Arzawa in the second half of the 2nd millennium BC was the name of a region and a political
entity in Western Anatolia. The core of Arzawa is believed to have been located along the
Kestros River, with its capital at Apasa, later known as Ephesus. When the Hittites
conquered Arzawa it was divided into three Hittite provinces: a southern province called
Mira along the Maeander River, which would later become known as Caria; a northern province
called the Seha River Land, along the Gediz River, which would later become known as Lydia;
and an eastern province called Hapalla. It was the successor state of the Assuwa league,
which also included parts of western Anatolia, but was conquered by the Hittites in c. 1400.
Arzawa was the western neighbour and rival of the Middle and New Hittite Kingdoms. On
the other hand it was in close contact with the Ahhiyawa of the Hittite texts, which corresponds
to the Achaeans of Mycenaean Greece. Moreover, Achaeans and Arzawa formed a coalition against
the Hittites, in various periods.
The kingdom
According to Hittite sources, the capital of the Kingdom of Arzawa was Apasa, corresponding
with later Greek Ephesus. The languages spoken in Arzawa during the
Bronze Age and early Iron Age cannot be directly determined due to the paucity of indigenous
written sources. The current consensus among scholars is that the linguistic identity of
Arzawa was predominantly Luwian, based, inter alia, on the replacement of the designation
Luwiya with Arzawa in a corrupt passage of a New Hittite copy of the Laws, which appears
to reflect a change in the name of the region. However, one scholar has recently argued that
Luwiya and Arzawa were two separate entities, because Luwiya is mentioned in the Hittite
Laws as a part of the Hittite Old Kingdom, whereas Arzawa was independent from the Hittites
during this period. He also argued that there was no significant Luwian population in Arzawa,
but instead that it was predominantly inhabited by speakers of Proto-Lydian and Proto-Carian.
The zenith of the kingdom was during the 15th and 14th centuries BC. The Hittites were then
weakened, and Arzawa was an ally of Egypt. This alliance is recorded in the correspondence
between the Arzawan ruler Tarhundaradu and the Pharaoh Amenophis III called the Arzawa
letters, part of the archive of the Amarna letters, having played a substantial role
in the decipherment of the Hittite language in which they were written.
According to Hittite records, in c. 1320 BC Arzawa joined an anti-Hittite alliance together
with the region of Millawanta under the king of Ahhijawa. As a response of this initiative,
the Hittite kings Suppiluliuma I and Mursili II finally managed to defeat Arzawa around
1300 BC. The king of Arzawa managed to escape to Mycenaean controlled territory. Arzawa
was then split by the Hittites it into vassal kingdoms. These were called;
Kingdom of Mira, Hapalla,
"Land of the River Seha" Also, Mursili's son Muwatalli added Wilusa
as a vassal. These kingdoms, usually termed simply as "lands"
in Hittite registers, could have formed part of the Arzawa complex already during the existence
of Arzawa kingdom. Known western Anatolian late-Bronze Age regions
and/or political entities which, to date, have not been cited as having been part of
the Arzawa complex are; Land of Masa,
Karkiya, Lukka lands,
After the collapse of the Hittite Empire from the 12th century, while Neo-Hittite states
partially pursued Hittite history in southern Anatolia and Syria, the chain seems to have
broken as far as Arzawa lands in western Anatolia were concerned and these could have pursued
their own cultural path until unification came with the emergence of Lydia as a state
under the Mermnad dynasty in the 7th century BC.
There has been evidence from a British expedition in 1954 to Beycesultan in inner western Anatolia
which suggests that the local king had central heating in his home. Nothing more was heard
from this invention until Gaius Sergius Orata reinvented it in Ancient Rome around 80 BCE.
Kings of Arzawa in the 14th century BCE Kupanta-Kurunta
Madduwatta of Zippasla Tarhundaradu
Anzapahhadu Uhha-Ziti - defeated by Mursili II around
1320 BCE See also
History of the Hittites Assuwa
Lukka Lydia
References
Sources Hawkins, J. D. 1998. ‘Tarkasnawa King of
Mira: Tarkendemos, Boğazköy Sealings, and Karabel.’ Anatolian Studies 48:1–31.
Hawkins, J. D. 2009. ‘The Arzawa letters in recent perspective.’ British Museum Studies
in Ancient Egypt and Sudan 14:73–83. Kelder, Jorrit M.. "Mycenaeans in Western
Anatolia". Talanta: Proceedings of the Dutch Archaeological and Historical Society. XXXVI-XXXVII:
49–88. Retrieved 6 November 2013. Melchert, H. Craig. The Luwians. Leiden: Brill.
Singer, I. 2005. ‘On Luwians and Hittites.’ Bibliotheca Orientalis 62:430–51..
Yakubovich, Ilya.. Sociolinguistics of the Luwian Language. Leiden: Brill.
External links