15th century BC confederation in western Anatolia From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Assuwa (Hittite: 𒀸𒋗𒉿, romanized: aš-šu-wa) was a region of Bronze Age Anatolia located west of the Kızılırmak River. It was mentioned in Aegean, Anatolian and Egyptian inscriptions but is best known from Hittite records describing a league of 22 towns or states that rebelled against Hittite authority. It disappears from history during the thirteenth century BC.
 | It has been suggested that Pasuhalta (region) be merged into this article. (Discuss) Proposed since December 2024. |
Assuwa 𒀸𒋗𒉿 aš-šu-wa | |
|---|---|
| unknown-1430 BC | |
| |
| Common languages | Luwian[1] |
| Government | Confederation |
| Members | |
• legible | Kispuwa, Unaliya, Dura, Halluwa, Huwallusiya, Karakisa, Dunda, Adadura, Parista, Warsiya, Kuruppiya, Alatra, Pasuhalta, Mount Pahurina, Wilusiya, Taruisa |
• obliterated | [—]lugga, [—], [—], [—]waa, [—]luissa, [—] |
| Historical era | Bronze Age |
The name appears in different scripts over the course of a few hundred years. The individual etymologies are unknown,[2]
but scholarship has come to accept that the Ancient Greek: Ᾰ̓σῐ́ᾱ, romanized: Asia is cognate to the Mycenaean Greek: 𐀀𐀯𐀹𐀊, romanized: a-si-wi-ja).[3]
Assuwa was located somewhere in western Anatolia. Linear B texts from Mycenaean Greece identified it as a region within reach of Pylos associated with levies of rowers,[16] suggesting a location separated by water from the Peloponnese. While the extent of its geography is a matter of debate, recent scholarship has argued that much of its territory was located in the western part of classical Phrygia.[17][18][19] This same region was designated by the Hittite laws as part of the land of Luwiya, according to modern researchers.[20][21][17] It was likewise mentioned in a contemporary Egyptian poetical stela along with Keftiu as one of the lands to the west of Egypt.[9][22]
The earliest mention of a-šu-wi(ya)[15] is from an Anatolian royal seal dating to the eighteenth/seventeenth centuries BC,[23][24] contemporary to the first and only mention of the land of Luwiya of the Hittite texts.[25] The name a-su-ja[7] in Minoan Linear A texts of the sixteenth century BC is also acknowledged to be a likely reference to Assuwa,[3][26] though with no clear understanding of the context.
Egyptian records mention a region called isy[15] and an Assuwan "chief" and "prince" providing supplies to Thutmose III from 1445-1439 BC during his military campaigns against Nuhašše in modern Syria, including copper, lead, lapis lazuli, ivory, wood and horses.[10] It has been suggested these references predate Egypt's direct contacts with the Hittites and refer to a trade relationship mediated by Alashiya[9] and initiated by an Assuwan power with access to the Mediterranean.[10]
Assuwa is likewise mentioned in six surviving Hittite documents,[27] with all texts either dated to or referring to events occurring during the reign of Tudhaliya I/II.[3] Most of our knowledge comes from the Annals of Tudḫaliya, which gives a detailed account of a rebellion by a league of towns in the aftermath of a Hittite campaign against Arzawan controlled territories west of the Maraššantiya.[10][28][12]
But when I turned back to Hattusa, then against me these lands declared war: [—]lugga, Kispuwa, Unaliya, [—], Dura, Halluwa, Huwallusiya, Karakisa, Dunda, Adadura, Parista, [—], [—]waa, Warsiya, Kuruppiya, [—]luissa, Alatra, Mount Pahurina, Pasuhalta, [—], Wilusiya, Taruisa. [These lands] with their warriors assembled themselves...and drew up their army opposite me...I, Tudḫaliya, brought up my forces at night, and surrounded the army of the enemy. The gods handed their army over to me, the Sun Goddess of Arinna, the Storm God of Heaven, the Protective Genius of Hatti, Zamama, Istar, Sin, Lelwani. I defeated the army of the enemy and entered their country. And from whatever country an army had come (out) to battle, the gods went before me, and the countries which I have mentioned, which declared war, the gods delivered them to me. All these countries I carried off. The conquered population, oxen, sheep, the possessions of the land, I brought away to Hattusa. Now when I had destroyed the land of Assuwa, I came back home to Hattusa. As a booty 10,000 foot soldiers and 600 teams of horses for chariots together with the 'lords of the bridle' I brought to Hattusa, and I settled them in Hattusa.[29]
Cline dates this rebellion to circa 1430 BC[10] and Bryce describes it as "the first major [Hittite] venture to the west" which was "not carried out with the aim to impose authority on the western border, but just to secure it."[30] The annals further detail the capture of an Assuwan king named Piyama-dKAL,[31] the establishment of a client state under his son Kukkuli[32] and a second rebellion[33]after which "the coalition of Assuwa was destroyed".[3]
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It is possible that Asuwiya ("our good land") was simply the native name for territory occupied by Luwic speakers.[34][35][4] Linguistic models suggest the existence of a common Luwian-speaking state circa 2000 BC, stretching from the central Anatolian plateau (modern Konya) northward to the western bend of the Maraššantiya (where modern Ankara, Kırıkkale and Kırşehir provinces meet).[36][37] The region was dominated by the kingdom of Purushanda,[21][36] the etymology of which suggests a takeover of Hattic lands by Luwian elites[38][39] and a kingdom made up of an eclectic mix of Luwian-speaking Luwians, Hattic-speaking Luwians, Luwian-speaking Hattians and Hattic-speaking Hattians.[40] Archaeology at Acemhöyük has confirmed the remains of central Anatolian, Mesopotamian and north Syrian pottery - as well as traces of monumental structures - dated 2659 to 2157 BC,[41] providing a plausible terminus a quo for the Luwian takeover of the region.[42]
In the eighteenth century BC the Hittites conquered the Assyrian karum at Kanesh[29] and ultimately moved south to Purushanda,[43] establishing Hittite rule over ikkuwaniya - the Lower land.[29][44] By 1650 BC everything west of Purushanda was regarded as the unconquered (and not worth conquering) land of Luwiya,[45][46] "an Old Hittite ethno-linguistic term referring to the area where Luwian was spoken."[47] While it is still an open question whether the border between the Hittites and the Luwians ever extended as far west as the Sangarious,[13] in the 1600s BC that border was clearly the Maraššantiya.[48]
Within a generation "Arzawiya" is first mentioned in the Hittite records, located somewhere beyond the Hittite sphere of influence in the Lower land.[49] This suggests an extensive colonization of the land of Luwiya by a non-Luwian peoples by the turn of the sixteenth century BC - Gander focuses on Hurrian[49] Yakubovich says Carian[50] and Cline implies Ahhiyawan[3] - in the wake of prior Luwian westward migration.[13][46][51] There are historical traces of this migration - the Leleges[52] and the Lukka[29] - but it is clear the Luwians came into contact with the Mycenaeans,[53][54][55] whose strongholds in the Argolis[56] lay directly across the Aegean Sea from modern İzmir and who seem to have at first called the Luwian territory ru-wa-ni-jo ("land where Luwian is spoken").[57] With time bred by familiarity the Luwian name a-šu-wi-ya was transliterated into Mycenaean as a-si-wi-ja.[15]
As a result of this contact the Luwian language and culture went through a profound metamorphosis,[58][15] - and spread inland along the Hermos and Maeander river valleys into classical Pisidia and beyond:[29][59][60] "Extension of the Lower land further to the southwest would have brought Hittite territory in close proximity to the region which came to be called Arzawa, thus creating the potential for border disputes and cross border raids of the kind allied to in a number of treaties which Hittite kings subsequently drew up with their immediate neighbors."[46]
By the 1430s BC the Hittites perceived a threat from this unfamiliar mixture of different political, social, cultural and linguistic groups amongst the small entities and independent polities[61][62][63] in the land of Luwiya and launched a preemptive strike.[29] The campaigns against the Assuwa coalition are listed after the Lusa campaign[64] south of Lake Beyşehir.[65]
The confederacy appears to have been a rather short-lived affair, and there is thus far no consensus as to identification of the towns of the Assuwa league listed in the Annals of Tudḫaliya:
‣"Now, the Assuwan League consisted of a coalition of forces running from Lukka in the southwest to Wilusiya in the northwest, and hence comprised western Anatolia in its entirety."[15]
‣"The group of states making up this confederacy probably lay in the far west of Anatolia, covering at least part of the Aegean coast."[29]
‣"...the province of Assuwa...is located in the Hermos valley, as much as four toponyms featuring in the list with bearing on the blanket term Assuwian League can positively be situated in the realm of Arzawa."[15]
‣"Starke...connects...the Land of Assuwa...with classical Assos."[46]
‣"Assuwa" was merely a city or town "somewhere in the region of the upper stretches of the Sangarius and the Tembris" and "located in the immediate proximity of the region in which the coalition was apparently active, just to the (south)east of Huwalusiya and Masa."[66]
‣"...not attested anywhere else."[49]
‣"...not attested anywhere else."[49]
‣"For the identification of Dura with classical Tyrrha and modern Tire(h) along the southern bank of the river late called Kaystros, see Freu (208)b...[15]
‣"...not attested anywhere else."[49]
‣"..it can hardly be separated from the town of Huwalusa, which is mentioned in another small fragment probably dating from the reign of Mursillis II."[67]
‣"Many of the towns mentioned alongside [it] have convincingly been localized in western Phrygia by M. Forlanini."[49]
‣Woudhuizen associated it with the town of Honaz near the ancient Lycus river in Phrygia.[15]
‣"...can only be the well attested country of Karkisa..."[67]
‣"...was apparently situated close to the Seha River Land..."[68]
‣"is to be localized in Kizzuwatna..."[49]
‣"...not attested anywhere else."[49]
‣"...not attested anywhere else."[49]
‣"[S]uggests some close connection with the country of Warsiyalla mentioned in §14 of the Alaksandus treaty together with the Lukka lands, Masa and Karkisa, in a context which...probably serves only to locate these countries somewhere in the west of Asia Minor."[67]
‣The name is identified with Karatepe on the Cilician plain,[69] far removed from traditional locations of Assuwa.
‣Woudhuizen associated it with a mountain near İzmir.[15]
‣"...not attested anywhere else."[49]
‣"...only mentioned in a fragmentary ritual text without determinative and lacking any geographical context."[49]
‣Woudhuizen noted the correspondence with the Luwian name for Kaunos, Kwalatarna (“army camp”).[70]
‣"...not attested anywhere else."[49]
‣"...not attested anywhere else."[49]
‣"..[it] can be equated Ilios by way of a hypothetical form Wiluwa."[67]
‣"...an alternative location at the Byzantine site of Iluza was proposed by Vangelis Pantazis..."[15][71]
‣"The possibility that [it] might be identified with Greek Troia, i.e. the city of Troy, was observed in 1924 by E. Forrer, and after much controversy philologists have agreed that the equation is possible by way of the hypothetical form Tauriya."[67]
‣"A silver bowl whose hieroglyphic inscription mentions the name of Taruisa (ta-r-wi-za) might be evidence of the same Tudhaliya's campaign against Assuwa."[72][73]
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