Anatolian Scribes in Mycenaean Greece

Author(s): Trevor R. Bryce

Source: Historia: Zeitschrift fr Alte Geschichte, Bd. 48, H. 3 (3rd Qtr., 1999), pp. 257-264
Published by: Franz Steiner Verlag
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4436547
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ANATOLIANSCRIBES 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 diplomacy 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, representingeither 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):

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)FranzSteinerVerlag WiesbadenGmbH,Sitz Stuttgart

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258

TREVORR. 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 Ahhiyawan 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 incontrovertibleproof of the Ahhiyawan-Mycenaean equation, the circumstantial evidence in favour of it is, in my view, overwhelming. In the discussion which follows, I make the assumption that Ahhiyawa 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 appropriatefor 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 Mycenaean 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
3

From EA (letters from El-Amarna) 32, adapted from the translation by V. Haas in W.
Moran, The Amarna Letters, Baltimore, 1992, 103.
See, for example, the papers published by H.G. Guterbock, M.J. Mellink, and E. Vermeule 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.
For the extent of this involvement, see Bryce, "The Nature of Mycenaean Involvement in
Western Anatolia", Historia 38, 1989, 1-21.

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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 Anatolians 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, apparentlyto escape Hittite overlordship,
others had been forcibly removed by Piyamaradufrom their homeland.5 Piyamaradu 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 recruitmentof 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
6
7

Tawagalawa letter, ? 9 (KUB XIV 3 III 7-17).

See M. Ventris and J. Chadwick, D)ocuments in Mycenaean Greek, Cambridge, 1959,
156, J. Chadwick, The Mvcenaean World, Cambridge, 1976, 80-1.
See Bryce, "The Nature of Mycenaean Involvement" (as in n. 4), 13-14.

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260

TREVORR. BRYCE

and citadels. Labour requirements may well have led to local workforces being
supplemented by the recruitmentof 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 preparedby 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
9

Strabo8.6.1 1.
As indicatedin the Tawagalawaletter, ?? 5-6 (KUB XIV 3 I 53 ff.).

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AnatolianScribes in MycenaeanGreece

261

their use is well attested in a number of documents, through references, for

example, to "scribes of the wooden tablets".10Copies 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. 1IAnd 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 grandfatherBellerophon (lines 119-236).
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."12
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, 122330.

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262

R. BRYCE
TREV1OR

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 numberequipped with the skills to
become scribes and interpretersin 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. 14Furtherto 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

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AnatolianScribes in MycenaeanGreece

263

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
natureof 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, bringing with them the skills which they could practise and teach in their new
homeland.
Morrispostulates a westward diasporaof Levantinecraftsmen and merchants
in the Late Bronze Age, including entrepreneursin 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 attributedto 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 Sprachforschung 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", Historia 40, 1991, 1-9.

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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 development 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

20

Trevor R. Bryce

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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