Arzawa (pronounced ar-TZAU-wa, perhaps later -va) was a small, obscure kingdom in the western Anatolia of the Late Bronze Age. As such, its importance in world history would appear to be limited. I have created this page to build up interest in this obscure kingdom. As I will show, Arzawa played a pivotal role in the birth of our civilization, and is the best potential witness to the events described in our oldest and greatest works of literature.
It also seems to be the unluckiest of ancient kingdoms. There aren't many civilisations that are struck down by meteors. It also appears to have underlaid a good part of the Atlantis legend (that part which did not derive from Thera).
Western Anatolia became known to archaeology in the nineteenth century. In 1879 Professor Archibald Sayce linked the reliefs of the Magnesia region in western Turkey to those of Yazilikaya in the centre, and recognised that they both belonged to a pre-Greek culture. In the following year, he announced that this culture represented the "lost Hittite empire" which Egyptian texts were then bringing to light (James p. 256).
Arzawa itself was first detected in 1902 by the Norwegian scholar J. A. Knudtzon - in Egypt. In 1887, the expedition at Tell El-Amarna in Egypt had uncovered the diplomatic correspondence of Pharaoh Amenhotep III and his son, Akhenaton. Two of these missives were written in a hitherto unknown language. Although scholars could read it, since the characters it used were standard Sumerian cuneiform, no-one could understand it.
Knudtzon's great discovery was that the language "had an apparent affinity with the Indo-European family of languages" (Gurney p. 4-5). He was even able to identify the kingdom's name. This language was promptly dubbed "Arzawan", and was found to be equivalent to tablet-fragments which E. Chantre had acquired ten years prior, near the village of Boghazkoy in central Turkey (now "Boghazkale"; I don't know why they changed the name).
Eventually, Dr Hugo Winkler (on behalf of the German Orient Society) received the Ottoman Empire's consent to excavate Boghazkoy, which he commenced in 1906. Immediately, he discovered an enormous archive; and, in the next year, he published his preliminary report. The site was in fact the capital of the empire of Hatti ("Hattusas"), which the excavators equated with the "Kheta" kingdom of the Egyptian records. The newly uncovered language, meanwhile, was renamed according to the Bible: "Hittite".
Since then, of course, we have discovered that both names, Arzawan and Hittite, are inaccurate; the kings of Hatti called their language Nesili, Nasili, and in one case Kanisumnili - "(K)neshian", that which is spoken in (Ka)nesh[as], motherland of the dynasty. Hattili more accurately describes the non-Indo-European language of the Halys heartland. But either way, scholarly interest has been directed toward the Kingdom of Hatti, leaving Arzawa far behind it - likely because no major Arzawan sites have been found yet.
However, records have been discovered throughout the Near East about Arzawa, and some older records have been retranslated. A good example of the latter is Ramesses III's account of the Sea Peoples at Medinet Habu, discovered by Auguste Mariette in the early 1850's. It lists a group of countries which the Sea Peoples destroyed - Hatti, Kode, Carchemish, Yereth, and Yeres (Drews). These latter have been retranslated "Arzawa" and "Alasiya", respectively (Redford).
Also, Recep Meriç of Dokuz Eylül University at Izmir has been uncovering Late Bronze Age hill-forts along the Gediz valley of western Turkey - built to defend against an eastern opponent, presumably Hittite (James p. 224). Through the diligence of archaeologists, Arzawa is coming back.
Arzawa is in Anatolia, to the west of the Hittite capital. Beyond this, no-one knows its location; one must as yet rely upon sketchy Hittite records. The same is true of the other western states.
The picture is clearing up, though. Some 1986 texts place a number of kingdoms in the southern littoral of Anatolia. That pushes the Lukka lands to classical Lycia and Arzawa in turn to the Ephesos region. In 1998, J D Hawkins (Anatolian Studies Vol 48) deciphered a relief of Tarkasnawa, last recorded King of Mira, near classical Smyrna.
Based on the celebrated "Ahhiyawa problem" - whether Ahhiyawa was in Mycenaean Greece or not - there have been numerous rival maps of western Asia Minor. The texts as of now suggest that Ahhiya lay outside Asia Minor, and are beginning to agree on those kingdoms that remain within it. Of course the most controversial of these is Wiluja, which sounds a lot like "Wilios".
Some scholars have attempted to locate Arzawa's later capital in Ephesos. This is due to a phonetic similarity between it and "Apasas", a western port town which Mursilis II called the city of the rebel Uhha-Ziti. One such scholar is Sarah Morris, in this pdf. Peter James thinks that the nation's capital was in a Zippasla / Sipylus before that, just east of Magnesia.
The language of the southwestern littoral of Anatolia - which includes Arzawa - was Luwiyan, which, like Kneshian, was a member of the Anatolian branch of the Indo-European family. Click here for a Luwiyan glossary.
For diplomatic correspondence, however, Arzawa used Kneshian - even when writing to the Egyptian king! It appears that this diplomatic faux pas was a result of Arzawa's provincial character; Kneshian was the language required to deal with the other states of Asia Minor, and especially with Hattusas.
The period under discussion here begins with the Middle Hittite king Tudhaliyas II. According to Craig Melchert (in Emory's Anatolian Conference), Hittite texts note that dialectical Luwiyan was already evolving into proto-Lydian, for instance shifting y > d. One example is Luwiyan marwaiya (black) > Lydian marivda (lead). Greek Linear B borrowed this word in a proto-Lydian form preceding w > v: moriwdos or moliwdos (there being no r / l distinction in that syllabary). It is likely that what the Greeks heard was the trade language of Luwiyans by the sea, while the Hittites were still occasionally preserving Luwiyan texts in an archaising "classical" form.
Some examples of Arzawan personal names are Ura-Tarhunta, Piyama-Radu, and Piyama-Kurunta. One could propose the pattern:
where x is the name of an overlord; divine, human, animal, or state.
In Luwiyan, piyama is "gift", ura is "great", muwa is "power", and ziti is "man". I couldn't tell you what "Kupanta" and "Radu" mean.
Manapa is certainly a descriptor and not a god's name. Controversy there hinges on what manapa meant to the Luwiyans. Ilya Yakubovitch suggests that it meant "protect the mana!" in the way Nebuchadrezzar employed Akkadian usur.
Like other Luwiyans, the Arzawans chiefly worshipped the storm god (Teshub in Hurrian, and later the Greek Zeus took on the storm god's role) whom they called "Tarhun" but rendered "Tarhunta" in theophoric names. Another god was Uhha, as seen in the names Uhha-Muwa ("Uhha's Might") and Uhha-Ziti ("Uhha's Man"). When the Arzawans made treaty with the Hittites, they also called the river and mountain gods to witness.
Another element that appears in the personal names is "Kurunta", often under the Sumerograms KAL and LAMMA. "Kurunta" alone became a personal name for a later prince of Tarhuntassa, founded by Luwiyans, so it seems likely that Kurunta was a local hero as much as a god (like Heracles).
The donkey was important to western Anatolia. Sarah Morris noted that Tarkasnawa of Mira was named after a donkey, and used ass's ears in his royal seal. The donkey's ear as a symbol of west Anatolian kingship survived into legends of Midas the Phrygian. It is further notable that these Dark Age legends have this king of non-Luwiyan origin adopting this Luwiyan custom after attaining kingship over Luwiyan land.
The religious practice of Arzawa seems to have been the same mix of piety and superstition which ruled the Hittite kingdom at this time:
These are the words of Uhha-Muwa, the Arzawa man. If people are dying in the country and if some enemy god has caused that, I act as follows:
They drive up one ram. . . . They drive the ram onto the road leading to the enemy and while doing so they speak as follows: "Whatever god of the enemy land has caused this plague -- see! We have now driven up this crowned ram to pacify thee, O god! Just as the herd is strong, but keeps peace with the ram, do thou, the god who has caused this plague, keep peace with the Hatti land! In favor turn again toward the Hatti land!" They drive that one crowned ram toward the enemy.
[ANET, 347]
The "scapegoat" was used by Luwiyans in Kizzuwadna as well. The Hittites imported both as, apparently, did Israel.
The current ran both ways. The Hittites believed that Alalus was king in Heaven. Anus then deposed Alalus. Kumarbis then deposed Anus and swallowed his genitals. But Kumarbis had erred in this: Kumarbis became pregnant with Teshub, Tarmisus, and the Tigris river. And Teshub the storm god led them to victory. [ANET, 120-1] The same myth reappeared centuries later in Boeotia: Hesiod believed that Chaos was king, and then Ouranos. Kronos neutered Ouranos and took over, but soon begat Zeus and the elder gods. Hesiod broke the link between Kronos's crime and his eventual downfall; for Hesiod, Kronos's wife tricked Kronos into swallowing actual stones (instead of Kumarbis willingly swallowing Ouranos's "stones"), which Kronos did instead of swallowing his own children. The myth is more coherent in the Hittite version, and so Hesiod or another predecessor not of the Hittite culture likely picked it up and garbled the details. As James points out, the myth originated further east than the Hittites; Teshub and Kumarbis were Hurrian gods, and the river Tigris is a dead giveaway (pp. 194-5).
The Hittites also shouldered from the Hurri-lands the primaeval Atlas - whom they called Ubelleris. Ubelleris had his feet in the "dark earth" - the underworld - and held up the earth and sky. [ANET, 125] Likewise, in much Hellenistic (and modern!) iconography, Atlas does not hold up the Vault of the Heavens from this world, but the entire globe of the Ptolemaic universe from some unknowable flat landscape. (As he'd have to; the flat earth was debunked in Greece at least by Aristotle's day, although it lingered in Palestine until after the Gospel of Matthew. Note how the better-educated Luke turned the mountain into a high place.) I think James was implying that the Greek, Hatti, and Hurri iconography represents a memory of Atlas supporting a flat earth and domed sky from the flat land of the Underworld.
Ubelleris was just one, specifically Hurrian, conception of the bearing-god. There were other "titans" in Great Hatti. Bull-men supported the heaven from earth in the Yazilikaya sanctuary (1200's BCE). Three men bear three other men, who bear Teshub, in Imamkülü to the east. And so on (James pp. 197-9). Mauritz van Loon called them "vanquished champions of the older generation of gods... indicated by the raised fists, and their defeat and punishment by their bent caps" (Anatolia in the Second Millennium BC, 1985, p. 21). Zeus punished other Titans in and under mountains: Prometheus (chained to a mountain), Typhon/Enceladus (buried under Etna), Ophion. (Python, Fontenrose, 1959, 231, 241-2). Atlas's family itself is located in Anatolia (James pp. 289-90), as is Merops's, who in Euripides's Helen was either married to Atlas or was Atlas. In particular the child of Elektra, daughter of Atlas, was Dardanos the founder of Troy.
Hesiod certainly got the stories from western Anatolia. The western Anatolians had accepted them from the Hittites. When the western Anatolians had done so - in the Bronze Age or the Dark Age - I cannot say; but the myth of the Titans was already canonical Greek fare by Homer's day.
In Emory's Anatolian Conference, Yoram Cohen and Assaf Yasur-Landau write that Greece and Hatti shared a religious feast tradition, likely found in Arzawa too.
What would a Bronze Age history page be without a king list?
The earliest Hittite records are dubious. The annals of the half-legendary founder of the state, King Hattusilis I, contain what would be the first invasion of Arzawa. This set the tone for centuries of strife; e.g. a treaty of Muwatallis II to Alexandros of Wiluja refers back to it (Beckman p. 87). However, these Annals survive only in much later copies; Arzawa may be an anachronism inserted by a redactor. An "Arzawiya" appears in the Proclamation of Telipinus, also only extant in later copies.
Western Anatolia made its grand debut in the form of the confederacy / rebellion of Assuwa, which a Tudhaliyas mentions fighting in his annals of 1450. Arzawa existed, but there is no evidence that it aided the conspiracy. (Translation of CTH 142.)
Arzawa first acts on its own circa 1430 BCE, as an enemy. Arzawa appears in the treaties of the Hittite king Tudhaliyas II (Beckman p. 24). Other treaties are quoted in a fascinating internal memo, the "Indictment of Madduwattas" by Tudhaliyas's heir Arnuwandas. (Beckman pp. 153-160. The "Indictment" was first assigned to the end of the Hittite kingdom, a mistake that persists to this day in certain places.) Lastly, Arnuwandas had written of his father's campaigns in CTH 143 that father and son had attacked Arzawa to the southwest and then campaigned against Masa to the northwest; the latter of which is corroborated in the later "Deeds of Suppiluliumas" (CTH 40, Bryce p. 162). I suspect that Masa was across the Hellespont in what became Thrace; and that its people were ancestors to the Phrygians and Armenians.
According to these sources, Arzawa was ruled by a certain Kupanta-Kurunta. These sources detail the rise to power over Arzawa and the rest of the west by a failed despot over on the Hittite side of the border by name of Madduwattas.
Madduwattas (Madyattes?) faced a struggle in the Lukka Lands (famously lawless) against a "man from Ahhiya" (Achaia?), named Attarisiyas. Tudhaliyas gave Madduwattas asylum, and even gave him (back?) the mountainous kingdom Zippasla with the Siyanti River Land; but on condition that Madduwattas use it as a base to invade Arzawa. When Madduwattas did this, Kupanta-Kurunta destroyed his army (again) and occupied Zippasla. Once more Tudhaliyas defeated Madduwattas's enemy and restored Madduwattas to his throne; this portion of the Indictment and its quoted treaty are, I think, corroborated in an event of CTH 143 where Tudhaliyas and Arnuwandas together chased K-K out of his land and took his family hostage. And once the imperial family had left, Madduwattas's previous nemesis Attarisiyas attacked him again at Zippasla, with 100 chariots (famously). This time Madduwattas did not even defend himself, but fled a third time to the Hittites. Tudhaliyas sent a third army under Kisnapili to the land to drive Attarissiyas out. This time, the army was ordered to stay.
Madduwattas apparently then decided he was never again going to suffer such indignities. When Dalawa (Lycian Tlawa, classical Tlos) and Hinduwa rebelled, Madduwattas suggested that Kisnapili take Hinduwa while Madduwattas take Dalawa. But while Kisnapili was on his way to Hinduwa, Madduwattas allied with Dalawa, and with its help ambushed and killed Kisnapili. Independent once more, Madduwattas married the Arzawan king's daughter, and soon took that kingdom too. When Tudhaliyas ordered Madduwattas to put down a revolt in Hapalla, he did - but then Madduwattas forced Hapalla, too, to switch loyalty to his own side. He then bullied Pitassa into his kingdom, even closer to the Hittite heartland. Under Tudhaliyas's hapless successor Arnuwandas I, Madduwattas even allied with his old foe Attarisiyas and invaded Alasiya (Cyprus). Madduwattas had conquered the whole of western Anatolia.
Around this time of Hittite collapse, elsewhere in Anatolia the Kaska burnt down the fort of Masat. Kuniholm's group has tree-ring dated the last building to around 1375 BCE, and the destruction layer includes the "Late Helladic IIIA" style of Greek pottery.
Tarhunta-Radu succeeded Madduwattas around 1350 BCE. Arzawa by then had made Tuwanuwa - Tyana, 100 miles to Hattusas's south - and Uda "his frontier", and had initated diplomatic correspondence with Amenhotep III. Tarhunta-Radu even dared request Pharaoh, in Kneshian, for his daughter's hand in marriage. Pharaoh's reply is missing; the god-king probably found it offensive, and either way probably ignored it. (Bryce pp. 140-9.)
Zippasla disappeared from history after Madduwattas's takeover of Arzawa. The next time the Hittites were able to address the whole of Arzawa, they aimed for Apasas and bypassed Madduwattas's old capital.
Around this time James locates a legendary event which went unmentioned in the records of the now-contracted Hittite imperium: the fall of Mount "Sipylus" in what would become Lydia, by an earthquake (recorded by Demokles 300's BCE, preserved by Strabo I.iii.17 - James p. 206). The mountain fell into a lake and swamped the kingdom of "King Tantalos". Pausanias recorded the same (VII.xxiv.6-7) on the shore of a "Lake Saloe", as did Pliny Junior (V.31). In other legends Tantalos was punished by having a rock dangle over his head, proverbial for Archilochos (600's BCE, quoted in Pausanias X.xxi.2) and known to the Return of the Atreids (500's BCE), Plato (Cratylus 395D-E), and the Scholiast on the Odyssey. Elsewhere Tantalos has to support a mountain (Antoninus Liberalis - Metamorphoses 36).
This legend existed in two of what I'd call "oral recensions": an Ionian Greek cycle concerning the Bearer King Tantalos and/or the kingdom Tantalis; and Plato's "Egyptian" - in reality, Lydian - version, which had adopted the Greek term Atlantis for the kingdom. James plausibly traced the name and some common aspects of the stories to the "Tlanz" or "Tlantes", the Bearer(s), a Greek epithet for Ubelleris and other Hurrian-derived bearing-gods I mentioned above. Deducing that other aspects were memories of a prehistoric kingdom, James looked for a mountainous region of western Anatolian with lakes and pre-Greek artifacts. Following the nineteenth century explorers Ramsay and Frazer, he found such a place in the Yarikkaya ravine "just east of ancient Magnesia", now Manisa (p. 252-3).
If James were only looking for the Greeks' source for their "Titan" legends, then so far so good. But James did not stop with the prehistoric location, but tried to deduce the event as well. Unfortunately there is no contemporary evidence, literary or material, of an earthquake or a flood in this region during the Bronze Age. James was forced to date the event to a gap in the historical record of Arzawa. But these records are Hittite, not Arzawan. The reason the Hittites were unable to reach inner Arzawa at that time is not that Arzawa was too weak, but that it was too strong.
James further tried to identify Sipylos (and Sisyphos) with Zippasla, and claimed that the Arzawans had moved their capital from there to Apasas. Leave aside that place names are terrible evidence; even James pointed this out, when dismissing the absurdity of planting Atlantis in the Atlantic. More troublesome is that Zippasla was not the founding capital nor was Madduwattas the founding father of Arzawa. Before Madduwattas, Arzawa was outside Zippasla; after Madduwattas, it ignored Zippasla. It is true that Madduwattas's court lived in Zippasla before he took Arzawa, and that later rulers lived elsewhere in Arzawa. There is no need to propose a natural disaster for such a move, but simple military necessity; Arzawa was further away and the region's most reliable enemy of the Hittites.
So what became of the land of Zippasla? Perhaps the Arzawans struck back and destroyed it. Perhaps a Hittite king punished it. Perhaps Madduwattas or a successor moved his capitol on his own. Perhaps the plague of Suppiluliumas claimed it. For now this fruit must remain out of reach.
But James had not thought of every potential cause of Arzawan decline and Greek myth. One recurring theme in these Atlantis legends involves rocks from above. In addition to the examples listed previously, Euripides's Orestes ties the much-abused Tantalos to a "bolos" swinging in orbit around Olympos. This theme cannot be attributed to eruptions (like Thera), nor to earthquakes or floods.
Eventually, the Hittites recovered - thanks to the military and administrative geniuses Tudhaliyas III and his chief advisor Suppiluliumas, later king himself. The "Deeds of Suppiluliumas" is the primary source here too (CTH 40). Tudhaliyas destroyed the Arzawan fort Sallapa (which became the Hittites' staging post for future campaigns) and reconquered the Lower Land. He then retook Tuwanuwa. The Arzawan leader Anzapahhadu routed an incursion under the Hittite general Himuili, but succumbed to the next one under Suppiluliumas. (Bryce pp. 163-4)
Suppiluliumas's son Mursilis (KUB XIX 22, another part of CTH 40) mentions as part of his father's reign the Hittite governor Hannutti's reconquest of Hapalla - wrested by Madduwattas so long ago. Later documents say it took Tudhaliyas and Suppiluliumas 20 years to subjugate Arzawa (Bryce pp. 164-5). Suppiluliumas must have been he who took back Pitassa. Further west, Arzawa's hold seems to have broken, with two cities undergoing internal strife without interference from anyone but the King of Hatti.
In the kingdom of Mira in the Arzawa lands (probably the northernmost, bordering Masa and Wilusa), king Maskhuiluwas's brothers besieged him and forced him to flee to Hattusas. One of them had named his heir "Kupanta-Kurunta" after the Arzawan who had stood up to the Hittites. Suppiluliumas understood this revolt as dangerous for his frontier. Accordingly he had his daughter Muwatti married to Maskhuiluwas, after which the couple returned to Mira. (Beckman p. 74)
Meanwhile, in "the Seha River Land" (probably just south of Mira), the king Muwa-Walwis ("Lion-Might") ruled as far as Artemis in Lesbos, according to Emory's Anatolian Conference attendee Hugh Mason. But Muwa-Walwis died and bequeathed his throne to Manapa-Tarhunta. The sources imply that M-T, as I will call him, was one of the younger sons of this king. His older brothers plotted in secret.
Then a plague struck the heartland of Hatti. Suppiluliumas died of it and his battle-seasoned successor, Arnuwandas II, fell incapacitated - apparently having to share rule with his cunning but underage brother Mursilis. Hatti's enemies began to see their chance, in Seha River and in the Kaska lands of Palhuissa.
In the Seha River Land: Manapa-Tarhunta's brothers, led by Ura-Tarhunta, plotted to kill him; but M-T escaped to Karkiya (Caria). Mursilis tried writing to U-T, but U-T dismissed him. Arnuwandas and Mursilis then both wrote to the men of Karkiya to keep M-T safe. U-T meanwhile proved to be both ineffectual and unpopular, as his method of assuming rule presaged. (Beckman pp. 82-3; CTH 61, year 4.)
Arnuwandas lived to see a revolt throw out U-T and reinstall M-T; and the old general Hannutti marched from the Lower Land upon the Kaska frontier town Ishupitta. But soon the plague claimed them too. The still-youthful Mursilis II was left alone. During this period, a certain Uhha-Ziti took Arzawa, and the Hittites' Kaska clients Pazzannas and Nunnutas took over Ishupitta.
Mursilis did not deal with Arzawa at first. He moved against the Kaska lands, first Ishupitta and then Palhuissa behind it. Next spring he set off from Ankuwa (presumably in that area) into Attarimma, Hu[wa]rsanassa, and Suruda. Their leaders fled to Arzawa. When the Hittite king demanded their extradition, Uhha-Ziti defied him and called him a "child", bringing along for the ride a Manapa-Tarhunta who clearly felt he owed more to his people than to the Hittites. Then, because the Kaska had rebelled again, Mursilis chased Pazzannas and Nunnutas out of Palhuissa into Kammama; whose citizens put the two fugitives to death. His northern frontier now safe, the king returned to Ankuwa to muster troops.
In a campaign well-documented in his "Ten Year Annals", the young Mursilis invaded Arzawa. At Mount Lawasa just before the Sehiriya River, Mursilis witnessed a "thunderbolt" - probably a meteor - streaking from the northeast into Apasas. At Sallapa, Mursilis joined forces with his brother Sarri-Kusuh, whom their father Suppiluliumas had appointed the king of Kargamis (Carchemish, in Syria). At Aura, Maskhuiluwas of Mira informed the king that the meteor had wounded Uhha-Ziti's knee (Bryce thinks, "brought him to his knees") and incapacitated him.
At some point Uhha-Ziti "stepped after" - allied with - the King of "Ahhiuwa". Emboldened by this, Uhha-Ziti's son Piyama-Kurunta attacked Maskhuiluwas of Mira, possibly destroying Impa, but Maskhuiluwas fended him off. Maskhuiluwas then turned on Hapanuwa, probably at this time, and allied with Hatti. Mursilis sent Gullas and Mala-Ziti (a Luwiyan) to raid the Ahhiyawan-allied city of Milawata (Miletos).
His father being still incapacitated, Piyama-Kurunta took the field at "Walma, at the R. Astarpa". He lost. Uhha-Ziti (and both his sons, in context) then fled to the islands just ahead of Mursilis, who walked into Apasas apparently without a fight. The Hursanassan, Surudan, and Attarimman "deportees" fled to the mountain Arinnandas and to the city Purandas. Mursilis and Sarri-Kusuh successfully starved them out of Arinnandas, but the men of Purandas would not hand their exiles over. While Mursilis was encamped at the river Astarpa, Uhha-Ziti died.
Another son of Uhha-Ziti, Tapalazunaulis, returned from the islands and took charge of the army at Purandas. Right after the Festival of the Year Mursilis marched from the Astarpa, drove Tapalazunaulis into the city, and invested it. At this point Tapalazunaulis lost his stomach for warfare and fled with his family and some deportees. Mursilis was able to capture them all but Tapalazunaulis himself. Lacking leadership, Purandas fell swiftly.
Piyama-Kurunta at this point finally saw his cause was lost, so he and the King of Ahhiyawa made landfall to sue for peace. Mursilis deported P-K to Hattusas.
Mursilis then marched through the Seha River Land, where Manapa-Tarhunta put on an especially obsequious display for the king (Beckman p. 83). Mursilis left him in charge of the river and of Appawiya. Mursilis then came to Mira. He set up a number of garrisons there, ostensibly to reward Maskhuiluwas for his help against Piyama-Kurunta and to protect him from the people of Mira (whom the Hittites did not trust). He also garrisoned Hapanuwa and gave Maskhuiluwas the land of Kuwaliya. One of the garrisons he built was Impa, which seems to have been a casualty of Piyama-Kurunta's attack. A certain Targasnallis, otherwise unknown, was given Hapalla (Beckman p. 74) - which had been conquered before the campaign and so presumably had undergone a change during it. Both Targasnallis and M-T stayed there for at least ten more years.
Mursilis had subdued the land in two years. For all three kinglets of Mira, Hapalla, and Seha-River, Mursilis signed a treaty recognising them as "free men" - who of course were now Hittite clients banned from joining together against him. Arzawa proper never recovered, but other western kingdoms might cause trouble now and again.
Maskhuiluwas and Muwatti were not blessed with children. They wrote to Mursilis asking him to recognise their adoption of their nephew Kupanta-Kurunta (Beckman p. 74).
A western king with the Sumerograms É.GAL.PAP "fomented revolt" ten years into Mursilis's reign - in context, likely from Masa, which had picked fights on Arzawa's behalf before (Bryce p. 231; Beckman p. 78). "É.GAL" in Sumerian is "great house", usually "palace". "PAP" is a father or a leader.
Maskhuiluwas again sent word of this to the king in accordance with Hittite treaty standard. But this time Maskhuiluwas had tired of Hittite support (rather like Madduwattas). He joined É.GAL.PAP and incited Pitassa into rebellion as well. (Beckman p. 75)
Mursilis returned to Sallapa. When he summoned Maskhuiluwas, Maskhuiluwas fled into Masa while his kingdom Mira-Kuwaliya surrendered. Mursilis invaded Masa, causing much damage. Presumably É.GAL.PAP was killed in that campaign. Masa's remnant had no choice but to hand over Mira's rebel. Mursilis sent Maskhuiluwas to Hattusas and installed his adopted son Kupanta-Kurunta in his stead.
Mursilis's successor, Muwatallis II, told Alexandros of Wiluja that he did not trust the Arzawans (likely with Mira on his mind). At this time, Manapa-Kurunta was ruling over the Seha River. Insofar as Hapalla ever counted as an Arzawa-land, it was now being run by an "Ura-Hattusa" who must have been Luwiyan only by name. At Mira, the adopted son of Muwatti sister of Mursilis, Kupanta-Kurunta, was considered a family member of the Great King himself; and so Alexandros was duty-bound to help K-K even against his own people if need be. (Beckman p. 90)
Muwatallis had to say this, because the old state of Masa bordering Wiluja and Mira had apparently learnt to hate the line of Mursilis. Masa had attacked Wiluja and so Muwatallis had destroyed it - again. (p. 88) (Gurney thinks that the Piyama-Radu and Tawagalawas affair occurred around this time; and the letter - to the Seha River Land? Mira? - recalling the deposition of Walmu and the plundering of Miletos in Beckman pp. 144-6 refers back to that event; the recipient's evil father could well be Piyama-Radu himself.)
But Muwatallis felt confident enough in Arzawan loyalty to enlist them and their neighbours - including even Masa - as allies against the Egyptians at Kadesh of the Orontes (1285 BCE, northern Syria), as recorded by Pharaoh Rameses II [Barnett 1975, 360].
Gurney now considers this the earliest possible time to place the activities surrounding the reinstallation of Walmu of Wilusa (Beckman pp. 144-6); Marino dates the event later, to Tudhaliyas IV.
When Urhi-Teshub came to the throne of Hatti as "Mursilis III", he deposed some of the governors of the old Arzawan states. While this established his firm control over the west (Machiavelli would have approved), such high-handedness did not fly at home. During the ensuing rebellion, Arzawa became Urhi-Teshub's power base, ironically enough supporting the claim of the rightful king.
Up until the reign of Tudhaliyas IV (whose inscriptions embellish the mountains of western Asia Minor to this day), Arzawa remained firmly in the Hittite camp. But Marino dates to this time a letter claiming that another "Tarhuna-Radu" was stirring up trouble in Seha River; KUB XXIII.13.
Arzawa appears to have been a victim of the Sea Peoples. Whereas the cities of central Anatolia were burnt, western Anatolia was abandoned.
As a final footnote, the Medinet Habu reliefs of Rameses III contain several scenes of campaigns in Asia during which the Pharaoh claimed to have taken "the town of Arzawa" (as well as Tunip and Amor). Archaeologists agree that these pictures are anachronistic, probably based on Rameses II's monuments.
I created a new directory for non-biblical history projects like this in 18 Feb 2001. I figured I'd at least deal with the "Atlantis legend" stuff while I was at it. (Hey, this is the Internet; I serve hobbyists, not scholars.) I also went and organised / fixed up the rest. 24 Feb: used Bryce to flesh out Madduwattas. 28 Feb: split Good James (tracing the legend) from Bad James (locating Atlantis). Also put in some hyperlinks (including CTH, finally). 22 Oct, improved clarity in places, based on notes taken two months ago and mislaid in my car (sorry!). 9 Mar 2005: I've been meaning to update this for years, for clarity's sake if nothing else; but now I've got some more primary sources so I figured I don't have further excuse for procrastination. 17 May 2005: found map of Purunda and a whole mess o' abstracts, and further decided to look into theophoric names. 9 May 2006: I found copies of the "Luwian glossary" around the place. The Emory abstracts have been taken offline, so I tagged them as such and moved the master reference to the Bibliography. I've consolidated the "KUB" index numbers with the CTH, and linked them. 19 May: Redirected the Mursilis Annals from http://www.multimania.com/hatti/texts/mursili1-8.html; expanded on the roles of Masa and Sallapa; applied more web-accessible texts; expanded on the role of plague and of the Kaska rebellion on Mursilis I's Arzawa policy. 22 May:
I started this page in early 1997 and pretty much ignored it until now, except for 28 June 2000. I don't have the command of nor the access to Hittite that I have of/to Greek, and I've grown addicted to primary sources and text-criticism.
Thank you, Ian, for pointing me to your translation; it should have been up here earlier.
The letter 's' is pronounced "sh", 'h' is "kh", 'z' is "tz", 'w' may have been intermediary between "v" and "w" based on how the Greeks ended up spelling it, and certain '-iya' and '-isa' suffices may be "-izha" based on how names like Karkiya and Karkisa refer to the same place. And the lack of a letter "o" is a limitation of Sumero-Akkadian cuneiform, not necessarily a feature of Hittite. Note how Hebrew uses the 'w' it inherited from Ugaritic and Egyptian. These are things to keep in mind when considering the strange case of Wilusa Taruisa, now known to have occupied the land we know as Ilios Troia.
I have tried to spell the words as if the letter "h" never existed in English. I could not however resist turning the 'h' into a "kh" and 's' into "sh" in places where the 'h' or lack thereof would have caused confusion. I can just about cope with Tudhaliyas. But if I can't spell Pithanas Pitkhanas, Alalah Alalakh, Kanes Kanesh &c. then I won't be able to pronounce them right. And I don't understand why so many scholars leave off the '-s' nominative suffix. Do we call Julius Juliu? or Sophocles Sophocle? What absurdity.
For the near-final word on Hittite history, use Bryce. For the rest of Bronze Age Anatolian culture, use Gurney. It may be dated, so keep an eye out for a new edition. For those who wish Bryce had included illustrations, get-but-don't-read Macqueen, who has little else.
The primary sources for Arzawa are Hittite and Egyptian. The Hittites had to put up with these annoying hillmen, so their sources are better. There are four sites with contemporary tablets so far. Kultepe / Kanesh / Nesas is not one of those sites; the only archive there comes from an Assyrian merchant colony within a kingdom that far, far predates Arzawa. Also the sundry Hieroglyphic Luwiyan inscriptions haven't told us much.
The most important site is Hattusas/Boghazkale. It was the capital except for a very brief layover in Tarhuntassa, and the texts are relevant. Most of that's been published already.
In the 1990's they found Sapinuwa at Ortakoy, a few dozen miles to Hattusas's northeast. These documents are administrative in nature, and have been loudly announced on the 'web: http://www.focusmm.com.au/civcty/ortky_00.htm. But they are on the wrong side of the capital for our purposes and (as far as I know) haven't been published.
Masat was another Kaska frontier town. Gary Beckman wrote something on the provincial administration there: http://www.umich.edu/~neareast/pages/faculty/beckman.htm.
Sarissa has been also found, or at least mentioned, at Kusakli. Its texts are published, too: http://www.vml.de/english/ks/ks1.htm. Unfortunately the building is religious and not political. What they published was the Sarissan edition of "Goat Sacrificing For Dummies".
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