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

menians are not yet living in Armenia! As related by
Herodotos (Histories VII, 73), the Armenians are an
apoikia of the Phrygians, who prior to their migration to
the Anatolian plateau inhabited the Olympos region in the
borderland of northern Thessaly and southern Macedonia
on the European continent, and before this, as we have
seen above, even the region as far south as the Peloponnesos.
There is some evidence that the Phrygians entered
Anatolia already in the Late Bronze Age, as according to
Homeros they are situated along the banks of the Sangarios
in the period before the Trojan war (c. 1280 BC). Moreover,
a Hittite text from the reign of Tud®aliyas II (1390-
1370 BC) or Arnuwandas I (1370-1355 BC) makes mention
of a certain Mita (= Phrygian Midas) of Pa®®uwa, a
region to the northeast of the Hittite capital Boazköy/Hattusa.
146 However, there can be no doubt that the
greatest surge of Phrygians into the highland of Anatolia
took place only after the fall of the Hittite empire at the
end of the Bronze Age, when, under the name of Muski,
they are recorded by the annals of the Assyrian king Tiglathpileser
I (1115-1077 BC) to have reached the region
of the upper Euphrates in great numbers. As cogently argued
by Igor Diakonoff, this particular historical event
triggers the formative phase of the Armenian people, in a
country formerly inhabited by Luwians and Hurrians. 147
Another weakness in the scenario presented by Drews
is formed by the crucial role he attributes to the Thessalian
plain in the colonization of Greece by the proto-Greeks.
Thus it is assumed that the proto-Greeks first arrive in
Thessaly and from there go on to take over central and
southern Greece. 148 This view is contradicted by the archaeological
evidence, which clearly shows that the
Mycenaean culture first develops in the Argolid and only
at a later time spreads to more northerly regions like Thessaly.
149 In fact, the plain of Thessaly, just like the hinterland
of Thebes, remains predominantly Minyan in
146 Woudhuizen 1993b; contra Drews 1993b, who also denies the
European origin of the Phrygians on account of the fact that archaeological
evidence, for which he is tendentiously looking only
c. 1200 BC, is lacking.
147 Diakonoff 1984 (65; 117 assigns a date of c. 1165 BC to the
invasion of the Muski, which is incompatible with the reign of Tiglathpileser
I, but suits their first mention in the Assyrian records,
see Vanschoonwinkel 1991: 463).
148 Drews 1988: 192-4.
149 Dickinson 1977: 24.
62
character up to well in Late Helladic III. The centre from
which Mycenaean influence radiates, ancient Iolkos in the
south, is still characterized by Minyan cist graves as late as
the Late Helladic IIB-IIIA period, whereas a Mycenaean
palace is reported here only from Late Helladic IIB or
IIIA1 onwards. 150 From an historical point of view, the
persistence of Middle Helladic traditions in Iolkos during
the earlier phase of the Mycenaean period coincides with
the “Minysche Schicht” of its royal house as represented
by Kretheus, Pelias (= the brother of Neleus who with Pelasgians
settles at Pylos c. 1600 BC, see further below),
and Akastos. 151
Finally, it is noteworthy that Drews heavily leans on
the linguistic thesis put forward by William Wyatt, who
maintains that the Indo-European invaders of Greece knew
the chariot and the horse when they first entered Greece.
Wyatt arrived at this conclusion by comparing the words
for chariot and its major parts to that for the four-wheel
mule wagon, from which comparison it appeared that the
first category is based on Indo-European roots, whereas the
latter is not. However, the conclusion that the Greeks introduced
these Indo-European words is only valid in case
there is no evidence of Indo-European speech in Greece
prior to the Greeks, as Wyatt explicitly asserts. 152 In the
previous pages, we have seen reason to believe that there
were Indo-European speaking tribes in Greece before the
arrival of the Greeks or their otherwise coming into being.
This nullifies Wyatt’s reasoning. As we have noted in the
foregoing, the horse was already known in Greece from c.
2300 BC onwards. In line with this observation, it is of interest
to note that the Greeks have preserved the old centum
form for “horse”, Mycenaean i-qo (= later Greek
hippos), instead of taking over the new Indo-Aryan satem
form ava- which came in vogue in other regions under the
influence of the from the late 18th century BC onwards
modern chariot warfare (cf. Luwian asuwa-). 153 Furthermore,
the Greeks preferred their own word for the chariot
itself, Mycenaean a-mo (= later Greek harma), instead of
150 Hope Simpson 1981: 161; Vanschoonwinkel 1991: 135; Papadimitriou
2001: 129; cf. Smit 1989. Note that Stubbings 1973: 642
is mistaken in assigning the Mycenaean palace at Iolkos to the
transition from Middle Helladic to Late Helladic I.
151 Pauly-Wissowa Realencyclopädie, s.v. Iolkos.
152 Wyatt 1970.
153 In the centum languages the palatals k, g, and g h develop into
gutturals, whereas in the satem languages they become assibilized.