Who Were the Sea Peoples? And Did They Bring About the End of the Bronze Age?
Christopher Nolan’s Odyssey has sparked a resurgence of interest in the Sea Peoples. But who were they and should they be blamed for the fall of the Bronze Age?
Cyprus and Ugarit: A Tale of Two Late Bronze Age Mercantile Polities
Cyprus and Ugarit were two very different societies but in the Late Bronze Age, they shared a vital maritime and mercantile link that had a transformative impact on Cyprus.
“Lift the mountain on your hands,” or How to Cross a Netherworld Border
West Asian texts depict the netherworld as a land which is bounded, keeping outsiders from entering and inhabitants from leaving. Yet, borders are seldom entirely unable to be cros
What Actually Happened in Syria at the end of the Late Bronze Age?
The Sea Peoples have been accused of destroying sites across Syria at the end of Late Bronze Age. But what if the sites weren’t destroyed and the Sea Peoples weren’t even aroun
Music in Ancient Mesopotamia
Music is a universal language. In ancient Mesopotamia that language was spoken with familiar instruments like lyres, flutes and cymbals. But what did it really sound like?
The Current State of Ugaritic Studies
The coastal Syrian city of Ugarit was only discovered in 1929. Since then it has been the most important source for tablets that reveal the history and culture of the late second m