Chronicle 10. THE… “SUN LANGUAGE”

Chronicle 10. THE… “SUN LANGUAGE”

/ΕΛΛΗΝΙΚΑ/ Χρονικο 10. Η… “ΓΛΩΣΣΑ-ΗΛΙΟΣ”

Calligraphic tree of life, Turkey (1897-98)

● Linguistics à la Turca ● İsmail Beşikçi and the Kurds ● Egyptian, Graeco-Byzantine, Arabo-Persian and Turkish Music ● Assimilation Through Religion and
Language ● Arabic Music Schools

Michales Loukovikas

“HITTITES, SUMERIANS, EGYPTIANS, ROMANS, Indians and Chinese: they all owe their existence to the Turkic race; their cultures and languages have been created by the Turks. Arabs and Jews are of Turkic origin; the prophet Muhammad was a Turk, as well. And all the languages of the world are derived from Turkish, the mother of all languages. The Kurdish language is non-existent; it is just a corrupt dialect of Turkish; the Kurds are nothing but Turkish highlanders”.

Psychotic megalomania? Absolutely! But also a… university thesis, or even more: an official state policy! This aphorism might very well be the starting point of a synopsis about the official Turkish ideology on the national question. Everyone in the Eurasian zone – except the Hellenes, the Persians, and… barbarians – owe almost everything to the Turks: their very existence, their language and culture, let alone their music!

“What about the Hellenes?”, some “Romioí” anxiously insist on asking, as they refuse to accept that they have either… never existed, or – most likely – are included among the “Romans” of the above citation quoted from the gold-bound kitabs of the sages.

“The question on the origin of the Yunanlılar [Ionians] has been clear since the time of Homer”, is the smug reply. “The great rhapsode was also a Turk called Omer. Besides, the Europeans have preserved his name almost intact: Homer”!

Well, I’m not referring to freaks of a sick mind. It is perhaps hard to believe but these ideas are championed by academics! The “Great Idea” (Megale Idea) has died out in Greece(?), but in Turkey it is alive and well, and (desires to be) the master of the world…

Anatolian languages

The Kurdish languages belong to the Iranian and Indo-Iranian branches of the Indo-European family. Therefore, they are related to the Persian (Farsi), Indian Sanskrit, Hellenic and most European languages. Even… worse (for the Turkish “linguists”), the ancient languages in the Anatolian area, still spoken or extinct, such as Hittite, have also been Indo-European.⁽¹⁾

Asia Minor/Anatolia: the multitude of peoples, languages and countries in antiquity.

• ⁽¹⁾ Most probably by the 1st century BCE, the native Anatolian languages went extinct, since the area was heavily Hellenized after the conquests of Alexander the Great. This makes Anatolian the first known branch of Indo-European to become extinct. The languages that are attested (written in cuneiform or hieroglyphs) are the following:

Hittite in central Anatolia; Carian; Lydian; Cappadocian; Pisidian; Sidetic in Pamphylia; Palaic in Paphlagonia; Isaurian on the Taurus Mountains; the Lycian branch, where Milyan is included; the Luwian branch, centered in Cilicia, but also extending northwest, where the Trojan language perhaps belonged; possibly Lycaonian; or the subsequent Pamphylian. Other Indo-European tongues in the peninsula were Phrygian and Mysian, probably belonging to the Paleo-Balkan languages, together with Thracian, Dacian, the Illyrian branch, and others, indicating that the Phrygians, and possibly the Mysians, went to Anatolia from the Balkans.

● Nationalism cries out: “one country, one people, one language!”, versus Reality, depicted in the above diverse mosaic of Anatolian countries, peoples, and languages.

Against this panspermia of ancient native Indo-European Anatolian languages and dialects, the Turkic languages (Turkish is just one of them) are relatively newcomers in Asia Minor, and belong to the Altaic family, together with the Mongolic tongues. Some linguists group the Altaic and Uralic (or Finno-Ugric) languages together (in the Ural-Altaic family). No such hypothesis connecting the Altaic and Indo-European languages has been put forward. It doesn’t matter much to Ankara’s “scientists”. So, they teach linguistics this way… à la turca:

Subject: The Sun Language Theory

“As is well known, the word soleil means sun in French. In the Turkic dialect of Yakut [Sakha] we can find the corresponding word silai. As the ‘s’ of the Yakut dialect turns to ‘g’ in the other Turkic dialects,⁽²⁾ it is self-evident [!] that the word comes from a Turkic root meaning light. Nevertheless, the Turks prefer the more common Turkish word günes. But the proof of the Turkic origin of the word soleil has been a revelation of a great linguistic and scientific truth, from which most important conclusions are derived”…

Signed (unashamedly): İ. N. Dilmen, professor.

The theory that Anatolia might be the cradle of the Indo-European languages was distorted into a pseudo-theory they had a Turkic/Turkish origin though: a) the popular hypothesis postulates their root in the Pontic-Caspian steppe and expansion by early 3rd millennium BCE; b) the earliest evidence of Turkic tongues as a separate group comes almost four millennia later in an early 8th century CE inscription found in Mongolia; c) the first reference to “Turks” appears in Chinese sources of the 6th century CE; d) Asia Minor was invaded by the Seljuks in the 11th century, ultimately resulting in permanent Turkic settlement in the peninsula.
● Above: a Hattian pair of long-horned bulls (copper,
c. 2300-2000 BCE)

• ⁽²⁾ This text makes clear that, according to Dilmen (and “linguists” à la turca), there are no Turkic languages; they are all Turkish dialects. He defined Yakut (or Sakha) as a dialect, although it is considered a language. Nationalist stranglehold on social sciences is very well known (Dilmen is a “very good” example). That’s why there are no universally accepted criteria for distinguishing a language from a dialect. The most common and most purely linguistic criterion is that of mutual intelligibility. It seems logical but it’s deceptive and far from scientific:

• Once I was in Granada with two Italianas searching for a good place to listen to flamenco. I still remember my amazement when I heard the girls asking passers-by for information: they spoke Italian, the others answered in Spanish, and there was no problem of mutual intelligibility! What does that mean? That Italian and Spanish are dialects? If so, of what language?

• On the other hand, one day, while eating in the University Dining Hall, there were two Cypriots sitting at the same table opposite me and speaking their village vernacular. I understood zero, nil, nothing at all! Not even the topic of discussion! What does that mean? That Helladic Greek and Cypriot are not Hellenic dialects but separate languages?

İsmail Beşikçi and
the Kurdish Question

Since I don’t like to be branded as “nationalist”, I invoke a Turkish scientist in the true sense of the word, the sociologist İsmail Beşikçi, a man who’s spent most of his life in Turkish state prisons not because he has committed any crime, but because he’s had the courage to publicize his documented views. Beşikçi has been persecuted/prosecuted, just because he initially criticized (and polemicized later on) the Turkish ruling ideology as it was set forth in such “scientific” theses – and even more because he has studied in depth and wrote extensively about a taboo subject: the Kurdish question.⁽³⁾

Kurdish musicians (1890)

• ⁽³⁾ The on-going war between Turks and Kurds dates back to the “Turkish War of Independence”, which established a Turkish nationalist state that has repressed the human rights of Kurdish people. The Kurds felt betrayed because they had taken part in almost every “dirty job” of the Turks from the late 19th century to the 1910s, mainly in the first ethnic cleansings of the 20th century, as they thought that they “cleared” the place for themselves. The perpetrators of the Armenian, Greek, and Assyrian Genocides (1.5 million + 900.000 + 400.000 = almost 3 million dead) were Turks, Kurds, Arabs and Caucasian Muslims: in fact, it was the genocide of heterodox people by the Islamists. But the Turks were primarily nationalists; so, they also turned against the Kurds, who finally rebelled. Major historical events, before the PKK revolt, include the Koçgiri, Sheikh Said, Ararat, and Dersim rebellions (1920, 1925, 1930, and 1938).

• Note that Beşikçi was born a Turk, not a Kurd. So he deserves our admiration even more.

The citations quoted above (except that reference to Homer) are from Beşikçi’s Historical Thesis on Turkey / The Sun Language Theory and the Kurdish Question, which cost him three years in prison, since he was “reckless” enough not to deny the existence of a nation… The first thing he took into account was the nature of the positions adopted by Turkish “scientists”, under the “guidance” of Mustafa Kemal (Atatürk), in 1930. Based on official documents, speeches and “scientific” theses, Beşikçi analyzed the formulation and development of the ideology of Kemalism, exposing its unscientific, racist and chauvinistic nature. In one of his numerous apologies (i.e. speeches in defense of himself), he attacked the official “Justice” of the Kemalist regime:

İsmail Beşikçi

“As a repressive state mechanism, this court threatens writers and intellectuals with imprisonment, favours police measures and secret trials, condemns scientific thought, prefers the secret services’ reports against truth and sociological findings, imposes verdicts without – at least – taking into account the defense of the accused and, using loopholes, accepts colonial oppression and tyranny, denying the reality of the existence of the Kurdish nation, something that is an objective fact above the will of people and institutions.

“This court essentially acts as an administrative and political body with a seemingly ‘independent function’ and ‘independent judgment’. It functions like the gendarmerie, police, national security service and other similar services, attempting to impose the hegemony of the official ideology through its verdicts. Rejecting an objective truth, your court is lying, considering the conclusions drawn by systematic societal research, the reliable knowledge, and the rights we advocate, as incriminating evidence.

“This court acts like the gendarmerie, police, national security
and other services, attempting to impose the hegemony
of the official ideology through its verdicts.” (İsmail Beşikçi)

Mustafa Kemal (Atatürk)

“In its verdicts regarding my books, your court states that ‘the sacred memory of Atatürk is stained’. What does that mean? It means that the Kurdish masses – men, women and children – will be continuously sent to exile, to the gallows, will be slaughtered, that laws and decrees will be shamelessly adopted on this logic – but anyone who criticizes such phenomena will be tried on the grounds of ‘libeling the sacred memory of Atatürk’. How can one consider genocide, exiles, the complete assimilation enforced in Kurdistan by the Kemalist regime as ‘sacred memory’? The division and partition of Kurdistan, the implementation of the tactics ‘divide and rule’ against the Kurdish nation, may be ‘sacred memory’ only for the imperialists and colonialists.

“The Turkish universities, on the other hand, as slaves of the official ideology, reject in principio scientific thought obscuring and denying the reality of the Kurdish nation. They consider the official ideology, which is based on fraud and indifference towards objectivity, as the only irresistible and definite reality. Thus they present this official ideology as scientific and legal. It is at this point that the ‘independent’ court and ‘independent’ judgment intervene, trying under threat of punishment to prevent any criticism of the university professors who, through political charlatanism, demand material and social privileges”…

This trial took place in 1979, just one year before the so-called “democracy” was overthrown in a coup of the army, the mighty pillar supporting at that time the regime. More trials and convictions preceded and followed for Beşikçi. Even if he could live two or three lives, he would not have time enough to serve the 200 plus years in prison imposed on him in total. Released in 1999, he was sent back to court in 2010 – that is, even after the collapse of Kemalism – for “propaganda” because of an article entitled The Rights of Nations to Self-Determination and the Kurds, which cost him 15 extra months in jail.

In January 1981, he sent a Letter to UNESCO from his prison, stigmatizing the decision of the Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization of the United Nations to declare that year as The Atatürk Year.⁽⁴⁾ A new conviction followed. Undeterred, he continued sending letters from the dungeons to international organizations that, of course, ended up in the hands of Turkish judges, who imposed new sentences. A letter to the Journalist Union of Switzerland e.g. cost him 10 years!

• ⁽⁴⁾ Note that: a) Kemal is the only person to receive such recognition by the UN “Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization”; b) education, science and culture have suffered much from his policies; c) the recipients of this recognition were, in fact, his heirs governing Turkey at the time: the military putschists; it was as if they were rewarded by UNSESCO for their… coup d’état in the previous year!

But even in his trials (where we lose count, indeed) with his apologies (several of these speeches were put together in his testimony, Defense), he persevered with remarkable courage and selflessness in order to defend the rights of the Kurdish people, relying on the public sense of justice; a sense that has ceased to govern the decisions or actions even of the “competent” international organizations.

We imagine spontaneously that we have before us İsmail B, personifying Josef K, Kafka’s main character in The Trial. But our association is rather incongruous: Beşikçi has not been a surreal figure of absurdist fiction but an indomitable hero of free thought and scientific knowledge, a symbol of our time – exactly because people like him are so rare today. However, he had the misfortune to be born in Turkey. Therefore, he will never be awarded a Nobel Prize!⁽⁵⁾

• ⁽⁵⁾ He was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in 1987 but… what can one expect from a Nobel Committee that has awarded the prize to persons such as Henry Kissinger (1973), Menachem Begin (1978), Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres (1994), Barack Obama (2009), and the neo-liberal European Union (2012) – but has not honoured Mahatma Gandhi?

Âşık Veysel

I’m certainly not to blame for politicizing the issue of linguistics à la turca, as it is an issue profoundly political. Lay, if you will, the blame on Alain Gheerbrant who “cast the first stone” by paralleling Mustafa Kemal to Âşık Veysel (see Chronicle 9). No doubt, there are even worse cases. One thing is to credit “exclusively” the Turks with Anatolian music; another thing is to do the same with the music of Constantinople; especially if we bear in mind that the Ottomans described this music as Arabo-Persian; it was called Turkish, or even Ottoman, only after the Republic was established, with the collapse of the Ottoman Empire…

● There are cases of “friendly fire” on this issue, which is, nevertheless, anything but crucial. It’s just a matter of orderliness and correct terminology. See e.g. the starting point of Stéphane Yerasimos, the Greek-born director of the French Institute of Anatolian Studies, when he presented an album with old “Ottoman music” featuring, among others, compositions by Dimitrie Cantemir, who was anything but Ottoman:⁽⁶⁾

Cantemir on a Romanian stamp

• ⁽⁶⁾ Cantemir was a great intellectual (philosopher, musicologist, composer, linguist, ethnographer, geographer, historian), and prince of Moldavia where he learned Greek and Latin and acquired a profound knowledge of the classics. He lived in forced exile for 23 years in Constantinople, where he studied at the Patriarchate’s Greek Academy, wrote about music and also composed. How is it possible to classify his music as “Ottoman” when the composer also fought against the Ottomans as an ally of Peter the Great in the Russo-Ottoman War of 1710–11?

“This project of performing Ottoman music on original instruments”, Yerasimos wrote in the booklet, “arose from a simple question: why not apply the method that has been already successfully followed in Europe for several decades, and try to re-discover the spirit and the performing style of the Ottoman music of the great period – the 17th and 18th centuries?”

Constantinople / from Byzantium to Istanbul, by Stéphane Yerasimos

● The Empire that substituted the once powerful Byzantine Empire after its downfall was Ottoman, indeed, as it was controlled by this tribe. But is this sufficient reason to classify also the music of post-Byzantine Constantinople under the same heading? My objection is due to the explicitly ethnic import of the term Ottoman as it means Turkish. On the contrary, the term Byzantine is supranational, referring in general to “the eastern part of the Late Roman Empire that, after the fall of Rome, continued as its successor until 1453.” In both these empires, the Byzantine and Ottoman, culture was a collective work of all ethnicities living within their boundaries. Ethnic identities can be found only in cultures that have been cultivated by peoples distinguished for the originality of their contributions to human civilization. If e.g. there has been no Phoenician civilization, given that the Phoenicians were heavily influenced by the Egyptians, Mesopotamians and Hellenes, in the same way there’s been no Ottoman civilization either. Let alone that, compared to the Ottomans, the contribution of the Phoenicians, especially in the spread of the alphabet, has been far more important.

Christianism and Islam: Differences in Assimilation

QUITE DIFFERENT APPROACH ADOPTED ALAIN DANIÉLOU, Gheerbrant’s compatriot and namesake. As an adviser to UNESCO’s International Music Council, he supervised several outstanding recordings of world music, such as Unesco Collection: A Musical Anthology of the Orient; Musical Atlas; Musical Sources; and Anthology of Indian Classical Music / A Tribute to Alain Daniélou. As a producer of the Cairo recordings, Taqâsîm and Layâlî, on instrumental or vocal modal improvisations, he formulated a thought-provoking synopsis that begins as follows:

Alain Daniélou playing sitar (1987)

“The melodic system peculiar to the Arabic-speaking peoples of the countries bordering on the Eastern and Southern shores of the Mediterranean is the result of a long evolution. It derives from the adaptation by the Arab conquerors of the ancient Greek, Persian, and Egyptian systems, which gradually developed into a unified and highly original art.

“‘Until the 13th century the theorists refer to Greek theories, but subsequently there arose a distinctly independent theory and an art, cultivated at the court of the Caliphs, which became increasingly refined and elaborate. Until the end of the 19th century, this art continued to develop under the influence of fresh Persian and Byzantine elements, which had become more prominent owing to the Turkish domination’ (d’Erlanger).”

“The melodic system of the Arabic-speaking peoples of the Mediterranean derives from the adaptation of the ancient Greek, Persian, and Egyptian systems”… “Until the end of the 19th century, this art continued to develop under the influence of fresh Persian and Byzantine elements.”
(Alain Daniélou, Rodolphe d’Erlanger)

The conclusions we can draw are quite astonishing, indeed: until the eve of their empire’s downfall, the Ottomans – at least in the domain of music – were still under the influence of the empire they had abolished half a millennium before! It was natural that the Arabic-speaking peoples, then vassals of the Ottomans in the region, were equally influenced. In this way, the Byzantine echoe echoed and resonated throughout the Mediterranean: the Christians, mainly in the western part of mare nostrum, were influenced through Byzantine ecclesiastical chant, at least until the 11th century when, due to the Schism, Gregorian chant became obligatory for the Catholics; the Muslims of the Ottoman Empire in the Orient were also influenced – not by ecclesiastical chant, of course, but by the erstwhile Byzantine secular music.

Lady With Tambourine, oil painting, Qajar period, Iran

Persian influences may be considered natural, because the Iranians had already realized their self-determination, having their own independent state. But what can anybody say about Byzantine music, especially secular, which – supposedly – ceased to exist as soon as the state that gave birth to it was erased from the map? How could it possibly influence the Mediterranean on the eve of the 20th century, and even impregnate it with “fresh” musical elements?

Trying to resume what Alain Daniélou and Rodolphe d’Erlanger have said, and the thoughts they have induced, we can imagine a historical model as follows: the Arabs (those coming from the Arabian Peninsula) were cultivated adopting the ancient Hellenic, Persian, and Egyptian cultures. They knew, therefore, very well that their empire would not last long if they were not able to assimilate the civilized Mediterranean peoples they had conquered. It was an indispensable prerequisite to safeguard their caliphate and stay in charge.

The Arabs knew their empire would not last long if they did not assimilate the ancient peoples they had conquered. This could only happen through religion (Islam) and language (Arabic), breaking the ties of these peoples with their glorious past. All they needed was a combination of incentives and coercion.

Under the circumstances, this could only happen through religion, first of all, and secondarily (but equally important), language. It was absolutely necessary for the Arabs to break the ties of these ancient peoples with their glorious past, making them convert to Islam and (even better) adopt Arabic. Hence they could exert undisputed control over their vast empire. A combination of incentives and coercion was all they needed. It was a rather moderate tactic compared with the one endorsed by the Christians to convert the Hellenes, unleashing an outright violent campaign, a long, widespread genocide (see Chronicles 23-24, The Genocide of the Hellenes and The Triumph of Cretinism).

When the Ottomans took over the Caliphate, they also adopted Arabic culture that had sprung out like an amalgam from these ancient civilizations. Note that this synthesis started bearing fruit only in the 13th century, after Constantinople fell for the first time to the Crusaders and Venetians in 1204. No similar cultural renaissance took place during the Ottoman period. That’s why there were still “fresh Persian and Byzantine elements” into the Court music and art until the last days of the Ottoman Empire. What exactly was the Ottoman contribution? It was not so much musical but mainly political – through this wide, unified area – allowing these “elements” to have a great impact on every corner of the empire.

Arabic Music Schools – Turkish Music

Salah el Mahdi

ACCORDING TO THE TUNISIAN PROFESSOR Salah el Mahdi, who spoke at the International musicological symposium at Delphi on Rhythms, Modes and Scales of Mediterranean Music in 1988,⁽⁷⁾ the Near East was influenced by the “old Turco-Byzantine music, extending to the Balkans and Caucasus”:

• ⁽⁷⁾ The European Cultural Centre of Delphi’s English text concerning this International Meeting renders the Greek musical term τρόπος (mode) as… manner. Unfortunately, no one there noticed it to correct it…

“Arabic culture is an integral and significant part of Mediterranean culture”, he said. “The modes of Arabic music are classified into four major schools:

“a) The Maghreb School; it is represented by the Arabo-Andalusian musical heritage introduced into this area by the Arabo-Andalusian refugees in the 14th and 15th centuries. This music survives today across North Africa, along with the old music of the Libyan people of this region.^(h)

• ^(h) Ancient Libya: The name referred to a) the region west of the Nile Valley, corresponding more or less to the modern Maghreb (North Africa except Egypt); b) the country immediately west of Egypt; or c) to the whole of Africa that was still more or less a terra incognita. Herodotus wrote that the Phoenicians carried out the first periplus of “Libya” (Africa) on behalf of the Egyptians. Talking about the Libyan people, Mahdi most probably referred to the Berbers and the rest of the Maghrebis.

“b) The Near East School; it is represented by the musical heritage of Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Palestine and, of course, Egypt. In part, this school has influenced Libya and Tunisia, which thus participate in two schools, as they are found in between. The Near East School has been influenced by the old Turco-Byzantine music, extending to the Balkans and Caucasus.

“c) The Arabo-Persian School; it is represented by the Abbasid musical heritage that was created in their great capital, Baghdad. It’s been the musical act in Iraq, Iran and all the [former] Soviet Republics of Central Asia as far as China.

“d) The Arabian Peninsula School; it includes Saudi Arabia, Yemen, all the Emirates and the Sultanate of Oman, and has had a twofold influence: from India and Africa.”

Now that we are sufficiently informed, and also have the necessary standard of comparison, we may have some fun enjoying Bernard Mauguin’s sophistries:

“Born in the shadow of Islam, Turkish classical music has been confused early in its history with art music of Persia and the Arab peoples. This common origin has been the cause of a persistent misunderstanding and, in general, little distinction is made between these various musical forms, which are usually grouped together under the vague heading of ‘Oriental music’…

“However, just as a knowledgeable listener can easily distinguish a work of Bach from a work of Berlioz, he could never confuse the playing of a Turkish musician with that of an Arab or an Iranian musician. Classical Turkish music has its own distinct personality”…

Johann Sebastian Bach

Wow! We are talking about such colossal differences: those between Bach and Berlioz! Who would have the guts to disagree? But these are differences of eras, between two composers (one baroque, the other romantic) who created in the same tradition of Occidental “classical” music during the so-called common practice period (baroque, classical, romantic). Racial differences (i.e. German vs. French) were rather insignificant. The same applies to the distinction among Turkish, Arab and Iranian musicians: their main difference, especially before the creation of national states, was also a difference of eras. If Mauguin compared Bach not with Berlioz but with Brahms, he would have noticed that they too are “easily distinguishable”. However, such a comparison between two composers of common origin (both Bach and Brahms were Germans) would have deprived him of any pretext for his chicaneries.

Bach vs. Berlioz: not German vs. French music but
baroque vs. romanticism (plus genius vs. average…)

No doubt that if instead of Western theorists we had their Oriental colleagues, things might have been even worse, since everyone would have “trumpeted one’s own merchandise”. Salah in Delphi e.g. spoke of Turco-Byzantine music because he was not a Turk; that’s why he gave no due emphasis to the role of Persian music theorists, something that the Iranian Hormoz Farhat did; but he in turn “forgot” the contribution of Byzantine musicians, which Simon Karás put forward at the forefront – and so on…

What the Orient needs is an era of Renaissance and Enlightenment – sine qua non – something that the Occident intentionally obstructs for its own interests. These interests, I’m afraid, are served, consciously or not, by those Western theoreticians who can’t see the forest for the trees (or, if you like, focus on the finger and can’t see it’s pointing to the moon), i.e. focusing on the secondary (the local differences in music), and minimizing the primary (its common features). The classic recipe: divide et impera! Or rather: διαίρει καὶ βασίλευε, as the one who first adopted this tactic was probably Philip of Macedon…

• >> Chronicle 11. “MUSIC IS THRACIAN AND ASIAN”
• << Chronicle 9. THE CELEBRATED TRÍCHORDON

Next Chronicle 11. “MUSIC IS THRACIAN AND ASIAN” ● “Barbarian” Contribution to Hellenic Instrument Making and Playing ● Antiquarianism-Ancestor Worship ● Multi-String Instruments and Psalteries ● Diapason, Harmony, Polyphony ● Music, Poetry, Nation ● Folk and Erudite Music ● Hydraulis ● Crusades ● Strabo on Music

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Chronicle 20. THE ENIGMATIC SEA PEOPLES

Chronicle 20. THE ENIGMATIC SEA PEOPLES

/ΕΛΛΗΝΙΚΑ/ Χρονικό 20. ΟΙ ΑΙΝΙΓΜΑΤΙΚΟΙ ΛΑΟΙ ΤΗΣ ΘΑΛΑΣΣΑΣ

● Bronze Age Collapse Due to Famine ● Trojan War and Anatolian
Sea Peoples ● Merneptah Stele and Exodus ● Hittites and Luwians

Michales Loukovikas

The “Great Green” Mediterranean, the “Sea of Hellenes”

BEFORE WE VOYAGE WEST, we need to sail off onto the “Great Green” of the “Sea of Hellenes” (Egyptian terms referring to the Mediterranean), in search of the Sea Peoples, meeting more migrant-refugee bands on the way. Voyaging in space and time, in history, legend or myth, let us go back to the explosive finale of the 17th century BCE, i.e. the “big bang” of the Minoan volcanic eruption on Thera, as it occurred very close to the period that the Sea Peoples initially appeared in Egypt. If we take into account the wrecking of the Minoan navy policing the seas, we can presume that these peoples were then nothing but pirates, and we also realize how interdependent the great powers were in the ancient world, as well.

Ancient ship, Egyptian papyrus painting

Later the Egyptians started identifying various bands of Sea Peoples in their own style, and one of the first they mentioned were the Sherden, or Shardana, a large group of pirates. They disrupted trade in the late 13th century and contributed greatly to the collapse of the Mycenaean civilization. Nonetheless, they are not mentioned in either Hellenic or Hittite legends or documents, suggesting that they did not originate from either sphere of influence. Many scholars relate the Shardana to Sardinia due to the similarity between the two words. Based on the same principle, the archaeologist Margaret Guido proposed that the Shardana might have ultimately derived from Sardis, and the Sardinian plain nearby, in Lydia, and perhaps migrated later to Sardinia. It seems that many people, and not only the Trojans that would become Romans, left Anatolia and the Aegean for the Italian peninsula and its islands due to the Bronze Age collapse rather than before. There is evidence that gives credit to Virgil’s Aeneid – but without excluding the possibility of earlier migrations. Recent genetic studies indicate that the populations not only of people, but even of cattle, in several Italian regions, especially in Tuscany, are more related to Asia Minor, and mainly in the northwest, than to anywhere else.

A famous passage from Herodotus, quoted by scholars quite often, portrays the migration and drifting of Lydians in the Mediterranean because of famine:

Etruscans dancing, painting on a tomb

“Their king divided the people into two groups, so that the one should remain and the other leave the country. His son, Tyrrhenus, was to be the head of those who departed. They went down to Smyrna and built themselves ships. After sailing past many countries they came to the Umbri, where they founded cities and called themselves Tyrrhenians.”

We can’t but remember that Anatolia faced the same acute problem of famine in the time of the collapse and, as a result, the Sea Peoples, then a coalition of seagoing migrants, closed ranks seeking relief from scarcity. Drought could have easily precipitated socio-economic problems and wars. As regards the story told by Herodotus and its link to the Sea Peoples, some scholars contend that those people called Teresh by the Egyptians were none others than the Tyrrhenians, or Tyrsenians, who are often identified with the Tusci (hence Tuscany), the Latin exonym for the Etruscans, or Ras(en)na, as they called themselves. The Tyrsenian linguistic family, together with Etruscan, includes the Lemnian language, spoken on the Aegean island of Lemnos to the 6th century BCE. Another Aegean tongue possibly related to the Etruscan was the Minoan Cretan. A third Aegean island close to Asia Minor mentioned as their possible origin by Thucydides is that of Lesbos. The Romans, as Virgil’s readers, identified the Teresh with the Trojans. There are clues to support this view. Several writers, e.g. Andrea Salimbeti in The Greek Age of Bronze: Sea Peoples, comment that a Trojan connection in the case of the Teresh (or Tursha) should be at first taken under consideration:

The double-headed eagle, the Byzantine symbol of Empire, was used before by Mycenaeans and Hittites, e.g. this relief at Alaca Höyük (1400 BCE)

“Troy appears in a Hittite record as Taruisa. It is a reasonable assumption that the people of Taruisa called themselves by some name close to this; stripped of vowels so that it can be compared to the Egyptian spelling”.

The Troad (or Troas) was outside the territory but within the sphere of influence of Hatti. Nevertheless, another Hittite record points to a different location, for it contains a list of cities, among them Tarsa, most likely Tarsus. These toponyms and corresponding ethnicities would be written down in Egyptian hieroglyphs, or in any cuneiform script, as “T-r-s” or “T-r-sh” – i.e. without vowels.⁽¹⁾

• ⁽¹⁾ A very good example of how important the Greek innovation with the vowels in the alphabet has been. If the Egyptian script had vowels, as well, the enigma of the Sea Peoples might have long since been solved!

“The Sea Peoples may well have been Troy and its confederated
allies, and the literary tradition of the Trojan War may well reflect
the Greek effort to counter those raids.” (Eberhard Zangger)

Anatolian amalgam: the most important regions and peoples

Anatolian connections have been suggested for other Sea Peoples, too, such as the Lukka (Lycians). Most striking is that they mostly seem to have descended from the Troad. Thus the Swiss geoarchaeologist,⁽²⁾ Eberhard Zangger, thinks that “the Sea Peoples may well have been Troy and its confederated allies, and the literary tradition of the Trojan War may well reflect the Greek effort to counter those raids.” This is what the Iliad seems to reflect.⁽³⁾

• ⁽²⁾ Geoarchaeology uses techniques and subject matter of geography, geology, and other Earth sciences, to examine topics which inform archaeological knowledge. Geoarchaeologists study the natural processes that affect archaeological sites, such as geomorphology, as well as soil and sediments, to contribute to archaeological studies.

• ⁽³⁾ According to this scenario, the Trojan War was “just” and defensive on the part of the Greeks, not intended for conquest and destruction of the city controlling the passage to the Black Sea.

Ilium/Troy: the wider area and, below on the right, the modern coastline in red and, therefore,
the floodplain that interested Zangger – on the strategic straits and close to the border area.

Eberhard Zangger

Eberhard Zangger’s Anatolian Hypothesis

● In his Anatolian hypothesis, Eberhard Zangger caused a sensation because of his controversial identification of Troy as Atlantis. Zangger’s point of view is that Plato used an Egyptian version of the story about Troy for his famous report on Atlantis. He based his argument on comparisons between the Mycenaean culture and Plato’s account of the Hellenic civilization facing Atlantis, as well as parallels between the recollections of the Trojan War and the one supposedly fought between Greeks and Atlanteans (a Titanomachy variation). He interpreted the legend of the Trojan War to be the memory of the momentous chaos leading to the Bronze Age collapse, and arrived at the conclusion that Troy must have been much bigger than scholars had presumed, with artificial harbours inside the modern floodplain. In order to prove it, he prepared a helicopter-based geophysical exploration of the plain to locate layers of settlement and artificial port basins, using ground-penetrating techniques. Having granted an “exclusive excavation license” for Troy to Manfred Korfmann, a German archaeologist, the Turkish government rejected Zangger’s request. Disappointed, the latter summed up his theory giving a lecture in the Heidelberg Academy of Science. In my view, his ambitious project was undermined not by Korfmann’s… exclusive rights to excavate for Troy (! – Zangger’s plan did not entail any real excavations) but rather by Turkey’s unwillingness to authorize any disclosure of sensitive military data in an area close to the border for the sake of science.

The historicity of the Iliad

Trojan War scenes on pottery

Despite the attempts of several historians to discredit the historicity of the Iliad, the Trojan War is considered a historical event; in addition, it is a key to grasp the underlying causes of all these epoch-making developments. “For sure, the Sea Peoples’ movement was one of the largest and most important migrations in history that changed the face of the ancient world more than any other single event before the time of Alexander the Great”, remarks Andrea Salimbeti. This long, ravaging war, in combination with the widespread famine in the entire peninsula, created the explosive conditions leading to the collapse. Under the circumstances, many Trojans, allies or neighbours, became refugees, and some survived by their wits or swords. Archeological evidence leads to the conclusion that the Sea Peoples were not pirates anymore, nor raiders plundering and pillaging established cities, but instead a mass of people looking for a place to settle, in search of a home. This was obvious since their first invasion of Egypt under Libyan leadership, when they were accompanied by their families and belongings. The Libyan tribes also played a role in the first campaigns against Egypt. Herodotus and Hecataeus mentioned one of them centuries later. It was the Berber tribe of the Maxyes or Mazyes, the Mazaces to the Romans, or the Meshwesh to the Egyptians – who claimed to have Trojan blood in their veins…

A Peleset headdress, and a similar (?) Phaestos disc symbol (below on the right)

Pelasgians and Philistines (Peleset)

An important Sea People have been the Peleset, identified with the Philistines, or in a broad sense, the Palestinians:

“One of the theories”, says Salimbeti, “links them to the Pelasgians who were allies of Troy and one group of them lived in Thrace. Those Pelasgians would have migrated south, overrunning and fatally damaging Achaean Greek civilization. Shortly after, many would have gone farther south to Crete.”

There are also Biblical references to the Philistines as coming from a place called Caphtor, identified by several scholars with Crete:⁽⁴⁾

• ⁽⁴⁾ According to Wikipedia: “Caphtor is a locality mentioned in the Bible and related literature. The people of Caphtor are called Caphtorites (Caphtorim) and are named as a division of the ancient Egyptians. Traditional Hebrew sources place Caphtor in the region of Pelusium [in the Nile Delta]. Other sources [?] associate Caphtor with localities outside Egypt e.g. Cilicia, Cappadocia, Cyprus or Crete.” The least probable scenario is “hard truth” for some scholars… (See Chronicle 27, footnote 10).

The Nile Delta with Pelusium in the East, the Hellenic colony Naucratis in the West, and further on the location Alexandria was to be built. The ancient canal linking the Mediterranean and the Red Seas is also shown.

“This theory”, adds Salimbeti, “has been somewhat strengthened by the discovery in Crete of the Phaestos disc. One of the symbols shows the head of a man crowned with feathers – very similar to the feather-topped helmets of the Peleset depicted” at the Temple of Ramses III.⁽⁵⁾

• ⁽⁵⁾ Well, it was certainly unavoidable: “The similarity [of the Peleset helmet] with Maya and Aztec feather headdresses is truly amazing, given the distance that separated the Mesoamerican culture” from the Mediterranean… Galloping imagination somewhere in the Internet Sea, while far in the distant horizon the land of Atlantis is gradually emerging…

● Well, what about the language of the Philistines? Wikipedia informs us of “possible relations to Indo-European languages, even Mycenaean Greek, [which supposedly] support the independently-held [?!] theory that immigrant Philistines originated among ‘Sea Peoples’.” And what do we know about the Pelasgian language(s)? “In the absence of certain knowledge about the identity (or identities) of the Pelasgians, various theories have been proposed. Since Greek is classified as an Indo-European language, the major question of concern is whether Pelasgian was an Indo-European language”. For more information, we are forwarded to the Aegean language family, proposed by Giulio M. Facchetti, due to some alleged similarities between Etruscan, Lemnian, and some other languages of the area, such as Minoan Cretan, Eteocretan, Eteocypriot, and Philistine. These languages could constitute a pre-Indo-European phylum stretching from Canaan to the Alps. But this is not a view held in common; there are attempts to link Eteocretan and Eteocypriot with Semitic.

Pelasgian Cycladic civilization: on this “frying pan”’s design (2800 BCE), some imaginative people see a map of Atlantis!

Surely, all the above are nothing but hypotheses, as Facchetti himself admits. What counts is the idea the ancient Hellenes had about the Pelasgians, who had survived even in the classical period in several locations of mainland Greece, Crete and other Aegean islands. People identified as “Pelasgian” spoke a language or languages that the Hellenes described as “barbaric” – that is, they were incomprehensible to them. A tradition also survived that many parts of Greece had once been Pelasgian before being Hellenized. Hence, we can relish watching all scholarly theorizations crumbling and crashing down… (On the Pelasgians see Chronicle 15, footnote 7).

Another “Trojan” Sea People might have been the Weshesh. Again, the scarcity of information led… “necessarily” to speculation about possible links between their name and that of Ilion, as the city of Troy was also called by the Greeks – Wilusa (or Wilusiya) by the Hittites – after king Ilus (thence the Iliad). “The W of Weshesh”, notes Salimbeti, “is a modern invention for ease of pronunciation; the Egyptian records refer to Uashesh.” Some scholars associate this people with Assos, also in the Troad, or with Iassos in Caria, or with Issus (Issos) in Cilicia. Others have theorized that they became part of the Israelite confederacy as the tribe of Asher. Another people connected with the Hebrews were the Tjeker. Moving to Canaan, they captured the city-state of Dor and turned it into a large, well-fortified capital of their kingdom. Dor was violently destroyed in the mid-11th century BCE by the expanding Phoenicians, who were initially checked by the Philistines, and then by the Hebrews. King David (if he was something more than just a mythological figure) supposedly conquered Dor and the Tjeker were mentioned no more.

Teucer (Teucrus) of the Troad and Salamis

Achilles and Ajax playing a dice game: an amphora
by painter-potter Exekias, ca 540-530 BCE

A possible linguistic connection has been proposed between the Tjeker and the Tekrur, identified with the Teucri, a tribe described by some ancient sources as inhabiting northwest Anatolia to the south of Troy. Tradition offers basically two candidates for their homeland: Crete or Attica. Legend links all three places and goes even further, following two heroes with the same name: Teucer (Teucrus). According to Virgil, the older Teucer was from Crete but left the island with a third part of its inhabitants during a great famine (how many such stories…). They eventually settled near a river, named Scamander after his father. On the contrary, Dionysius of Halicarnassus claims Teucer had gone to the Troad from Attica. Scamander (or Xanthos) was a river-god, a son of Oceanus. According to Homer, he fought on the side of the Trojans after Achilles insulted him. He was the personification of the river that flowed by Troy. The Hellenes had set up their camp near its mouth, and their battles with the Trojans were fought on its plain. The land was initially called Teucria, after Teucer. When Dardanus arrived there, it was renamed as Dardania (thence Dardenelles), and later Troad (from king Tros). But these toponymic changes would not deter the Trojans to often call themselves Teucrians. Aeneas e.g. is described as “the great captain of the Teucrians”.

The Judgement of Paris (1904), by Enrique Simonet: Aphrodite, the winner in this ancient beauty pageant, stepping forward triumphantly naked, while Hera and Athena stay behind humiliated…

Teucer the younger, or “bastard”, was half-Trojan because his mother, Hesione, a concubine of king Telamon, was a princess of Ilion. His father had arrived from Aegina to Salamis, as he was sent away by his own father for he had accidentally killed his brother. Teucer also fought in the Trojan War, but on the side of the Hellenes, having his half-brother, Ajax, as a co-fighter, while his cousins, Hector and Paris, and his uncle Priam, were “enemies”. After all, war was a family affair – let alone for Teucer Jr. On his return to Salamis, however, his father accused him for not bringing Ajax’s body back home. He was in his turn disowned, exiled and set out to find a new home. With his departing words that Horace turned into a moving ode, he exhorted his companions to “despair in no way… tomorrow we shall set out upon the boundless sea”.⁽⁶⁾ This speech, related later to the theme of voyages of discovery, is also found in Dante’s Inferno and Tennyson’s Ulysses. Teucer eventually joined king Belus of Tyre in a Phoenician campaign against Cyprus, and when the island was seized, the king handed it over to Teucer as a reward. He founded there the city of Salamis, named after his homeland.

• ⁽⁶⁾ Horace, Odes: “Wherever fortune may bear us, kinder than my father, | We shall go, o men and comrades! | Despair in no way with Teucer as your leader and as protector, | Surely resolved Apollo has promised uncertain | Future to Salamis in a new world. | O men, who with me often have endured | Worse fortunes, now, banish cares with wine; | Tomorrow we shall set out upon the boundless sea!”
  (Quo nos cumque feret melior fortuna parente, | ibimus, o socii comitesque. | Nil desperandum Teucro duce et auspice Teucro; | certus enim promisit Apollo ambiguam tellure nova Salamina futuram. | O fortes peioraque passi | mecum saepe viri, nunc vino pellite curas; | cras ingens iterabimus aequor.”)

Leda and the Swan, from the Sanctuary of Aphrodite,
Paphos, Cyprus (3rd century CE)

The “copper island”, a vital node in the trade networks, experienced two waves of Grecian settlement: the initial wave consisted of Mycenaean traders, c. 1400 BCE. Towards the end of this period, great amounts of Mycenaean pottery were produced in Cyprus. A major second wave, connected with Teucer’s story, took place after the Bronze Age collapse, c. 1100 BCE, with the island’s predominantly Hellenic character dating from this era, due to the invasion of Helladic refugees. Apart from Salamis, Teucer is credited as a founder of other cities, too. A local legend in Galicia, in northwestern Iberia, relates the foundation of Pontevedra to “Teucro”. The legend seems to be based on the conjecture that Greek traders might have arrived there in ancient times. Though legends appear for a certain reason, historians and archaeologists tend to agree that the initial settlement was probably formed when Gallaecia was integrated into the Roman Empire (1st century BCE). Pontevedra, i.e. “old bridge”, in reference to an old Roman bridge across the Lérez river, is sometimes poetically called “The City of Teucro”, and its inhabitants teucrinos – just like the Trojans!⁽⁷⁾ (See Chronicle 26, Odysseys in the Aftermath of the Trojan War: Colonization of Iberia).

Oil lamp, Tróia

• ⁽⁷⁾ It seems as if Tróia, across Setúbal, Portugal, was named after Troy but we do not know why. Tróia peninsula has been inhabited since prehistoric times when it was an island called Acalá. In the 1st century CE, the Romans built a town and named it Cetóbriga. It served as a fishery centre until 412, when it was destroyed completely by an earthquake with tsunami. If the town’s initial name had been Tróia, we could think that the Romans, as originating from the Trojans, decided to build a “Troy” in the vicinity of the city of Odysseus – Olisipo, Lisbon! According to José Pedro Machado, Tróia – in the Onomastic-Etymologic Dictionary of the Portuguese Language – is not a toponym found exclusively in the area of Setúbal. There are more Tróias in Portugal and a Troya in Galicia. Their “godfathers” were probably inspired by the Iliad. Based on an article in the Great Portuguese and Brazilian Encyclopedia, Machado expressed the idea this name to originate from Cetóbriga: > Cetóbria > Cetróbia > Cetróia > Xetróia > Atróia – though it seems too much of an adventure for a toponym… Or perhaps the name comes not from Troy but from either Troyes or Truyes, two cities of France; or its origin is the Latin phrase “Trogia (villa)”, from the Celtic name Trogus – which is the most likely explanation.

Mosaic in Conímbriga

Thracian and Celtic Coincidences

● Cetóbriga is apparently a Celtic toponym, too. But because of the reports on the presence of even Thracians in Iberia, who also had the suffix –briga in their tongue, let’s have a look at that possibility, too. This suffix is very common in several toponyms of the peninsula. The most well-known city with such a name is Conímbriga, one of the greatest Roman settlements in Portugal. During pre-Roman times, the Conii (or Cynetes, who settled later in southern Portugal) occupied the settlement. After the town was destroyed by Suebi c. 465-468 CE, several of its inhabitants went to live in the neighbouring Aeminium that was gradually renamed as Coimbra. The word Conímbriga is not related to the Conii; it is formed by the native term conim (rock) and the Celtic suffix –briga (citadel), deriving from the Celtic Brigantes, who had Brigantia, N. England, under their control in pre-Roman times. Ptolemy wrote that the Brigantes also lived in SE Ireland, while Strabo mentioned the Brigantii as a subtribe of the Vindelici on the Alps. There was a Brigantium (Coruña) in Galicia, and a Brigaecium in Asturias. But there were also the Bryges, or Brigantes, a numerous Thracian people, whose cradle was perhaps the land of the Cicones, a Homeric tribe, between the Hebrus (Maritsa) and Nestos rivers, or the area around the Prespes or Brygeides lakes. The Bryges were ancestors of the Phrygians (‘B’ turned into ‘Ph’), who originally lived in the Balkans, and then settled in Asia Minor. The land of the Cicones, according to Herodotus, was initially called Briantica. The Bryges spread to N. Epirus (c. 700 BCE), to Paeonia, to Illyria (as Scymnus of Chios wrote in his Periēgēsis), to the Adriatic (in the area of the Brygeides islands), and later to West Europe, campaigning as followers of Dionysus. According to Hesychius, the suffixes –briga, or –bria, were typical in the names of the Thracian Brigantes’ towns (See Chronicle 26, Odysseys in the Aftermath of the Trojan War: Colonization of Iberia).

Trojan Horse: its oldest known depiction
on the Mykonos vase; ca 670 BCE

UP TO NOW, excluding Teucer, who attacked Cyprus in collaboration with the Phoenicians, representing all those who found refuge there, we have seen no Hellenes fighting alongside the Sea Peoples, or their allies, but rather against them in the Trojan War. It is what Sanford Holst already told us in the previous Chronicle:

“The Mycenaeans attacked the Anatolian people from the seaward side. To deal with this problem, warriors and ships in the Sea Peoples confederacy poured from Anatolia and the Black Sea into the Aegean, where they ravaged the Mycenaeans.”

Let us try to verify this in Wikipedia:

“The invaders, that is, the replacement cultures at those [Mycenaean] sites, apparently made no attempt to retain the cities’ wealth but instead built new settlements of a materially simpler cultural and less complex economic level atop the ruins. For example, no one appropriated the palace and rich stores at Pylos, but all were burned up, and the successors (whoever they were) moved in over the ruins with plain pottery and simple goods. This demonstrates a cultural discontinuity.”

This may demonstrate a logical discontinuity, as well! The question of who the invaders might have been is left open. However, the author identifies them with “the replacement cultures”, who were stupid enough to “burn up the palace and rich stores”, instead of appropriating them. Quite simply, those invaders had no intention to settle there; they went there just to destroy: for sure, they were not “the replacement cultures”!

Captive Sea Peoples in Egypt

The Anatolians were prevalent among the Sea Peoples but they were not alone. Several tribe names in the Egyptian files have a dubious or unknown origin – i.e. the Shekelesh, perhaps the Siculi, who moved to Sicily from the Italian mainland.

“There was a gigantic series of migratory waves”, Michael Grant remarks, “extending all the way from the Danube valley to the plains of China”; and Moses Finley agrees: “A large-scale movement of people is indicated… The original centre of disturbance was in the Carpatho-Danubian region of Europe… pushing in different directions at different times.”

But if we have faith in Michael Wood, they were… “essentially” [?!] Hellenes:

“Were the Sea Peoples in part actually composed of Mycenaean Greeks – rootless migrants, warrior bands and condottieri on the move? Certainly there seem to be suggestive parallels between the war gear and helmets of the Greeks and those of the Sea Peoples”. Moreover, he reminds us that “there were migrations of Greek-speaking peoples to [Sardinia and Sicily] at this time”, and therefore, he includes the Sherden and Shekelesh among the “villains”. Troy, he concludes, “was sacked by essentially Greek Sea Peoples”…⁽⁸⁾

• ⁽⁸⁾ It’s a pity there were “essentially” no Britannic “condottieri on the move”. Or else this… “thinking woman’s crumpet” (as Wood was humorously dubbed by British newspapers for his good looks most appealing to women) would have found Hellenic colonies even on Mars!

Cycladic head: a Pelasgian who is suspect as an “islander”: he has deformed his features!

Michael Wood is not alone, either. The identification of the Denyen and Ekwesh with the Danaans and Achaeans respectively are long-standing issues in Bronze Age scholarship, as the “suspects” also lived “in the isles”…⁽⁹⁾ Were the Egyptian scribes so naïve to use two names for one and the same people? What species of Bronze Age scholars are they if they (pretend to) ignore that Achaeans and Danaans are synonymous terms? Have they not been schooled in the Iliad? Homer mentions the name Achaeans 598 times; Danaans 138 times; Argives 182 times; and Hellenes only once. According to a version of the myth, they were ancestors of the Greeks and their tribes: Hellen, Graecus, Magnes, and Macedon (Makednós) were sons of Deucalion and Pyrrha, the only survivors of the Great Flood. Sons of Hellen were Dorus, Xuthus, and Aeolus; sons of Xuthus were Ion and Achaeus. Danaus, coming from Egypt, Pelops, from Anatolia, and Cadmus, from Phoenicia, gained a foothold in Greece, were assimilated and Hellenized. At least for the Danaans, perhaps due to their “Egyptian” origin, there is some “flexibility”: they are identified with the people of Adana in Cilicia, or possibly related to the land of the Danuna, near Ugarit, in Syria, or it is rumoured they joined Hebrews to form one of the original 12 tribes of Israel, that of Dan.

• ⁽⁹⁾ Although the connection of the Hittite toponym Ahhiyawa, or Ahhiya, with Achaea is strongly disputed (cf. Wikipedia: “the exact relationship of the term Ahhiyawa to the Achaeans beyond a similarity in pronunciation is hotly debated by scholars”; see also the conclusion of this Chronicle), the… “Wikipedists” are absolutely sure about the identification of the Achaeans with the Ekwesh. So, if you search for the entry “Ekwesh”, you are redirected to the “Achaeans”… As for the phrase “in the isles”, used by the Egyptians when referring to Sea Peoples and quoted by scholars as an argument, it ends up meaning: “Whoever is not a landsman is a suspect”!

THE MAJOR EVENT DURING PHARAOH Merneptah’s reign (1213–1203 BCE) was a war against a confederacy, termed the “Nine Bows”, under the leadership of the king of Libya. The pharaoh declared that he defeated the invasion, killing 6,000 soldiers and taking 9,000 prisoners. To be certain of the numbers, among other things, he took the penises of all uncircumcised dead and the hands of all the circumcised.⁽¹⁰⁾ We mention this macabre detail because, as it turned out, the so-called “Achaeans”, the Ekwesh, were circumcised, a fact that would certainly have obliged any serious Bronze Age scholar to “acquit” the Grecian Achaeans!⁽¹¹⁾

• ⁽¹⁰⁾ Imagine those poor soldiers who were assigned to count all these penises and hands…

• ⁽¹¹⁾ …“a fact causing some to doubt they were Greek,” is what we actually read in Wikipedia! They were circumcised as a… camouflage! Or just to baffle our Bronze Age scholars! What they do remember is Virgil’s aphorism: “Timeo Danaos et dona ferentes”; i.e. “Beware of Greeks bearing gifts” – in this case: bearing circumcision! Our scholars have been schooled in the Aeneid, at least… Note that not only the Ekwesh, but also the Shekelesh and Shardana were circumcised, as the Egyptians made clear (pity, they did not inform… Michael Wood)! Thus these two peoples had also been Oriental in origin and settled in Sicily and Sardinia only later. Those who were not circumcised were the Peleset. (“Aha!”, I can hear you chuckling, my dear scholars…)

Merneptah stele: the Zionist usurpers… usurped it from
another usurper!

Merneptah Stele and Exodus

● The pharaoh’s victories over the Libyans and their Sea People allies are glorified on the Merneptah Stele, a black granite slab over three meters high, that Flinders Petrie discovered in Thebes in 1896. There is, however, a kind of footnote in the final two of the 28 lines, which refers to a separate campaign in Canaan. There the king boasts of defeating and destroying four cities, the fourth one being most probably a city and valley in northern Canaan, called Jezreel – a word so similar to… Israel! For sure, that would be far more convenient and beneficial for all: the entire Jewish diaspora, the emerging Zionism, formally established as a movement the next year after the discovery, for many Christians, especially the clergy, and of course, for Petrie himself! That day he wondered: “Won’t the reverends be pleased?” and then he prophesied: “This stele will be better known in the world than anything else I have found.” He was not a fool: if this set of hieroglyphs on Line 27 could be read as… “Israel”, instead of “Jezreel”, it would present the first documented instance of this name in the historical record, and the only mention in ancient Egypt!

Although the readings in many places are illegible due to the rough surface and the poor cutting (Petrie’s own translation of the text contains dozens of question marks; only next to the controversial word the mark is missing…), most biblical archeologists accept Petrie’s version. So, his find was also proclaimed as… “Israel Stele”;⁽¹²⁾ based on a disputed word in the penultimate line of a text dealing with another subject! What a disgrace for Merneptah: a proud pharaoh boasting of a triumph over a handful of poor villagers! There were no more than about 25 villages then on the highlands of Canaan. Archaeologists and historians have attempted to trace the origins of these villagers but it’s been impossible to identify any distinctive features that could define them as specifically Israelite. “It is probably… during Iron Age I” (1200–1000 BCE), says archaeologist Paula McNutt, that “a population began to identify itself as ‘Israelite’.” The Kingdom of Israel emerged as an important, worth-mentioning local power even later, by the 9th century BCE, before falling to the Assyrians in 722. Thus, there was no “Israel” for Merneptah to mention – unless he was as prophetic as Petrie himself!

• ⁽¹²⁾ Merneptah is also to blame: he “appropriated” the stele from his predecessor, Amenhotep III, turned it round and wrote his controversial text on its rough surface. He could never imagine how this text would be distorted. For sure, he was not a prophet like Petrie!

Departure of the Israelites, by David Roberts (1829)

● This “misspelling” trick was some kind of “compensation” for the historical “error” of the Egyptians to mention neither the notorious Exodus nor the calamitous Biblical plagues. The archeologists are equally “guilty”, as they failed to find any evidence to support the “story” of the Jews in Egypt and the Sinai. The consensus among biblical scholars is that there was never any exodus of the proportions described in the Bible. According to the book of Exodus, arguably the most important in the Bible, the Jews leaving the country would have numbered some 2 million – compared with an entire Egyptian population of around 3 to 3.5 million in 1250 BCE! Marching ten abreast and without accounting for livestock, they would have formed a line 240 kilometers long! No evidence has been found that Egypt ever suffered such a demographic and economic catastrophe, or that the Sinai desert ever hosted (or could have hosted) these millions of people and their herds… The date proposed initially of an Exodus around 1450 BCE is also problematic: digs in the 1930s had failed to find traces of the simultaneous destruction of Canaanite cities c. 1400 BCE – and in fact many of them, such as Jericho, the first one to fall to the Israelites according to the Bible, were then uninhabited. A century of research by archaeologists and Egyptologists has found no evidence that can be directly related to the captivity, and the escape and travels through the wilderness, and most archaeologists have abandoned their investigation of Moses and the Exodus as “a fruitless pursuit”. Archaeologist William Dever says that there is “no room for an Exodus from Egypt or a 40-year pilgrimage through the Sinai wilderness.”

Flinders Petrie’s “fine, Caucasian, dynastic race” invading Egypt…!

● Flinders Petrie, who could possibly “address the issue”, died a long time ago and was buried on Mount Zion, in Palestine. Besides, he remains a controversial figure as a committed advocate of “eugenics” and of the “superiority” of the white, Northern peoples over the Latinate and Southern peoples, as well as for his affiliation with a variety of fascist groups and anti-democratic thought in England. His archaeological views were equally racist: he contended that the Egyptian civilization was derived from a “fine”, invading “Caucasian Dynastic Race”, which had conquered Egypt in pre-dynastic times of late prehistory and introduced the pharaonic, dynastic culture to the “inferior” “mulatto” race then inhabiting the country. These views spilled over into disputes with E. A. Wallis Budge. The British Museum‘s Egyptologist declared that the ancient Egyptians were an African people with roots in eastern Africa and their religion was essentially identical to the religions of the peoples of northeastern and central Africa. However, all but some of his colleagues followed Petrie – a most revealing fact about the dominant ideology at the time, at least among intellectuals. Thus Petrie and his followers derided Budge’s ideas as impossible and “unscientific”…

NEXT ROUND in this protracted war against the Sea Peoples, marking the Bronze Age collapse, took place some three decades later, during the reign of Ramses III (1186–1155 BCE), the last great pharaoh of Egypt. His inscriptions state that the “Nine Bows” re-appeared as another “conspiracy in their isles”… Most Sea People tribes were there again; we are also informed that at least two great battles were fought, one on the sea, and the other on land.

The pharaoh proudly presented his captives (from L to R): the Libyan, Nubian, Syrian, Shasu, and Hittite (the… Hellene probably escaped!)

“When it was over”, says the Wikipedia article on the Sea Peoples, “several chiefs were captive: of Hatti, Amor, and Shasu among the ‘land peoples’, and the Tjeker, ‘Sherden of the sea’, ‘Teresh of the sea’ and Peleset or Philistines (in whose name some [?] have seen the ancient Greek name for sea people: Pelasgians)”…⁽¹³⁾

• ⁽¹³⁾ Pelasgian is related to πελός and Πέλοψ (Pelops: dark-skinned), or to πέλας (the fellow man, or the one nearby) and πελάζω-πλάζω (approach), or to περάω and πέρα (cross to the other side, as a migrant tribe). Once more, the scholars are wrong, as there is no connection with the sea, specifically πέλαγος (pelagos < πλήσσω or πλήττω, i.e. hit).

What conclusions can we draw? We are surprised, first of all, since our scholars were not… surprised at all when they read about a Hittite chief among those captive. Hatti had been a Sea Peoples’ arch-enemy – and one of their greatest victims. But scholars are usually aware of such “details” and are not taken by surprise. Besides, the same thing happened before and the pharaoh’s official complaints were forwarded to the Hittite monarch – as long as this empire still existed. OK, but why don’t they bother to explain, instead of wasting their time trying to involve the Greeks in this… “conspiracy theory”?

Ramses III vs the Sea Peoples

Eventually, we realize that the destruction of the established civilizations, mainly the Hittite and Mycenaean, was a deliberate tactic of the Sea Peoples to garner more strength at sea and amass land forces, as well. After all, the empires were of the aristocracies, Hittite or Mycenaean. What else could a desperate Hellene or a destitute Anatolian do, under the circumstances, but follow and stand by the peoples with whom he shared the same aspirations for a better life?

What else could a desperate Hellene or a destitute Anatolian do but follow the peoples with whom he shared the
same aspirations for a better life?

But what a pity for our scholars: not even one Greek among the captive chiefs… He probably escaped! The other captives were chiefs of the Amorites, who lived in Syria and part of Mesopotamia, and possibly of the Hebrews: Shasu is a term for nomad wanderers, and at least one of the tribes worshipped the Jewish god Yahweh. The rest were sea captains.

The pharaoh concluded his report as follows: “I slew the Denyen in their isles” and “burned” the Tjeker and Peleset… Therefore, he implied some maritime raids of his own, or some punitive expeditions elsewhere in the Mediterranean. In the Aegean? Where, what and whose were these “isles”? Whatever the answers, the chain reaction of the raids went on; it was the Egyptians’ turn to destroy – but destruction bears no signature…

Lady of Mycenae (fresco)

Homer mentions an Achaean attack upon the Nile delta, while Menelaus speaks of that in the Odyssey, recounting his voyage back home from the Trojan War. It was not, however, the only such marauding action by Mycenaeans against Egypt where they went “just for the fun of it” – and some gain, of course!

Taking into account the continuous turbulence among or within the sovereign Mycenaean royal families, the hypothesis that they may have utterly destroyed themselves is long-standing, and seems to find support by the reputable Greek historian Thucydides:

“For in early times the Hellenes and the barbarians of the coast and islands… were tempted to turn to piracy, under the conduct of their most powerful men… They would fall upon a town unprotected by walls… and would plunder it… no disgrace being yet attached to such an achievement, but even some glory”…

Hittite chariot

The “Achaeans” through Hittite eyes

VARIOUS HITTITE ACCOUNTS, from c. 1400 to c. 1220 BCE, mention a land in western Anatolia, named Ahhiyawa (or Ahhiya). The term is thought to be a Hittite rendition of the word “Achaea”, with the broader meaning of “the Achaeans’ land”. This idea was strongly disputed by other Hittitologists (see e.g. footnote 9). In addition, a precise geographical location of this land cannot be drawn from the texts. In any case, it seems that “Achaea” and Hatti evidently dealt with each other both on a diplomatic and a military level. We can read a letter that the Hittite king sent to his “Achaean” counterpart, where the latter is recognized as a “Great King”, and of equal status with the other contemporary great Bronze Age rulers: the kings of Egypt, Babylonia and Assyria. Referring to Millawanda (or Milawata: Miletus?) as a city within the “Achaean” domain,⁽¹⁴⁾ the Hittite monarch mentions an earlier “Wilusa episode”, within his own area, where the “Achaeans” lined up with his enemies. We have seen that Wilusa was most probably Troy (cf. the archaic Ϝίλιον, and later Ilion, i.e. the Trojan acropolis). This “episode” is possibly connected with the Trojan War.⁽¹⁵⁾

The Love of Helen and Paris, by
Jacques-Louis David (1788)

• ⁽¹⁴⁾ The Minoans had created in Miletus perhaps their most important settlement on Anatolian soil. The Mycenaeans inherited it, when they replaced the Cretans as the leading power in the Aegean. The city grew and became prosperous, as it is attested not only from the archaeological evidence, but also these Hittite records, which indicate that Miletus was the most important base for “Achaean” activity in Asia Minor ultimately reaching Iassos, Ephesus, and other cities.

• ⁽¹⁵⁾ Unfortunately, we cannot cross-check the available evidence because the Mycenaeans, unlike the Hittites, did not bother to write down such… “details”! The records in Linear B just refer to administrative bureaucratic issues of the palace. Even commerce is curiously absent from the written sources in Linear B! That’s why it’s impossible to reconstitute from texts in Linear B the late Bronze Age’s political developments. (Hittites vs. Mycenaeans: 1–0!)

In the second half of the 13th century, a long anti-Hittite revolt broke out with “Achaean” support, and headed by Piyama-Radu, who married his daughter to the vassal ruler of “Miletus”. His case is of particular interest since it appears to intertwine with that of the Trojan War. It was a remarkable revolt for its duration, having spanned at least 35 years, during which time he posed a considerable threat to three consecutive Hittite kings; it caused a great deal of turmoil in the areas of Wilusa, Arzawa,⁽¹⁶⁾ and Seha, and led to an invasion of Lazpa (Lesbos?), which passed under “Achaean” control. The aforementioned letter was sent in this period, as the Hittite king tried to persuade his “Achaean” counterpart to restore peace. Among other things, he mentions a brother of the “Achaean” monarch, named Tawagalawa, or… Eteocles,⁽¹⁷⁾ according to several imaginative scholars! Much more controversial is the “identification” of Piyama-Radu: it is speculated that he “corresponds to the archetype” of the Trojan king Priam… What’s next? They will probably… rewrite the Iliad!

• ⁽¹⁶⁾ “Achaea” and Arzawa joined forces several times against the Hittites. Arzawa was a kingdom, or a confederacy of local rulers, in western Anatolia, with Apasa, later Ephesus, as a capital.

• ⁽¹⁷⁾ The story of Oedipus’ son and king of Thebes is part of the Theban Cycle that is unrelated to the Trojan (Epic) Cycle and the Atreides. Eteocles’ brother was Polynices, with whom he fought for the throne and both were killed. The tragedy culminated with their sister Antigone’s death.

Places mentioned in this Chronicle (counter-clockwise): Wiluša, Lazpa, Seha, Mira, Apaša, Millawanda, Arzawa, Hapalla, Lukka, Alašiya, Ugarit, Amurra,Tarša, Hatti, Hattuša.

Warfare between “Achaeans” and Hittites began c. 1400 BCE. Hittite records mention the operations of the “Achaean” warlord Attarsiya in southwestern Asia Minor, possibly in Lycia, against Hittite vassals. It is the first recorded “Achaean” military activity on the Anatolian mainland, and is associated with an increase of Mycenaean findings in Miletus in this period (early 14th century BCE), indicating that a number of Greeks moved from mainland Hellas to this region. Attarsiya used the city as a military base, and hostilities continued until circa 1250 BCE. “Achaean” activity was to interfere in Asia Minor, with the support of anti-Hittite uprisings, or through local vassal rulers that the “Achaean” king used as agents for the extension of his influence. Speculation, of course, is also present here: It has been suggested by several scholars that the warlord was none other than Atreus, a mythical king of Mycenae, and father of Agamemnon. Others, noting that the Hittites do not speak of the “high king of Achaea”, argue that he should have been some general, named Atreus, or with a similar name, or finally that Attarsiya means Atreidēs, i.e. he was a member of the royal dynasty.

In order to undermine the Hittites, the warlord intervened in Anatolian affairs attacking Hittite vassals, such as Madduwatta from Arzawa (Luwia),⁽¹⁸⁾ whom he repeatedly defeated, as the army he deployed included 100 war chariots. But he eventually withdrew from Asia Minor to prepare a campaign against Alashiya (Cyprus?). He had the Lukka (“Lycians”) on his side, providing him the necessary naval support, together with a number of his Anatolian allies, even Madduwatta, who decided to switch camps. This worried the Hittites, since they considered the island one of their dependencies. The invaders finally defeated them, and thus Alashiya passed under their control. The Mycenaean presence in Cyprus is also corroborated by archaeological evidence, as we have seen, for Mycenaean finds dating from that time were unearthed there.

Anatolian hieroglyphs

• ⁽¹⁸⁾ The Luwians lived in central, western, or southern Asia Minor, as well as the northwestern part of the Levant, in the Bronze and Iron Ages. They spoke the Luwian language, an Indo-European Anatolian tongue written in cuneiform of Mesopotamian origin, or a unique native hieroglyphic script, which was sometimes also used by the linguistically related Hittites.

The following decades were a period of Mycenaean expansion on the Anatolian coast (c. 1380–1320 BCE). In 1320-1315, there was another anti-Hittite rebellion in Arzawa, in cooperation with “Miletus”, and supported by the “Achaeans”, who appeared to be in control of a number of islands in the Aegean, an impression also supported by archaeological evidence. Finally, the Hittites were victorious. The king of Arzawa managed to escape to “Achaean”-controlled territory, and his land was split into three provinces: a southern province, Mira, would later become known as Caria; a northern province, Seha, would be renamed as Lydia; and an eastern province called Hapalla (the Grecian Pisidia). That was the finale of this kingdom’s history, which had passed into oblivion, and came back on the surface thanks to the Hittite texts.

If, indeed, the information contained in these archives corresponds up to a point to historical facts, it seems that the Mycenaean and Hittite palatial civilizations of the Aegean and Anatolia were “bored” (to death) by the same woodworms…

The Luwian Civilization: The Missing Link in the Aegean Bronze Age

ALBEIT BELATEDLY, I’VE STUDIED Eberhard Zangger’s book,⁽¹⁹⁾ The Luwian Civilization / The Missing Link in the Aegean Bronze Age (2016). I feel it is useful to outline his main points regarding the Sea Peoples:

• ⁽¹⁹⁾ Since 1994 Zangger has been advocating the view that a Luwian civilization existed in Western Asia Minor during the 2nd millennium BCE. In 2014 he established the international non-profit foundation Luwian Studies.

The Luwian Civilization / The Missing Link in the Aegean Bronze Age. Cover: probably an Atlantis-like reconstruction of Troy, the most prominent Luwian city, as Eberhard Zangger imagined it.

“Over twenty years ago, I proposed a chronological reconstruction of the political and economic development in the countries around the Eastern Mediterranean during the 13th century BCE. It causally links three wars comprised of reciprocal attacks. First, the so-called Sea Peoples’ invasions took place, during which the navy of allied Luwian petty states from the eastern shore of the Aegean Sea advanced to the southeast. The Luwians were then attacked a few years later by allied Greek forces – and this is memorialized in the tradition of the so-called Trojan War. And finally, a civil war… broke out in Greece.”

“Perhaps the trigger for the [Luwians’] decision to engage in war was [Hatti’s] conquest of Cyprus… possibly to get access to its copper resources. The Luwians in western Asia Minor played an active role in long-distance trade and may have depended on Cyprus as a port of call. Therefore they entered into a military alliance and built a fleet of fast, agile vessels for invasions. Instead of moving against the Hittite forces over land, they dashed across the sea and reached the important Hittite borderlands of Cyprus and Syria. The acclaimed mercenary armies of the Lukka and Sherden had become marine forces which no longer fought alongside the Hittite king but against him – they had formed the coalition known as the Sea Peoples… [Eventually] the capital Hattuša was wiped out overnight – and with it the Hittite Empire.”

Sphinx Gate at Hattusa

“The petty states from western Asia Minor suddenly controlled an area stretching from Macedonia across Anatolia to Syria and Canaan, where it touched upon the Egyptian dominion… Together with this vast territory, the Luwians now dominated almost all ore deposits in the Eastern Mediterranean, as well as the trade routes on land and at sea… Both the access to the Black Sea region as well as the connection through Cyprus and Syria to Mesopotamia were now under Luwian control. Considering the distribution of mineral resources, arable land, the path of the perennial rivers and of the trade routes, the Mycenaeans were about to face a superior force for an extended period of time. To avoid complete dependence… they engaged in a coalition themselves with the ultimate purpose to raid western Asia Minor… About ten years later, united Greek forces attacked western Asia Minor – and this was later remembered as the ‘Trojan War’… which was thus a counterattack against the previously victorious Sea Peoples.”

“While the Mycenaean kings were fighting at Troy, their wives and less competent deputies had taken their thrones. When the surviving victorious kings returned, many of these deputies did not want to give up their power. A civil war broke out and consumed progressively one citadel after another… Pylos – and later Ithaca – may have been among the last palaces to fall into the hands of the insurgents.” (Eberhard Zangger, The Luwian Civilization / The Missing Link in the Aegean Bronze Age; see Chronicle 26, Odysseys in the Aftermath of the Trojan War: Colonization of Iberia).

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Mycenaean gold diadem