The kingdom of Ahhiyawa is revealed in the book “Ahhiyawa. The Mycenaean Aegean through the Hittite Texts", by Konstantinos Kopanias, archaeologist, associate professor at the Department of History and Archeology of the University of Athens. These texts, written in the Hittite language and in cuneiform script, are presented for the first time translated into Greek by the author himself in the book recently published by the Book Institute - Kardamitsa. The interest of the publication is twofold:On the one hand, valuable information about the Mycenaean political world is recovered from a different perspective, that of the Hittite kingdom, which between the 15th and 13th centuries BC was one of the most important in the Near East. On the other hand - which is perhaps even more important - because it turns out that Greek mythology and epics hide much more historical truths than we thought until now.
The term "Ahiyava" is considered by the vast majority of scholars to be etymologically related to the ethnonym "Achaeans". How likely is it to constitute a Mycenaean kingdom in the Aegean? "First of all, let's clarify that in Hittite the term "Ahiyava" is geographical, it is almost never used as an ethnonym. The proposal that it is identified with the Greek term "Achaeans" was first formulated by the Swiss philologist Emil Forrer in 1924, but most archaeologists and philologists rejected it then for various reasons. However, from the 1980s onwards it began to become clear that this identification was probably valid, which was confirmed towards the end of the 1990s. That is, the identification of these two terms is a very recent realization," he says in APE-MEP Konstantinos Kopanias.
According to the Hittite texts, Ahiyava was a unified and powerful kingdom. So if it is identified with the kingdom of the Achaeans of the Mycenaean period, then why is the picture we have from the records of the Linear B script (the first script of the Greek language) different? "That's the big problem. The Linear B records paint the picture of small, autonomous palace centers controlling a limited territory, with reference to an anakta (lord), but it is not clear whether this anakta is a king in control of only that particular administrative center or is in some other palace.
The records of Linear B always refer to matters of an economic nature, there are no references to trade imports or diplomatic contacts with foreign rulers. That is, they give the image of introverted little kingdoms cut off from the rest of the world, dealing with the management of local agricultural and livestock production. On the other hand, the specific Hittite texts refer only to the kingdom of Ahiyava or the Land of Ahiyava, which is always one. In other words, the image we form from the perspective of the Hittites is that it was a unified area politically and administratively, but this is not confirmed by the Linear B texts. There is this contradiction, but we have not yet arrived at somewhere", answers the professor.
The Hittite texts mentioned in the book include chronicles, letters and questions of kings to various gods (deeds), but also treaties that show close diplomatic contacts between the powerful kingdoms of the time, such as the Egyptian and the Assyrian. The interest, however, peaks with the identification of some names that highlight the historical background of the Homeric epics. For example, an Ahiyava king named Attarissiya, who lived in the early 14th c. e.g. and carried out many campaigns in southwestern Asia Minor, probably in the region of Miletus, has been etymologically associated with the Greek name Atreus/Atreides, while another king of the Achaeans, Tawagalawa, who lived around 1250 BC, has been identified with name Eteocles. "I think the identification of the name Attarissiya with the name Atreus is certain.
The suggestion, first made by Forrer and later by Martin West, who was a very serious scholar, is now widely accepted. This name is preserved in the Hittite texts and is very important, but we should not fall into the trap and think that we have discovered the mythical Atreus, because it may just be a synonym. However, it is interesting because it seems that even in mythology there is a distant historical echo and not everything is just a figment of the imagination of some poets", points out K. Kopanias in APE-MPE.
Also very interesting is the reference to a conflict that was related to Vilusa (Ilion/Troy). According to the Hittite texts, a king of Ahiyava, whose name has not been preserved, seeks to recover a dowry owed to his ancestor by the ruler of Wilusha, who was a vassal of the Hittites (hence it is mentioned in the Hittite texts ). This dowry included some neighboring islands, perhaps Tenedos, Imbros, Lemnos or Lesbos, while the name of the king of Vilousa is Alaksandu - the etymological connection with the name Alexander is obvious. Given that in the Homeric epics everything is about the abduction of Helen by Alexander/Paris, a "marriage" that is, how close are we to connecting these events with the Trojan War?
“Indeed, at the heart of all this controversy, which the Hittite texts mention, is the story of a marriage. Actually, not the marriage itself, but the dowry, which the ancestor of the Achaean ruler failed to receive sometime in the early 14th century BC. And this was something that the Achaean kings remembered about 120-150 years later . They were concerned that these islands had not been taken, when they were theirs. This is one element that connects this historical event with later Greek myth. Another very interesting element is the name Alaksandu/Alexander - and this identification is accepted by all scholars. That is, everyone agrees that Alaksandu must be identified with the name Alexander, as it is neither a Luvian name nor fits any other language, but must come from Greek.
Now where and how was a ruler of Vilousa (Troy) found to have a Greek name in the 13th century. BC, this is a bit strange. A possible explanation is that, at the beginning of the 14th c. BC, a son or a daughter of the then Mycenaean ruler married a daughter or a son, respectively, of the ruler of Vilousha and thus this name entered the royal dynasty of Troy and was transferred from grandfather to grandson, since even in antiquity this used to. So after some generations, someone came to have this name without necessarily being Mycenaean himself. The name is Greek, it also exists in the archives of Grammiki B but as a female, i.e. Alexandra", underlines Mr. Kopanias to APE-MPE.
And other persons and events described in the Hittite texts can be associated with the mythical war of Troy, such as Piyamarandu who for years created many problems for the Hittites with his raids in the Aegean region and Asia Minor. His name is Lubian, yet he himself served the interests of the Mycenaean ruler during the reign of Tawagalawa/Eteocles—another identification to which there is no objection among scholars. "Pijamarantou records important military successes, which the texts report, fortunately, in quite detailed terms," notes Mr. Kopanias, pointing out that the closest thing to the Trojan War from the Hittite texts is the action of this man in Vilousa, from where he displaced the king Alaksandu. “Did he go over there with his army and drive him out? Did she scare him and run away? Did the people of Vilousha revolt and drive him out? We don't know. However, Alaksandu was a vassal king of the Hittite ruler, they had signed a treaty between them, so the Hittites eventually helped him regain the throne. This is the closest we have to the Trojan War, but things are completely upside down.
That is, we have a man with a Mycenaean name as the lord of Vilousha who is a rival of the Mycenaean ruler and we have a man with a Lubian name who is a vassal of the Achaean ruler, who puts Vilousha under his control - thus under his control Achaean ruler- but in the end they are defeated. That is, they are expelled by the Hittites who regain it. So what is described in the Hittite texts is completely different from what we read later in the Homeric epics. There are, however, some common interesting elements that emerge if a thorough analysis of the Homeric epics is done.
Like the role of Alexandros-Paris, which is much more important than it seems at first sight, something that I. Kakridis and German philologists of the 20s had previously pointed out. There are other elements. I think what we can maintain is that the Hittite texts do confirm the existence of a historical core in the epics and mythology and that we should read them with great interest and special care. Not as historical texts, but as texts that offer us historical information, which we must first confirm from other sources before we adopt them", concludes Mr. Kopanias to APE-MPE.
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