This review appeared last night on the Breakfast With Pandora blog and also on Amazon.com.
The time is 1200 BC, and the situation is dire for the established civilizations on the eastern edge of the Mediterranean Sea. A large group of marauders invades from the west, destroying Ugarit, the west Syrian metropolis, and threatening the Nile Delta itself, as well as Egyptian vassals in Canaan, including the cities of Gedjet (Gaza) and Shalem (Jerusalem).
These invaders are dubbed the “Sea Peoples” because of their preference for using ships as a means of transportation. Scholars have been divided as to where they come from, but Abbott settles on the hypothesis that they were Greeks. He goes one step farther as well and takes them for the Greeks who attacked and destroyed the legendary city of Troy.
So, ambitious this book is, but in characteristic fashion, Abbott focuses less on sea captains with wind whipping their hair than on what we have come to know after Iraq as “collateral damage:” the ordinary people affected by these events.
To be sure, Abbott can’t resist a scholar’s interest in the Sea Peoples’ ability to defeat conventional chariot-centered warfare. But there are actually zero eye-witness descriptions of large battles. Instead, the on-stage violence, so to speak, is always personal and jarring.
Several threads of characters, two from the sacked city of Ugarit, two from Egypt, two from Canaan, one from Greece, and one of the Ibryhim (Hebrews) form the material for Abbott’s tapestry; there are so many characters, in fact, and the historical situation is so complex, that Abbott helpfully includes extensive explanatory notes at the end of the book.
But despite their number and diversity, each set of personages is distinct and vivid in its own way, and helps to create a full picture of what life must have been like in the uncertain times at the end of the Bronze Age. A surprising tenderness in the face of brutality, loss, and displacement is the emotion that underpins the action.
The reviewer goes on to muse how his favourite character is Hekanefer, the Egyptian scribe attached to one of the Egyptian army units trying to defend the land. I must admit to very much enjoying him myself, especially the different ways he relates to different family members. I have seen several blogs recently doing “meet my character” posts, and this made me think that this would be a good plan for hear. Watch this space…