Byblos (=Jbeil), situated on a headland about thirty-seven kilometres north of Beirut, has been continuously occupied since at least 5000 BC. During the Bronze Age it was a major port on the Mediterranean coast. It held this position primarily because of its location between the two key civilizations of Mesopotamia and Egypt. From the time of pharaohs of the second dynasty (c.2890-c.2686 BC) traders from the Delta went to Byblos for timber, metals and goods. Sargon of Akkad (r.c.2270-c.2215 BC), the first great empire builder, claimed to have raided as far as the ‘Cedar Forest and the Silver Mountain’ to obtain wood and precious metals.
At the beginning of the second millennium BC trade was disrupted by the Amorite invasion. Byblos, like many of the Phoenician and Syrian cities, was destroyed. Many of the towns were never rebuilt, but seaports such as Byblos and Ugarit (=Ras Shamra) quickly regained their former prosperity. Trade resumed with Egypt under the pharaohs of the Middle Kingdom (c.2055-c.1650 BC).
The fifteenth dynasty (c.1650-c.1550 BC) is associated with the Hyksos, who conquered Egypt and took over the rule of much of Phoenicia and Syria. Ahmose-I (r.1550-1525 BC) succeeded in expelling the Hyksos from Egypt, and Egypt’s hold over Canaan was consolidated during the reign of Thutmose III (r.1479-1425 BC).
Cyprus contained rich copper mines and was an important source of the metal for the eastern Mediterranean area. In the Amarna correspondence the ruler of a kingdom of Alasiya is said to have great amounts of copper. It is therefore possible to associate Alasiya with Cyprus, but this is disputed.
When Thutmose IV (r.c.1400-c.1390 BC) sealed an alliance with Mitanni by marrying the daughter of the Mitannian king Artatama-I (r.c.1410-c.1400 BC), he gained control of the inland route along the lower Orontes and of the entire coast as far as Ugarit. This allowed Egypt to begin its domination of the eastern Mediterranean trade in the Levant.
In c.1340 BC Suppiluliuma-I (r.c.1344-c.1322 BC) launched an attack on Syria (the Great Syrian War) in which he crushed Mitanni and made the southernmost border of the Hittites a frontier with Egypt. At this time Ugarit became a Hittite vassal and remained under Hittite control until the fall of the Hittite Empire. Akhenaten (r.c.1352-c.1336 BC) did not respond.
The Hittites allowed Ugarit to develop as a commercial centre and Suppiluliuma gave Ugarit many cities that extended the borders of the Ugarit kingdom, perhaps east of the Orontes. Apparently serving as a buffer state between Mesopotamia and Egypt, Ugarit prospered as a neutral port and a conduit of international trade. As well as being a transit point the city was also a manufacturing site – a bronze workshop has been found and it was also a source of purple textiles.
In his first year Seti-I (r.c.1294-c.1279 BC) swiftly reaffirmed Egyptian control over the southern Phoenician coast from Akko to the north of Tyre. Throughout the thirteenth century BC the Eleutheros and Orontes valleys remained under Hittite control, protecting the passage of Mediterranean trade through the Akkar plain.
The final quarter of the thirteenth and the early years of the twelfth century BC marked the incursions of the Sea People and the subsequent collapse of the Hittite Empire. This period also witnessed the decline of Egypt as a regional power, the considerable shrinking of Assyrian power, and the growing ascendancy of the Israelites in Palestine and of the Aramaeans in Syria. To the north the cities of Ugarit and Alalakh were destroyed, but the major cities on the coastline south of Ugarit seem to have escaped serious disruption.
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