The Ethnicity of the Sea Peoples - RePub - Erasmus Universiteit ...

humaniora which comes closest to experiment in the natural
sciences. To these epoch-making finds, Carl Blegen
supplemented the discovery of the Mycenaean palace of
Pylos (1939), which was destroyed at the end of the Late
Bronze Age and therefore cannot possibly be accommodated
in an Early Iron Age environment. To this comes
that the king of Mycenae, Agamemnon, is endowed with
the power to call all the other Greek kings from both the
mainland and the Aegean islands to service in war – which
presumes a political unity reflected in the archaeological
record by the so-called Mycenaean koin of Late Helladic
IIIB, but never reached again until the unification of
Greece by Alexander the Great at the start of the Hellenistic
period.
The historical validity of the supreme power of the
king of Mycenae is further emphasized by the recognition
of the king of A®®iyawa (= Greek Akhaians) as a great
king in correspondence with the Hittites, namely in the socalled
Tawagalawas-letter from presumably the reign of
the Hittite great king Muwatallis II (1295-1271 BC). The
latter source of evidence further affirms the historicity of
Agamemnon’s father and predecessor, Atreus, who appears
in the so-called Indictment of Madduwattas from the reigns
of Tud®aliyas II (1390-1370 BC) and Arnuwandas I (1370-
1355 BC) as Attarissiyas, the man of A®®iy (= a shorthand
variant of A®®iyawa). Moreover, in a treaty also from
the reign of Muwatallis II the kingdom of Troy is referred
to as Wilusa, the Hittite equivalent of Greek Ilios (<
*Wilios), and turns out to be headed by a king named
Alaksandus, the Hittite equivalent of Greek Aleksandros.
As a matter of fact, in the aforesaid Tawagalawas-letter, a
conflict between the Hittite king and his A®®iyawan colleague
over Wilusa is explicitly mentioned – an incident
which inflated in Greek memory to the famous Trojan war
(see further section 8 below)!
In alignment with the Hittite evidence, it is of no little
consequence for the historicity of the Trojan war that the
Hittites, as first realized by Thomas Webster, are staged in
Homeros’ account of it as allies of Troy in two capacities:
first in the enumeration of the Trojan allies at the end of
book II of the Iliad as Halyzones from far away Alybe – a
city, like the Hittite capital Hattusa, associated with silver
– (Iliad II, 856); and second as Kteioi, whose leader Eurypylos,
the son of the Mysian king Telephos, is killed by
Akhilleus’ son Neoptolemos (Odyssey XI, 521). 52 To this
52 Webster 1960: 67; Meyer 1968: 12 identifies Alybe with the
27
may also be added53 the mythical Amazones, an enemy
whom the Phrygians run up against when trying to carve
out a territorium for themselves along the Sangarios river
in Anatolia at the time when Priamos still fought himself
(Iliad III, 184) and whom Bellerophon stumbles upon during
his adventures inland from Lycia (Iliad VI, 186).
Furthermore, another strong argument in favor of the
Late Bronze Age politico-historical setting of the Homeric
poems is provided by the catalogue of the ships. As far as
the Greek mainland is concerned, it stands out that Aitolia
and Thessaly are represented, but northwest Greece is not.
This coincides with the distribution of Late Helladic IIIB
ware in connection with settlements and chamber tombs
with multiple burials, from which northwest Greece is excluded:
apparently the latter region is not Hellenized before
the Early Iron Age. 54 Similarly, as duly stressed by
Joachim Latacz, the Cyclades and the west coast of Asia
Minor are also not represented, which, as far as the last
mentioned area is concerned, is historically correct since
the Aiolian, Ionian, and Doric migrations to western Anatolia
date from the Submycenaean period onwards. A problem
is posed, however, by the position of Miletos (= Hittite
Millawanda), which according to Homeros is inhabited by
Carians and sides with the Trojans (Iliad II, 686), whereas
it definitely belonged to the Mycenaean (archaeologically)
or Akhaian (historically) sphere of influence at the time of
the Trojan war (c. 1280 BC). As Millawanda is in the Hittite
records reported to have changed sides during the reign
of Tud®aliyas IV (1239-1209 BC), the Homeric position of
Khalybes from the Black Sea coast, which is linguistically possible,
but chronologically inadequate as these latter are only attested
for the Early Iron Age. Note in this connection that Hittite involvement
in Mysia is assured by their foundation of Sarawa there,
see Woudhuizen 1992a: 138.
53 Smit 1988-9: 54, with reference to Garstang 1929: 86 f. for the
Amazones and 172 for the Keteioi; see further Leonhard 1911: 15-
6. Note with Gindin 1999: 225-6 that the relation between Keteioi
and Amazones is enhanced by the fact that the name of the leader
of the former, Eurypylos, is a masculine variant of that of the
queen of the latter, Eurypyle. The same author also rightly stressed
the relation of the name Telephos with the Hittite royal name Telepinus
(p. 248-9), and that of his second son Tarkhn with the Luwian
divine name Tar® unt (p. 225). The close knit fabric of
mythical associations is further elaborated by the fact that the wife
of Telephos is recorded to fight from the chariot like an Amazone
(Gindin 1999: 248-9). On top of this, the leader of the Keteioi is
called a megas basileus “great king” by Quintus of Smyrna, see
Gindin 1999: 231.
54 Smit 1989: esp. 180 (map); cf. Latacz 2003: 266, Abb. 22, and
section 8, Fig. 12a below.