The Old World has confronted archaeologists with many riddles, perhaps the most tantalising of which is the Dark Age, an economic and cultural recession so devastating it lasted for 400 years from 1200 to 800 BC.
Or did it? The dates for the Near East and Mediterranean are derived from the highly regarded chronology of ancient Egypt, but could not that itself have been miscalculated?
This is the theory proposed by Peter James, Nikos Kokkinos and their colleagues. Deciphering the clues from papyri and pottery, they search layer by layer through the excavated treasures of a vast area from Spain to Iran and from Denmark to Sudan, until they reach Egypt, the root of the labyrinthine riddle. It is here that they unearth 250 years of ‘ghost history’.
Once these are eliminated, fresh perspectives are thrown not only on the reality of the Dark Age, but also on the Trojan War, the foundation of Rome, the origin of the Greek alphabet and the Golden Age of Solomon.
