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

the archaeological record by the Mattpainted ware, which,
as we have seen above, originates from the Cyclades as
well and of which the introduction, as we have just seen,
distinguishes the transition from Early Helladic III to Middle
Helladic. As a complicating factor, it should be realized
that there are still more population groups mentioned
in the historical sources which cannot positively be assigned
to either of the three tribes identified so far for the
lack of evidence. On the whole, however, it may safely be
stated that with the Thracians, Phrygians, and
Leleges/Carians we have discussed the most prominent of
the population groups present in Greece before the Greeks
or living there simultaneously with the Greeks in their earliest
history.
From a linguistic point of view, it deserves attention
that the Thracian language, although barely known, is considered
of Indo-European stock and most closely related to
Phrygian, this to the extent that one speaks of the Thraco-
Phrygian language group. 139 As opposed to this, Carian,
which, it must be admitted, also largely eludes us because
the script in which the language is recorded still goes undeciphered,
is generally assumed to be a member of the
Indo-European Anatolian group of languages, together
with Hittite, Luwian, and Palaic. As such, it may be held
responsible for place names in -ss- and -nth- in Greece,
which are decidedly of Indo-European Anatolian type. 140
Furthermore, one may be tempted to point to related Lycian
type of names like Glaukos (= Linear B ka-ra-u-ko),
Lykaon, Pandion, Sandion, and Leda. At any rate, we obviously
have to reckon with at least two distinct pre-Greek
linguistic layers of Indo-European (= IE) stock, namely
Thraco-Phrygian and IE Anatolian.
If the bearers of the Minyan culture of Middle Helladic
Greece are rightly identified as Thraco-Phrygians, then
it necessarily follows that the view according to which the
Greeks arrived or otherwise came into being in the only
remaining transition from Middle Helladic to Late Helladic
I at c. 1600 BC must be correct. Therefore, let us take a
look at the various theories proposed. In the first place,
Robert Drews in his stimulating monograph on the subject
argued that the proto-Greeks were a chariot gang who
came by boat from Pontos to Thessaly, from where they
139 Crossland 1971: 857; contra Polomé 1982a: 888.
140 Laroche 1957: 7; Laroche 1961a: 91; cf. Woudhuizen 1989:
193-4.
61
colonized the rest of Greece. 141 Secondly, Jan Best defended
the thesis that the proto-Greeks were identical with
the Hyksos, the foreign conquerors of lower Egypt in the
Second Intermediary Period (c. 1720-1550 BC), who were
driven from the country by the founder of the 18th dynasty,
Ahmose, and with their kinsmen from Canaan and
Syria took refuge to the southern shores of Greece. 142 Finally,
Frank Stubbings likewise painted the picture of a
conquest of the Argolid by displaced Hyksos leaders from
Egypt, only he did not consider them proto-Greeks, but a
foreign warrior caste who, like they did in Egypt, adapted
to the culture and language of the host country. 143 Of these
three theories, the last two take into consideration the wellknown
historical evidence of Danaos, the ancestor of the
Danaoi, coming from Egypt to the Argolid, and of Kadmos
with his Phoenicians founding the city of Thebes. The validity
of this literary evidence is strengthened a great deal
by the fact that the Mycenaean Greeks are referred to by
the name Tanayu (Tn3y) “Danaoi” in the Egyptian hieroglyphic
inscriptions from the funerary temple of Amenhotep
III (1390-1352 BC) at Kom el-Hetan in Egyptian
Thebes. 144
Which of the three models about what happened in
Greece c. 1600 BC is the right one? In order to answer this
question, we will examine them a little closer, starting with
the one presented by Drews. This author takes as his starting
point the view of the linguists Thomas Gamkrelidze &
Vjaeslav Ivanov, who argued that the Greek language is
closely related to Armenian on the one hand and Indo-
Iranian on the other hand, and that the homeland of the
proto-Greeks accordingly must be sought somewhere in
the region of what was once Armenia, just south of the
Caucasus. Here they found in abundance the different sorts
of wood to build their chariots and the horses to drive
them. 145 A problem posed by this view is that at the time
that Greek is supposed to have split off from the parent
language and the proto-Greeks are supposed to have undertaken
their journey to their new home in Greece, the Ar-
141 Drews 1988.
142 Best in Best & Yadin 1973.
143 Stubbings 1973.
144 Edel 1966; cf. Woudhuizen 1992a: 73; pace Strange 1980: 22,
note 33; 148.
145 Drews 1988: 32 ff.; 200-1; since 1995 the work of Gamkrelidze
& Ivanov is available in English translation.