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A Mycenaean sword from Boğazköy–Hattusa found in 19911

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 September 2013

O. Hansen
O. Hansen
Affiliation:
Athens
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Abstract

This paper deals with a bronze sword found during repair work on a road close to the Hittite capital of Hattusas in central Anatolia. It carries an Akkadian inscription stating that it was taken as booty by the Hittite king Tuthaliyas II during his campaign in the Assuwa country of western Asia Minor, c.1430 BC. The content of the inscription may be evidence of Ahhiyawan-Mycenaean Greek warfare in western Asia Minor in the Late Bronze Age, and/or of a historical background for the Trojan war.

Type
Articles
Information
Annual of the British School at Athens , Volume 89 , November 1994 , pp. 213 - 215
Copyright
Copyright © The Council, British School at Athens 1994

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References

2 Ünal, A., Ertekin, A., and Ediz, İ., ‘The Hittite sword from Boğazköy–Hattusa, found 1991, and its Akkadian inscription’, Müze, 4 (1990–1991), 46–52Google Scholar (in Turkish with English translation).

3 Ibid., pp. 50–1 of English text.

4 Ibid. 51, col. i fin.

5 At Masat Höyük, c.100 km NE of Hattusas towards the modern town of Amasya, several Mycenaean finds have been made since excavations were undertaken in 1945, and particularly from the early 1970s on.

6 Karo, G., Schachtgräber von Mykenai, 204–6Google Scholar, with list of examples and characteristics on p. 205; Sandars, N. K., ‘The first Aegean swords and their ancestry’, AJA 63 (1961), 17–29, esp. 17–18, 22–4, 27–8.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

7 e.g. Garstang, J. and Gurney, O. R., The Geography of the Hittite Empire (Occasional Publications of the British Institute of Archaeology at Ankara, 5; London, 1959), 120–5.Google Scholar For the ascription to Tuthaliyas see Carruba, O., ‘Beiträge zur mittelhethitischen Geschichte, i: die Tuthalijas und die Arnuwandas’, SMEA 18 (1977), 137—74, esp. 158–61Google Scholar; Güterbock, H. G., ‘Troy in Hittite texts? Wilusa, Ahhiyawa, and Hittite history’, in Troy and the Trojan War: A Symposium held at Bryn Mawr College (October 1984), 39.Google Scholar The chronicle is KUB xxiii. 27; 28; 13.

8 Garstang and Gurney (n. 7).

9 Here I follow e.g. Güterbock (n. 7 and elsewhere).

10 Already as early as Hattusili I of the mid-17th cent., Hittite kings were accustomed to dedicate their booty to protective deities as an expression of gratitude for divine assistance. Cf. KBo 10.2 i 10 ff. and KUB 24.3 ii 44 ff.; Ünal et al. (n. 2), 52.

11 e.g. Kretschmer, P., ‘Alaksandus, König von Vilusa’, Glotta, 13 (1924), 205–13Google Scholar, an article based on a mere mention of the text by Hrozný, F., Journal of the Society for Oriental Research, 6 (1922), 67.Google Scholar Kretschmer wrote before the appearance of Forrer's, E. much-discussed article ‘Vorhomerische Griechen in den Keilschrifttexten von Boghazköi’, Mitteilungen der Deutschen Orient-Gesellschaft, 63 (1924), 1–2Google Scholar, which he could only cite in a postscript. D. D. Luckenbill had noticed the similarity of Alaksandus with Alexandros of the Iliad as early as 1911 (‘A possible occurrence of the name Alexander in the Boghaz-Keui tablets’, CP 6 (1911), 85–6).

12 ‘The language of the Trojans’, in Bryn Mawr symposium (n. 7), 53 n. 13.

13 Callimachus, Sos. 24; Anth. Pal. vii. 218. Cf. Watkins (n. 12), 53fin.

14 This phrase occurs first in a Hittite–Hattic bilingual prayer in the old ductus: see E. Neu, StBoT 25, nos. 112, II. 4–6; 113, II. 14–16. Furthermore, Strabo (xii. 550) records that for ‘Alizones’ (-noi) some read ‘Alazones’, other ‘Amazones’. I fully agree with Watkins that E. Laroche's assertion that the equation of the Amazons with the Hittites ‘rests on nothing’ is in need of correction: not only because of the discovery of the present sword, but also on account of the famous black-figured neck amphora in the British Museum depicting Achilles slaying the Amazon Penthesileia. Cf. the memorable SAL GIŠBAN, ‘female archer’ or ‘woman of the bow’, of Hittite ritual. (Penthesileia herself carries arrows.) See Cook, B. F., Greek and Roman Art in the British Museum (London, 1976), 50.Google ScholarLaroche's, article is published as ‘Linguistique asianique’, Minos, 11 (1970) [1972], 112–35Google Scholar (quotation on 126).