The Trojan War: A Very Short Introduction by Eric H. Cline

Author:Eric H. Cline [Cline, Eric H.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Translated by Frederick S. Choate
ISBN: 9780199760275
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Published: 2013-01-15T07:00:00+00:00

Wilusa and Ahhiyawa

In addition, at least one city-state that belonged to the coalition, specifically Wilusa/Wilusiya, continued to exist for another two centuries. During that time, Wilusa not only interacted with the Hittites but was also clearly involved with the political entity known as Ahhiyawa, as well as with specific individuals from that entity, for among the twenty-eight known Hittite texts that mention Ahhiyawa or the Ahhiyawans are a few that specifically discuss their activities as related to Wilusa. If the Ahhiyawans are correctly identified as the Mycenaeans, as most scholars now agree, then we have textual evidence that Mycenaeans were involved in the affairs, and fighting on behalf of, the city-state of Wilusa (Troy), from the fifteenth to the thirteenth centuries BCE.

For instance, Mycenaean involvement with Wilusa in the Assuwa rebellion may be circumstantially indicated in a much later Ahhiyawa text, which is a translation into Hittite of a letter sent by the king of Ahhiyawa to a Hittite king, probably Muwattalli II, in the early thirteenth century BCE. Muwattalli, we know, ruled from approximately 1295 to 1272 BCE. The letter, which is partly concerned with much earlier events, was thought until recently to have been sent by Muwattalli to the king of Ahhiyawa, but has now been shown to have traveled in the opposite direction; as such, it is one of a very few letters to have been dispatched by an Ahhiyawan king to his Hittite counterpart.

The primary topic discussed in the letter is the ownership of a group of islands lying off Anatolia’s Aegean coast, which had formerly belonged to the king of Ahhiyawa but had apparently been seized by the Hittites. Within the letter, we are told that sometime in the past a Hittite king named Tudhaliya had defeated the king of Assuwa and subjugated him. This matches the account found in the earlier Annals of Tudhaliya and is undoubtedly a reference to the Assuwa rebellion, so we know that the letter refers to events that had taken place about 150 years earlier.

The letter is damaged and incomplete, but it now seems, based on a new translation, that a diplomatic marriage had taken place between the current Ahhiyawan king’s great-grandfather and an Assuwan princess, at a time prior to the Assuwan rebellion, and that the islands were transferred by the Assuwan king to the Ahhiyawan king as part of the dowry. The Hittites claimed that Tudhaliya’s victory over Assuwa during the rebellion had given them possession of Assuwa’s offshore territories, but according to the letter’s author, the current king of Ahhiyawa, the victory had taken place only after these territories had already been presented to Ahhiyawa. Now the Ahhiyawan king was, a century and a half later, seeking to reaffirm his claim to the islands through diplomatic means.

The new translation of this letter indicates that there were good relations and, most intriguingly, apparently a dynastic marriage between the Ahhiyawans and the Assuwans during the mid-fifteenth century BCE. If we are correct in our identification of Ahhiyawa as

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