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

LUWIAN ROMAN INDIC GERMANIC
F1 Tarku Kara Jupiter Mitra-Varuna Thor
F2 Santas Mars Indra Wodan
F3 Kupapa Quirinus Nasatya-Avin Freyr
Table 9. Trifunctional divine triads among various Indo-European speaking groups.
Now, the present Luwian divine triad is not the only evidence
for trifunctionalism in Crete. Recently, Chris Lynn
and Dean Miller argued that the cup with a man with a
staff (= F1), the rhyton with a depiction of boxers and
other sports (= F2), and the vase with a procession of
farmers (= F3) from one and the same Late Minoan IB
context at Hagia Triada present yet another instance of this
typical Indo-European ideology. 685 Contrary to the opinion
of the latter authors, however, I would not attribute this
example of trifunctionalism to the Mycenaean Greeks, who
only gained possession of the island of Crete after the disastrous
Santorini eruption at the end of Late Minoan IB (c.
1450 BC), but to the Luwian population groups which presumably
arrived with the Indo-European incursions in the
east-Mediterranean region at the end of the Early Bronze
Age II, c. 2300 BC. 686
According to the late Edgar Polomé, there is no evidence
of trifunctionalism among the Indo-European population
groups of Anatolia, which would underline their
aberrant position in the field of linguistics as exemplified
by the unique preservation of a reflex of laryngeal [h2]. 687
As shown in the above, however, this evidence is blatantly
provided by the most southernly fringe of the Luwians, i.e.
those inhabiting the island of Crete. Such a conclusion coincides
markedly with the straightforwardly Indo-
European nature of the Luwian language as attested for the
hieroglyphic monuments, which, apart from some individual
developments like the loss of the voiced velars, is particularly
related to the conservative group among the Indo-
European languages consisting, next to the other IE Anato-
685 Lynn & Miller 1999.
686 Mellaart 1971; Gimbutas 1973; Best 1981: 8-9; see section 3
above.
687 Polomé 1982b: 169 “(…) nothing reminds us of the trifunctional
pattern in the traditions of the Luwians, Hittites, and other Indo-Europeans
of the Old Kingdom, (…)”. An exception to this
statement is be formed by the trifunctional colors (F1 white, F2
red, and F3 blue) enumerated in a Hittite ritual, see Littleton 1973:
95 and cf. note 683 above.
142
lian languages Hittite and Palaic, of Celtic, Italic, and
Tocharian. 688 Hence, the preservation of a reflex of laryngeal
[h2] in IE Anatolian may safely be ascribed to the influence
of the indigenous Anatolian languages like Hattic
and Hurritic on that of the Indo-European intruders. No
need, therefore, to saddle the Indo-Europeans of Anatolia
up with 1700 years of fictitious history, as Robert Drews,
in the wake of the linguists Thomas Gamkrelidze & Va-
eslav Ivanov, does in his Greater Anatolia! 689
688 Woudhuizen 2004a: section 9.
689 Drews 2001.