FROM LUGAL.GAL TO WANAX?
A One-day Workshop held at Leiden
University on 14 October 2016 on
Kingship and State Formation in the
Late Bronze Age Aegean
With papers by:
John Bennet, Oliver Dickinson,
Kostas Kopanias, Guy
Middleton, Frans Wiggermann,
and Willemijn Waal
Organised by Jorrit Kelder and
Willemijn Waal
Venue:
Academy Building, Leiden University, Room AG 1
Rapenburg 73, 2311 GJ Leiden
Attendance is free, but you are requested to register by
contacting the organisers ([email protected]
or [email protected]). Please note that we
have limited capacity and places will be assigned on a
first come, first-serve basis.
This Workshop has been sponsored by the
Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and
Sciences, the Leiden University Fund / van
Walsem, the Faculty of Archaeology of
Leiden University, and LURIS, Leiden
University’s Knowledge Exchange Office.
FROM LUGAL.GAL to Wanax?
KINGSHIP AND STATE FORMATION
IN THE LATE BRONZE AGE AEGEAN
A ONE DAY WORKSHOP
TO BE HELD AT
LEIDEN UNIVERSITY,
14 OCTOBER 2016
CONVEYED BY
J.M. KELDER (UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD)
&
W.J.I. WAAL (LEIDEN UNIVERSITY)
KEY QUESTIONS
From the early 14th century BC onwards, Hittite texts refer to a land Ahhiya(wa). The exact
geographic position of this land has been the focus of academic debate for more than a century, but
most specialists nowadays agree that it must have been a Hittite designation for a land within the
Mycenaean world. Many questions remain, however, most importantly regarding the precise political
status and geographical layout of Ahhiyawa. The 13th century BC attribution of the Sumerogram
LUGAL.GAL to the Ahhiyawan King in two of these Hittite texts is especially problematic, for this
title suggests a degree of parity between the (unnamed) Ahhiyawan ruler and a select group of
important kings in the orient (such as the kings of Egypt, Assyria, Mitanni, Babylon and Hatti itself),
and thus implies that there must have been a ruler of similar supra-regional importance in the
Mycenaean world. Such as concept, however, is at odds with the currently prevalent view of the
Mycenaean world as a collection of culturally similar, yet politically independent, palatial states.
In recent years, various attempts have been made to explain this apparent dichotomy. Although there
has been a growing acceptance that there must have been some sort of collaboration between various
(often unspecified) palatial states, there is no consensus as to its specific nature: what this
collaboration entailed, which palaces were involved, whether it had a permanent or ad-hoc character,
and whether or not there was a clear hierarchy of palaces and rulers. This workshop aims to give a
fresh look on the organization and political structure of the Mycenaean world, combining Near
Eastern (especially Hittite) and Aegean textual and archeological evidence.
Key Questions that will be addressed include:
1. Can we establish a more or less fixed ‘value’ for the title of LUGAL.GAL in the Late Bronze
Age Near East and how must we consider the title in the Ahhiyawa texts?
2. Can we establish a clear ‘job description’ (areas of influence, activities, properties) of the
wanax and lawagetas in Mycenaean society?
3. To what extent does the archeological evidence plead for or against the existence of a larger
Mycenaean state?
4. To what extent does the textual evidence plead for or against the existence of a larger
Mycenaean state?
5. Can the archeological and textual data be satisfactorily reconciled?
The aim of this workshop is not to give the definite answers to these questions or to reach complete
consensus (although this would of course be a nice outcome!), but rather to candidly discuss the
different points of view and to have all arguments out in the open. This way, it will become clear
where there is common ground, what questions remain open and what further research may help to
contribute to a better the understanding –on both sides of the Aegean- of the Mycenaean palatial
world.
ABSTRACTS
Inside - Outside: a review of the textual evidence for Mycenaean socio-political structure and how it
might have appeared to the extra-Mycenaean world
John Bennet, British School at Athens / University of Sheffield
In this paper, I summarise concisely the Linear B textual evidence for socio-political
structure in those centres that offer sufficient data, with an emphasis on the upper levels,
on the grounds that these figures are most likely to have come into contact with agents of
external political entities. I will touch on, but not deal with extensively, the possible
'reach' of key figures and the physical spaces in which they might have acted within
Mycenaean centres. On the basis of this brief review, I explore how that socio-political
structure might have appeared to those encountering Mycenaean polities from the
outside. My focus is more on methodology - how can we draw such a picture - than it is
on attempting to reconstruct any particular historical reality.
What conclusions might be drawn from the archaeology of Mycenaean civilisation about political
structure in the Aegean?
Olivier Dickinson (University of Durham)
Specialists in the Aegean civilisations of the Late Bronze Age have traditionally
interpreted the archaeological material under the influence, conscious or not, of the later
Greek traditions of the "heroic age", preserved most notably in the Homeric poems, and
also by analogy with the Near Eastern civilisations. Evans's original interpretation of the
Minoan civilisation of Crete as an imperial power holding sway over much of the
Aegean, including the Greek mainland, derived from these sources, and the collapse of
this civilisation and its replacement by the originally mainland-based Mycenaean
civilisation have often been conceived in terms of war and conquest. However, support
for these theories, and for the notion of a "Mycenaean empire", cannot be found in the
legends, which characteristically imagine Greece in terms of the historical period, when
Greece consisted of a multitude of political communities. Although these historical
communities often formed relationships of alliance and dependence and even combined
in leagues intended to be permanent, only limited and localised attempts have been made
to suggest such features in the Late Bronze Age. It will be the purpose of this paper to
examine whether such interpretations, and even the theory of a Mycenaean "mega-state",
are necessary, and to what extent the archaeological evidence can support them.
A Great King on Alashia? Archaeological versus textual evidence
K. Kopanias (National & Kapodistrioan University of Athens), E. Mantzourani, and Y. Voskos
Alashia's king was mentioned as an equal of the Egyptian King in the Amarna Letters,
despite the fact that his kingdom was no match to Egypt from the political and the
military point of view. It seems that Alashia's significance as a trade partner, as well as
the fact that it was beyond Egypt's reach, were sufficient reasons, in order to pretend that
its rulers belonged to the "big league". In our paper we offer a very brief overview on
various texts from Egypt, Hatti and Ugarit concerning the political status of the king of
Alashia, as well as a summary of the available archaeological evidence on Cyprus. It
seems that there is no major site, which could be considered as the capital of a Great
Kingdom. But yet, one of them was indeed viewed as such by Egypt, Ugarit and other
rulers for their own reasons. The same could also apply in the case of Ahhiyawa.
Although we have no undeniable archaeological evidence, which proves the "supremacy"
of a single Mycenaean center over the whole of the Aegean, one of them seems to have
been considered by the Hittites as the capital of a Great King.
Where do we go from here? (Re)constructing Mycenaean political geography and change in the
palatial era
Guy D. Middleton (Newcastle University)
A bare-bones narrative of Mycenaean ‘history’, developed from the archaeological
evidence, usually proceeds from big man societies and the emergent chiefdoms of the
Shaft Grave period through the development of incipient states and eventually fullyfledged palatial states ruled by kings; these flourished for around two centuries, but
ended in crisis and collapse around 1200 BC. But such an ‘evolutionary’ scheme is an
oversimplification, which tends to obscure agency in the transformations that took place;
it also obscures the dynamism and regional variation apparent at any one time and pays
no attention to the complex interactions that must have existed within Greece.For the
palatial period, a period that could easily have seen more than ten kings come and go in
any one palace, historical reconstructions are not possible because we simply have no
historical texts, not even a king list, to give us some specifics. In order to develop a more
nuanced understanding of the palatial period, we can ask two key and connected
questions of the archaeological and textual evidence: 1) how was palatial era Greece
organised politically, and 2) how may this have changed over time? This paper will
address these two questions and will suggest that the palatial period was a time of
considerable variation in political organisation in which large organised royal states,
smaller states or ‘statelets’, and stateless societies co-existed and interacted within the
Mycenaean culture zone. It will also develop ideas of political dynamism based on
archaeological evidence from the Argolid, Crete, Lakonia, Messenia, and the Aegean. It
will be argued that, in addition to the consolidation of states, supra-regional state
expansion, or attempts at wider hegemony (or empire), can be detected in the
archaeological and textual evidence – and indeed that we should expect this to have
happened through a range of mechanisms. In addition, it will be suggested that the
palatial collapse of c. 1200 BC and aspects of the postpalatial period can be best
understood in this context.
The origins of Mycenaean kingship
Sofia Voutsaki (Rijksuniversiteit Groningen)
The nature of Mycenaean kingship at the heyday of the palatial system has been heavily
debated for more than a century. Much has been written on the social and economic
position, the ritual dimensions and external relations of the wanax, or the possible
influences by Minoan prototypes, the distant Indoeuropean roots of Mycenaean
kingship and the survival of the institution into the Dark Ages and the Homeric world. In
contrast, the origins of Mycenaean elite ideology in the local traditional structures of the
late MBA and early LBA mainland have received much less attention. The aim of this
paper is to explore the formation of Mycenaean elite ideology not only as a result of
external formative influences (which clearly played a very important role), but also in
the context of the pre-existing socio-political structures and the mainland cultural
traditions. I shall discuss two different modes of elite self-representation, namely
mortuary practices and figurative art, which both underwent dramatic, though uneven
and localised changes at the onset of the Mycenaean period. In the mortuary sphere
multiple, sometimes lavishly furnished, burials in larger tombs and extramural
cemeteries replaced single inhumations in simple, intramural, and usually unfurnished
tombs. At the same time, fi urative art, i.e. the depiction of the human usually male
figure, and the animal and plant world , almost always found on precious, intricately
crafted items accompanying the dead, appeared fairly suddenly and in specific sites,
marking the end of the largely uniconic tradition of the mainland MBA. In this paper, I
want to investigate what the changing expression and construction of different facets of
personal identities (age, gender, kinship and status) can tell us about the outlook and
ideology of the emerging elites in the competitive and unstable early Mycenaean world.
I will discuss both the overarching changes, but also divergent responses by different
elite groups, with the emphasis inevitably on the Grave Circles of Mycenae and the
North Cemetery at Ayios Vasilios, Laconia.
A view from the East: Hittite evidence for a Mycenaean Kingdom?
Willemijn Waal (Leiden University)
With the decipherment of Hittite in 1915, an invaluable new source of information about
Late Bronze Age Greece has become available to us. Among the thousands of cuneiform
tablets discovered in the archives of Hattusa, the capital of the Hittite Empire (ca. 16501180 BCE), there are some 26 texts that mention the ‘Ahhiyawa’, a term which has been
the object of much debate and controversy. Though the identification with Ahhiyawa and
the Mycenaean world is now generally accepted, there is still no consensus regarding the
question to which Mycenaeans this term refers exactly and more specifically, whether or
not Ahhiyawa was a great kingdom. In previous literature much attention has been given
to the fact that in the Hittite texts the kin of Ahhiyawa is called a ‘Great Kin ’ and that
the Hittite king addresses him as his equal. This would imply that Ahhiyawa was a
substantial supra-regional power which is difficult to rhyme with the current prevailing
paradigm in which the Mycenaean world is portrayed as consisting of several smaller,
independent states. The usage of this title by the Hittite king has therefore by some been
dismissed as diplomatic flattery. In this paper, I would like to (re)evaluate the status of
the king of Ahhiyawa by comparing the nature, mode and intensity of the contacts
between Hatti and Ahhiyawa to the Hittite relations with the Great Kings of Egypt,
Babylon, Assyria and Mitanni. In addition, the paper will contemplate on the possible
implications of the dearth of archaeological evidence for Hittite-Aegean contacts on both
sides.
Great Kings in the Ancient Near East
Frans Wiggermann (VU Amsterdam)
Wiggermann will have a brief look at the history of great-kingship in the ANE, starting
with the “Kin of Kish”, then throu h the Middle Bronze A e (Mari period, Assyria,
Babylonia) until the fall of Babylon, then to the rise of Assyria, and its relations with
Egypt and Babylonia. Are there besides brothers also fathers and children? How far does
the family metaphor go, and how formal is its application?