When we think about the Bronze Age Collapse, it is easy to imagine a weak and declining Egypt slowly losing control of Canaan.

But immediately before the collapse, the opposite was true.

Egypt was powerful.

Really powerful.

For centuries, Canaan had been part of the Egyptian imperial system. Egyptian armies marched through it. Egyptian officials governed it. Canaanite kings answered to the Pharaoh. The roads and supply lines of the Levant functioned as arteries of Egyptian power.

And nowhere is that power more visible than at the Battle of Kadesh in 1274 BC.

This was not a border skirmish.

This was a clash between the two superpowers of the Late Bronze Age: Egypt and the Hittite Empire.

The Hittites were on the rise. And they wanted Egyptian Canaan1.

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If the Egyptian numbers are even remotely accurate, Ramses II marched north with around 20,000 soldiers and more than 2,000 chariots — the Bronze Age equivalent of tanks. The Hittites may have fielded an even larger force - 30,000 soldiers and 3,000 chariots.

To put that into perspective, the total population of southern Canaan at the time may only have been around 50,000 people.

The Egyptians were projecting military force across hundreds of kilometers, through Canaan and into southern Syria, on a scale that would have been unimaginable to the small Canaanite city-states beneath them.

This is what the world looked like right before the Bronze Age Collapse.

Strong states.

International diplomacy.

Massive armies.

Interconnected empires.

And hidden inside that world were the cracks that would soon tear it apart.

The Road Through Canaan

The Egyptian army departed from Pi-Ramesses in the Nile Delta and marched north along the Via Maris through Canaan toward Kadesh, near the modern Syrian-Lebanese border.

That route matters.

The Egyptians could not have moved an army this large through hostile territory. The march itself demonstrates how deeply entrenched Egypt was in Canaan. The region functioned as an imperial corridor connecting Egypt to Syria.

The army was divided into four divisions named after gods: Amun, Ra, Ptah and Set.

Ramses II personally led the Amun division.

And interestingly, the Egyptian army was not composed solely of Egyptians.

Among Ramses’ troops were Sherden mercenaries — warriors likely connected to the same broader groups later remembered as the “Sea Peoples.”

Yes, the same Sea Peoples who would later attack Egypt during the Bronze Age Collapse.

At Kadesh, they fought for Egypt.

That detail is easy to miss, but it tells us something important about the Late Bronze Age world. These populations were not yet the apocalyptic invaders of later Egyptian inscriptions. They were already moving around the Mediterranean as mercenaries, migrants and soldiers long before the collapse reached its peak.

The Late Bronze Age world was interconnected.

And unstable.

Ramses Walks Into a Trap

As the Egyptians approached Kadesh, they captured two Shasu nomads — probably Bedouin from the southern Levant.

Under torture, the spies revealed vital intelligence.

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The Hittite army, they claimed, was still far to the north.

Muwatalli II, the Hittite king, had not yet arrived.

Ramses believed them.

And why wouldn’t he?

Speed mattered. If the Egyptians reached Kadesh first, they could establish position before the Hittites arrived and force them into a disadvantageous battle.

So Ramses advanced quickly with only part of his army while the remaining divisions stretched far behind him along the road through Canaan.

But the spies were lying.

The Hittite army was already there.

Hiding in the shadows of the city walls surrounding Kadesh.

Waiting.

This may be the first clearly documented military disinformation operation in recorded history.

Ramses II was running head long into a trap. The king was accompanied by only one of his four divisions.

But then the Egyptians caught a break. They caught two more spies.

This time the truth came out.

But it was already too late.

The Largest Chariot Battle in History

The Hittites burst out from behind Kadesh and slammed into the Egyptian Ra division while it was still marching north in loose formation.

The Egyptian camp descended into chaos.

The Hittites nearly won outright.

According to Egyptian accounts, Ramses himself became isolated during the fighting and barely escaped death.

In later inscriptions, Ramses transforms the disaster into a story of heroic personal bravery. He describes himself standing alone against overwhelming odds while abandoned by his troops:

“I found the 2,500 chariots in whose midst I was, surrounding me… not one among my princes, my captains of chariotry, my chief men, my knights was there.”

Then, naturally, Ramses claims he personally routed the enemy.

As royal propaganda, it is magnificent.

As literal history, probably less so.

The actual battle ended indecisively. Neither side achieved a decisive victory.

But that alone is remarkable.

Because despite ambush, confusion and near catastrophe, the Egyptian military machine held together.

The empire survived.

For the moment.

After the Battle of Kadesh, the Egyptians and Hittites sign the “Silver Treaty.” The two superpowers of their time agree to a peace. Ramses II even marries a Hittite princess 13 years later.

An age of diplomacy is ushered in. Ending the ceaseless fighting on the Canaanite frontier.

But it would not last for long.

The World Before the Collapse

The Battle of Kadesh captures the Late Bronze Age world at its peak.

Huge armies.

International diplomacy.

Mercenaries crossing borders.

Imperial powers competing over Canaan.

This was not a primitive world stumbling blindly through history.

It was a sophisticated international system.

And within roughly a century, much of it would collapse.

The Hittite Empire would disappear entirely.

Egypt would lose control of Canaan.

The Sea Peoples would become enemies instead of mercenaries.

And new peoples — including the Israelites — would emerge in the ruins of the old order.

That is what makes Kadesh so important.

It is not just the story of a battle.

It is a snapshot of the ancient world before everything fell apart.

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(1) Kasid12, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

(2) Public domain, Wikicommons

The region was not independent. It was part of the Egyptian Empire — administered through a network of Canaanite vassal kings who competed for Egyptian favor while struggling to maintain control over their own cities.

We caught a glimpse of that world in the Amarna Letters discussed in the last post: desperate rulers begging the Pharaoh for aid, accusing their rivals of treachery and watching order slowly fray around them.

And then, suddenly, Egypt disappears from Canaan.

The Egyptian garrisons vanish. The imperial administration collapses. The old system of Canaanite city-states begins to break apart.

At almost the exact same moment, the Israelites first appear in the historical record.

That timing is not a coincidence.

To understand what happened to the Egyptians — and how the Israelites emerge in the aftermath — we need to widen the lens beyond Canaan itself.

Because the Israelites appear during one of the great catastrophes of ancient history: the Bronze Age Collapse.

Between roughly 1250 and 1150 BC, the civilizations of the Eastern Mediterranean were battered by drought, famine, earthquakes, migration and war. Trade routes collapsed. Kingdoms disappeared. Entire societies fell apart.

And in the middle of that chaos, Egypt lost control of Canaan.

A World Before the Collapse

To understand the catastrophe, we first need to understand the world that existed before it.

At the end of the Bronze Age, the Eastern Mediterranean was dominated by several powerful civilizations.

In Greece, there were the Mycenaeans.

These were not the later Greeks of Socrates and Aristotle. They came earlier, centuries before Classical Greece. They ruled from enormous palace complexes, controlled trade across the Aegean and used a writing system called Linear B.

The Mycenaeans were sophisticated and wealthy. Around 1250 BC, they built massive fortifications with stones so large that later Greeks believed only Cyclops — mythical one-eyed giants — could have moved them.

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Then they disappeared.

After the Bronze Age Collapse, Mycenaean civilization was gone. Population plummeted. Central administration vanished. Writing vanished with it. Greece entered a Dark Age.

When Homer later told stories of the Trojan War in the Iliad and the Odyssey, he was preserving distant memories from before the collapse — memories that had already begun to pass from history into legend.

To the east, in Anatolia, modern-day Turkey, stood another great power: the Hittite Empire.

The Hittites were Egypt’s main rival. Both empires expanded into Syria and eventually collided at the Battle of Kadesh in 1274 BC — perhaps the largest chariot battle in recorded history.

Thousands of chariots and tens of thousands of soldiers fought to a standstill.

The Egyptians and Hittites eventually made peace. Ramses II even married a Hittite princess.

And yet despite their power, the Hittites also collapsed.

Their capital, Hattusa, became little more than a village. The empire fragmented into smaller Neo-Hittite states in northern Syria.

Further east, the Assyrians and Babylonians survived — barely. Both declined during the crisis before later re-emerging as the Neo-Assyrian and Neo-Babylonian empires.

Those names will matter later in our story.

The Neo-Assyrians would eventually destroy the Kingdom of Israel.

The Neo-Babylonians would destroy Judah.

But during the Bronze Age Collapse itself, even they struggled.

The Sea Peoples (A Migration-Invasion)

No discussion of the Bronze Age Collapse is complete without the so-called “Sea Peoples.”

The Egyptians describe them as a confederation of foreign groups attacking from overseas.

In one inscription, Pharaoh Merneptah boasts of defeating them in 1208 BC — the same inscription that first mentions Israel.

The Egyptians list groups like the Peleset, Tjekker, Shekelesh, Danuna and Weshesh.

Historians later grouped these peoples together under the label “Sea Peoples,” but the ancient sources never treat them as a single ethnic group. It is simply a convenient modern category.

Who were they?

The honest answer is that we do not really know.

Some may have come from the Aegean world. Others possibly from Sardinia or Sicily. The Philistines — the Peleset of Egyptian records — seem to have had an Aegean culture and eventually settled along the southern coast of Canaan around modern-day Gaza. DNA evidence from Ashkelon, a Philistine city, points to southern European ancestry among the early Philistines.

But the larger question is not just who they were.

It is why they were moving at all.

The Egyptians describe entire peoples migrating with ox carts and families.

That detail matters.

This was not simply a military invasion in the normal sense. It looks more like migration under pressure — desperate people searching for new places to live.

A migration-invasion.

There are parallels elsewhere in history.

The Goths pressing into the Roman Empire.

The Viking migrations into Western Europe.

In both cases, violence and migration blurred together.

The Sea Peoples may have been doing something similar.

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Earthquakes, Drought and Famine

So what created that pressure?

Probably several things at once.

Archaeologists and historians increasingly see the Bronze Age Collapse as a systems collapse — multiple disasters hitting interconnected civilizations simultaneously.

One factor was earthquakes.

Historian Eric Cline describes an “earthquake storm” that may have lasted for decades. Evidence of major earthquakes appears across the Eastern Mediterranean: Mycenae, Troy, Hattusa, Ugarit and multiple cities in Canaan.

Another factor was climate.

Around the end of the 13th century BC, the region entered a prolonged drought that may have lasted between 150 and 300 years.

The resulting famine was severe.

The Hittite queen herself reportedly offered her dowry in exchange for grain, writing simply:

“There is no food in my lands.”

We can even watch the famine spread southward through surviving records.

At first, Egypt exported grain to the Hittites through the port city of Ugarit in modern-day Syria.

Then eventually Ugarit itself began to starve.

One desperate letter from the city reads:

“There is famine in your house; we will all die of hunger.”

Trade routes failed. Food shortages worsened. Populations moved.

And when enough people begin moving at once, conflict follows.

Egypt Survives — But Retreats

Unlike many of its rivals, Egypt survived the Bronze Age Collapse.

That alone is remarkable.

The Egyptians defeated the Sea Peoples in major battles during the reigns of Merneptah and Ramses III.

And yet despite those victories, Egypt still lost control of Canaan.

By the mid-12th century BC, Egyptian authority in the region had effectively collapsed.

The imperial buffer zone they had spent centuries building fell apart.

And in its place, a new world emerged.

The Philistines settled along the coast.

The old Canaanite city-state system weakened.

And in the highlands of Canaan, new societies began to appear.

Including the Israelites.

A New World

The Bronze Age Collapse was not a single event.

It was a long process that reshaped the Eastern Mediterranean.

Civilizations disappeared. Empires retreated. Trade networks fragmented. Migrants searched for food and stability.

Out of that chaos came new peoples and new states.

In Canaan alone, the Phoenicians, the Arameans and theIsraelites emerge from the ashes of the Bronze Age Collapse.

The Philistines and other Sea Peoples like the Tjekker migrate into Canaan and are settled along the coast.

The world of the Late Bronze Age died.

A new Iron Age world took its place.

And in that new world, in the hills of Canaan, the Israelites began their story.

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(1) Larry from Charlottetown, PEI, Canada, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

(2) Patrick Gray, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

In this episode, the Bronze Age Collapse tears apart the eastern Mediterranean, and the Egyptian Empire loses its hold on Canaan. We trace what that collapse looked like on the ground—and the opportunities it created for the people living through it.

Overlooking the ashes of the Canaanite cities, new communities take shape in the highlands. The Israelites forge a new life. We step inside an early Israelite home, exploring their culture before turning to the deeper question of how they got there.

Were they invaders, nomads, or just Canaanites looking for a better life?

Read the episode and bonus content at:

History of the Jews

Writing about the history of the Jews from antiquity to the 20th century without losing sight of context and people. Check out 3000+ years of history and bonus content.

By Dovid Parnas

You can also reach me at: hotj.podcast@gmail.com

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In this episode, we explore that collapse—the final piece of the puzzle before we can begin telling the story of the ancient Israelites.

We trace its impact across the region, from the great powers of Greece and Anatolia to the empire of Egypt. Along the way, we confront one of history’s enduring mysteries: the “Sea Peoples.” Who were they, and what did they want? Displacement—perhaps caused by drought, famine, or earthquakes—may have pushed them into a wave of migration and conflict.

As they move south, clashing with the civilizations of the Near East, their advance ultimately ends in Egypt. There, they are defeated—and many are resettled in Canaan, setting the stage for the later encounters between the Israelites and the Philistines.

Read the episode and bonus content at:

History of the Jews

Writing about the history of the Jews from antiquity to the 20th century without losing sight of context and people. Check out 3000+ years of history and bonus content.

By Dovid Parnas

You can also reach me at: hotj.podcast@gmail.com

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If you are mildly familiar with the Bible, you will say that there were Canaanites. If you are more familiar, maybe you will remember that there were seven nations. But basically, it is a land of small, independent kingdoms.

However, archeology tells us something else entirely. Yes, there were Canaanites.

But they were ruled by Egypt. They were part of New Kingdom Egypt, right up to when the Israelites appear for the first time in the Merneptah Stele in 1208 BC.

And once you know that, the whole story starts to look different.

What was Egyptian Canaan like? Did the Israelites conquer (parts of) Canaan from the Egyptians? Where did the Egyptians go?

Part III fills in the next stage of the prequel to the ancient Israelites - the Egyptian period of Canaanite history.

Strategic Depth

After expelling the Hyksos, Egypt drew a clear lesson: they need strategic depth.

Foreigners had entered Egypt through Canaan. More than a millennia later, Egyptians would remember the Hyksos as cruel invaders.

This is from Manetho, an Egyptian historian in the 3rd century BC.

A people of ignoble origin from the east…had the audacity to invade the country... Having overpowered the chiefs, they then savagely burnt the cities, razed the temples of the gods to the ground, and treated the whole native population with the utmost cruelty, massacring some, and carrying off the wives and children of others into slavery.1

The archeology does not support Manetho’s claims of Hyksos cruelty, but that was how the Egyptians felt. Part II showed us how vicious Egyptian hatred of the Hyksos was at the time. Manetho just continues the tradition.

So when Egypt reclaimed its independence, it did not just defend its borders—it pushed north and created a buffer zone reaching into modern-day Syria. They make it all the way to the Euphrates river, which they call “inverted water”2. Because they had never seen a river that flowed from north to south. They only knew the Nile, which flows northward.

At first, this brought destruction to Canaan. Egyptian campaigns in the 16th century BCE destroyed many Middle Bronze Age cities. The Egyptians did not invest in Canaan, even for the sake of collecting taxes. For the Egyptians, Canaan was just “on-the-way” as Egypt took control of wealthier areas like Byblos and Mitanni.

But under the pharaoh Thutmose III, the strategy changed.

Not destruction—empire.

The Gamble at Megiddo

Around 1479 BCE, a coalition of Canaanite kings rebelled and gathered at Megiddo. It was one year after Thutmose III had taken the throne and they probably betted on the new Pharoah being new, cautious, inexperienced.

But Thutmose III was a bold Pharoah. The Canaanite kings could not have known it, but he would campaign for 16 of the next 20 years. This was the wrong Pharoah to mess with.

Thutmose III lead his Egyptian army north immediately. After 10 days of marching, the only thing separating him from Megiddo were the hills connecting the Mount Carmel and the Samarian highlands.

To cross them, the Egyptian army had three possible routes. Each of these narrow passes were prone to ambush, but the middle one was particularly dangerous. If he went through there and the Canaanites caught him, it was over.

His generals argued against it, but Thutmose chose the dangerous route.

It was undefended.

The Canaanites had thought like the Egyptian generals. They had split their forces between the two other passes.

Within hours, the Egyptians were through. The rebellion collapsed.

Canaan became an Egyptian province.

The Egyptians will only leave three hundred years later.

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Canaanite life under Egypt

We know what life looked like under Egyptian rule thanks to the Amarna letters—hundreds of clay tablets sent between local rulers and the Egyptian court.

They reveal a world that is anything but stable.

Canaan is:

• Politically fragmented

• Economically strained

• Constantly fighting itself

Local kings still rule—but only as servants of the Pharaoh. They pay taxes, compete for power, and try to survive in a system they don’t control.

A World of Small Kings

One of those rulers was Lab’ayu, the king of Shechem.

He is exactly what you would expect from this kind of system: ambitious, manipulative, and completely self-interested.

Accused of taking over neighboring cities, he writes to the Pharaoh insisting that he is loyal—that he is only acting in Egypt’s interest.

To the king, my lord and my Sun: Thus Lab’ayu, your servant and the dirt on which you tread…I have obeyed the orders that the king wrote to me. Who am I that the king should lose his land on account of me?...I am not a rebel and I am not delinquent in duty. I have not held back my payments of tribute…My act of rebellion is this: when I entered Gezer, I kept on saying, “Everything of mine the king takes, but where is what belongs to Milkilu [the king of Gezer?]3

Lab’ayu explains that he is just taking back from Gezer, what they took from the Pharoah. It’s a nice attempt.

But given Lab’ayu’s track record, it rings hollow.

This is not his first time. Other rulers complain about him, constantly. His rivals accuse him of aggression. Even his own family becomes entangled in his schemes.

Eventually, the Egyptians arrest him.

But a man like Lab’ayu knows how to bribe his way out. He escapes the clutches of the Pharoah.

And in the end, he isn’t brought down by empire—but by the people around him.

The Amarna letters imply that he was lynched in the town of Gina. The circumstances are unclear. But his story tells us a lot about Egyptian Canaan.

It is chaos.

The People on the Margins

Then there are the Habiru.

They appear throughout the Amarna letters, usually in the worst possible context—raiding land, destabilizing cities, working with rebellious rulers.

For a long time, people thought they might be the Hebrews.

Today, most historians think otherwise.

“Habiru” seems to describe a type of person, not a people:

• Migrants

• Bandits

People without land, without protection, living on the edges of society.

They moved between cities and tribes, sometimes working, sometimes fighting, sometimes taking what they needed.

They made life in Canaan more unstable.

However, they weren’t strong enough to challenge Egyptian rule.

For Egypt, this was still—remarkably—business as usual.

Stuck in the middle

A picture of 15th-14th century Canaan looks like this.

At the top: Egypt.
Below it: local rulers competing for power.
At the edges: people like the Habiru, surviving however they can.

And the actual Canaanites had to deal with all of them.

Unfortunately, we only have texts from Canaan’s elite - the vassal kings of Egypt. But from the Amarna letters we can gather that life was not great in Canaan for the Canaanites.

Their kings, like Lab’ayu, were corrupt. They served the Pharoah without reserve. And they failed to protect their lands from the Habiru.

[Thus Lab’ayu spoke] … I did not know that my son was consorting with the Habiru. I hereby hand him over to [the Egyptian commissioner.] Moreover, if the king wrote for my wife, how could I hold her back? If the king wrote to me, “Put a bronze dagger into your heart and die”, could I not execute the order of the king?4

If the Canaanite kings would not protect their own family from the Egyptians, how much would they protect the Canaanites?

Why This Matters

This is the world that exists just before the Israelites appear.

Not a blank slate. Not a quiet land waiting to be settled.

But a region shaped by empire, instability, and collapse.

This period of Canaanite history is crucial to understanding where the Ancient Israelites come from and what they remember.

By understanding the world of Canaan, we can understand where the ancient Israelites come from, why they remember the Egyptians so negatively and why they forget some of what happened.

The last question, why they forget about Egyptian rule, we will answer in Part IV. We also need to understand where the Egyptians went? What broke the New Kingdom’s hold on Canaan?

Because it certainly doesn’t seem like the Canaanites could have.

If you want to follow the full story of the Jews and the Ancient Israelites, subscribe now!

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(1) Harold Hayden Nelson, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

(2) Osama Shukir Muhammed Amin FRCP(Glasg), CC BY-SA 4.0 , via Wikimedia Commons

(3) PioGal; © Sémhur / Wikimedia Commons / CC-BY-SA-3.0; © Sweet Publishing / CC-BY-SA-3.0; the Metropolitan Museum of Art / CC-Zero, CC BY-SA 3.0 , via Wikimedia Commons

In this episode, we trace the long and bitter relationship between Egypt and its northern neighbors. As migrants from Canaan move into Egypt, they rise from traders and migrants to rulers of the Nile Delta, establishing the Hyksos kingdom. Their rule provokes a violent Egyptian response: the rise of the New Kingdom and a campaign of destruction that reaches into Canaan itself.

By the end of the episode, the world before the Israelites looks very different—shaped by migration, conquest, and the lingering memory of foreign rule.

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“All happiness has vanished… owing to these Asiatics who roam the land.”
— The Prophecies of Neferti

The Israelites did not appear in a vacuum.

They emerged from a world shaped by trauma—specifically, Egypt’s trauma. Or xenophobia. I will let you be the judge.

By the time we encounter “Israelites” on the Merneptah Stele (c. 1208 BCE), Egypt is fighting to hold onto Canaan. Although Canaan is lies far beyond the Nile Delta, it is key to Egyptian foreign policy. They would say, to their national security.

To understand why, we need to go back several centuries—to a time when Egypt itself was conquered.

When Foreigners Came to Egypt

In the early second millennium BCE, Egypt was not the dominant imperial power we usually imagine. When you hear names like Ramses the Great, or Thutmose the Great. Those lie in Egypt’s future, the New Kingdom.

This is the Middle Kingdom. At this time, Egypt was part of a wider interconnected world. Trade routes linked Canaan, Syria, Mesopotamia, and Egypt. Along those routes came people the Egyptians called “Asiatics”—a broad label for migrants from the north, many of them Amorites.

They arrived in different ways:

• As merchants, embedded in long-distance trade

• As migrants, settling gradually in the Nile Delta

• As captives, brought south through Egyptian military campaigns

And they did not remain on the margins.

Archaeology shows that many of these “Asiatics” became skilled participants in Egyptian society—traders, artisans, and laborers integrated into the economy. At the same time, many native Egyptians continued to perform the hardest forms of labor.1

This is the first important tension.

Not a simple story of domination—but of overlap, competition, and challenged expectations. It is a culture shock.

Egyptian texts reflect that discomfort clearly. The presence of these northern peoples is described not as neutral, but as destabilizing:

“The land is bowed down in distress, owing to these feeders…Asiatics have come down to Egypt” — The Prophecies of Neferti

The Hyksos: From Migrants to Rulers

At some point, that tension tipped into political transformation.

In the 1720 BC2 or as late at 1640 BC3, northern Egypt came under the control of these foreign elites—the people later known as the Hyksos (“foreign rulers”).

How this happened is still debated:

• A sudden invasion (from other “Asiatics”)

• A gradual internal takeover (from the “Asiatics” already in Egypt)

• Or some combination of the two

But the outcome is clear.

• Hyksos rule in the north

• Native Egyptian dynasties in the south

At the time and in later Egyptian writers like Manetho (writing over a thousand years later), this period was experienced with deep humiliation—a time when foreigners ruled Egypt itself.

That experience will shape the world of Canaan before Israel.

A Divided Egypt

Pharoah Kamose, the Egyptian ruler of Upper Egypt broods over his predicament. His frustration is palpable.

“What serves this strength of mine… I sit united with an Asiatic and a Nubian, each in possession of his slice of Egypt”4

Things have escalated. This is not: foreigners in Egypt. This is: foreigners ruling Egypt.

Egypt is fragmented. It is divided between rival powers, with foreign rulers controlling its most economically vital region.

That is the second key development:

Egypt experiences not just a culture shock, but loss of sovereignty.

The War to Reclaim Egypt

The response begins in the south.

Egyptian rulers—first Seqenenre, then Kamose, and finally Ahmose I—launch a series of campaigns to expel the Hyksos and reunify the country.

The tone of these campaigns is unmistakable.

“I will grapple with him, that I may rip open his belly! My wish is to save Egypt and to smite the Asiatic!”5

This is not routine warfare.

It is framed as existential.

And when the Egyptians finally succeed, they do something crucial:

They do not stop at their borders.

Destruction vs. Conquest

This is the turning point—and the idea that matters most.

Empires usually conquer.

They take territory, incorporate populations, and extract resources.

But what the Egyptians do after the Hyksos is different.

They destroy.

Under Ahmose, Egyptian armies push into Canaan—the region from which the Hyksos had originated. Campaign accounts describe:

• Cities burned

• Populations slaughtered

• Regions systematically devastated

This is not language of administration or integration.

It is elimination.

The distinction is critical:

You conquer what you want to use. You destroy what you fear.

Egypt did not see Canaan as a prize.

It saw it as a threat.

The Collapse of a Region

Before these campaigns, Canaan in the Middle Bronze Age was thriving.

• Urban centers like Hazor, Megiddo, and Lachish

• Active trade networks across the Near East

• A population of roughly 150,000

Afterward, the picture changes dramatically.

Archaeology shows widespread destruction across the region in the 16th century BCE. Every major city is hit. Population levels drop sharply—perhaps by two-thirds.

And Egypt was not acting alone.

At roughly the same time, groups from the north—often associated with Hurrian movements—were also destabilizing the region:

• Raiding inland settlements

• Disrupting trade routes

• Gradually weakening political structures

Canaan was caught between two forces:

• Egyptian retaliation from the south

• Migration and invasion from the north

The result was systemic collapse.

What This Changes

We are still centuries away from the Israelites.

But the world they will emerge into has changed dramatically.

Canaan is no longer a stable network of city-states. It is a fractured, partially depopulated region, shaped by:

• Imperial violence

• Migration

• Political collapse

And Egypt?

Egypt has been transformed even more.

It is now:

• Militarized

• Expansionist

• Determined never to face another Hyksos scenario

That mindset changes the Egyptian psyche. It will set Egypt down a path of empire that will encompass Canaan and dictate the lives of Canaanites for centuries to come.

Back to the Israelites

This brings us back to our original problem.

By 1208 BCE, “Israel” appears in Canaan—and Egypt is fighting there.

That no longer needs a special explanation.

Egypt had already spent centuries projecting power into the region, shaped by the fear of what had once come out of it.

The real question now shifts:

If Canaan was so deeply disrupted—if its cities collapsed, its population declined, and its political order fractured—

what kinds of societies replaced it?

Were the Israelites:

• External newcomers, as the biblical story suggests?

• Or internal developments, emerging from within this broken landscape?

To answer these questions, we need to leave Egypt and shift our focus to Canaan. The New Kingdom emerges around 1550 BC, but that leaves 300 years before the Merneptah would mention the Israelites. What happened?

We will answer that in Part 3.

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(1) Iry-Hor, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

(2) Georges Émile Jules Daressy (19 March 1864 – 28 February 1938), Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

“Plundered is Canaan with every evil;
Israel is laid waste, his seed is not;
All lands together, they are pacified;
Everyone who was restless, he has been bound1.”

With that declaration of victory, carved into stone by the scribes of the Egyptian Pharaoh Merneptah, Israel enters recorded history for the first time.

The year is 1208 BC.

And the first thing we learn about the Israelites is not who they are—but that they have been defeated.

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The Problem of Beginnings

If you want to tell the story of a people, you need a place to start.

For the Jews, that starting point is surprisingly unclear.

The Merneptah Stele is the first explicit, datable mention of Israel. It tells us that somewhere in Canaan, a group called “Israel” existed—and that the Egyptians had just crushed them.

That raises immediate questions:

• Who were these Israelites?

• Where did they come from?

• And why are the Egyptians fighting them in Canaan?

At first glance, we might think we already know the answers.

After all, there is no shortage of ancient histories.

The Stories We Think We Know

The Bible gives a clear narrative:

Abraham leaves Mesopotamia for Canaan.
His descendants go down to Egypt during a famine.
There, they grow into a nation.
They are enslaved.
They leave in the Exodus.
They wander the desert.
And finally, they return to Canaan.

Simple enough.

But the ancient Greeks tell a very different story.

The historian Diodorus Siculus, writing in the first century BC, describes a plague in Egypt blamed on foreign peoples with strange customs. These foreigners are expelled and migrate to Judaea under Moses.

Another tradition, preserved by the Jewish historian Josephus, quotes the Egyptian priest Manetho, who goes further. He links the Jews to the Hyksos—foreigners who once conquered Egypt—and describes them as diseased outcasts driven from the land.

These accounts agree on one basic structure:
the Israelites were in Egypt, and then they left.

But they disagree on everything else—especially on whether the Israelites were victims… or villains.

A Mismatch

There’s just one problem.

None of these stories fit very well with the Merneptah Stele.

Because in 1208 BC:

• The Egyptians are in Canaan

• The Israelites are also in Canaan

• And the Egyptians are attacking them there

But according to the Biblical narrative, Egypt should have been devastated after the plagues. What are they doing in Canaan attacking the Israelites?

And according to the Greek accounts, Egypt had already expelled these troublesome foreigners. Why chase them into Canaan?

So even if we rely on these ancient traditions, we are left with the same question:

Who are the Israelites that appear in 1208 BC?

Changing the Question

Therefore in this article (part 1 of an anticipated 6), we start with a different question.

Instead of asking:

Who were the Israelites?

We ask:

What was happening in Canaan and Egypt before they appear?

Because people don’t emerge out of nowhere.
They emerge from context.

And that context, in this case, is one of the most dramatic turning points in ancient history:

The Bronze Age Collapse.

The Merneptah Stele was written right in the middle of this upheaval, in the late 13th century BC.

Across the eastern Mediterranean, systems that had existed for centuries were beginning to fail. Empires would fall. Trade networks would collapse. Populations would shift.

To understand the Israelites, we need to understand the world just before that collapse.

So we begin earlier—during the Middle Bronze Age.

Egypt Looks North

Let’s start with how the Egyptians saw Canaan.

From a text known as The Teachings for King Merikare:

“Lo, the miserable Asiatic…
He is wretched because of the place he is in:
Short of water, bare of wood…
He fights since the time of Horus,
Not conquering nor being conquered2.”

This is not a flattering description.

To the Egyptians, Canaan was poor, chaotic, and perpetually unstable.

And in fairness—they weren’t entirely wrong.

The Geography of Canaan

Canaan is a narrow strip of land between the Mediterranean Sea and the deserts of Arabia and Syria.

It is squeezed between two great centers of civilization:

• Egypt, fed by the Nile

• Mesopotamia, fed by the Tigris and Euphrates

Both regions are flat, fertile, and capable of supporting large populations and empires.

Canaan is neither.

It has no major rivers.
It is broken by hills and mountains.
Travel is difficult.
Agriculture is limited.

It is, in many ways, a corridor—a land people pass through.

Which helps explain why it is so often fought over.

And Yet, It Thrived

Despite Egyptian complaints, the Middle Bronze Age (roughly 2000–1550 BC) was a period of prosperity in Canaan.

Cities like Hazor, Shechem, and Megiddo were:

• Fortified

• Organized

• Economically active

These were not small villages. They were urban centers, controlling surrounding regions and participating in long-distance trade.

Hazor alone may have housed 18,000 people—a major city by ancient standards.

Canaan was not a backwater.

It was a hub, linking Egypt and Mesopotamia.

Trade routes passed through Canaan carrying goods like tin, essential for making bronze.

Ideas moved along these same routes.

So did people.

Groups like the Amorites rose to power across the region, with rulers such as Hammurabi of Babylon.

Canaan sat at the center of this network—a place of movement, exchange, and constant interaction.

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Then Something Changed

By the Late Bronze Age, everything looks different.3

• The population of southern Canaan drops from roughly 150,000 to 50,000

• Many cities decline or disappear

• Settlement shifts toward the lowlands

• The highlands are largely abandoned, with only a few cities remaining

A third of the population is gone.

Entire regions are emptied.

Something has gone very wrong.

Back to Our Question

We began with a simple question:

Who were the Israelites?

We found them in 1208 BC—defeated, mentioned briefly, and otherwise unexplained.

We turned to ancient histories—but they raised more problems than they solved.

So we stepped back.

We looked at Canaan before their appearance:

• A land shaped by geography

• Connected by trade

• Dominated by city-states

• And then suddenly transformed

Now we are left with a new question:

What happened between the Middle and Late Bronze Age?

What caused the collapse of this system?

And how does that collapse relate to the emergence of the Israelites?

In the Next Post

We will meet the Hyksos—the “shepherd kings” who conquered Egypt and left a deep scar on its memory.

Centuries later, writers like Manetho would claim that the Israelites were connected to them.

Was he right?

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(1) 𐰇𐱅𐰚𐰤, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

(2) Lev.Tsimbler, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

We turn to ancient accounts—from the Bible and Greek writers—but they don’t fully explain what we see. So instead, we step back and explore the broader world of Bronze Age Canaan and Egypt. As that context comes into focus, the tension between them—and the stage on which Israel first appears—begins to take shape.

Substack: https://historyofthejews.substack.com/

Through the story of Dmitrii Bogrov, a revolutionary assassin, we explore how Jewish history is often misunderstood—reduced to familiar themes like religion or antisemitism. This podcast takes a different approach: telling a full history, grounded in archaeology and contemporary sources, and focused on context rather than clichés.

Check out Substack to see bonus posts! This weeks post explores two other ways to look at Bogrov's life.

Substack: https://historyofthejews.substack.com/

The curtains go up in the Kiev Opera house, featuring The Tale of Tsar Saltan. The play begins and three sisters sit at spinning wheels as Tsar Saltan listens to their conversation. But the real action is in the audience.

In the front row sits Pyotr Stolypin, the Russian prime minister. He has survived ten attempts on his life.

In row 17 sits Dmitrii Bogrov. His ticket was paid for by the Russian secret police. They want to prevent an eleventh attempt. And Bogrov is the man who can identify the assassins. He has them waiting at his house.

Bogrov is a double agent, working for the Russians. But the assassins do not know that.

The play goes on, but nothing happens. The Russian secret service are nervous, ready. Finally, an intermission. A chance to speak to Bogrov.

There are still no assassins. Maybe you should go home and check on them, they tell him. So Bogrov stands up. He makes to leave the theatre but notices something. Stolypin. Standing alone.

Calmly, Bogrov approaches the prime minister, pulls out a revolver and shoots Stolypin twice. The first bullet goes into the orchestra pit. But the second bullet is fatal. It passes through Stolypin’s medal of Vladimir the Great into his chest. Four days later, the prime minister of Russia was dead.

Bogrov was a double agent. But not for the Okhrana.

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Why did Bogrov kill Stolypin?

Story One: The Gambler. Money should not have been a problem. His father was a successful lawyer, well assimilated into Russian society. But Bogrov was a gambler.

As time went on, his debts grew and grew. Despite a genuine interest in revolutionary politics, Bogrov had to pay the bills. He found work as an informer for the Russian secret police.

Eventually, the rumors of his activity found their way back to the people that he had betrayed. Some former friends visited him. And they gave him an ultimatum.

Either you die or a Russian official dies.

Bogrov’s life choices had caught up with him. That is why Bogrov kills Stolypin.

Story Two: The Revolutionary. Bogrov came into adulthood during revolutionary times. He celebrated his birthday in 1905, a month after “Bloody Sunday”. He probably still had the newspaper clippings, showing the protesters gunned down outside the Winter Palace.

Five years later, he approached the Socialist Revolutionary Party with a proposition. He would kill Stolypin, the Russian Prime Minister. But they rejected his offer. It was too risky. Upon hearing the news, Bogrov suffered a nervous breakdown.

But in the end, he would carry out his part for the revolution. That is why Bogrov kills Stolypin.

Story Three: The Jew. Bogrov’s grandfather was a contentious figure amongst Jews in Russia. He was a famed writer in the Jewish Enlightenment, the Haskala. He had written Zapiski Evreia, “Notes of a Jew”, which brought the world of the Russian Jewry to Russian readers. Bogrov’s grandfather believed in assimilating into Russian culture. Both Bogrov’s grandfather and his father converted to Christianity.

But Bogrov’s school diploma marked him as a Jew. That was a choice.

After finishing his degree, Bogrov moved away from Kiev to Saint Petersburg. It was supposed to be safer, given the rise of antisemitism and the pogroms that frequented the Russian empire at this time. But the move did not set him at ease.

In 1910, Bogrov wrote to a member of the Socialist Revolutionary Party that he wanted to kill Pyotr Stolypin, the Russian prime minister. According to the correspondent, Bogrov sought revenge for the antisemitic pogroms that had plagued Russia. He held Stolypin responsible. That is why Bogrov kills Stolypin.

The Problem with Jewish History

Many times, we only hear one story of the many that history presents us.

The writer enjoys the drama of the gambler. The historian or idealogue will tell us about the revolutionary. And far too often, people speaking about Jews or Jewish history reduce them to the Jew. Whatever that means to them. Was Bogrov a victim of circumstances, a martyr of antisemitism? Was Bogrov disloyal, a dual citizen, an outsider?

The truth is that Bogrov was a gambler, a revolutionary and a Jew. All of the above. He was also many other things. Because he was a person. Like any of us.

There is no single generalization that explains his life.

He was one of many revolutionaries. The Russian Revolution of 1905 had widespread support across Russia, before Bogrov joined any revolutionary cadre. He was one of many gamblers. Read Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina if you want a vivid depiction of Russian life at the end of the 19^th century. Gambling was common at the time. And he was one of nearly four million Jews living in Russian Empire at the time.

Yet, no other revolutionary, gambler, Jew killed Stolypin. None of these simplifications are the reason Bogrov killed Stolypin. Only by looking at the whole can we understand Bogrov’s life and decisions.

You need to understand the reforms of Tsar Alexander the Liberator. The hope they gave to the Jews of Russia. The Tsar’s assassination and the May Laws that followed, shattering that hope for normalcy. And much more.

You need context.

Although Bogrov’s story is a historical tangent, it serves as an example for the rest of Jewish history. I have found that Jewish history is often passed through a filter, reducing it to generalizations. In modern times, those filters tend to be Judaism, antisemitism and Zionism. In the past, they were colored more by tensions between Jews and Christians, Muslims or Greeks.

I showed you three filters on Bogrov’s story. None of them worked alone. Would Bogrov have killed Stolypin if he had not been threatened by people that he betrayed? Would Bogrov have chosen Stolypin if he had not been Jewish? Would Bogrov ever have thought of killing anyone if he had not been a revolutionary? Probably not.

History of the Jews is about turning off the filters. Watching Jewish history unfold without making it about something. Seeing Jews as complex, full people whose lives have context.

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I write and podcast about Jewish history as a continuous, 3,000-year story.

Most people encounter Jewish history in fragments, refracted through the lens of religion or politics. But there is much more to it.

I only began to appreciate Jewish history once I understood its scale and depth.

Through Jewish history, we can look at questions like: What was it like to live in Ancient Rome or the Abbasid Caliphate? To be conquered by the Babylonians or the Mongols?

In other words, what has it been like to live, as a people, across thousands of years and radically different worlds?

That is scale.

Most histories focus on emperors, wars, and political systems. Even when they discuss social issues, they tend to focus on how governments responded.

But Jewish history, and certainly this Jewish history, offers a different perspective.

It shows how those political, military, and social forces were experienced by the people living through them—how they adapted, responded, and made decisions within them.

That is depth.

This project is an attempt to tell that story fully.

It begins with the ancient Israelites and moves forward from there. Therefore, most content will be organized chronologically and sync with the History of the Jews podcast.

By training, I am a data scientist, and it is important to me to start from the evidence. I use archaeology, contemporaneous texts, and modern historical research to reconstruct what happened—and how people responded to it.

What you’ll find here

• Podcast episodes following the story of the Jews over time*

• Posts about Jewish history ordered chronologically

• Extended stories and side narratives

If you’re interested in a full, evidence-based narrative of Jewish history—one that moves beyond simple categories—you’re in the right place.

Subscribe to follow along as the story unfolds.

(1) Yair Haklai, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons. The photo was enhanced to make it clearer.

*Podcast set to launch April 5