Bryce, Trevor R. Anatolian Scribes in Mycenaean Greece

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Anatolian Scribes in Mycenaean Greece Author(s): Trevor R. Bryce Source: Historia: Zeitschrift für Alte Geschichte, Bd. 48, H. 3 (3rd Qtr., 1999), pp. 257-264Published by: Franz Steiner VerlagStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4436547Accessed: 23-09-2015 22:13 UTC

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ANATOLIAN SCRIBES IN MYCENAEAN GREECE

In the well known Hittite document commonly (though misleadingly) called the Tawagalawa letter, the Hittite king Hattusili III wrote to the king of Ahhiyawa complaining about the insurrectionist activities in western Anatolia of the Hittite renegade Piyamaradu.I The latter, who was apparently operating with the Ahhiyawan king's support, had eluded Hattusili's attempts to capture him and had taken refuge in Ahhiyawan territory. Hattusili's letter sought his extradition, or at least the Ahhiyawan king's cooperation in preventing further attacks by him on Hittite subject territory.

This letter is the only surviving clearly identifiable piece of correspondence between the Hittite and Ahhiyawan royal courts. It is not the original document sent to Ahhiyawa, but a copy of it made for reference purposes and kept in the archives of the Hittite capital. The copy was written in Hittite. What language was used in the original? Communications between the Hittite and foreign royal courts were generally written in Akkadian, the international language of diplo- macy in the Late Bronze Age Near East. The same applies to many of the Hittite king's communications with his vassal rulers, particularly those in Syria. Like the Tawagalawa letter, a number of these communications survive in Hittite versions, and sometimes Akkadian versions, representing either drafts or copies of the originals. Also in a diplomatic context, copies of the treaties contracted between Hittite kings and their foreign counterparts and vassal rulers were often made in both Hittite and Akkadian versions.

On the other hand, all surviving documents recording communications between Hittite kings and their vassal rulers in western Anatolia are in Hittite. Indeed it is most unlikely that Akkadian was ever used in these communications. Understandably, since Luwian was the primary language of the western subject states, and as it was closely related to Hittite (both were Indo-European languages), the latter would have been much more easily learned by native Luwian speakers than the Semitic Akkadian language. Indeed in a letter sent to the pharaoh Amenhotep III by a king of Arzawa, the postscript contains a request from the scribe that all future correspondence be conducted in Hittite (i.e. not in Akkadian):

1 KUB (Keilschrifturkunden aus Boghazkoi, Berlin) XIV 3, ed. F. Sommer, Die Ahhijava- Urkunden, Munich, 1931, repr. Hildesheim, 1975, 2-194, transl. in part by J. Garstang and O.R. Gurney, The Geography of the Hittite Empire, London, 1959, 111-14.

Historia, Band XLVIII/3 (1999) C) Franz Steiner Verlag Wiesbaden GmbH, Sitz Stuttgart



258 TREVOR R. BRYCE

You, scribe, write well to me; put down, moreover, your name. The tablets that are brought here always write in Hittite!2

If scribes from the Luwian-speaking Arzawan countries had difficulty with Akkadian, or at least were more at home with Hittite, then the latter was obviously the appropriate language for communications between the Hittite king and his western vassals.

But what language was used in communications between Hittite and Ahhi- yawan kings, and thus in the original of the Tawagalawa letter? Most scholars now accept that Ahhiyawa was the Hittite way of referring to the Mycenaean world.3 Although we still lack incontrovertible proof of the Ahhiyawan-Mycen- aean equation, the circumstantial evidence in favour of it is, in my view, over- whelming. In the discussion which follows, I make the assumption that Ahhiya- wa does in fact refer to the Mycenaean world, or in some contexts to a specific kingdom within that world. On this assumption the native language of the recipient of the Tawagalawa letter was Mycenaean Greek.

But we can hardly admit the possibility that the original of the Tawagalawa letter was written in his language (see below). Nor is it likely that it was written in Akkadian. That was appropriate for communications with kings and vassals of the Near East who lived within a Semitic-speaking orbit. It was also appropriate for communications with the royal court of Egypt, which like the Hittite court had scribes in its chancellery who were fluent in Akkadian. But it is very difficult to believe that Akkadian was used as a lingua franca in communications with a kingdom which was far removed from the Akkadian-speaking world and had relatively tenuous links with this world.

The likelihood is that the original of the Tawagalawa letter as well as the copy kept in Hattusa was written in Hittite. If so, does this mean that Mycen- aean kings, or at least their scribes, could read Hittite?

Quite possibly there were a number of Mycenaean Greeks, including scribes, who had some knowledge of the languages spoken in Anatolia, particularly in the west, as a result of close Mycenaean involvement in western Anatolian affairs.4 Luwian was the predominant language in the region, and, through regular commercial and social intercourse, Luwian and Mycenaean speakers may well have acquired some knowledge of each other's language for the purposes of oral communication. It is also possible that some Mycenaean

2 From EA (letters from El-Amarna) 32, adapted from the translation by V. Haas in W.

Moran, The Amarna Letters, Baltimore, 1992, 103. 3 See, for example, the papers published by H.G. Guterbock, M.J. Mellink, and E. Ver-

meule under the general title "The Hittites and the Aegean World", American Journal of

Archaeology 87, 1983, 133-143. See also T.R. Bryce, "Ahhiyawans and Mycenaeans - an

Anatolian Viewpoint", Oxford Journal of Archaeology 8, 1989, 297-3 10.

4 For the extent of this involvement, see Bryce, "The Nature of Mycenaean Involvement in

Western Anatolia", Historia 38, 1989, 1-21.



Anatolian Scribes in Mycenaean Greece 259

Greeks acquired a smattering of Hittite. But that is a far cry from an ability to read and understand lengthy diplomatic correspondence in the language.

In any case literacy in the Late Bronze Age world was probably confined to a professional scribal class. From the Linear B tablets it is clear that there was such a class in Mycenaean Greece. But it is highly questionable whether Mycenaean scribes had the ability to read documents written in Hittite. This would in the first place have involved mastering the complex cuneiform script, which was totally alien to the script used in their own documents, as well as acquiring fluency in at least one of the languages for which it was used. The task of learning the script was a formidable and lengthy one, even for scribes who were working in their own or a closely related language.

Moreover, as far as we know, the Linear B script used by the Mycenaeans was confined to the labelling of goods or compiling of inventories - lists of items for export, weapons and armour, temple dedications, personnel, palace goods, records of produce, and the like. As yet we have no evidence that it was used more extensively, for writing letters, recording treaties and rituals, compiling collections of laws, and so on, as in the Near Eastern world. That required a much higher order of reading, writing, and compositional skills than those reflected in the Linear B tablets. It is most unlikely that Mycenaeans themselves were involved with the task of reading and translating cuneiform documents originating from the Hittite royal court. If not, then there must have been others in the Mycenaean courts who were capable of doing so.

By the middle of the 13th century a substantial number of western Anatoli- ans were living in the Mycenaean world. The most explicit evidence for this is provided by the Tawagalawa letter which indicates that in the reign of Hattusili some 7000 Hittite subjects from the Lukka lands had been transplanted to Ahhiyawa. Some had gone voluntarily, apparently to escape Hittite overlordship, others had been forcibly removed by Piyamaradu from their homeland.5 Piya- maradu himself had been granted a new home for his family and retinue in Ahhiyawan/Mycenaean territory. Further, from the Linear B tablets we know that western Anatolia was one of the regions from which labour was recruited for the Mycenaean palace workforces, for domestic service, textile-making, and so on.6 Indeed recruitment of labour from western Anatolia may have been one of the primary incentives for Mycenaean interest and involvement in the region.7

Apart from personnel for the palace-industries, a substantial workforce was undoubtedly needed for the massive building projects of the Mycenaean world, notably the construction, maintenance, and extension of the Mycenaean palaces

5 Tawagalawa letter, ? 9 (KUB XIV 3 III 7-17). 6 See M. Ventris and J. Chadwick, D)ocuments in Mycenaean Greek, Cambridge, 1959,

156, J. Chadwick, The Mvcenaean World, Cambridge, 1976, 80-1. 7 See Bryce, "The Nature of Mycenaean Involvement" (as in n. 4), 13-14.



260 TREVOR R. BRYCE

and citadels. Labour requirements may well have led to local workforces being supplemented by the recruitment of manpower, through raids and other means, from across the Aegean. In such a context we might note the Greek literary tradition which credits the building of the walls of Tiryns to Cyclopes from Lycia.8 In a Late Bronze Age context, the Lycians were a Luwian-speaking Lukka people from south west Anatolia, many of whom as we have seen were resettled in the Mycenaean world around the middle of the 13th century. It is not inconceivable that the literary tradition, albeit a late-attested one, has some basis in fact.

The thousands of Anatolian settlers in Greece almost certainly included some who had been trained as scribes. Written communications between the Hittite king and his western vassal rulers indicate the employment in the vassal courts of scribes who could read and write Hittite cuneiform. Their role was obviously an important one in the interaction between Hittite king and vassal ruler. On the other hand, in view of the Mycenaean Greeks' commercial and political dealings with the peoples of western Anatolia, it is very likely that these western scribes also played a role in communications with the Mycenaean world, acquiring in the process some knowledge of the Mycenaean Greek language. If they could speak and read Hittite and Luwian, and also had a knowledge of the spoken language of the Mycenaean people, they could render valuable service at a Mycenaean court, as scribes and interpreters. Although we have only one surviving letter written by a Hittite king to his Ahhiyawan counterpart, and none written by an Ahhiyawan king to a Hittite king, we can have little doubt that there were other instances of diplomatic communications between Ahhiyawa and Hatti, particularly during the first half of the 13th century, the period of the most intense Mycenaean activity in western Anatolia.

The services of Anatolian scribes in the Mycenaean court were probably not limited to communications and exchanges with the Hittite king. Given the Mycenaean king's political and military interests in Anatolia, it is not unlikely that some of his communications with western Anatolians who supported his interests or whom he sought to influence or win over were conducted in writing, in Hittite or Luwian cuneiform. Further, there may well have been written documents formalizing agreements or contracts with persons like Atpa, the local Anatolian appointed as ruler of Millawanda (Miletos) under Ahhiyawan overlordship in the 13th century.9 If so, then almost certainly the documents were prepared by Luwian scribes in the service of Atpa's Mycenaean overlord.

A word about the material on which letters were written in the Late Bronze Age. We know from references in the Hittite texts that Hittite scribes wrote on clay, metal, and wood. Although no examples of the last of these have survived,

8 Strabo 8.6.1 1. 9 As indicated in the Tawagalawa letter, ?? 5-6 (KUB XIV 3 I 53 ff.).




their use is well attested in a number of documents, through references, for example, to "scribes of the wooden tablets".10 Copies of important documents were made on clay and stored in the archives of the royal capital. We know that the originals of treaties were often if not invariably inscribed on metal - iron, silver, or bronze. What material was used for letters? In the absence of any explicit evidence, it is likely that the original letters sent to vassal rulers or foreign kings were inscribed on wax-coated wooden tablets, which were hinged and folded. If so, the highly perishable nature of this material would explain why no original letters have been discovered in Anatolia, or in any of the ancient kingdoms with whom the Hittites corresponded.

There were, however, remains of a wooden tablet in the Bronze Age shipwreck recently discovered at Ulu Burun off the coast of Lycia, near the modern Turkish town Kas. 1I And the well known, and only, reference to writing in Homer refers to just such a tablet. In Book 6 of the Iliad, Diomedes gives a detailed account of the exploits of his grandfather Bellerophon (lines 1 19-236). According to this account, Bellerophon came originally from Argos, the kingdom ruled by Proetus. Proetus' wife fell in love with Bellerophon, but when he rejected her advances, she falsely accused him before her husband of trying to seduce her. Outraged, Proetus sent Bellerophon to Lycia, in southwestern Anatolia, with a letter to be delivered to the Lycian king, Proetus' father-in-law. The letter contained instructions for its bearer to be put to death. The strange unintelligible script in which the letter was written ensured that its contents remained unknown to Bellerophon:

"So into Lycia he sent him, charged to bear a deadly cipher, magical marks Proetus engraved and hid in folded tablets."1 2

What is to be made of this "deadly cipher", these "magical marks"? If the tradition has a genuine Bronze Age origin, it may have arisen out of an episode which involved a letter written in Luwian cuneiform.'3 If so, there is little wonder that the Greek Bellerophon would have been unable to read it, and that the Lycian king or his scribe had no trouble in doing so. Luwian was the language of Bronze Age Lycia, part of the Lukka Lands. The employment of a Luwian scribe in the Argive king's service would have ensured that the letter he

10 As in KUB XIII 35 (+) IV 28, and the letter KBo (Keilschrifttexte aus Boghazkofi, Leipzig/ Berlin) IX 82 where the "chief of the wooden tablet scribes" is one of the court advisers.

I I See G. Bass, "Oldest Known Shipwreck Reveals Splendors of the Bronze Age", National Geographic 172, 1987, 693-732.

12 ll 6, 168-69, transl. R. Fitzgerald. 13 This was first suggested and discussed at some length by F.J. Tritsch, "Bellerophon's

Letter", Acta of the Ist International Congress of Mycenaean Studies, Rome, 1967, 1223- 30.



262 TREV1OR R. BRYCE

was commissioned to write in his own language could be read by its recipient, but not by the postman.

We have suggested that amongst the thousands of Anatolians who found new homes in the Mycenaean world there were a number equipped with the skills to become scribes and interpreters in the Mycenaean courts. The scribal training which they had received in their original homeland was now used in the service of their new overlords. Yet they may well have brought with them more than their specific professional skills. If they had been trained in the standard Near Eastern scribal school tradition, their training would have obliged them to learn the 'classics' of Mesopotamia, notably literary traditions emanating from the Sumerian, Babylonian, and Hurrian peoples which found their way into the Hittite world. 14 Further to the west, in another world that was clearly receptive to stories of heroes and great achievements from the past as well as the present, it is very probable that traditions from the Near East also became known in Mycenaean court circles - at least partly through the agency of Luwian scribes who had become familiar with them in the course of their scribal training. These traditions might well have included the Gilgamesh epic, which was preserved in the intellectual milieu of the scribal schools (there was a Hittite version of the epic, which still survives in fragmentary form), as well as the Hurrian myths which were later to influence Hesiod's Theogony.

In recent years a number of scholars have brought into sharper focus the nature and extent of the role played by the Near East in shaping Greek culture, in both the Late Bronze and Early Iron Ages. 5 More specifically there is an increasing awareness of the pervasive influence exercised by Near Eastern poetic and mythological traditions on the poetry of Homer and Hesiod.16 The question is whether this influence was a feature of early Iron Age contacts, or whether it was already in play at least several centuries before, in the Late Bronze Age. Commercial and cultural contacts were well established between the Mycenaean world and the Syro-Palestine region, and indirectly extended further east into Mesopotamia. As Martin West points out, "the Mycenaean world was not a sealed unit but part of an international nexus."i7

14 See G. Beckman, "Mesopotamians and Mesopotamian Learning at Hattusa", Journal of Cuneiform Studies 35, 1983, 97-114.

15 Note, for example. W. Burkert, The Orientalizing Revolution, Cambridge (Mass.) and London, 1992.

16 For example, M. West observes that "The Homeric and Hesiodic picture of the gods' organization, and of the past struggles by which they achieved it, has so much in common with the picture presented in Babylonian and Ugaritic poetry that it must have been formed under eastern influence" ("Ancient Near Eastern Myths in Classical Greek Thought") in Civilizations of the Ancient Near East, ed. J.M. Sasson, New York, 36).

17 "Ancient Near Eastern Myths" (as in n. 16), 33f. S.P. Morris comments that the Late




The actual mechanisms of cultural interaction between the Bronze Age Near Eastern and Greek worlds are also becoming clearer. Notable in this respect is the Ulu Burun shipwreck. The ship's cargo of copper and tin ingots and luxury items provides a material illustration of the commercial links between Egypt, the Levant and Greece in the 14th-13th centuries B.C. and the nature of the trade between these regions. There may also have been other cargo not identifiable in the archaeological record - what Morris refers to as "human talent".'8 The evident admiration of the Mycenaean world for the artistic accomplishments of their neighbours to the east may well have served as an incentive for Near Eastern craftsmen to travel to the Mycenaean world, bring- ing with them the skills which they could practise and teach in their new homeland.

Morris postulates a westward diaspora of Levantine craftsmen and merchants in the Late Bronze Age, including entrepreneurs in search of new resources and markets, and travelling along the established trade routes. The new arrivals in the west no doubt included many skilled in the arts of metallurgy and other manual crafts, as well as healers, seers, and singers or poets, as listed amongst the categories of demioergoi in Od. 17.382-85.19 At all events, it is very likely that in the Bronze Age skilled craftsmen, immigrant and itinerant, were the most important agents of east-west cultural transmission.

To judge from artifactual evidence alone, commercial and cultural interaction between Mycenaean Greece and Hittite Anatolia appears much more tenuous than Mycenaean interaction with other Near Eastern regions like the Levant.20 Yet as we have seen, evidence from the Hittite texts indicates a significant diaspora of western Anatolians resettling in the Mycenaean world during and perhaps also before the 13th century. It is highly probable that the new settlers included a number who brought with them the manual and intellectual skills also recently attributed to other Near Eastern immigrants to Greece in the Late Bronze Age.

Bronze Age ushered in the most significant phase of Aegean relations with the Near East, an "international age" of lasting intellectual and social exchanges as well as commercial transactions linking the Aegean with the Hittite, Egyptian, and Mesopotamian empires (Daidalos and the Origins of Greek Art, Princeton, 1992, 102). See also J. Puhvel, Homer and Hittite, Innsbruck, 1991; id., "A Hittite Calque in the Iliad", Historische Sprachfor- schung 106, 1993, 33-8. Puhvel identifies a number of Hittite-Homeric linguistic and literary parallels which are further suggestive of significant Near Eastern cultural influence on the Mycenaean world during the Late Bronze Age.

18 "Daidalos and Kadmos: Classicism and 'Orientalism"', Arethusa Special Issue, Fall, 1989, 43.

19 See Morris, Daidalos (as in n. 17), 115. Cf. Burkert, The Orientalizing Revolution (as in n. 15), 6.

20 See the discussions by E. Cline, "Hittite Objects in the Bronze Age Aegean", Anatolian Studies 41, 1991, 133-43; "A Possible Hittite Embargo against the Mycenaeans", Hist- oria 40, 1991, 1-9.



264 TREVOR R. BRYCE

In such a context it is quite conceivable that literary traditions originating in the Near East first became known in Greece during the Mycenaean period, through the agency of Anatolian scribes in the service of Mycenaean kings as well as through other agents, such as dot6ot of Levantine origin. Within this stream of east-west cultural transmission, the Gilgamesh tradition very likely made its first appearance in the Greek world. If so it may well have exercised, already at this comparatively early stage, a significant influence on the develop- ment and shaping of the traditions which provided the genesis of Homeric epic. This in no way rules out the possibility of a second, later period of cultural transmission, during the so-called Orientalizing period (c. 750-650 B.C.) when itinerant craftsmen from the Near East may once again have brought to the Greek world a range of manual and intellectual skills, including the Semitic art of writing, and a range of literary traditions, some of which may already have found their way westwards half a millennium earlier.21

University of Canterbury, Christchurch, New Zealand Trevor R. Bryce

20 While West ("Ancient Near Eastern Myths"las in n. 16], 345) believes that Near Eastern influence on the poetry of Hesiod and Homer was probably due to post-Mycenaean contacts, he comments that an older stratum of borrowing may also be involved. Cf. Burkert: "It should be clear that ..... Bronze Age and later adoptions are not mutually exclusive; the impossibility of always making clear-cut distinctions cannot be used to refute the hypothesis of borrowing in both areas to an equal degree" (The Orientalizing Revolution las in n. 15], 6). Cf. also Morris, "Daidalos and Kadmos" (as in n. 18), 46-8.



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Bryce, Trevor R. Anatolian Scribes in Mycenaean Greece