The Ethnicity of the Sea Peoples - RePub - Erasmus Universiteit ...

Having reached the end of our quest into the vicissitudes of
the Sea Peoples, it seems worthwhile to summarize the results
with respect to their ethnicity.
As far as the Lukka are concerned, there can be little
doubt that they originate from the lower Xanthos valley in
later Lycia. This area looks out onto the Mediterranean sea
in the south, but is otherwise separated from the surrounding
regions by a spur of the formidable Taurus mountains.
From this geographical situation alone it seems permissible
to assume that the Lukka formed a close knit ethnic community.
At any rate, this is the case with their Early Iron
Age descendants, who call themselves Termilai and write
in a distinct dialect of Luwian, the so-called Lycian A.
From an archaeological point of view, however, our inference
about the ethnic coherence of the Lukka cannot be
backed up by a distinct material culture because archaeological
data from the lower Xanthos valley are thus far
lacking for the Late Bronze Age period.
The Ekwesh and Denye(n) are alternative indications
for the Late Bronze Age Greeks, corresponding to Homeric
Akhaians and Danaoi. Of these indications, the one,
in form of A®®iyawa, is preferred by the Hittites, while the
other, in form of Tanayu, is most of the time preferred by
the Egyptians. In archaeological terms, the ethnic coherence
of the Late Bronze Age Greeks is strongly indicated
by the so-called Mycenaean koin of Late Helladic IIIB – a
cultural unity unparalleled for Greece until the Hellenistic
period. The latter archaeological culture cannot be dissociated
from the records in Linear B, which are conducted in
a distinct Greek dialect most closely related to Arcado-
Cyprian of later date. That the Late Bronze Age Greeks indeed
considered themselves as Akhaians may be further illustrated
by an episode in Herodotos’ Histories (V, 72),
according to which the Spartan king Kleomenes, being refused
entrance into the temple on the acropolis of Athens
by the priestess on the ground that he was considered a
Dorian, replied that he was not a Dorian, but an Akhaian –
a point of view which tallies with the fact that the Dorians
from central Greece, when taking possession of the Peloponnesos
at the end of the Submycenaean and beginning of
the Protogeometric periods, are led by Heraklid kings with
a legitimate claim on the Mycenaean throne as descendants
of Perseus, who return to their ancestral lands. The cultural
and linguistic unity of Late Bronze Age Greece should not
15. CONCLUDING REMARKS
117
induce us, however, to exclude a certain amount of ethnic
diversity, as Linear B texts, next to the geographic name
Akawija (KN) “Akhaia”, already bear testimony of the
ethnonyms Rakedamonijo (TH) “Lacedaimonian”, Ijawone
(KN) “Ionians”, and the personal name related to an ethnonym
Dorijewe (PY) “Dorieus (dative)”. 603 After the fall
of their palatial civilization, some of the Mycenaean
Greeks took the boat and looked for new homes in the
eastern Mediterranean, one group under the name of
Hiwa “Akhaians” colonizing the Cilician plain in Anatolia,
and an other group under the name of Dan “Danaoi”
colonizing various locations in the Levant. These migrations
were not numerous enough, however, to plant the
Greek language in the given regions, the Akhaians in the
Cilician plain going over to Luwian and the Danaoi in the
Levant resorting to Semitic. This being the case, the
Greeks in question may safely be assumed to have mixed
to a significant extent with the indigenous population.
If the literary traditions about the Philistines originating
from Crete and/or Lydia in western Asia Minor are
correct, this particular people is likely to be identified with
the Pelasgians of Greek sources. The latter were one of the
various population groups living in mainland Greece before
the Greek ethnos came into being, and hence at least
partly responsible for the Middle Helladic culture with its
characteristic Minyan ware. As far as can be determined
from the evidence of place and personal names, the Pelasgians
were of Indo-European tongue, to be more specific
of a Thraco-Phrygian type. When southern and central
Greece were conquered by foreign invaders from Egypt
and the Levant, Pelasgian population groups who wanted
to preserve their independence fled to the north into Thessaly,
which remained predominantly Minyan up till Late
Helladic IIIA, and to the region of Larisa Phrikonis in the
Mysian-Lydian borderland of western Asia Minor. On the
basis of the evidence from personal names, again, the latter
group was not numerous enough to cause a language shift,
but went over to the local Luwian dialect. As opposed to
their kinsmen who had fled, Pelasgian population groups
which stayed in southern and central Greece became thoroughly
Mycenaeanized and in this process, as Herodotos
603 Ventris & Chadwick 1973: glossary, s.v.; Shelmerdine 1997:
564; cf. Driessen 1998-9 and Vanschoonwinkel 1991: 361.