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

In this section I will present a brief overview of the main
historical developments in the Near East with a bearing on
the Levant from the catastrophic events at the end of the
reign of Narâm-Sin of Akkad and during the First Intermediary
Period in Egypt to those marking the end of the
Bronze Age. In doing so, I will base myself on Redford
1992 (with chronology adapted to Kitchen 1989) and
Bryce 1998, unless indicated otherwise.
At the end of his reign, Narâm-Sin of Akkad (2291-
2255 BC) was defeated by a group of mountain dwellers
called the Guti, who conquered Babylon and ruled it for a
period of about one century. At the time of their onslaught
on Babylon, these Guti came from the mountainous region
of the Lower Zb in western Iran. A later source from the
time of Hammurabi (1792-1750 BC) reports that part of
their land was called Tukri. From this piece of information,
W.B. Henning deduced that we may well be dealing with
the Tocharians inhabiting the Tarim basin along the western
border of China in the historical period, who addressed
themselves both as Tugri and as Kui (< Guti). 58 If this is
correct, we actually have here the first historical evidence
about a group of Indo-Europeans.
In about the same time as the Gutian onslaught on
Akkad, at the end of Early Bronze Age II, there is massive
evidence for large-scale destruction of settlements in Anatolia,
especially in the Konya region and Cilicia later occupied
by Luwians. The subsequent lack of reoccupation
suggested to James Mellaart that the affected regions became
the grazing grounds of nomads. 59 The origin of the
nomads in question may perhaps be indicated by the evidence
of the royal burials at Alaca Höyük, which are of
similar type as those of the later Mycenaeans and Phrygians,
and characterized by solar discs and theriomorphic
standards recalling counterparts from Horoztepe and
Mahmatlar in the Pontic region: all these elements have
been attributed by Ekrem Akurgal to Indo-Europeans60 –
nomadic cattle-breeders and herdsmen originating from61 the steppe zone north of the Black Sea, the Caucasus, and
58 Henning 1978.
59 Mellaart 1971: 406-10.
60 Akurgal 1992: 1-5.
61 Mallory 1989.
3. HISTORICAL SETTING
29
beyond. Accordingly, we appear to be confronted with two
concerted invasions by Indo-Europeans in the 23rd century
BC: one by the ancestors of the later Tocharians across the
Caucasus into Mesopotamia and another by the ancestors
of the later Hittites, Luwians, and Palaians across the
Bosporus into the Anatolian highland and along the western
and southern coasts into the plains of Konya and
Cilicia – the latter event marked by the spread of Trojan
IIg ware with as its “Leitmotiv” the so-called depas amphikupellon.
The upheavals at the end of Late Bronze Age II in the
23rd century BC also affected the Greek mainland, Crete,
and the Levant. In Greece, for instance the “House of the
Tiles” at Lerna was burned down and covered by a tumulus
– a burial custom characteristic of the Kurgan culture
of the Russian steppe. This event is commonly associated
with the arrival of the earliest Indo-Europeans in southern
Greece (see further section 7). As far as Crete is concerned,
the flourishing settlements at Vasiliki near the bay
of Mirabello and Myrtos (Fournou Korifi) along the south
coast were destroyed by fire and the ruins of the first covered
by simple hovels and that of the second by a peaksanctuary
– a completely new phenomenon for the island.
62 Against the background of the events in Anatolia
and Greece, it seems not farfetched to assume that the
Indo-European invasions also affected eastern Crete – an
assumption which would allow us to explain the evidence
for the Luwian language in Cretan hieroglyphic documents
dating from the Middle Bronze Age onwards (see further
section 12 and appendix I). Finally, the Levant bears testimony
of a similar lapse to nomadism as Anatolia: if Indo-
Europeans were responsible for this development, as
Marija Gimbutas argued on the basis of Kurgan-like shafttombs
(among which a twin catacomb grave) at Bâb edh-
Drâ east of the Dead Sea, these have not been traced in the
records which surface again from the Middle Bronze Age
onwards. 63
62 Caskey 1971: 803; Best 1981b: 8-9. Note that according to
Hiller 1985 : 127 there was no peak-sanctuary at Myrtos after its
destruction, even though Warren 1972: 92 does suggest such a
function for an Early Minoan III arc-shaped building.
63 Gimbutas 1973 groups these Indo-European migrations together
as her “second wave of Indo-Europeanization”. As opposed to
this, Best 1976: 218 associates these graves with the apsidal hou-