About the fall ctxt.es

In the 18th century, when the idea of ​​modernity was formulated, even explicit, its opposite was discovered and understood with horror: decadence, the idea that every civilization that is born grows And one wonders, she will have to die sooner or later. Collapsed exactly, like Rome, the first great fall, the first that is understood in the century of the Enlightenment, the one with which the century of the Enlightenment imagined darkness. Since then we have seen other collapses. But none of them was the first, the most spectacular, the most massive, completely unknown in the 18th century, glimpsed in the 20th century and understood only in the 21st century. That great collapse occurred around the year 1177 BC, it was a collapse like no other, one of the most sterile and spectacular eruptions ever seen, undoubtedly the deepest ever known. This is the end of the Bronze Age. With that sudden end, a globalized, interconnected world that might have practiced commerce and politics without borders disappeared. Of all the civilizations then known in the Eastern Mediterranean – Hittites, Canaanites, Mycenaeans… – only one survived, although seriously weakened and transformed – Egypt. It is not known for certain what happened, what caused all this. Initially it was believed that everything was the climate crisis, then a series of natural disasters. Ultimately, it was thought that this end was the result of a series of unstoppable, scorched-earth invasions by the so-called Sea Peoples, as the Egyptians called them. That is to say, they were called the people of the Great Green, which they called the Mediterranean Sea, that incomparable, terrible depth of green darker than black. Today it is believed that what actually happened was everything, but at the same time. Climate change, earthquakes and invasions, sometimes peaceful, of different peoples, perhaps originally from Italy, who were fleeing, desperate from hunger and drought, with no tomorrow. In any case, those attending that grand finale, as is always the case, could not understand the unique synchronicity they were witnessing. They disappeared for all the reasons mentioned above, but also because of their ignorance and surprise at what they were about to experience, which was incomprehensible to them. In fact, I have begun to write these lines to talk about the only written testimony that we have left in this regard. It is evidence of what happened and was experienced in real time. It is an almost journalistic text, discovered in Ugarit, a city state that was rediscovered in 1928 in what is now Lebanon. More specifically, it is a clay tablet, found in 1986.

Ugarit, a large commercial city of about 8,000 inhabitants, was completely destroyed between 1190 BC and 1185 BC. The remains found indicate serious and systematic massive violence. As in all besieged ancient cities, small treasures have been found buried in the gardens of houses, hidden by their owners in the belief that they would not die, and would return to find them. On the other hand, there is always treasure buried in the garden. Even today, when the treasure is nothing more than a secret, which no one should know, and the garden is that point of your soul, with fertile, soft soil and the smell of the forest, which no one knows. After its destruction, Ugarit was abandoned for more than 600 years. By the Persian period, there was another era, another world dominated by iron, other languages, other customs and other clothing. The tablet in question was found in a ceramic firing oven, where arrangements had been made to harden the tablet, along with 700 other tablets that had never been fired. This is a letter which the king of Ugarit wanted to send to the king of Cyprus for help, and which was never sent. In that letter, and this is its great documentary value, an explanation is given of what actually happened, of what was being experienced, of the perception of the disaster. Eventually, it is stammeringly explained that “the ships can already be seen.” That is, very little is explained, almost nothing. Just one of the causes of disaster. And yet, from a distance, without fully seeing what is described, which lacks form, color, sound and future.

This is how the era ends. It is seen from a distance, very little and poorly, because the seeing eyes are, of course, of another age. Furthermore, what is seen is poorly explained, because what is to be described lacks appropriate words, while those infallible and precise words arise only with the New Age. Fallacies are not accidental, because they begin with words. Without proper, timely, clear words, everything falls, everything collapses.

In the 18th century, when the idea of ​​modernity was formulated, even explicit, its opposite was discovered and understood with horror: decadence, the idea that every civilization that is born grows And one wonders, she will have to die sooner or later. Collapsed exactly, like Rome, the first great fall, the first…