Identity
Since the decipherment of the somewhat younger Linear B tablets, it is thought that the people called Mycenaeans might have been Achaeans or later subjected by them. No written source found at a Mycenaean site reveals what they called themselves. Upon a reading of the Iliad, where the residents of the Peloponnesus and adjacent islands are often called Achaeans, and taking into account mention of the Ahhiyawa in Hittite sources from the Late Bronze Age, the theory suggests itself that the Mycenaeans could possibly even be Achaeans. The Tawagalawa Letter written by an unnamed Hittite king of the empire period (14th-13th century BC) to the king of Ahhiyawa, treating him as an equal, suggests that Miletus (Millawanda) was under his control and refers to an earlier "Wilusa episode" involving hostility on the part of Ahhiyawa. Ahhiya(wa) has been identified with the Achaeans of the Trojan War and the city of Wilusa with the legendary city of Troy. However the exact relationship of the term Ahhiyawa to the Achaeans beyond a similarity in pronunciation is hotly debated by scholars, even following the discovery that Mycenaean Linear B is an early form of Greek; the earlier debate was summed up in 1984 by Hans G. Güterbock of the Oriental Institute.
Read more about this topic: Mycenaean Greece
Famous quotes containing the word identity:
“Though your views are in straight antagonism to theirs, assume an identity of sentiment, assume that you are saying precisely that which all think, and in the flow of wit and love roll out your paradoxes in solid column, with not the infirmity of a doubt.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“The modern world needs people with a complex identity who are intellectually autonomous and prepared to cope with uncertainty; who are able to tolerate ambiguity and not be driven by fear into a rigid, single-solution approach to problems, who are rational, foresightful and who look for facts; who can draw inferences and can control their behavior in the light of foreseen consequences, who are altruistic and enjoy doing for others, and who understand social forces and trends.”
—Robert Havighurst (20th century)
“During the first formative centuries of its existence, Christianity was separated from and indeed antagonistic to the state, with which it only later became involved. From the lifetime of its founder, Islam was the state, and the identity of religion and government is indelibly stamped on the memories and awareness of the faithful from their own sacred writings, history, and experience.”
—Bernard Lewis, U.S. Middle Eastern specialist. Islam and the West, ch. 8, Oxford University Press (1993)