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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Baduin" data-source="post: 3882067" data-attributes="member: 45562">The best era is the end of the Bronze Age - the Great Era of Grave Robbing. <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/12th_century_BC" target="_blank">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/12th_century_BC</a><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twentieth_dynasty_of_Egypt#Tomb_robbing" target="_blank">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twentieth_dynasty_of_Egypt#Tomb_robbing</a>See Wunderlich's Secret of Crete. He may have made mistakes in details, but the overall picture is perfect.<a href="http://www.philipcoppens.com/crete_dead.html" target="_blank">http://www.philipcoppens.com/crete_dead.html</a><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Secret-Crete-Hans-Georg-Wunderlich/dp/0285621645" target="_blank">http://www.amazon.com/Secret-Crete-Hans-Georg-Wunderlich/dp/0285621645</a><a href="http://www.amazon.com/review/R1RUE52GZ1IGHB" target="_blank">http://www.amazon.com/review/R1RUE52GZ1IGHB</a>The Bronze Age was an era of the Artificial Immortality. They thought that the corpse lived on in the Underworld. It had to be fed, not always symbolically (That belief lasted even longer even in Classical Greece they feeding pipes to literally feed the dead with soup). As long as the corpse lasted underground, the soul could survive in happines, (usually somewhere else, on the Isles of the Blessed etc), using all the treasure gathered in its tomb. But it had to have that treasure, and regular sacrifices to feed it. The state was basically an association to worship the ancestors.At that time there were gathered enormous treasures in many tombs - in Mycean Greece, in Egypt, for example in the enormous, now-destroyed Egyptian Labyrinth etc. <a href="http://www.amazeingart.com/seven-wonders/egyptian-labyrinth.html" target="_blank">http://www.amazeingart.com/seven-wonders/egyptian-labyrinth.html</a><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labyrinth" target="_blank">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labyrinth</a>People believed the treasures were protected by gods and monsters (Minotaur etc). But, in the end of the Bronze Age, it fell apart. The Grecian tombs, with their riches, were looted by Dorians. Egypt was attacked by Sea Peoples and disintegrated. <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sea_Peoples" target="_blank">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sea_Peoples</a><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_Intermediate_Period_of_Egypt" target="_blank">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_Intermediate_Period_of_Egypt</a><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Priam%27s_Treasure" target="_blank">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Priam's_Treasure</a><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heracleidae" target="_blank">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heracleidae</a>When people understood they cannot protect their dead, the mode of burial changed. They began to burn bodies to save them from being desecrated.Those "Dark Ages" were much darker than those after fall of Rome. All of the states were conquered by barbarians. Since they had centralized economy based on the palace/temple, they simply fell apart. In Greece they even forgotten that they ever had a writing. The roving "heroes" such as those that conquered Troy amassed unbelievable riches robbings tombs and temples. <a href="http://www.ancient-greece.org/history/dark-ages.html" target="_blank">http://www.ancient-greece.org/history/dark-ages.html</a>This is the original "Heroic Age" of Hesiod.<a href="http://ancienthistory.about.com/cs/grecoromanmyth1/a/hesiodagesofman_4.htm" target="_blank">http://ancienthistory.about.com/cs/grecoromanmyth1/a/hesiodagesofman_4.htm</a>In D&D this suggests an idea of wizard-kings building elaborate tombs to protect their bodies and riches, while their spirits live happily as blessed spirits, fey princes, or even gods - but only as long as their body and treasure is safe. On the other hand, marauding heroes rob their tombs and destroy their kingdom.</blockquote>

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