Sandars N.K. The Sea Peoples. Warriors of the Ancient Mediterranean (1250-1150 BC)

Revised Edition. — Thames and Hudson, 1985. — 224 p. — (Ancient Peoples and Places). — ISBN: 0-500-27387-1.In the late 13th century BC an epoch of prosperity and relative stability in the East Mediterranean came to an abrupt end. Egyptian influence collapsed, the Hittite Empire fell and Mycenaean civilization lay in ruins, plunging Greece into a Dark Age that lasted for more than 300 years. What caused these catastrophes? Why did civilizations which had withstood countless upheavals in the past suddenly crumble and fall? Today scholars lay much of the blame on marauding bands known as the Sea Peoples. Inscriptions set up by Pharaoh Ramesses III tell of assaults by the raiders against Egypt and the Levant. But who were these invaders? Did they alone bring about the demise of Bronze Age civilization? In a brilliant study, now brought up to date for the revised edition and ranging from the Sack of Troy to the rise of the Philistines, Nancy Sandars interweaves literary and archaeological evidence to provide a magnificent account of a shadowy and calamitous age.N.K. Sandars' many books include Bronze Age Cultures in France (1957), Prehistoric Art in Europe (revised edition 1985) and translations of The Epic of Gilgamesh and Poems of Heaven and Hell from Ancient Mesopotamia for Penguin Classics. She is currently working on a study of the Silk Route from China to the West.