ABSTRACT
The Near Eastern world provided markets and outlets for a wide range of goods produced in the lands lapped by the waters of the Aegean Sea. Merchant vessels sailing the eastern Mediterranean carried the products of Minoan Crete and Mycenaean Greece to all the major ports and trading emporia of the Mediterranean coastlands, whence many goods of Aegean origin were conveyed along caravan routes and waterways to palaces, market-places and homes of the affluent in Mesopotamia, Anatolia and Egypt. In a world highly attuned to the benefits of international commerce and cultural exchange, it is hard to imagine a royal family, or indeed any family of wealth and substance, who could not boast possession of exquisite items of Aegean manufacture, who had not sampled the delights of the wines produced in Homer’s rich and lovely land called Crete. Indeed, tomb paintings from New Kingdom Egypt depict Aegean gift-bearing visitors to the pharaoh’s court, almost certainly members of trade delegations. But, beyond these commercial exchanges, the links between the Near Eastern kingdoms and the Aegean and mamland Greek civilizations were tenuous. From a strategic or political point of view, the lands in or across the wine-dark sea were of little interest or significance to the Great Kings, and except in a very few cases rate not even a passing reference in their written records. Militarily, no Great King had the resources to impose his control over them—nor was there any compelling motive for him to try to do so. Strategically, diplomatic alliances with them could serve no practical purpose.
