This is a

This is CBS I on the world. I'm John Bachelor visiting with Professor Eric Klein. His new book is a sequel to the original genius 1177 BC the year civilization

collapsed dated this is the bronze age ending in a series of catastrophes but but it's about to introduce the Iron Age.

The way to think about this in terms of literature is the Odyssey and the Iliad are the Bronze Age.

The Iron Age that follows looks a whole lot like the Old Testament.

So right now we're going to go to Israel at the time and the Israelites via Egypt.

Professor, there are lessons to be learned about how some of the big 8, big 7, big six, the global traders of a of 1300 BC, how the ones

succeeded in the ones that didn't. Egypt had a series of rulers from Ramses a third, I believe he was murdered by his wife and his son, or her son, to Ramses 11 and this is the 22nd dynasty what do we find in there that is that

tells us the catastrophes 1177 is wearing them down what's in there?

So in the aftermath of the collapse and Ramses the third is the one who defeats the sea peoples that we've mentioned in 1177 but he is then as you just

mentioned assassinated apparently by his wife and son a minor wife and his mummies been found with his throat slashed. So after him, there's a series of additional

pharaohs that actually 19th, 20th, until the 21st and onward in terms of dynasties.

And we wind up with Egypt not doing so well,

if I could put it that way they do manage to survive but they are

merely coping in the aftermath of the collapse rather than transforming or even adapting.

They are merely coping and we find ourselves in the centuries after the collapse in Egypt

in what is known as the third intermediate period which is a time of

shall we say anarchy and chaos such that at one point we've got no fewer than three or even four different people calling

themselves Pharaoh in different regions of Egypt. So the upshot for us is that

Egypt which had been one of the major players on the

international stage supplying gold for instance to most of the other great powers.

Egypt now retreats to a certain extent from that international stage

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