Sea Peoples and Luwians

Although the Sea People vanished from the political records, they left a legacy second to none in world history. In Palestine, where many clans from both Greece and western Anatolia sought refuge, the Philistine and Phoenician civilizations arose, reviving and spreading much of the inventiveness in metallurgy, seafaring, warfare and trade that had characterized fallen Troy and its allies. The civilization of Rome claimed to have originated with Aeneas of Troy. And the memory of Troy and the Trojan War stood firmly at the center of interest for Western scholars up through the Middle Ages. Today it still remains one of the central legends of the West, related by one of the most eloquent poets the world has ever known. SOURCE

Who Were the Sea People?

Written by Eberhard Zangger | Illustrated by Rosemary Robertson

Mavi Boncuk |

Ancient symbols on a 3,200-year-old stone slab have been deciphered by researchers who say they could solve "one of the greatest puzzles of Mediterranean archaeology".

The 29-metre limestone frieze, found in 1878, in what is now modern Turkey, bears the longest known hieroglyphic inscription from the Bronze Age. Only a handful of scholars worldwide, can read its ancient Luwian language.

The first translation has offered an explanation for the collapse of the Bronze Age's powerful and advanced civilizations.

The script tells how a united fleet of kingdoms from western Asia Minor raided coastal cities on the eastern Mediterranean.

It suggests they were part of a marauding seafaring confederation, which historians believe played a part in the collapse of those nascent Bronze Age civilisations.

Researchers believe the inscriptions were commissioned in 1190 BC by Kupanta-Kurunta, the king of a late Bronze Age state known as Mira.

The text suggests the kingdom and other Anatolian states invaded ancient Egypt and other regions of the east Mediterranean before and during the fall of the Bronze Age.

Archaeologists have long attributed the sudden, uncontrollable collapse of the dominant civilisations around 1200BC partly to the impact of naval raids. But the identity and origin of the invaders which modern-day scholars call the Trojan Sea People, had puzzled archaeologists for centuries.

The new findings follow research by an interdisciplinary team of Swiss and Dutch archaeologists.

They include Dr Fred Woudhuizen[1], thought to be one only 20 people in the world who can read Luwian. He translated the inscription.

The 35cm-tall, 10-metre-long limestone slab was found 1878 in the village of Beyköy, 34 kilometres north of Afyonkarahisar in modern Turkey. French archaeologist George Perrot copied the inscription before the stone was used by villagers as building material for the foundation of a mosque.

According to this inscription, the Luwians from western Asia Minor contributed decisively to the so-called Sea Peoples' invasions – and thus to the end of the Bronze Age in the eastern Mediterranean. When Kupanta-Kurunta had reinforced his realm, just before 1190 BC, he ordered his armies to storm toward the east against the vassal states of the Hittites. After successful conquests on land, the united forces of western Asia Minor also formed a fleet and invaded a number of coastal cities (whose names are given) in the south and southeast of Asia Minor, as well as in Syria and Palestine. Four great princes commanded the naval forces, among them Muksus from the Troad, the region of ancient Troy. The Luwians from western Asia Minor advanced all the way to the borders of Egypt, and even built a fortress at Ashkelon in southern Palestine.

The copy was rediscovered in the estate of English prehistorian James Mellaart after his death in 2012 and was handed over by his son[2] to Dr Eberhard Zangger,[3] president of the Luwian Studies foundation, to study.

Mr Zangger, a Dutch linguist and expert in Luwian language and script, said the inscription suggested "Luwians from western Asia Minor contributed decisively to the so-called Sea Peoples’ invasions - and thus to the end of the Bronze Age in the eastern Mediterranean".

The foundations said: "One of the greatest puzzles of Mediterranean archeology can thus be plausibly solved."

The translation and researchers' findings will be published in December in the journal Proceedings of the Dutch Archaeological and Historical Society and in a book by Mr Zangger. SOURCE

The region where Luwian was spoken at the end of the Bronze Age was much larger than the one where Hittite was spoken (according to Brill's New Pauly 2012).

[1] Frederik Christiaan Woudhuizen (born 13 February 1959) is an independent scholar who studies ancient Indo-European languages, hieroglyphic Luvian/Luwian, and Mediterranean protohistory. He is the former editor of Talanta, Proceedings of the Dutch Archaeological and Historical Society.

[2] In December 2017, Zangger and the Dutch linguist Fred Woudhuizen published in the Dutch archeology journal Talanta the Luwian hieroglyphic drawings (including texts from Edremit, Yazılıtaş, Dağardı and Şahankaya) that were retrieved from Mellaart's estate. However, early in 2018 Zangger distanced himself from Mellaart and accused him of having falsified documents.[22] Further research in Mellaart's former study in London in February 2018 had revealed that Mellaart had completely invented the (allegedly cuneiform) “Beyköy text”. On the other hand, Woudhuizen, who published together with Zangger, continues to believe that the Luwian hieroglyphic inscription HL Beyköy 2 is certainly not forged by Mellaart and probably genuine.

[3]Eberhard Zangger (born 1958 in Kamen, West Germany) is a Swiss geoarchaeologist, corporate communications consultant and publicist. Since 1994 he has been advocating the view that a Luwian civilization existed in Western Asia Minor during the 2nd millennium BC. In 2014 he established the international non-profit foundation Luwian Studies, whose president he is.Since April 2014, Zangger is president of the board of trustees of the international non-profit foundation Luwian Studies. The commercial register of Canton Zurich (Switzerland) states as the foundation's purpose “the exploration of the second millennium BC in western Asia Minor and the dissemination of knowledge about it”. The Board of Trustees includes Ivo Hajnal, Jorrit Kelder, Matthias Oertle and Jeffrey Spier.

In May 2016, Luwian Studies went public with a website in German, English and Turkish. At the same time Zangger's book appeared: The Luwian Civilization – The missing link in the Aegean Bronze Age. As part of its research, the foundation has systematically catalogued over 340 extensive settlement sites of the Middle and Late Bronze Age in Western Asia Minor. These sites are presented in a public database on the website.

In June 2017, Zangger received unpublished documents from the estate of the British prehistorian James Mellaart, which the latter had marked to be of particular importance.[20] The material in Mellaart's estate referred to two groups of documents, both of which were allegedly found in 1878 in a village called Beyköy, 34 kilometers north of Afyonkarahisar in western Turkey. On the one hand there was a Luwian hieroglyphic inscription (“HL Beyköy 2”) on limestone which must have been composed around 1180 BC. Mellaart, however, only possessed a drawing of this inscription. According to Mellaart's notes, in addition to this, bronze tablets bearing Hittite texts in Akkadian cuneiform were also found at Beyköy (“Beyköy text”). These described the political events during almost the entire Bronze Age from the perspective of rulers in western Asia Minor. Mellaart only possessed English translations of these documents.

Yazılıkaya

In June 2019 Zangger together with the archeologist and astronomer Rita Gautschy of the University of Basel, published a new interpretation of the Hittite rock sanctuary Yazılıkaya at Ḫattuša, according to which the sequence of rock reliefs in chamber A could have been used as a lunisolar calender. 

Yazılıkaya as a lunisolar calendar