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Perseus and the Achaeans in the Hittite Tablets

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 December 2013

A. H. Sayce
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Extract

Dr. Forrer's discovery of the Achaeans in the Hittite cuneiform tablets of Boghaz Keui is now well known to classical scholars. His identification of them with the Hittite Akhkhiyawas is beyond question, and I am inclined to think that Dr. Cowley has made a happy suggestion in further identifying them with the Hivites (Ha-Khiwwî) of the Old Testament. On the other hand, the identification of the Akhkhiyan chieftain Attarassiyas (also written Attarsiyas) with the Homeric Atreus is phonetically impossible; nor would the date of Attarsiyas agree with that usually assigned by tradition to Atreus.

About 1250 B.C. Attarsiyas the kuirwanas or κοίρανος of the Akhkhiyawa came from the western side of Asia Minor with a fleet of 100 ships to the Pamphylian coast (hardly the Karian, as Forrer proposes). He had previously driven a tributary of the Hittite king, by name Madduwattas, from his dominions in the south-western part of Asia Minor; Dudkhaliyas III, however, the Hittite monarch, had restored the latter, but on the death of Dudkhaliyas, and in the first year of the reign of his successor, Arnuwandas, Attarsiyas made another attack, this time by sea, and again compelled Madduwattas to solicit help from his suzerain.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of Hellenic Studies , Volume 45 , Issue 2 , 1925 , pp. 161 - 163
Copyright
Copyright © The Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies 1925

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References

page 161 note 1 The German excavations at Boghaz Keui, the Cappadocian capital of the Hittite Empire, in 1907–8, brought to light two libraries of cuneiform tablets, mostly belonging to the 14th century B.C., though some of them are of earlier date. About 20,000, including fragments, are at Berlin, others are in Constantinople. The Berlin collection is being rapidly copied and published. During the war, the Swiss Assyriologist, Dr. Forrer, was engaged to work upon them, and his knowledge of the texts is therefore more extensive than that of any other scholar.

page 161 note 2 The name Madduwattas is parallel to the Lydian Sadyattes. Alyattes. Since m and w are expressed by the same cuneiform character, we could read Wadduwattas cp. Adyattes.

page 162 note 1 Cf. the name of Urpalla, king of Tukhana, near Tyana, in the time of Tiglasthpileser IV.