From Kizzuwatna to Troy?
Puduḫepa, Piyamaradu, and Anatolian Ritual in Homer*
SARAH MORRIS
University of California, Los Angeles
The sixth book of Homer’s Iliad has long attracted attention for its embedded
narratives, including traditions that sound native to Anatolia. When Glaukos of
Lycia meets Diomedes in battle, their family histories prevent them from engaging as enemies, once they recognize each other as guest-friends (Il. 6.119–236).
A long digression on Glaukos’s ancestors recounts the stirring story of his grandfather, the hero Bellerophon, and the monster Chimaera, set in Lycia in clearly
Hellenized tales of a “snake-slayer” (slayer of the illuyankas-serpent) long native
to Anatolia.1 Like the death and transport to Lycia of Sarpedon in Iliad 16, narrated in Anatolian language, or the funeral of Patroklos with its close convergences with Hittite royal burials, this passage reveals how Greek epic poetry can
incorporate foreign traditions for ritual procedures set on Anatolian soil.2
Another Iliad 6 episode long seen as Hellenic—the Trojan propitiation of
Athena—allows us to unpack its connections with Bronze Age ritual in Anatolia,
in tribute to the model of “demic diffusion” articulated so well by the late Calvert
Watkins. For in addition to teaching us how to kill a dragon, and how to be a
dragon, this book of the Iliad teaches Hellenic heroes and poets how to stop an
enemy in Anatolian fashion. The propitiation of Athena by the women of Troy is
an episode long suspect to Hellenists for its highly Athenian details of cult. In this
essay, I will try to demonstrate that the motivation for this special prayer, its supervision by the queen, performance by a priestess, assistance by female elders,
and special phrases all shadow closely patterns in Anatolian royal and ritual procedures, seen in both text and art, in both East and West.
1. Trojan prayers in Homer
To recall the action and setting: the rampage of Diomedes in Iliad 5 sends one
Trojan back to their citadel for a special plea to their gods; this unites Hector with
his mother, wife, son, brother, and brother-in-law, in intimate family scenes that
*
1
2
This effort is dedicated with affection and gratitude to the memory of Calvert Watkins.
Watkins 1995 (especially 404, 444, 448ff. on the illuyankas-myths), Katz 1998.
Watkins 2008, Högemann and Oettinger 2008.
Stephanie W. Jamison, H. Craig Melchert, and Brent Vine (eds.). 2013.
Proceedings of the 24th Annual UCLA Indo-European Conference. Bremen: Hempen. 151–67.
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prove to be his final, living moments with them in the poem. How this action is
initiated is telling: the seer Helenos (son of Priam, first introduced here in the
Iliad) urges his brother Hektor to return to the city for a special appeal to Athena
(6.73–118). The Trojan prince is to bid their mother, Hekabe, to gather the “old
women,” ascend to the acropolis, unlock the doors of the hieron and offer her
finest peplos to Athena by placing it on her knees. This offering is intended to
accompany and enforce a vow: twelve cattle will be sacrificed, if the goddess
takes pity on Troy and holds back Diomedes (86–97). These instructions (delivered in a single long sentence) are repeated by Hektor to his mother (269–78), but
carried out by the priestess Theano with a prayer to the goddess in direct speech,
after Hekabe chooses a fine cloth to offer Athena (286–310). Alas, the goddess
hears their prayer but refuses it (311), one of many signs of divine favor towards
the Greeks in their war against Troy.
This passage harbors distinctively Anatolian features, beginning with the role
of the queen in propitiating on behalf of her people. In Greek myth and cult,
women serve as priestesses, either as a term of youthful service, or in lifetime
offices tied to leading families and/or local politics (e.g., the Pythia).3 But to involve the wife of the king in such a role seems to be a specific reflection of the
kind of role played in Hittite Anatolia by a number of royal women, in particular
by Puduḫepa, wife of Ḫattušili III (1267–1237 BC) as well as daughter of the
priest of Ishtar in Kizzuwatna.4 The Hittite queen, just like the king, was the chief
celebrant in the Hittite state cult (there being no separate high priest or priestess).5
We shall see how Puduḫepa in particular may have shaped the epic role of women in cult: for the moment, the way male members of the royal family at Troy
involve the queen in cult seems to reflect such an ancient practice, or more pertinently, the way a Greek poet imagined that a royal family in Anatolia should behave in terms of cult practices and practitioners.
As in other Homerica, this role of queen as priestess also has Aegean precedents. Independently, Margalit Finkelberg and Kenneth Atchity with Elizabeth
Barber argued that aspects of royal succession in Greek mythology capture pat3
4
5
Connelly 2007.
Darga 1974; Otten 1975; Bin-Nun 1975; Taggar-Cohen 2006: 380–92, 444–5 (royal priesthood).
The queen could hold the title of šiwanzanna-, written logographically as (MUNUS)AMA
.DINGIR-LIM (literally ‘mother of god’), but there is no indication that this was a regular part
of her office or that the šiwanzanna- had a unique role as high priestess. On this word see now
CHD Š: 489–92.
From Kizzuwatna to Troy?
153
terns of descent from a king through his daughter, and that such patterns are reinforced by the hereditary role of priestess retained since the Aegean Bronze Age.6
Comparison of this kinship line with the peculiar institution of the tawananna in
Hittite (or even Hattian) Anatolia may even bring this Aegean pattern into closer
relation with those of Anatolia.7 These patterns survive in Greek myth, on the one
hand, in the strong line of descent via daughter of the king (thus Helen is heir to
the kingdom of Sparta), whose exogamy brings in a foreign-born prince as the
next king (Menelaos from Argos; more distantly in other cities, Pelops from Lydia, Kadmos of Phoenicia, etc.). On the other hand, this descent survives in cult in
various forms of hereditary priestess-hood retained by noble families in the Iron
Age, which may preserve Bronze Age privileges. In the Odyssey, Penelope prays
to Athena for the safe return of her son (4.759–67), and the wife of Nestor presides at a sacrifice to Poseidon at Pylos (3.450–2). Whether shadowy or strong in
early Greece, memories of such patterns and/or familiarity with living examples
may have helped make Hekabe a priestess, as well as a queen.
However appropriate her role in Anatolia, Hekabe as queen is displaced by
an actual priestess, Theano, never invoked by Helenos or Hektor in the initial
instructions but introduced in line 304, as the one who bears the key and opens
the temple door. It seems that an Anatolian, Aegean tradition (queen as priestess)
has been updated, and the queen upstaged, to foreground the role of an actual
priestess, Theano, a type of figure familiar to a Greek audience since the Bronze
Age (cf. the priestess E-ri-ta, PY Ep 704). For as holder of the keys to a sanctuary, Theano also incorporates a proper Bronze Age functionary in Mycenaean
Greece, listed in addition to the priestess in the Mycenaean Greek text just referred to (PY Ep 704.7 ka-ra-wi-po-ro /klāwiphoros/ ‘key-bearer’). It is significant that the poet adds an extra line (300) to explain how the Trojans made her
(ἔθηκαν) priestess (ἱέρεια) of Athena, as if to justify her intrusion into the royal
propitiation. And clearly, as a wife and mother, she serves as priestess under circumstances unusual in later Greek terms.
Thus her appearance in the Iliad is intrusive: as Kirk notes in his commentary, “Theano, then, is a curious innovation”; in fact, “No other priestess is mentioned in Homer.”8 Priam’s daughter, Kassandra, is a marriageable bride in the
Iliad (13.365) and a sister mourning her brother (24.699), rather than a virgin or
6
7
8
Finkelberg 1991, Atchity and Barber 1987.
Finkelberg 1997, Uchitel 2007.
Kirk 1990:165.
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priestess of Apollo as in later narrative; thus Theano’s appearance in Bronze Age
epic is striking, if not anomalous. The next priestess in Greek literature occupies
a throne in Athena’s temple on the archaic Acropolis (Hdt. 5.72), while in art, the
figure of a priestess (e.g., the Pythia at Delphi) is often identified by her age
and/or the temple key she wields. In western Greek art, Theano sometimes appears in scenes of Ajax assaulting Kassandra at the statue of Athena, in her Homeric role at Athena’s sanctuary.9
But Theano first appears on an early Greek (Corinthian) vase, the so-called
Astarita krater in the Vatican, the only depiction of the Greek embassy sent to
request the return of Helen early in the Trojan war, from the lost epic poem, the
Cypria.10 Mentioned briefly in the Iliad (11.138–42), the visit is recalled by
Theano’s husband, Antenor, who tells Helen herself, in the Teichoscopia (Il.
3.205–24), of receiving these Greek guests. A fuller version of the episode in a
lost poem by Bacchylides (“Sons of Antenor” or the Request for Helen) gives
Theano a prominent role, as priestess of Athena, along with fifty sons (some on
this vase). At left, Odysseus, Menelaos, and Talthybios wait on the walls of Troy,
or possibly on the steps of an altar. They are approached by Theano followed by
three females, labeled Dia, Malo, and a nurse (“Trophos”), then a number of
named horsemen, including at least two of her sons, presumably to protect her
from the enemy. Of the three females, “Dia” is a name for a divine attendant, like
Theano. “Malo” (Mēlō) is likewise a common Greek name, but I would like to
compare it to an Anatolian deity, Malis or Maliya, invoked by Hipponax (fr. 40
West), and glossed by Hesychius (s.v.) as a local name for Athena. A slave of the
Lydian queen Omphale also carries this name, and in Lycia Malis is the “native
equivalent of Athena.”11 Her Hittite ancestor, DMaliya, probably of older Anatolian ancestry (Nesite?), was associated with gardens, rivers, as “Mother of wine
and grain,” with a temple in Kizzuwatna where she is equated with Ishtar.12 In a
Greek lyric fragment (PLF fr. incert. 17) recently appreciated by Watkins,
“Malis” is described as spinning, an attractive complement to an archaic ivory
“spinner” figure from Ephesus. The third figure, “Trophos” or nurse, distinguished by her white hair as aged, may be Aithra, nurse of Helen and mother of
Theseus, captured from Attica when Helen’s brothers returned her to Sparta,
9
10
11
12
Moret 1975:22–3; Connelly 2007:92–104, figs. 4.14–16; Parker 1998 on Herodotus 5.72.
Beazley 1958, Kaltsas and Shapiro 2008:196–7.
Melchert 2004:36, as cited by Watkins 2008:122.
Haas 1994:156, 273–4, 410–11, 855–56; Watkins 2007:123; Hawkins 2013:126–9.
From Kizzuwatna to Troy?
155
whose recovery from Troy was celebrated in Athenian myth and art. But none of
these three play a role in extant Greek literature on the Trojan war, and I suspect
Anatolian origins.
Let us examine the name of Theano herself, for its Anatolian echoes. Clearly
theophoric in Greek, it is borrowed for later priestesses in Athens and Argos
(Plut. Alc. 22; IG II2 3634, a Roman arrephoros), echoed in others (Theonoe in
Euripides’ Helen, etc.), and is a “paradigmatic name for a priestess.”13 I would
like to offer a more distant, if speculative, comparison to similar names in Anatolia. In the first instance, one thinks of the ritual specialist Tunnawi(ya), author of
at least five of the so-called Kizzuwatna rituals, most of them “wholly Anatolian”
(i.e., Hittite-Luwian) rather than a mixture of Hurrian, Luwian, and Mesopotamian rituals. In at least one Hittite text (KBo 21.1–5, I 1), Tunnawi hails from Hattusas, in others from “Dunna” (Tynna?).14 Other possible Anatolian inspirations
for Theano’s name (Θεανώ < *Θεϝανώ?) as well as her duties include the distinctive title tawananna, discussed earlier for its particular place and function in Anatolian royal succession. Did a Greek poet invent Theano’s name by hearing and
Hellenizing an Anatolian name or a title, once hereditary in agnatic kinship but
also embracing a cult function?
One reason for bringing Theano’s name closer to Anatolia is the epithet that
follows it in Homer. Her family and origin are expressed in what is assumed to be
a patronymic, Kissēis, “daughter of Kissēs,” a figure who appears in Iliad 11
when Agamemnon slays one of her sons, Iphidamas, grand-son (and son-in-law)
of Kissēs, a king of Thrace. (I doubt it anticipates South Persian Kissios [Hdt.
5.49, Aeschylus Pers. 120, Ch. 423], for Kashu/Kassites.) But what if a different
kind of adjective qualifies her?
Kissēis, whose spelling and versification suggest some form of *Kissēw-is,
could also be “Kissew-an,” if Theano comes from a place in Anatolia known to
Greeks at least by an initial term. The obvious candidate, abbreviated in Greek,
would be Kizzuwatna, the province of southeastern Anatolia annexed by the Hittites in the late Empire, and home to powerful cult traditions centered on the
Storm God, Teshub, and the goddess Inanna/Ishtar, as well as Ḫebat. As the original home of Puduḫepa, queen and supreme priestess in the 13th century, and as
the locale of distinctive cult traditions (Hurrian, Mesopotamian and Anatolian),
this ethnic epithet—often added to Puduḫepa’s name, “daughter of the land of
13
14
Sourvinou-Inwood 1988:35, Connelly 2007:70 n.90.
Goetze 1938; Hutter 1988; Miller 2004:452, 458 (origins south of the Maraššanta river).
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Kizzuwatna”—would make Theano the bearer of special cult practices native to
southeast Anatolia, celebrated in the Hittite world.
However, I owe to Petra Goedegebuure the excellent suggestion that this
word may be, instead, an attempt to render in Greek the Hittite persona ḫašauwa-, sometimes translated as “midwife” for its function in Hittite birth texts and
putative etymology (‘engender’),15 but more generally a female ritual practitioner.16 Otten’s understanding of this term (1952:231–4) as a phonetic reading of the
Sumerogram MUNUSŠU.GI “old woman” makes it even more plausible as a Hellenized term, by bringing it closer to the phrase “borrowed” from Anatolia in this
passage (below). Following Kretschmer (and Gladstone) to make Homer’s Keteioi (Od. 11.521, “Mysian” allies of the Trojans) Hellenic memories of distant
Ḫatti, we have a parallel for reading the initial consonant in Greek (ḫ > k). This
would turn another title into a proper name (whether or not Homer makes it/him
Thracian), in a literal translation of a noun-agent into a personal name or nominal
epithet, masking Theano’s Anatolian function. In some Hittite texts, Tunnawiya
is also called ḫašauwaš (KUB VII 53 + XII 58 I1, IV 44), and even Puduḫepa
gives herself this title in prayers where she serves as (metaphorical) ritual ministrant for the health of her family (KUB XXI 27 II 15–23).
Further circumstances and terminology characterize this Trojan episode as
Anatolian: next, in the role assigned to the “old women” (Il. 6.87: geraiai) whom
Hektor is to assemble with his mother in the instructions issued by Helenos. Hekabe gathers these together (6.287) after calling her attendants (amphipoloi, clearly
separate figures associated with ritual in Homer: Od. 4.760, etc.), and they follow
her (296: metesseuonto) to the citadel. The plural female form of the adjective for
“old” is unique here in Homer, as if invented for the occasion.17 Once again, I
would argue for an origin in Anatolian ritual, given the special name and role of
the “old woman” (ŠU.GI) with ritual powers and functions.18 Such figures appear
both as practitioners, but also as authors and/or performers of specific rites. Thus
the Sumerogram MUNUSŠU.GI or “old woman” is linked with a high number of
15
16
17
18
Beckman 1983:232–5, 270. Otten (19562:234) also accepts the etymology from ḫaš(š)- ‘engender, give birth’, despite equating ḫašawa- with MUNUSŠU.GI.
Puhvel (1991:229) explicitly rejects any connection of ḫašawa- with ḫaš(š)- on the proper
grounds of the single -š- (all derivatives of ḫaš(š)- have a geminate) and the fact that the attested verbal noun of ḫaš(š)- is ḫaššumar. It could not be *ḫašawar. Kloekhorst (2008:319–21)
also implicitly rejects the connection, since he does not list ḫašawa- under ḫaš(š)-.
Lorimer 1950:443 calls this term another Athenian trait; Graziosi and Haubold 2010:99–100.
Miller 2004:10.
From Kizzuwatna to Troy?
157
ritual texts. While they practice solo in Hittite ritual texts, they can be referred to
collectively in the third person, in other contexts (as when Ḫattušili I complains
about their influence over his wife, in the Hittite-Akkadian bilingual text: KUB
1.16, iii/iv 64 ff.).19
Having assembled a full female panoply of ritual power—Anatolian queen,
Greek priestess, and local “old women”—the Trojan party is now ready to perform their appeal to the chief city goddess, Athena. First, the queen chooses her
finest piece of cloth from the deepest recesses of her treasury, one that “shines
like a star.” Then they proceed to the citadel, where Theano the key-holder opens
the door of the temple (nēos), and they begin their prayer. Raising their hands, all
of the women (pasai: queen, priestess, geraiai, amphipoloi?) utter a ritual cry,
ololygē: this special term marks many a Homeric episode when women participate in a sacrifice, prayer, or vow, including the two Odyssey passages where a
queen (Penelope, Eurydice) presides (4.767, 3.450). Long associated with the
discomfort and guilt that modern scholars imagined behind ancient animal sacrifice, this term has regained something closer to its ancient meaning since Billie
Jean Collins compared it to the Hittite ritual cry for such occasions, palwai-.20
Greek contexts mark this cry of ololygē as a song of triumph (Aesch. Th. 367–
70), victory (Aesch. Ag. 594–7), appeal to the gods for their attention and help
(Eur. fr. 351), or simply joy and celebration attending a sacrifice, vow or prayer,
as in the Odyssey passages cited above.
This ritual cry is followed by the gift to the goddess of a valuable cloth; while
this invokes later Greek practices, it is also familiar in Anatolia: in one text, a
royal divine dream is interpreted by a woman, Hepapiya (a priestess?), to mean
that one should give a garment to a deity (KUB 15.5+48.122 i 7–9; de Roos
2007:71 and 80). In both instructions and completion in Homer (Il. 6.92, 277,
302–3), the peplos is placed “on her knees,” a phrase that has long puzzled readers of Homer and archaeologists. For it implies a seated statue of the goddess,
and calls for comparison to archaic Athenian images, such as the one signed by
Endoios and seen near the Erechtheion on the Acropolis by Pausanias (1.26.4),
long associated with a marble Athena, seated and armed, found in 1821.21 Speculation about this statue is connected to discussion of the Homeric prayer and the
19
20
21
Collectively, “old women” of Liḫzina, in the Luwian ritual of Zuwi (CTH 412) and in the
Nuntarriyašḫa festival (CTH 626); Haas 1994:888–9.
Collins 1995.
Akropolis 625: Morris 2001:148–50, fig. 11.
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offering of a peplos, as both an anachronism and an Athenian one, or even an
interpolation by Peisistratid Athens into the Iliad.22 Most Athena statues depicted
at Troy in Greek and Roman art are standing armed figures, like the ones who try
(and fail) to protect Kassandra from assault by Locrian Ajax.23 The tradition of
the Trojan Palladion, an image of Athena stolen by Diomedes and Odysseus, is
hard to see as a heavy seated statue plus throne, a further problem in this passage
for Greek audiences.
Instead, we should imagine, behind this Trojan Athena, examples of seated
goddesses in Bronze Age Anatolia. Small portable images could have survived
and traveled over time and space, like the gold statuette in the Schimmel collection, perhaps the kind vowed in Hittite prayers, while Hittite monuments were
long visible to later observers, such as the rock-cut relief of king and queen propitiating gods at Fraktin.24 In it, two Anatolian deities (labeled Ḫebat and Teshub in
12th-c. Luwian hieroglyphs) are enthroned, receiving libations poured out before
them by the king and queen (Ḫattušilis III and Puduḫepa) or offerings (bread,
etc.) placed on tables in front of their seat. While seated clay figurines exist in
Mycenaean art, and seated goddesses accept libations and offerings (including
textiles) in Aegean frescoes and glyptic, perhaps our poet set his Trojan scene in
Anatolian terms, with a seated goddess receiving offerings “on her knees.”
2. Hittite prayers
After offering the peplos to Athena at Troy in Iliad 6, Theano raises her voice in
prayer, delivering six lines of hexameter with a typical vow: the promise of
twelve cattle (unbroken heifers), if the goddess will take pity on the Trojans and
break the spear of Diomedes (6.305–10).
“πότνι᾽ Ἀθηναίη ἐρυσίπτολι δῖα θεάων
ἆξον δὴ ἔγχος Διομήδεος, ἠδὲ καὶ αὐτὸν
πρηνέα δὸς πεσέειν Σκαιῶν προπάροιθε πυλάων,
ὄφρά τοι αὐτίκα νῦν δυοκαίδεκα βοῦς ἐνὶ νηῷ
ἤνις ἠκέστας ἱερεύσομεν, αἴ κ᾽ ἐλεήσῃς
ἄστύ τε καὶ Τρώων ἀλόχους καὶ νήπια τέκνα.”
22
23
24
305
310
Lorimer 1950:442–9, Graziosi and Haubold 2010:27–9, 99–101.
Moret 1975:11-16.
See http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/works-of-art/1989.281.12 (small gold pendant with a
child “on the knees” of a goddess); http://www.hittitemonuments.com/fraktin/ for relief at
Fraktin and Ḫebat’s title as an enthroned goddess: Otten 1975:21; Haas 1994:388.
From Kizzuwatna to Troy?
159
“O lady Athena, our city’s defender, shining among goddesses,
break the spear of Diomedes, and grant that the man be
hurled on his face in front of the Skaian gates; so may we
instantly dedicate within your shrine twelve heifers,
yearlings, never broken, if only you will have pity
on the town of Troy, and the Trojan wives, and their innocent children.”
This prayer addresses Athena as Potnia (a prehistoric cult title in Mycenaean
Greece, but otherwise a title in Homer, like wanax, for royal personages), with a
vow to sacrifice in thanks if the plea be granted, all the more poignant as it is refused. Once individual features of the ritual in the Iliad are revisited as Anatolian,
it remains to link this prayer to Bronze Age Anatolia. A newly published Hittite
text offers a set of special prayers delivered by an unnamed Hittite queen (probably Puduḫepa) in the form of vows (oxen, sheep, plus special Hittite offerings,
golden images), if the deities addressed fulfill her requests. The text (KUB 56.15
= CTH 590) includes several separate appeals in the first person (direct speech),
tailored to specific deities and their locales: first, a prayer for well-being for the
king (a common concern for the queen) which promises sacrifices to a mountain[?]; a short tribute to Teshub and Ḫebat (in an unknown town), then a vow to
“the goddess, my lady” for well-being. There follow two texts in the third person,
which record how the Queen went to Izziya (classical Issos, identified with Kinet
Höyük in Cilicia) to pray to the sea, and then speak a second prayer at Kummanni
(Comana, in Cappadocia). Both prayers are then cited in direct speech, but it is
their object which attracts our attention: the queen prays to the Sea to “[deliver]
Piyamaradu to me so that he does not elude my grasp”; at Kummanni: “If you
seize Piyamaradu (alone?), [I will give you a] bird of gold, and a unit of time [of
gold]. Piyamaradu [will?] it/them …” before our text breaks off.25
Who was Piyamaradu, and why does his activity cause such concern in the
royal house of Ḫatti, generating more than one kind of special prayer? Hitherto
largely known in letters and other diplomatic texts, he poses a major nuisance
to the Hittite monarchy and their various western vassals and allies, over a lifetime of extraordinary longevity and supreme annoyance to successive kings of
Ḫatti. For his name appears in documents associated with four successive Hittite
rulers, from Muršili II or Muwatalli II (in the Letter of Manapa-Tarḫuntas), to the
time of Ḫattušili III (if P’s name is restored in Ḫattušili’s annals, CTH 82, and
25
De Roos 2007:240–3; Beckman, Bryce, and Cline 2011:248–52, AhT 26 (the version cited
here).
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assuming Ḫattušili III is the author of the Tawagalawa letter, CTH 181). Thus he
was not only long-lived, lasting over thirty years, but effective in his ability to
cause trouble at some distance from the Hittite heartland. In the earliest texts with
his name (KUB 14.1 + KBo 19.79), he attacked Wilusa and Lazpa (Troy and
Lesbos?), carrying off craftsmen (šaripitu), and alienates the loyalty of Atpa,
king of Millawanda (Miletus), away from the Hittite king. In one of the latest
texts (KUB 14.3 = CTH 181), resolving a dispute between Hittite and Aḫḫiyawa
kings over Wilusa, Piyamaradu is protected by the king of Aḫḫiyawa and flees
over the sea with 7,000 captives.26 As “a rebellious subject petitioning for a new
vassal kingdom,” he openly did not toe the Ḫatti line in practice.27
What is striking about this prayer and its potential for understanding scenes
in Homer is how an historical figure, who threatens or annoys the stability of the
Hittite monarchy, has become a target of intercession by a Hittite queen. More
than any other feature of this passage in Iliad 6, it suggests a powerful parallel if
not precedent for the Trojan prayer, in that the queen herself intervenes to save
her husband’s kingdom against a foreign intruder. Like the scrap of Luwian epic
with an adventure set at “steep Wilusa,” the new Hittite prayer may simply reveal
that in Anatolia, as well as the Aegean, historical encounters fed poetic and ritual
narratives.28 But Puduḫepa’s prayers could prefigure the Trojan appeal in Iliad 6,
in the same way that other features of this passage, and other Homeric episodes,
are enriched by contact with Anatolia.
Perhaps we should not be surprised, once we accept the high level of concern
raised by the activities of Piyamaradu for both the Hittite king as well as the
queen. For while she was making special intercessions with her divine patroness
to stop the rebel, her husband, King Ḫattušili III, was making diplomatic overtures of unprecedented generosity and courtesy to his Aḫḫiyawa counterpart. On
only one occasion did a Hittite king refer to such an Aḫḫiyawa leader as “my
brother, my equal,” even a “great king.” As Trevor Bryce has recently argued, it
is no coincidence that this lavish tribute appears only once, when the king of the
Ḫatti has been unable to stop Piyamaradu by means of force, and has turned to
diplomacy to flatter the Aḫḫiyawa into a supportive alliance against the rebel
26
27
28
If Piyamaradu was captured (KBo 16.35, 7: Gurney 2002:136) during the reign of Muwatalli,
thus ending his activity, his name cannot be restored in the annals of Ḫattušili III.
Gurney 2002:136–7.
Watkins 1986:58–61.
From Kizzuwatna to Troy?
161
who refused to be a loyal vassal king.29 Thus the career of Piyamaradu inspired
unusual measures both diplomatic and ritual, by both king and queen.
3. Anatolian interfaces
Within the corpus of Bronze Age texts detailing campaigns, cease-fires, embassies and overtures, prayers and curses, lie events that later Greek poets turned into
epic encounters and episodes of the Trojan War. In support, let us recall how
closely Ḫatti and Aḫḫiyawa were intertwined, how early, and where their encounters took place. Since the time of Tudḫaliya I/II, these encounters involved not
only diplomatic correspondence with vassal kings (where Aḫḫiyawa are cited as
third parties), but more vivid archaeological testimonia for interaction.
At least one king (Tudḫaliya I/II?) captured a foreign sword from battles in
Aššuwa (west) and dedicated it to the Storm God at Ḫattušas. The most recent restudy of the weapon—once seen as “Aegean,” for its close resemblance to a Type
B sword—compares details of its hilt, tang, and riveting technique to weapons
from Syria-Cilicia, especially Byblos, and finds even closer relatives in Anatolia
itself, at Alaca Höyük. What is most striking is that its alleged Aegean relative,
the Type B sword, was first identified at Mycenae, where many were found by
Schliemann in the Shaft Graves, that is to say, in the early Mycenaean period
(15th c).30 These important graves also offer us the most explicit Hittite import to
Mycenaean Greece: a silver vessel in the shape of a stag, once a Hittite bibru but
pierced for use as an Aegean rhyton, found in Circle A, Grave V.31 If it made its
way to a Mycenaean ruler as a diplomatic “greeting gift” (in the Akkadian terminology of the later Amarna letters), it puts kings of Aḫḫiyawa and Ḫatti on formal
and friendly terms as “brothers,” if not fellow “Great Kings,” early on. If this
valuable object reached a wealthy grave by other means—as booty, piracy, ransom, or trophy claimed by an early Mycenaean soldier of fortune—then we can
imagine a different relationship between Anatolia and the Aegean, one based on
warfare rather than diplomacy.32 Since both kinds of interaction appear in other
textual evidence, and we have just examined how at least one Hittite king tried
both force and diplomacy against his non-Hittite neighbors, both are plausible.
29
30
31
32
Bryce 2003.
Taracha 2003.
Koehl 1995.
As described in Morris 1989.
162
Sarah Morris
I would like to probe these Aegean burials more closely for other Hittite connections in ritual. As long recognized, the burial of Patroklos on Trojan soil (Iliad
23) mirrors in many ways the stages of a Hittite royal funeral.33 In particular, Day
3 of the šalliš waštaiš, when the funeral pyre is extinguished with wine and beer,
the bones gathered, anointed with oil and wrapped in cloth, seems to echo specific steps outlined in the Iliad. But even more striking than literary comparanda is
the material evidence from Mycenae for practices in the same text: gold and electrum face-masks from both grave circles at Mycenae compare to the gold pūriyalplaced over the mouth and gold šakuwa- placed over the eyes of the Hittite dead,
on Day 2 (KUB XXXIX 22, ii 2–4, 58–9). In related funeral texts, a gold cup is
held up to the deceased (KUB XXX 23+ ii 11–16), and a clay cup is smashed to
the ground (XXX 23+ iii 40), both types of vessels found in abundance in the
Shaft Graves (including clay cups broken above the graves). Finally, a pair of
gold scales from Grave III at Mycenae calls to mind how an “old woman” uses a
pair of scales to weigh something made of clay (?) against gold and silver (KUB
XXX.15, 1–33). Since Mycenae was excavated decades before Hittite texts were
deciphered, funerary scales of gold and their Homeric complement, the psychostasia (Il. 22.208–13), were readily compared to practices in the Egyptian
Book of the Dead, not in Anatolia. Let us recall that, as Hektor leaves the battlefield for the city of Troy to deliver his brother’s request for a special prayer, he
wears an early Mycenaean “tower shield” of the kind worn in art of the Shaft
Grave period (Il. 6.116–7).34 Ultimately, convergences between Mycenaean and
Hittite traits appear over many centuries. These early Mycenaean links suggest
connections across the Aegean since the 15th century, whether hostile or in the
migration of practices, perhaps through intermarriage or relocation of captives
and craftsmen, in both directions. As I have argued, such connections might have
brought a “Potnia Aswiya” to Mycenaean Pylos in the Late Bronze Age, and left
lasting traces of her Anatolian counterpart at Ephesus (Bronze Age Apasas) in the
cult image of Artemis Ephesia.35
A different kind of connection exposed Greek poets to Anatolian terms and
practices that outlived the Bronze Age, particularly in western Asia Minor (home
to later Greek cities) and in the southeast in Cilicia. In the west, Bronze Age
33
34
35
For the most recent edition of this text, see Kassian, Korolëv, and Sidel'tsev 2002; discussion
in Rutherford 2007.
Lorimer 1950:132–92, Stubbings 1962:510–13, Kirk 1990:169–70.
Morris 2001.
From Kizzuwatna to Troy?
163
monuments and figures were “read” as Egyptian (Hdt. 2.106), their Luwian hieroglyphs in royal titles applied to later kings like Midas of Phrygia.36 In the southeast, Greek legends (Mopsos) and names in cuneiform texts appear in another
important arena for the afterlife of Hittite culture—in reliefs and texts still visible.37 Recently scholars have directed our focus towards the transmission of
Bronze Age Anatolian ritual formulae to Greek poetics, via both practitioners
who performed ritual and in monuments that displayed them, in these two primary areas for “Anatolian interfaces” from East to West.38 When royal power and
fortified citadels declined, survivors relocated to southeast Anatolia and North
Syria in a Neo-Hittite revival of Bronze Age kingdoms, and more modest practitioners survived among regional and rural communities that outlived the Bronze
Age, continued to apply their skills, and taught them to descendants, apprentices,
and later generations. This would explain the high incidence of surviving Hethitica in Greek ritual—burials, prayers, hymns, oaths, curses, cures—if performance
long outlasted the 2nd millennium BC. And it may clarify some puzzles in our
Homeric text with Hittite precedents, transformed as always into something deliberately Greek in its afterlife. In the Trojan prayer to Athena, a Greek poet imagines how the deity responded, something absent in Hittite prayers (although one
may ask a god to “lend an ear” and offer votive ears of gold and silver: KUB 15.1
ii 25–7), but crucial in an epic tradition where divine favor is essential to the action. In quest of that favor, the Trojans mustered many an Anatolian title, term,
prayer, and practice—in a passage where a high number of foreign, prehistoric
borrowings seem to be clustered—only to receive a divine, Greek denial.
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