TOP 10 BRONZE AGES / BRONZE AGE ICEBERG

(SPECIAL MENTION)

 

But wait – there’s more Bronze Ages!

Or at least more layers to the Bronze Age iceberg, much like the layers of Bronze Age cities archaeologists find that keep going all the way down.

So, here’s my usual twenty special mentions I like to do for each top ten list, where there’s enough entries or layers to the iceberg.

 

(1) MYTHIC BRONZE AGE

 

No, not the one that comes after the Stone Age but the one that comes after the Silver Age.

That is, in the “ages of men” in Greek mythology (according to Hesiod) – stages of progressive decline from the peak of the original Golden Age. Obviously, the Bronze Age is worse than the preceding Silver Age and Golden Age, but still better than the rock bottom to come.

While there is a popular tendency to label peak periods in history or culture as Golden Ages, you don’t see that as much for Bronze Ages. Heck, you don’t see the usage of Silver Age often – and Bronze Age even less so. The only one that comes to mind in somewhat common usage is the Bronze Age of Comics, said to succeed the Golden and Silver Ages.

 

(2) BRONZE AGE RELIGION

 

Bronze Age religion is a surprisingly prolific topic – enough for its own top ten and for its own Wikipedia list in that name.

That is because the Bronze Age played a surprisingly enduring role as the foundation for religions even today.

There’s the Bible and Near Eastern religions in general – hence Bronze Age religion can be argued to underlie the foundation of the Bible and the three major world religions that can be said to originate from it.

But it doesn’t stop there – there’s also the Bronze Age foundations of the third largest major world religion (by size), with Vedic Hinduism.

Not to mention the influence of Mycenaean and Minoan mythology or religion on classical mythology, not least on Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey.

 

(3) URBAN BRONZE AGE

 

The Bronze Age tends to be defined by its cities, particularly in Mesopotamia. Of course, cities preceded the Bronze Age back to the Neolithic – indeed, often the same cities of the Bronze Age were continuously inhabited from then – but cities reached new heights in the Bronze Age, both literally in monumental architecture and figuratively in scale or influence.

Which leads me to…

 

(4) POLITICAL BRONZE AGE

 

Cities might have preceded the Bronze Age but political states only really came into being with all their archetypal features and infrastructure in the Bronze Age, initially as city-states or states formed by cities in their surrounding hinterland – notably in Mesopotamia.

Over time, these states got bigger or came up against other states (or just other people), which leads me to…

 

(5) IMPERIAL BRONZE AGE

 

States might be a definitive feature of the Bronze Age but even more so are empires, as states conquered or controlled other states or people.

Which leads me to…

 

(6) CLUB OF GREAT POWERS

 

The Bronze Age not only saw the emergence of politics in states or empires, but also saw the emergence of international politics in the concentration of power in, and balance of power between, a few predominant empires – something that has remained with us ever since.

In the case of the Late Bronze Age, that has been labelled as the Club of Great Powers – Assyria, Babylon, Egypt, the Hittite Empire, and the Mitanni.

Admittedly, the Wikipedia article of that name notes that it comes largely or entirely from a single source – but I like it, particularly as it is one that could be used throughout history ever since, even today. Also, I occasionally like to imagine it as a metaphor for club as a weapon, used by great powers to club lesser powers into submission.

Speak softly and carry a big club, as it were.

 

(7) SEA PEOPLES

 

Well, you can’t have Bronze Age special mentions without the Sea Peoples, those seaborne barbarians hypothesized to be behind the Bronze Age Collapse.

Which is pretty impressive considering how much about them is hypothetical.

 

 

(8) MIDDLE BRONZE AGE COLD EPOCH & BRONZE AGE OPTIMUM

 

A period of unusually cold climate in the North Atlantic for 300 years from 1800 BC to 1500 BC, essentially from a volcanic winter scenario from various volcanic eruptions – including one of my favorites, the volcanic eruption that destroyed the Minoan island of Thera.

It was followed by the Bronze Optimum of, well, optimal climate from 1500 BC to 900 BC.

 

(9) COPPER & TIN AGE

 

Yes, it’s an oxymoron that the Bronze Age would also be the Copper and Tin Age, given that bronze is an alloy of those two metals – although I understand there’s also an arsenical bronze, which substitutes arsenic for tin and sounds nasty.

I also understand that tin was the bottleneck for bronze in the Bronze Age, as copper is relatively plentiful and easy to access – so that sources of tin were highly prized.

Which leads me to…

 

(10) MERCANTILE BRONZE AGE

 

No doubt trade existed from the Stone Age, at least when inter-tribal interaction didn’t involve killing each other – but the Bronze Age saw the emergence of trade in more consistent and developed form, driven by trade for the tin required for its namesake metal.

 

(11) MONUMENTAL BRONZE AGE

 

“My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;

Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!”

 

Among the most enduring aspects of the Bronze Age is its monumental art and architecture. Bronze Age Mesopotamia and Egypt created or set the standard features of imperial chic and palace states, including monumental architecture – which was then imitated by Minoan and Mycenaean civilizations.

 

(12) LITERATE BRONZE AGE

 

Even more enduring than the monumental art and architecture of the Bronze Age is its invention of writing, which has been a fundamental aspect of civilization or society ever since.

Sumerian cuneiform and Egyptian hieroglyphs are the definitive writing systems of the Bronze Age – indeed, they are two of the four independent inventions of writing that are most commonly recognized. The third, Chinese characters, also dates to the Bronze Age China – the Shang Dynasty in particular – while the fourth, the Meso-American writing systems, is the only outlier from the Bronze Age as American archaeology doesn’t include a Bronze Age.

Other scripts were developed by Bronze Age civilizations, but as I understand it, they arose from or were influenced by one of the big three Bronze Age writing systems, particularly Sumerian cuneiform or Egyptian hieroglyphs – ultimately giving rise to the alphabet through the Phoenicians to the Greeks and Latins.

 

(13) LITERARY BRONZE AGE

 

From the literate Bronze Age, we inevitably get the literary Bronze Age – Bronze Age or ancient works of literature as we would recognize it, beyond mere records of government.

The two most famous works of Bronze Age literature – which featured as my two top entries in my Top 10 Bronze Ages – firstly the Bible and secondly Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey, are more usually considered to be Iron Age literature writing of the Bronze Age, which may not preclude some components or parts that originate from the Bronze Age itself.

Otherwise, the most prominent works of Bronze Age literature would be Sumerian and Egyptian – with the Epic of Gilgamesh foremost from the former (and indeed the Bronze Age in general) and the Book of the Dead foremost from the latter.

 

 

(14) LEGAL BRONZE AGE

 

From the literate Bronze Age we not only get the literary Bronze Age but the legal Bronze Age – the definitive written codification of laws. Setting aside the religious legal codes in the Bible, the most famous Bronze Age written codification of law is the legal code of Hammurabi.

 

 

(15) BRONZE SWORD AGE

 

If the spear is the definitive weapon of the Stone Age, the sword is the definitive weapon of the Bronze Age and of course endured as the definitive weapon of hand-to-hand or melee combat thereafter.

While you could have bladed stone weapons, they were in the nature of axes or daggers (or arrow or spear heads) – the invention of swords depending on the smelting of metal as occurring in the Bronze Age.

 

(16) BRONZE CHARIOT AGE

 

If the sword is the definitive weapon of the Bronze Age, the chariot is definitive of Bronze Age warfare.

Or more precisely Bronze Age mobile warfare, as chariots effectively played the role of cavalry – actual cavalry being largely precluded by the limitations of the Bronze Age, although there are some indications of horseback riding among military elites.

“The power of mobility given by mounted units was recognized early on, but was offset by the difficulty of raising large forces and by the inability of horses (then mostly small) to carry heavy armor”.

Hence – the Bronze Age was the age of chariot warfare “The Battle of Kadesh in 1274 BC is likely to have been the largest chariot battle ever fought, involving over 5,000 chariots.”

Although chariots continued to be used in the Iron Age, that age saw their military capabilities superseded by actual cavalry.

 

(17) BRONZE MIRROR AGE

 

I was tempted to call this the Cosmetic Bronze Age, since the use of cosmetics arose or at least given its definitive form in Egypt during it (albeit probably with some predecessors) – something which is probably not unrelated to the Bronze Mirror Age.

I find it intriguing that up until the Bronze Age, humans almost entirely went about not knowing how they looked – at least for their faces.

Sure, they knew how other humans looked but an individual human did not know how their own face looked, except perhaps by way of artistic representation by someone else.

And sure, there were reflective surfaces or objects capable of being used as mirrors in the preceding Stone Age. Pools of still water for one – I like to attribute the classical myth of Narcissus entranced by his own reflection in water as residual folklore memory harking back to this. Reflective or polished stone surfaces, particularly obsidian, was another.

However, the Bronze Age was where mirrors really came into their own, albeit not of the same quality or commonplace usage as subsequently. Indeed, so much so that there is a Wikipedia article for bronze mirror.

“By the Bronze Age, most cultures were using mirrors made from polished discs of bronze, copper, silver, or other metals”.

It is also tempting to think that this feature of the Bronze Age, by allowing more general accessibility to our own reflections and thereby appearance, may have been more enduring and far-reaching than any other feature of the Bronze Age, for better or for worse. The Mirror Revolution is still very much with us today!

 

(18) BULL & BRONZE AGE

 

Yes, I was going for a somewhat esoteric pun on bull and bear markets, but for the Bronze Age – but I’m joking and I’m serious.

The serious part is that, while humanity seems to have always had some reverence for bulls – at least going by their prevalence in Paleolithic Stone Age art – sacred bulls really seem to have reached new heights in the Bronze Age, aptly enough for my bull market pun.

The Bull of Heaven in the Epic of Gilgamesh.

The multiple sacred bulls worshipped in Egypt.

The bulls of Vedic Hinduism, which may well have influenced the persistence of sacred bulls or cows in India.

The various bulls of the Bible – and the Golden Calf for that matter.

The recurrence of bulls in classical mythology.

And perhaps above all, the bulls of Crete or Minoan civilization – including the ritual practice of bull-leaping – which is reflected in the Minotaur of classical mythology.

 

(19) BRONZEPUNK (SANDALPUNK)

 

Like Stonepunk for the Stone Age, Bronzepunk is the retro-futuristic cyberpunk derivative for the Bronze Age.

Sandalpunk is probably the better term as usually it amalgamates the Bronze Age with the Iron Age, particularly Greece and Rome for the latter.

Technically, Bronzepunk is SF extrapolating from the Bronze or Iron Age as the breakthrough point for more advanced technology – say, for example, an Industrial Revolution based in Greece or Rome, given this historical period saw some rudimental development of steam engines and also industrial-style production in Rome.

“It blends speculative continuity and technological anachronism, imagining worlds where empires like Rome, Mycenae, Ancient Athens, the Hittites, Ancient Egypt, and the like, and the like, never collapsed, instead evolving into futuristic superpowers while preserving their ancient cultural identity.”

It might also be argued to extend to SF where a future technological society adapts, imitates or reverts to Bronze or Iron Age cultural aesthetic or social structure.

Or for that matter, a Bronze or Iron Age setting with fantasy elements.

 

(20) ER0TIC BRONZE AGE – HIEROS GAMOS & SACRED PR0STITUTI0N

 

Bow-chicka-wow-wow – as usual, it’s my kinky (or kinkier) entry for my final or twentieth special mention.

And when it comes to kink, thy cup runneth over in the Bronze Age. There’s the Trojan War in the Iliad – a war fought over a woman, but what a woman! There are those topless Minoan girls and the slinky Egyptian ones, the latter lithe and svelte in their form-fitting dresses, with their golden skin and painted eyes who would not look out of place as supermodels on a modern catwalk. As Camille Paglia quipped, ancient Egypt invented style.

Perhaps somewhat surprisingly, Mesopotamia comes out on top for Bronze Age kink – with its hieros gamos or sacred marriage between kings of cities and the high priestesses of Inanna or Ishtar, consummated with gusto.

And there’s the controversial topic of sacred pr0stituti0n – also termed temple pr0stituti0n, cult pr0stituti0n, or religious pr0stituti0n (or sacred s€x or sacred s€xual rites where no payment was involved), “purported rites consisting of paid intercourse performed in the context of religious worship, possibly as a form of fertility rite or divine marriage (hieros gamos)”.