the availability of resources to an army. The defeat can largely be attributed to poor decision-making on the part of the Crusader leadership. For Saladin, it was a decisive victory and his greatest military triumph, opening the path to the conquest of Jerusalem.

Eugene Rogan in 2010, published a mammoth epic (The Arabs: A History) that chronicled 550-600 years of modern Arab history stemming from the Mamluk and Ottoman Empires to the gut-wrenching days of the Arab Spring Revolution. Later on, he revised this book four times (until 2018) to include additional crucial events that stamped the supremacy of the region. In his work, he covers the events en masse from the corners of Morocco unto the borders of Iran.

Rogan's work discusses the lives of Arab people from the perspective of an Arab citizen. Characters ranging from a barber, a courtier to various military generals are given equal importance due to their unique skillset in preserving the notes of life and aspirations endured by the people for a lifetime. As we go through certain chapters, one cannot help but shed tears on those people whose lives were purged due to fanatical ambitions pursued by their leaders.

When we view the Arab world, we think about 'Islam' as the only religion and 'Arabic' as their only language. However, Rogan differs from this convention and urges the reader to look beyond it. He ensured the readers see for themselves how sectarianism already prevalent within the Arab society, upon propelled by demonic colonial policies adopted by foreign powers such as the Ottoman Turks, Britain and France all later intensified the disunity, discord and suspicion among the Arab brethren. Moreover, he clearly spends time in explaining some of the unique governance systems established in select Arab countries by multiple colonial powers resulting in perpetual instability that will plague the world even in the 21st century.

In the book, Egypt takes a strategic share of the history discussion owing to its central position in rousing the Arab identity, nationalism and future revolutions. Meanwhile, the painful stories of oppressed communities from Syria, Lebanon, Algeria, Palestine and Iraq will deeply move you. Subsequently, Rogan elucidated on the importance of women in shaping the freedom movements and sovereignty of their countries. These anecdotes recounted by homemakers to UN envoys will give a strong idea as to how the social order of the day persisted in the region. The triumvirate of comprising of radical Islamist ideologies, the discovery of crude oil and the Cold War dynamics will go on to cement the prominence of the Arab World even today.

Beyond random dates, Eugene Rogan offers a massive cinematic experience into the determination and willpower of generations of Arabs that built their presence and shaped their influence in this world. Lastly, this book also provides an answer to a question governing our minds, "Why Do Conflicts and Ideologies Overseas Directly Influence Our Lives?", and it clearly directs us to reexamine the precursor events that molds modern society.

Book - https://goodreads.com/book/show/15931363.The_Arabs_A_History

Author - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugene_Rogan

Hi, I am looking for a good survey/introduction book on the modern middle east. Do you have suggestions? I heard really good things about Clevelands book. Besides this coming september I will start Middle East studies at a top 100 university, do you think I can work in diplomacy or foreign service with a degree in Middle eastern studies?

Crossroads of the Euboean Gulf: The Bronze Age Development of Lefkandi-Xeropolis

The Island That Plays at Being a Mainland

Euboea is a geographical sleight of hand. Though ostensibly the second-largest island in the Greek archipelago, its proximity to the eastern littoral of the mainland ensures it has historically functioned less as a remote insular outpost and more as a massive, natural breakwater for central Greece.

Stretching some 180 kilometres from northwest to southeast, this narrow ribbon of rock runs in close parallel to the coasts of Thessaly, Phocis, Boeotia, and Attica. Between Euboea and the mainland lies a sheltered, liquid highway, the North and South Euboean Gulfs. In a notoriously volatile Aegean, these protected waters offered a forgiving corridor for early maritime communities. Coastal settlements like Lefkandi prospered here, safely insulated from the tempestuous open sea to the east. At its most intimate pinch-point, near the modern regional capital of Chalcis (a mere 10 kilometres northwest of Lefkandi), the island nearly kisses Boeotia across a channel barely 40 metres wide. Here, the Euripus Strait pulses with fierce, reversing tidal currents, a ludic hydrological quirk that has dictated the rhythm of local maritime traffic for millennia.

The coastal plateau of Xeropolis, situated just east of the modern village of Lefkandi, commands the head of the South Euboean Gulf. It remains one of the most formidable prehistoric sequences in the Aegean. To inhabit Xeropolis was to sit astride a shifting web of maritime routes connecting the mainland, the Cycladic stepping stones, and the wider Aegean basin. Consequently, the site boasts an almost uninterrupted occupational matrix from the Early Bronze Age (c. 2400 BCE) down to the twilight of the Geometric period (c. 700 BCE) (Davidson et al. 2010). While Lefkandi frequently commands the spotlight for its monumental Early Iron Age Toumba heroon, its Bronze Age trajectory is equally engaging. It offers a masterclass in deep-time resilience, chronicling a community deeply entangled in trans-marine exchange, technological transmission, and the arduous business of surviving severe climatic shocks.

The Trans-Aegean Web and the Anatolian Lure

Anatolia, the vast westernmost peninsula of Asia projecting its rugged shores toward Europe, is by no means a distant, abstract entity when viewed from Euboea. From the island's eastern coast, the Anatolian littoral lies some 300 to 400 kilometres away. Yet, Early Bronze Age mariners were not in the habit of striking blindly across open water. They operated within a maritime landscape scaled to human endurance, relying on the Cyclades and Sporades as visual and navigational anchors. Through the patient, incremental process of island-hopping and coastal cabotage, the Aegean was transformed from a barrier into a connective tissue (Broodbank 2000).

For the inhabitants of Lefkandi, Anatolia was simply the eastern terminus of a highly trafficked maritime corridor. This connectivity resolves the mystery of how Anatolian metallurgical paradigms, the revolutionary technology of the potter’s wheel, and highly specialised drinking assemblages, such as the elongated depas amphikypellon, could sweep across the Aegean and seamlessly embed themselves in local Euboean culture during the Early Bronze Age (Kouka 2013).

The Engine of Exchange: Copper, Silver, and the Sea

The abrupt appearance of western Anatolian material culture at Lefkandi was not a mere stylistic caprice; it was inextricably tethered to the relentless third-millennium pursuit of metals. The Euboean Gulf functioned as a primary arterial route for shifting ores. Euboea itself sat strategically poised between the copper deposits of Othrys to the north, the arsenical copper of Cycladic Kythnos, and the rich silver-lead veins of Attic Lavrion (Stos-Gale and Macdonald 1991).

The Anatolianizing ceramics, particularly the depas amphikypellon, are consistently unearthed in the shadows of early Aegean metalworking centres. The hands that steered these vessels across the waves likely belonged to prospectors and smiths (Renfrew 1967). Positioned at a geographical choke-point, Lefkandi could dictate the flow of raw ores and finished goods. The synchronous arrival of the potter’s wheel and nascent tin-bronze metallurgy betrays Lefkandi as a critical economic node, where elite drinking rituals served as the social lubricant for alliances forged within a highly profitable, metal-hungry network.

The Great Tin Enigma: Tapping Continent-Spanning Arteries

If copper was the robust blood of Lefkandi’s metallurgical industry, tin was its elusive ghost. Unlike the visible and geologically abundant copper veins of the Aegean, tin is a mineral anomaly, completely absent from the landscapes of Greece. To transform soft copper into the formidable alloy of true tin-bronze, the early metalworkers at Xeropolis could not rely on regional cabotage. They were forced to plug into some of the most staggering, continent-spanning trade networks of the prehistoric world, transforming Lefkandi into the western littoral's premier terminal for an almost unimaginable global economy.

In the third millennium BCE, during the explosive dawn of the Lefkandi I horizon, this exotic additive arrived via an arduous overland and maritime pipeline stretching deep into the Eurasian interior. Groundbreaking tin isotope analysis suggests that Lefkandi’s earliest bronze implements were alloyed with tin panned from the alluvial deposits of Central Asia—specifically the rugged Altay Mountains and the river valleys of modern Tajikistan and Afghanistan (Brügmann et al. 2023; Muhly 1978). Traded hand-to-hand across the steppes, down through Mesopotamian networks, and across the Anatolian plateau to maritime gates like Troy, this Central Asian tin was gathered by Euboean mariners who turned a scarce luxury into the literal foundation of their early elite material culture.

As the Late Bronze Age swept the Aegean into the hyper-coherent orbit of the Mycenaean palatial economies, the geopolitical compass of the tin trade spun dramatically toward the west. While Cyprus monopolised the copper supply, the tin feeding Lefkandi’s furnaces increasingly arrived from the absolute edge of the known world: the rich alluvial streams of Cornwall and Devon in Southwestern Britain (Berger et al. 2019; Powell et al. 2022). This Atlantic corridor relied on a breathtaking chain of connectivity, moving British tin down the French coast, through the Straits of Gibraltar—or via trans-continental river systems like the Rhône—before launching it across the Mediterranean. During the height of palatial globalisation, a Lefkandi bronze sword was a literal physical marriage of two geographic extremes: copper from the foothills of Cyprus and tin from the rain-swept rivers of Britain.

The Lefkandi I Horizon: Pots, Dates, and the Migration Mirage

The earliest substantial occupation on the Xeropolis tell dates to the Early Bronze Age, specifically Early Helladic II. However, it is the latter half of the third millennium BCE that commands attention, marked by the explosive appearance of the "Lefkandi I" (or Kastri/Lefkandi I) ceramic horizon.

This phase is defined by a sudden influx of wheelmade, heavily Anatolianizing forms: bell-bodied "Troy Cups", the ubiquitous depas amphikypellon, beaked jugs, and highly burnished red-slipped wares (French and Dickinson 2022). For decades, scholars wrestled with the implications of this assemblage. Early grand narratives invoked invasions or physical migrations, while modern perspectives favour a more fluid model of cultural entanglement. As Pullen (2013) notes, this Anatolian package was not adopted uniformly across the mainland. Rather, Lefkandi operated as an early maritime gateway, where opportunistic local elites co-opted eastern technologies and drinking customs to broadcast their own elevated status.

Dating this phenomenon requires navigating the treacherous plateau of the late third-millennium radiocarbon calibration curve. We are left with two competing chronologies: a "high" model based on Bayesian modelling, and a "low" traditional model anchored to Egyptian dynastic synchronisms (Manning 2010).

The high chronology pushes the Lefkandi I horizon back to roughly 2450–2400 BCE (Manning 2010). If true, Lefkandi had already spun its sophisticated Aegean web long before any climate crises forced its hand. The Anatolian shapes represent a protracted era of elite emulation and peaceful, sustained trade with urban hubs like Troy II.

Conversely, the low chronology compresses the transition to c. 2300–2200 BCE, aligning it violently with the collapse of the mainland's EH II Korakou culture and the onset of the 4.2k BP megadrought (French and Dickinson 2022). This proximity breathes life into the old migration hypothesis, suggesting that displaced Anatolian seafarers, fleeing their own collapsing citadels, seized strategic footholds like Xeropolis.

However, recent archaeogenetic data has severely complicated this tidy narrative of population replacement. Genomic mapping of Bronze Age Aegean populations reveals a stubborn genetic continuity from the Early to Middle Bronze Age, punctuated only by a trickle of gene flow from Anatolia and the Caucasus (Clemente et al. 2021; Lazaridis et al. 2017). Genes, it seems, do not always march in lockstep with pots. Even if the low chronology holds, the sudden bloom of Anatolianizing wares at Lefkandi is best read as a symptom of local ambition, indigenous Euboean elites enthusiastically adopting foreign technologies to secure their rank within lucrative trans-Aegean trade routes, rather than succumbing to a wave of foreign invaders.

The Desiccating Wind: Climate Stress and Early Resilience

As these maritime networks matured, the Greek mainland was subjected to a severe environmental reckoning. The transition from Early Helladic II to III aligned with the 4.2k BP event (c. 2200 BCE), a multi-centennial phase of intense aridification driven by cold, dry northern winds (Manning 2019). Across the Peloponnese, this desiccating shift triggered agricultural contraction and the unravelling of centralised proto-urban communities (Weiberg et al. 2016).

The pre-crisis mainland had been dominated by the EH II Korakou culture, characterised by administrative sealing systems and monumental structures like Lerna's House of the Tiles (Pullen 2008). Beneath the strain of the 4.2k event, this rigid, early urban experiment shattered. Yet, Lefkandi refused to follow suit. Instead of collapsing, it pivoted into a long Intermediate Phase (EH III). Shielded by the Euboean Gulf from the worst open-sea volatility, Lefkandi morphed into a decentralised maritime refuge (Knodell 2021; Kouka 2013).

We must be careful, however, not to reduce this survival to a romantic vision of a community turning purely to the sea for its salvation. Bioarchaeological realities, specifically stable isotope analyses, bluntly inform us that Aegean coastal populations remained stubbornly reliant on terrestrial agriculture; marine proteins formed only a fraction of their diet (Vika 2011). Lefkandi’s true resilience likely lay in the micro-ecological stability of its immediate hinterland: the fertile Lelantine Plain. By anchoring themselves to a landscape capable of weathering the drought, and amplifying that baseline security with the profits of maritime trade, the inhabitants of Xeropolis navigated a systemic collapse that broke their mainland contemporaries.

Middle Bronze Age Consolidation and the Shaft Grave Friction

Historically, the Aegean transition into the Middle Helladic period has been painted in the drab colours of decline and isolation. The stratigraphy of Xeropolis’s "Deep Sounding", however, tells a story of unbroken, dynamic occupation, divided into three distinct ceramic phases (Dickinson 2020).

The Middle Helladic era is not the nadir of the 4.2k BP crisis, but rather the long, cautious process of adapting to it (Manning 2019). While the mainland retreated into simpler domestic architecture and the ubiquitous Grey Minyan wares, Lefkandi consolidated a fiercely independent, decentralised existence. The presence of a monumental MH tomb complex on the eastern slope of Xeropolis, stone chambers capped by a massive tumulus, confirms that a sophisticated local elite was hard at work anchoring their legitimacy to the ancestral landscape while remaining conversant with wider mainland burial traditions (Sapouna-Sakellaraki 1995).

This autonomy makes the subsequent Late Helladic I–II "Shaft Grave" era (c. 1600–1400 BCE) a period of high temperature friction. As mainland centres like Mycenae rapidly amassed wealth and martial power, the clearest examples of which are Grave Circles A and B at Mycenae (Dickinson 1977), Euboea did not simply capitulate. The local elites, who had long monumentalised their power in tumuli, engaged in a tense period of negotiation with these expanding palatial networks. Lefkandi maintained a degree of regional sovereignty, managing its integration into the Mycenaean orbit on its own terms.

The Palatial Unravelling and the Second Survival

By the zenith of the Mycenaean palatial era (LH IIIA–B), Lefkandi was drawn into the orbit of mainland bureaucracies, likely tethered to major Boeotian hubs like Thebes. Yet, the site’s most extraordinary chapter was written in the wake of the catastrophic palatial collapse around 1200 BCE (Evely 2006).

While the great citadels of Mycenae, Tiryns, and Pylos burned and their populations scattered at the close of LH IIIB, Xeropolis shrugged off the collapse. Unshackled from the rigid demands of a top-heavy command economy, it flourished into a sprawling, unfortified coastal town in the Late Helladic IIIC period (Davidson et al. 2010).

It is a striking historical rhyme. Faced once again with a macro-regional breakdown, Lefkandi survived by reverting to the very strategies that had saved it a millennium earlier: unparalleled flexibility, the deep-time wealth of the sea, and a masterful decentralisation of power.

References

Broodbank, C. (2000). An Island Archaeology of the Early Cyclades. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Clemente, F., Unterländer, M., Dolgova, O. et al. (2021). 'The genomic history of the Aegean palatial civilizations', Cell, 184(10), pp. 2565–2586.

Davidson, D.A., Wilson, C.A., Lemos, I.S. and Theocharopoulos, S.P. (2010). 'Tell formation processes as indicated from geoarchaeological and geochemical investigations at Xeropolis, Euboea, Greece', Journal of Archaeological Science, 37(7), pp. 1564-1571. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jas.2010.01.017

Dickinson, O. (1977). The Origins of Mycenaean Civilisation. Gothenburg: Paul Åströms Förlag.

Dickinson, O. (2020). 'The Middle Helladic Pottery of Lefkandi Phases IV–VI: An Introduction', The Annual of the British School at Athens, 115, pp. 133-174. https://doi.org/10.1017/s0068245420000076

Evely, D. (ed.) (2006). Lefkandi IV: The Bronze Age: The Late Helladic IIIC Settlement at Xeropolis. London: British School at Athens.

French, D. and Dickinson, O. (2022). 'Lefkandi Phase I, with Special Reference to the Pottery, its Chronological Position, and its Anatolian Connections', The Annual of the British School at Athens, 118, pp. 1-75. https://doi.org/10.1017/s0068245422000028

Knodell, A.R. (2021). Societies in Transition in Early Greece: An Archaeological History. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Kouka, O. (2013). '“Minding the Gap”: Against the Gaps. The Early Bronze Age and the Transition to the Middle Bronze Age in the Northern and Eastern Aegean/Western Anatolia', American Journal of Archaeology, 117(4), pp. 569–580.

Lazaridis, I., Mittnik, A., Patterson, N. et al. (2017). 'Genetic origins of the Minoans and Mycenaeans', Nature, 548, pp. 214–218.

Lloyd, M. (2021). 'The griffin family of Lefkandi - A twelfth-century-BC alabastron from Xeropolis-Lefkandi', Ancient World Magazine.

Manning, S.W. (2010). 'Chronology and terminology', in Cline, E.H. (ed.) The Oxford Handbook of the Bronze Age Aegean. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 11–28.

Manning, S.W. (2019). 'The 4.2ka BP event in the Mediterranean: an archaeological perspective', The Holocene, 29(10), pp. 1600–1609.

Pullen, D.J. (2008). 'The Early Bronze Age in Greece', in Shelmerdine, C.W. (ed.) The Cambridge Companion to the Aegean Bronze Age. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 19–46.

Pullen, D.J. (2013). '“Minding the Gap”: Bridging the Gaps in Cultural Change Within the Early Bronze Age Aegean', American Journal of Archaeology, 117(4), pp. 545-553. https://doi.org/10.3764/aja.117.4.0545

Renfrew, C. (1967). 'Cycladic metallurgy and the Aegean Early Bronze Age', American Journal of Archaeology, 71(1), pp. 1–20.

Sapouna-Sakellaraki, E. (1995). 'A Middle Helladic tomb complex at Xeropolis (Lefkandi)', The Annual of the British School at Athens, 90, pp. 41-54. https://doi.org/10.1017/s0068245400016075

Stos-Gale, Z.A. and Macdonald, C.F. (1991). 'Sources of metals and trade in the Bronze Age Aegean', in Gale, N.H. (ed.) Bronze Age Trade in the Mediterranean. Jonsered: Paul Åströms Förlag, pp. 249–288.

Vika, E. (2011). 'Diets in the Aegean Bronze Age: a stable isotope approach', Journal of Archaeological Science, 38(9), pp. 2157–2164.

Weiberg, E., Hughes, R.E., Finné, M., Bonnier, A. and Kaplan, J.O. (2016). 'Mediterranean biomes and societies in the general area of Greece during the Holocene: a data-model comparison of land use, vegetation, and climate after 6000 BP', The Holocene, 26(12), pp. 1961–1979.

This is a sequel to the earlier post mentioning some of the books capturing the key figures or aspirations in the Arab and Middle Eastern history.

1. The Iron Wall: Israel and the Arab World - Avi Shlaim
2. Lion of Jordan: The Life of King Hussein in War and Peace - Avi Shlaim
3. Three Worlds: Memoirs of an Arab-Jew - Avi Shlaim
4. Black Wave: Saudi Arabia, Iran and the Rivalry - Kim Ghattas

The third book comes as a personal anecdote from the author highlighting the changing circumstances that shaped the Middle East's perspective while the Jews are subjected to question across Arab countries based on their stance against Palestine.

You can have a short peek into the discussion points put forward by the author.

Avi Shlaim - Jaipur Lit Fest

Similarly, Kim Ghattas expands her research into the roles played by PAK and AFG in shaping the Middle East.

Kim Ghattas - Jaipur Lit Fest

Rhodes successfully negotiated the Bronze Age collapse. This is the third of three articles that looked at the 'Bronze Age Development of Rhodes', 'How and Why it Survived the Collapse' and its subsequent Iron Age resurgence.

The island of Rhodes was one of the surprising survivors of the Bronze Age collapse around 1200 BCE. I have written three articles. The first yesterday was 'How Rhodes developed during the Bronze Age'. The second, today is 'How and Why Rhodes survived the collapse of the Bronze Age' and the third, on Friday will be 'How Rhodes Prospered and Evolved into the Iron Age. Follow the links to see the full article, images and references. Enjoy.

The late 13th-century BCE collapse of the Mycenaean palatial system marked a catastrophic turning point for Mediterranean civilizations. While mainland citadels faced total systemic failure, the island of Rhodes, integrated into the Mycenaean koine yet devoid of rigid central administration, demonstrated remarkable resilience. By leveraging its position as a decentralized maritime node, particularly through Ialysos, Rhodian communities navigated the environmental stressors of the 3.2 ka event. This article explores how Rhodes’s unique socio-political structure fostered continuity rather than erasure, providing a critical counter-narrative to the standard historiography of Bronze Age collapse and the transition into the Early Iron Age.

Situated at the crossroads of the Aegean, Anatolia, and the Levant, the island of Rhodes functioned as a vital maritime conduit during the Late Bronze Age (c. 1700–1200 BCE). Rhodes operated as a decentralised tripartite coalition comprising the coastal centres of Ialysos, Kamiros, and Lindos. This maritime network facilitated the movement of Cypriot copper, Aegean ceramics, and cultural influence between Minoan, Mycenaean (Ahhiyawan), and Near Eastern spheres. This decentralised political and economic structure explains why Rhodes demonstrated remarkable resilience during the Late Bronze Age Collapse, successfully sustaining long-distance eastern trade networks as mainland palatial economies fragmented into the Early Iron Age.

I have managed to shortlist some of the books that effectively chronicle the struggle and evolution of Arab nationalism and the aspirations of the Middle Eastern people.

Kindly let me know if they are good, and do you have any favourites among these?

1. Albert Hourani - A History of the Arab Peoples
2. Eugene Rogan - The Arabs: A History
3. Eugene Rogan - The Fall of the Ottomans: The Great War in the Middle East
4. Peter Mansfield - A History of the Middle East
5. David Fromkin - A Peace to End All Peace
6. Simon Sebag Montefiore - Jerusalem: The Biography
7. Rashid Khalidi - The Hundred Years' War on Palestine
8. James Barr - A Line the Sand
9. James Barr - Lords of the Desert
10. Justin Marozzi - Baghdad: City of Peace, City of Blood

معظم التاريخ الشعبي عن مصر بيبدأ من الدولة القديمة، الأهرامات، الفراعنة. لكن ده فعليًا فصل متأخر من قصة أطول بكتير. أهرامات الجيزة، اللي اتبنت حوالي 2600 قبل الميلاد، أقرب لينا زمنيًا مما هي قريبة من الفترة اللي حابب أشير ليها هنا: حوالي 9000 قبل الميلاد.

اللي كان بيحصل في وادي النيل والصحراء المحيطة بيه في الفترة دي غريب ومهم بجد، ومش بياخد حقه من الاهتمام الشعبي.

كام نقطة تستحق المعرفة:

الصحراء الكبرى ماكانتش دايمًا صحراء. خلال الفترة الرطبة الأفريقية (African Humid Period)، اللي امتدت تقريبًا من 14,500 لـ 5,000 سنة مضت، المنطقة اللي بنتخيلها دلوقتي رمال لا نهاية ليها كانت سافانا فيها بحيرات، أراضي عشبية، أمطار موسمية، وحيوانات ضخمة. أفراس النهر كانت عايشة في أماكن دلوقتي مفيهاش مياه أصلًا. ورعاة الماشية كانوا بيتحركوا في مناطق مكنش يقدر عليها معزة دلوقتي.

نبتا بلايا، في الصحراء الغربية جنوب النيل المصري، فيها واحدة من أقدم التراصفات الفلكية المعروفة في العالم. ترتيبات حجرية، باحثين زي توماس بروفي وغيره بيقولوا إنها بترصد مواقع الانقلاب الشمسي وممكن نجوم بعينها، وأقدم من ستونهنج بآلاف السنين. اللي بنوها كانوا رعاة عايشين حوالين بحيرة موسمية.

الأسس الثقافية والدينية اللي ازدهرت بعد كده في مصر الفرعونية، العلاقة بالنيل، بالماشية، بالسماء، بالموتى والآخرة، كانت بتتأسس في النافذة دي من ما قبل التاريخ. قبل الهيروغليفية بزمن، وقبل الفراعنة بزمن أطول.

أنا قضيت وقت طويل في الفترة دي لأني أنتجت فيلم روائي طويل أحداثه فيها. لكن التاريخ نفسه قائم بذاته. حابب أعرف رأي المجتمع ده: ليه فترة ما قبل الأسرات بتاخد اهتمام شعبي قليل أوي مقارنة بالعصر الفرعوني اللي جا بعدها؟ هل ده بس بسبب غياب المعالم والكتابة، ولا فيه سبب أعمق ليه الجزء ده من قصة الإنسانية بيتعدّى من غير ما حد يقف عنده؟

Firstly I am against saddam, im not saying I support him. But after hearing about the plight of the Kuwaiti bidoon, and hearing how the justification for them not given citizenship is that they came from other countries I was wondering why the Iraqi government didnt do this?