The Collapse of the Bronze Age Gave Rise to the Creation of the First Warship: the Helladic Galley

How do societies confront a systemic collapse? What endures and what disappears forever when a world falls apart? A study published in the Journal of Eastern Mediterranean Archaeology and Heritage Studies addresses these questions from an unprecedented angle: the deck of a ship. Researcher Tzveta Manolova proposes a journey through the turbulent transition between the Late Bronze Age and the Iron Age (approximately 1200–900 BCE) in the eastern Mediterranean, using shipbuilding traditions and representations of ships as a compass to navigate the upheavals of the period.

The so-called Sea Peoples crisis or Bronze Age collapse is one of the most fascinating enigmas of ancient history. Palaces burned, empires such as the Hittite vanished, international trade collapsed, and maritime routes filled with uncertainty. Traditionally, this period has been studied through migrations, climate change, or settlement patterns. However, this article argues that ships, those “floating cathedrals” of antiquity, were far more than simple means of transport; they were both symptom and vehicle of change, a strategy of adaptation and resilience in the face of chaos.

“Ships offer a unique perspective on the long-term effects and transformations brought about by the end of the Bronze Age, acting both as contributors to and symptoms of broader trends,” the study notes. To demonstrate this, Manolova compares the trajectories of two major maritime cultures: the Aegean (Greece and its islands) and the Cypriot-Levantine region (the Syrian-Lebanese coast and Cyprus). The conclusion is that their paths could not have been more different.

The Aegean: a sea of radical ruptures

The Aegean naval story during this period is one of discontinuity and forced reinvention. During the Late Bronze Age, the dominant vessel was the Minoan ship. It was a versatile sailing ship, with curved hulls, good cargo capacity, and a distinctive feature: the ikrion, a light structure at the stern. This ship was not merely a tool; it was a symbol of palatial power, deeply embedded in the iconography and ritual life of the Mycenaean elite, as shown by the famous frescoes of Akrotiri (Thera/Santorini).

However, toward the thirteenth century BCE, a newcomer appears: the Helladic galley. It was a radically different vessel: a flatter hull, designed for speed powered by oars, and a spectacular zoomorphic prow figure, a hybrid creature combining bird and horse. This ship was, essentially, the first warship.

With the collapse of the Mycenaean palaces (around 1200 BCE), the first major rupture occurs: the Minoan ship disappears completely and forever from representations. Its symbolic and ritual world, linked to the wanax (king), sinks with it. In its place, the Helladic galley becomes the only type of ship iconographically visible in the Aegean.

But the apparent continuity suggested by the galley is deceptive. After an explosive interest in depicting them on LH IIIC pottery (with scenes of naval combat and warrior-rowers), there follows a “gap” of more than a century with hardly any images of ships. When they reappear in the Iron Age (Geometric Period), the galley has undergone a second fundamental mutation: the iconic Helladic prow figure has disappeared. It is replaced by a simple curved horn.

Was this a loss of technical skill, as has been suggested? The study dismisses this. Geometric galleys display technological advances (such as more massive prows for ramming) that require expert shipwrights. The disappearance of the figurehead, Manolova argues, was a deliberate cultural rupture, similar to the abandonment of the Minoan ship. It was a symbolic rejection of the past.

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Another striking contrast is thematic obsession. While the Minoan ship was shown in ceremonial contexts, the galley is associated almost exclusively with war and piracy. Maritime trade is invisible in the Aegean iconographic record for five centuries, despite the fact that we know from archaeological remains (such as the Uluburun shipwreck) that it existed. This “intentional omission” reflects, according to the article, an elite ideology that despised trade (associating it with “greedy” Phoenicians in Homeric poems) and glorified raiding.

In sum, the Aegean naval tradition was highly conservative, restricted in its ship typologies, cautious and selective in its borrowings, and underwent a series of abrupt ruptures each time the political system that sustained it collapsed.

The Cypriot-Levantine World: the resilience of the heirs of the sea

On the other side of the Mediterranean, the story is one of remarkable continuity and pragmatic adaptation. Here there was not one but several well-differentiated types of ships, each with its own function.

The study highlights two merchant vessels with proper names, attested both in texts and images for nearly a millennium. The first is the mnš, a merchant ship with a curvilinear hull and tall vertical posts, with a wicker palisade along the deck. It is very likely that the famous Uluburun shipwreck was a mnš. This vessel appears from the eighteenth century BCE and continues to be represented into the Iron Age.

The other is called the br, a hybrid and more slender craft, used both for cargo and for transporting troops. In addition, there were local galleys with their own distinctive features, such as prow figures with realistic duck heads, a prestige motif in the region.

The key point here is that these types of ships, and certain cultural elements such as stern and prow fittings, survived the transition. There was no “reset” as in the Aegean. At the same time, this tradition was not static: it constantly innovated. In the eleventh–tenth centuries BCE, a new galley with a curved horn on the prow and a square, massive stern was developed in the Levant, designed for ramming. This design, according to the study, was later adopted by the Aegean, not the other way around.

The difference is also visible in consumption practices: how and where ships were represented. In the Levant, administrative seals related to trade abound, as do terracotta models as votive offerings and graffiti in coastal sanctuaries and on cliffs, especially during the turbulent twelfth century BCE. These graffiti, concentrated in places such as Mount Carmel and Kition (Cyprus), seem to capture maritime rituals of highly mobile groups at a time of great uncertainty.

What explains this resilience? The article points to the sociopolitical structure of the maritime city-states of the central Levant (such as Tyre, Sidon, Byblos). Unlike the Aegean palaces, which exercised rigid ideological control over their naval iconography, here there was a symbiosis between the palace and private merchants. The king granted tax exemptions, diplomatic protection, and capital to major traders, who in turn were part of the elite and managed international networks. This model, exemplified in the documentation from Ugarit, created a “supreme parent house” that integrated political, military, and commercial networks.

When Ugarit fell, its mercantile elites likely fled with their ships, knowledge, and contacts to other Phoenician cities, which acted as refuges. The maritime tradition was not lost; it was redistributed and consolidated.

The study paints a picture of contrasts. Faced with collapse, the Aegean opted for radical rupture and militarized specialization, in a process where naval traditions were so closely tied to palatial power that its downfall dragged them under as well, only to be reinvented later in a restricted form. The Cypriot-Levantine world, by contrast, displayed extraordinary resilience, based on a diverse and pragmatic naval tradition and on a socioeconomic structure in which state and private actors cooperated in the maritime sphere.

The researcher concludes: “Whereas the Aegean maritime sphere, elite-centered and ideologically limited, made it vulnerable to socioeconomic disruptions, the maritime orientation of the Cypriot-Levantine region was more robust, diversified, and capable of absorbing shocks through the symbiotic interaction between state and private enterprise.”

This analysis, combining iconography, archaeology, and texts, goes beyond classifying ships. It shows us how cultural responses to crisis can be diametrically opposed, and how the sea, far from being merely a route for mysterious invaders, was a stage on which the survival, continuity, and identity of entire civilizations were at stake. In the end, ships were not only sailing across the Mediterranean; they were carrying the fate of those who built them.