#i told you i'm inordinately passionate about troy in the context of the late bronze age and these 4000 words are the result

[sisterofiris]

Greco-Anatolian contacts in Late Bronze Age texts, or: was there a historical Trojan War?

(This is the abridged - though still long - version of a presentation I gave during a seminar. If you’re interested in more details or sources, feel free to message me, or check out the bibliography.)

Did the Trojan War really happen? It’s a hot topic among Classicists, and has become even more so over the last 150 years. Archeological excavations in north-western Turkey, as well as the discovery of Hittite civilisation and decipherment of Hittite cuneiform tablets, have provided apparent support for the existence of Troy and the reality of a conflict over it between Greeks and Trojans. Anyone interested in the subject has probably heard the following evidence:

a large city, corresponding to Homer’s descriptions of Troy in the Iliad, was unearthed at Hisarlık; this city existed for over 3000 years and, most relevantly to our topic, suffered a major destruction around 1180 BC - a date corresponding to the traditional time frame given for the Trojan War (around 1250-1200 BC)

Hittite sources mention a city in the same region - north-western Anatolia - named Wiluša, which strongly parallels (W)ilios, another name for Troy in the Iliad

they also mention another city in the same area, Taruiša, which could be the Hittite equivalent of Greek Troia (Troy)

in a treaty Wiluša concluded with the Hittite empire around 1280 BC, an underground watercourse is mentioned; the archeological site also features an underground watercourse, therefore this site and Wiluša could be one and the same

in the same treaty, the king of Wiluša is identified as Alakšandu, the Hittite spelling of Alexander; this name has been linked to the Trojan prince Paris in the Iliad, who is also known as Alexander

the same treaty refers to a deity named Appaliuna, which can be read as Apollon, a major deity of Troy in the Iliad

Hittite texts speak regularly of the kingdom of Aḫḫiyawa, located in or beyond the Aegean Sea, a term which echoes the name for the Greeks in the Iliad, Akhai(w)oi (Achaeans)

a letter from the Hittite king to the king of Aḫḫiyawa mentions a conflict their lands had over Wiluša

Many people, from Classicists to archeologists to documentary makers, have sought to connect the dots between these elements and answer the question with a yes: there could have been a Trojan War. This is certainly an easy deduction to make. However, many of these argumentations (not all, of course; I’m not throwing everyone under the bus here, but it’s a common trend) present a serious methodological flaw. That is, they take what I like to call a “murder mystery” approach.

The “murder mystery” starts with a question: did the Trojan War happen? Arguments in favour of and against it are then sought out in the available sources. Since many arguments in favour of it are found, it’s assumed that the original question can be answered positively: the Trojan War could have happened (or, as less critical people affirm, did happen). The problem with this approach is that it treats a fictional account (Homer’s Iliad) as a hypothesis to be proven or disproven. But an epic isn’t a corpse in a mansion to be investigated until the culprit is found; it’s not even an eyewitness account. Even just treating it as something that can be proven is being biased in favour of it being at least somewhat trustworthy. Using the Iliad as a starting point also gives the central role to a narrative written 500 years after the supposed events, while sources contemporary to those events are treated as supporting evidence - not as the subject we should be delving into in the first place.

So what should be done? We cannot discuss the historicity of the Trojan War without tackling, well, the history surrounding it. In other words, and this may seem counter-productive: we need to forget about the Trojan War, to establish instead a general picture of Late Bronze Age contacts between Greeks and Anatolians along the Anatolian coast, and especially around Wiluša. Only once we have put the above “evidence” back into its context will we be able to discuss the Iliad.

So here we go - let’s use Hittite sources to find out how Greeks and Anatolians interacted in the Late Bronze Age. What kind of presence did the Greeks have on the Anatolian coast? Were western Anatolians always Hittite allies? What was the ethnicity of Wiluša’s inhabitants? Did Greeks and Hittites ever do battle? It’s all under the cut.

Setting the scene

Before we build our puzzle and see if the Trojan War piece fits into it, we need to confirm that we’ve actually got the right puzzle. This requires four proofs:

That the archeological site at Hisarlık was called Wiluša in Hittite sources;

That this site fits Homer’s description of Troy;

That Wiluša and Taruiša are the Hittite equivalents of (W)ilios and Troia;

And that the Hittites knew and interacted with the Greeks.

I won’t go into too much detail here, as these questions have been extensively discussed over the last century (if you’re curious to know more, see the bibliography). Nowadays, most experts agree that all four are likely true. While Hittite geography is still debated in many areas, the localisation of Wiluša is close to certain thanks to campaign routes detailed in royal annals, combined with archeological data from western Anatolia. Unfortunately, no written texts (except for one seal) were found at Hisarlık, which could have given definite proof of the site being Wiluša - but it’s still highly likely. Meanwhile, the Iliad contains enough geographical and topographical descriptions that its setting can be narrowed down to a very specific area, which also happens to coincide with the site at Hisarlık.

Linguistically, Wiluša being the equivalent of (W)ilios - attested in the Iliad as Ilios, but the presence of an initial digamma (w sound) is proven by the word’s metric rhythm - and Taruiša being the equivalent of Troia is perfectly plausible. So is Aḫḫiyawa for Akhai(w)oi (same as (W)ilios; the term is attested as Akhaioi but had to originally contain a digamma). The localisation of Aḫḫiyawa in or beyond the Aegean Sea, and its obvious might in Hittite texts echoing the mighty archeological sites of Late Bronze Age Greece, confirm this further. As one of my professors once said: either Aḫḫiyawa was not Greece, which would mean one powerful kingdom (Aḫḫiyawa) left traces in Hittite texts but none in the archeological record, while another (Greece) left archeological traces but no written ones... or Aḫḫiyawa was Greece, and therefore the Hittites knew the Greeks.

It should be pointed out that we don’t know if Aḫḫiyawa referred to all of Greece, or just to a part of it. Was it the Aegean islands? Pylos? Mycenae? The whole Peloponnese? Linear B texts found at Bronze Age archeological sites in Greece don’t give enough information about the political structure of the time for us to be sure. It’s clear that each city-state was governed by a king, or wanax, but we don’t know if the Hittites were only in contact with one of those kings (which would make Aḫḫiyawa a small, local kingdom) or if all city-states belonged, temporarily or permanently, to a coalition ruled by an overlord (who would be the “king of Aḫḫiyawa” mentioned in Hittite texts). Considering how uniform Late Bronze Age Greek culture was, how similar its archeological sites are and how the dialect in all Linear B tablets is identical, and considering how the king of Aḫḫiyawa was powerful enough for the Hittite king to view him as an equal, I would lean towards the coalition hypothesis - but this is yet to be proven.

The early 14th century: a Greek sword and a Hittite vassal

Let’s begin our study with the first text in which Wiluša is mentioned. This would be the Annals of Tudḫaliya I/II (we’re not sure if he was the first or the second Hittite king named Tudḫaliya), in which he describes a campaign he led against north-western Anatolia. Several city-states there, including Wiluša and Taruiša, had joined into an anti-Hittite coalition known as the Aššuwa coalition - Aššuwa being the name of the region. Tudḫaliya defeated them in battle and returned to the Hittite capital, Ḫattuša, along with spoils and captives. One of the spoils from this campaign was found in an archeological dig: it’s a sword in the Late Bronze Age Greek style.

It’s hard to determine whether the sword was forged and used by a Greek person, or whether it was an Anatolian imitation, but either way, it shows that north-western Anatolia was in contact with Greece. Moreover, it would imply that both peoples were on good terms. At the very least, they were trading partners; at most, Greeks and Anatolians - including Trojans - may have fought against Tudḫaliya together. The presence of Greeks in the area is confirmed by a much later letter, which mentions a marriage alliance between Greeks and Anatolians during this period. Could it have been in Wiluša? Did Greek and Trojan royalty intermarry? The letter in question is fragmentary, so we can’t know for certain, but as we will see later on, this hypothesis is not at all far-fetched.

But not all contact was positive. The Indictment of Madduwatta, a slightly later text, stars a Hittite vassal king named Madduwatta who ruled somewhere in south-western Anatolia (we’re not sure where, exactly) and who got into conflict with a Greek nobleman. This man, Attariššiya, tried to kill Madduwatta multiple times, to the point that Madduwatta had to ask the Hittite king for help. Most interesting is the mention of a battle between Attariššiya’s forces and the Hittite king’s, in which one general from each side was killed.

So here we have evidence of an actual, armed conflict between Greeks and Hittites. However, this was not part of an “official” Greek conquest. Attariššiya is only identified as a “man of Aḫḫiyawa”, not a king, so his interests in Anatolia were probably personal and had nothing to do with "official” policy (though he may have had unofficial support from the Greek king). He may have wanted to secure a trading post or even set up a colony; archeological evidence shows that Greeks had been present all along the coast of Anatolia since the 15th century at least, mostly trading but also settling permanently. Attariššiya’s strategy was also clearly opportunistic, as was Madduwatta’s, since they later put their past arguments aside to raid Cyprus together (much to the horror of the Hittite king).

These two instances show that Greeks were interested in Anatolia in the 14th century, and tried to secure a foothold there through whatever opportunities presented themselves - marriage alliances, raids, or battles. Likely aware of the threat the Hittites posed, they were vested in getting them out of the area. This meant that, on various occasions, Greeks allied themselves with western Anatolians... and, possibly, with Trojans.

The late 14th century: a Milesian war and a Greek deity

This strategy continued through the 14th century, leading us to a western Anatolian king named Uḫḫa-ziti. Uḫḫa-ziti ruled over Apaša, later known as Ephesus, but seems to have had power over a large area which also included Millawanda, later Miletus. In the early reign of the Hittite king Muršili II, Uḫḫa-ziti allied himself with the Greek king and handed Miletus over to him. Miletus already had a large Greek population - in fact, it was the most Greek city of western Anatolia - so this decision may well have been a welcome one for the Milesians. Muršili, however, wasn’t so pleased.

In his Annals, he describes how he sent his army against Miletus and utterly destroyed the city. (This destruction can also be seen in the archeological record.) Meanwhile, Uḫḫa-ziti had taken refuge in the Greek islands, likely under the protection of the Greek king, where he finally died. This may have been the extent of the Greek king’s help, since his official troops do not seem to have taken part in the war. While Milesian Greeks most likely fought the Hittites, and other Greeks may have independently joined the cause, the war in Miletus was ultimately between Hittites and western Anatolians.

Still, this was a major defeat for the Greeks, who saw the city with the strongest Greek presence, Miletus, conquered by the Hittites. The message was clear: western Anatolia belonged to the Hittites, so the Greeks duly suspended their expansion efforts in the area. This led to more positive interactions with the Hittites, to the point that, when Muršili fell sick, the statue of a deity from Lazpa (Lesbos) and another from Greece were brought in to heal him. Maybe Greeks and Hittites could get along after all?

The early 13th century: Wiluša takes centre stage

Muršili’s conquests in western Anatolia ushered in a new age, featuring more contacts with Greece than ever. Some of those are explicitly attested - the 13th century has more mentions of Greece in Hittite texts than any other - but others were implicit. This is the case for the aforementioned Hittite treaty with Alakšandu of Wiluša. In the historical introduction to the treaty, Wiluša is described as having always been favourable to the Hittites, taking their side and supporting them even when the city belonged officially to another kingdom. According to this treaty, Wiluša would have had stronger links with the Hittites than with anyone else.

And yet the king’s name was Alakšandu - very, very obviously the Greek name Alexander. For him to have a Greek name, there had to be a strong Greek presence in the area. Could this be the result of the 14th century marriage alliance? If so, then there had been Greek blood in the Trojan royal family for over a hundred years. And even if not, there was undoubtedly some kind of Greek element in Alakšandu’s family.

This is further confirmed by the appearance of the deity Appaliuna, probably Apollon, in the treaty. The origin of Apollon is debated, and many scholars view him as an originally Anatolian deity. Either way, for him to appear both in Bronze Age Anatolia and in later Greece, he had to have travelled either from East to West, or from West to East across the Aegean Sea - and this required contacts between Greeks and Anatolians. Hence the question: was Wiluša really closer to the Hittites than to Greece, or was this royal propaganda to minimise the Greek presence in the area?

The 13th century also saw the rise in power of Greece. Miletus may have been given back to them under Muršili II’s successor, maybe in an effort to pacify relations between Greeks and Hittites, now both among the greatest powers of the time. Ḫattušili III, who ruled in the mid-13th century, implies that Miletus belonged to Greece in a letter known as the Tawagalawa letter, concerned with a renegade who had taken refuge in Miletus. Since the city was owned by the Greek king, Ḫattušili had to write to him to ask for the renegade to be extradited. The same letter features the most famous quote about our topic:

The king of Ḫatti, regarding the matter of the city of Wiluša over which we became hostile, has convinced me regarding that matter. We have made peace. Now hostility is no longer right between us.

This is the only mention, in the entirety of Hittite sources, about a conflict that directly opposed the Greek king and the Hittite king. But was it a war - or just a political disagreement, solved through diplomacy? Other disagreements between both kings are recorded, including one over some Aegean islands and to which kingdom they belonged. And even if there was a war over Wiluša, did it really happen in the mid-13th century, or was Ḫattušili referring to a much earlier event?

Unfortunately we don’t have answers. What we can say is that this conflict parallels the treaty with Alakšandu: both the Hittites and the Greeks were interested in Wiluša, and both sides may well have believed the city belonged to them. They certainly had good reason to invest their efforts there. Wiluša, being located at the mouth of the Dardanelles, controlled the trade routes to the Black Sea, and for two expanding kingdoms, the prospect of trade in that area must have been very attractive indeed.

The late 13th and early 12th century: the end of an era

The return of Miletus to the Greeks gave them a foothold in western Anatolia and coincided with a rise in their power. But at the same time, the Hittite presence in the area was slowly becoming more permanent, and in the late 13th century, the Hittite king managed to acquire Miletus again. From then on, he no longer considered the Greek king as an equal.

It’s very hard to tell what happened afterwards. No mentions of Greece survive in Hittite texts from the turn of the 13th century, and Hittite civilisation was destroyed within the first decade of the 12th century. Our only source for these final years comes from Linear B tablets found in Greece. These tablets, preserved by fire when the palaces where they were stored burned down, were not meant to be permanent: they only recorded lists of goods and personnel that had entered the palaces in the last few months before their destruction. Several of these tablets listed women from western Anatolian localities, and one group specifically is identified as “women from Aswiya”. Aswiya has been interpreted as the Greek name for Aššuwa - the region where Wiluša was located. (Incidentally, it may also very well be the origin of our word “Asia”.)

This tablet would indicate that the Greeks were still active in the region, either participating in slave trade or conducting raids and bringing back captives. It also gives us an idea of what goods they might have sought out in western Anatolia. Very few Anatolian objects were found at Late Bronze Age Greek sites, but the Linear B tablets could point towards imported goods being of a more perishable nature - that is, human workers, and since the women were most likely involved in weaving, textiles. These imports seem to have been ongoing right up until Greek civilisation itself came to an end, in the first couple of decades of the 12th century.

Back to the Trojan War

That was a lot of information, so let’s summarise. Greeks and Hittites interacted over the course of three centuries in the Late Bronze Age, as both civilisations were interested in securing a foothold in western Anatolia. While Hittite sources paint the region as always having been favourable towards the Hittites, reading between the lines shows that western Anatolians also had strong, often positive links to Greece. This was the case in Miletus, which had a sizeable Greek population, as well as in Troy, where the royal family itself had Greek ties.

The Greek strategy in western Anatolia was clearly opportunistic. Footholds were gained through raids and alliances with local kings - whatever suited the Greeks best at that moment - and outright war with the Hittites seems to have been avoided, for the most part. Once the Greek king acquired Miletus, he was considered equal to the Hittite king, but this changed with the Hittite re-conquest of Miletus after which Greco-Hittite relations ended abruptly and negatively. The Greeks, however, did not give up on western Anatolia until their own civilisation collapsed, at the end of the Bronze Age.

So what about the Trojan War in all this? It’s clear that the Iliad preserves the memory of the Late Bronze Age, between its city named (W)ilios/Troy, its Greeks wearing boar’s tusk helmets (discovered in Bronze Age Greek graves), its Trojan prince named Alexander, and its Greek kings using the ancient title wanax. Could the war itself have been based on a real event, too?

Currently, scholars are divided between two main hypotheses. The first is that there truly was a war over Troy opposing Greeks and Anatolians. This may have been the conflict that Ḫattušili III mentions in his letter to the Greek king, which would place the war at around 1250 BC. Alternatively, one could attribute the violent destruction of Troy around 1180 BC, attested in the archeological record, to the Greeks - perhaps as a last resort after having lost Miletus. The problem with this latter theory is that Greek civilisation itself was being destroyed by 1180: both Mycenae and Pylos, two major sites, went up in flames between 1190 and 1180. If the Greeks did attack Troy around that time, it would have been part of a migration seeking to establish themselves elsewhere, not as a concerted, strategic effort to expand an already dying kingdom.

The second main hypothesis is that the Iliad was inspired not by a single event, but by the many conflicts that opposed Greeks and Anatolians along the coast during the Late Bronze Age. The Trojan War may even have been a cross-cultural trope: a Hittite text quotes a song in Luwian (one of the languages of western Anatolia) about Wiluša. So both Greeks and western Anatolians may well have sung stories about Troy, and about wars against each other, eventually combining them into a single epic we know as the Iliad.

Conclusion: war... and peace?

The possibility of a cross-cultural Iliad, shaped by centuries of Greco-Anatolian contacts, leads us to the question of positive interactions between those peoples. This topic is just as significant as it is under-studied. Since most people are interested in the historicity of the Trojan War, many studies have focused on conflicts in the area, but as we have seen, Greeks and western Anatolians didn’t just fight; they were often trading partners, and even allies. Hittite sources depict western Anatolians, including Trojans, as having always been on the Hittite side, but this may not reflect reality so much as a pro-Hittite, anti-Greek bias - since Hittite relations with Greece were often tense.

(Side note: our bias towards viewing Greeks and Anatolians as enemies is also due to the way we’ve opposed Western civilisations to Eastern ones ever since Herodotus’ Histories. Most of my current research focuses on how Greeks and Anatolians interacted and saw each other before the Persian Wars, and it turns out relations were a lot more positive than you’d expect. Even in Archaic times, Lydians, Lycians, Carians and the rest weren’t “Eastern barbarians” - they were major trading partners, fashionable ladies, neighbours across the street, and even, in some cases, Mum or Dad. But I digress. Back to the Bronze Age.)

These positive interactions between Greeks and western Anatolians are also reflected in the Iliad. The Trojans aren’t depicted as barbarian foreigners, but as a people strikingly similar to the Greeks, who speak the same language and worship the same Gods. Many Greek heroes also have links to Anatolia, and vice versa: see, for example, the exchange between Diomedes and Glaucus in Book 6. The Iliad may even contain echoes of Hittite culture, such as Patroclus’ funeral which is strikingly similar to royal Hittite burial rites, or the name of king Telephos which has been linked to the Hittite name Telepinu.

In fact, Greek mythology in general is rife with Anatolian elements. There is enough material on the topic to write an entire book, so I won’t delve into it here, but suffice to say that Greek culture soaked up external influences like a sponge. Until recently, this was thought to be the result of the Orientalising period (8th-6th century BC), but it seems more and more likely that this cultural exchange dates back to a far earlier time.

So was there a Trojan War? There could have been - but maybe that’s not the right question to ask. Maybe we should be looking, instead, into a Trojan Ambiguous Relationship motivated by several centuries of shifting political alliances along the western Anatolian coast, and leading to significant cultural exchange. Or even - who knows - a Trojan Peace.

Bibliography

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Beckman G., Hittite Diplomatic Texts, Atlanta 1996.

Beckman G., Bryce T., Cline E., The Ahhiyawa Texts, Atlanta 2011.

Bryce T., « The Nature of Mycenaean Involvement in Western Anatolia », Historia: Zeitschrift für Alte Geschichte 38 (1989), 1-21.

Bryce T., The Kingdom of the Hittites, Oxford 2005.

Cline E., The Trojan War: A Very Short Introduction, Oxford 2013.

Cline E., 1177 B.C.: The Year Civilisation Collapsed, Princeton 2014.

Collins B. J., Bachvarova M., Rutherford I. (ed.), Anatolian Interfaces: Hittites, Greeks and their Neighbours, Oxford 2008.

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