The Ahhiyawa and Wilusa: Did the Hittites Know of the Trojan War?
Homer’s Iliad is one of the oldest stories which has survived. Coming out of the Greek Dark Age and describing events which occurred more than three millennia ago, it is a richly wrought and beautiful poem, but also something of a puzzle.
The events that it describes, whereby an alliance of Bronze Age Greek states sail over the Aegean to wage war over a kidnapped-ish princess, are not just to be found in Homer’s work. There are many other surviving fragments and versions of the same story, all more or less consistent in their telling of the events of the siege of Troy.
This suggests that, at its core and stripped of its mythology, the Iliad may be describing something out of the collective memory, a real war between the Achaean Greeks and the Trojans and a story which was told and retold many times by many different people. Historians are divided on what the Trojan war looked like (and indeed whether it even happened) but there might be clues.
The city of Troy is generally thought to be the archeological site of Wilusa, in the far north western corner of modern Turkey: it existed at the right time and in the right place, and it was destroyed when Troy was destroyed. The region surrounding Wilusa is known as Taruisa and 100 years ago in 1924 the Swiss Assyriologist and Hittitologist Emil Forrer first proposed the link between these names and “Ilium” and “Troy” as Homer calls it.
But Forrer was not a Greek expert: his domain lay to the east, with the Assyrians and more importantly with the other great power in Anatolia, one which may have had suzerainty over Troy herself: the Hittites.
These hardy people of the Black Sea and the rugged interior of Turkey had ruled these lands from their hidden city of Hattusa for centuries by the time of the Trojan War. They were a vast empire, and they were at their peak.
However the relationship between the Hittite empire and the Achaean Greeks of the Bronze Age is unclear. The focus of the Hittites was east and south, to their Egyptian rivals and the Assyrians who would eventually topple them on two separate occasions.
Again it is Emil Forrer that might have the answer. In his identification of Troy with Wilusa he noted Hittite references to an obscure people of the west with whom they had some dealings, and whom the Hittites called the Ahhiyawa.
And if these are indeed the Greeks of Bronze Age Mycenae, then is it possible to rediscover Troy from the Trojan side? Did the Hittites record anything of the war?
It seems they just might.
The Prince, the Treaty and the Warlord
According to Hittite sources the history between Troy and the Greeks dates back to centuries, and they were not always enemies. Several Hittite documents attest to Wilusa joining a rebellion against the Hittites themselves around 1400 BC.
This rebellion was crushed and the Wilusans brought to heel, but there is some tantalizing evidence that the Wilusans, the Trojans, may have had help. A sword has been found in Hattusa dating from the time and wrought in the style of Mycenae and the Greeks. The inscription on the sword confirms that the man who bore it fought against the Hittites.
Following the failed rebellion Wilusa was solely absorbed into the Hittite empire, becoming an entirely vassal state by the approximate time of the Trojan War 100 years later. A Hittite document records the treaty between Wilusa and Hattusa, and here again are other clues to a Greek involvement.
One of the gods guaranteeing the treaty on the side of the Wilusans is named Apaliunas, which historians agree is a version of the Greek name Apollo. Furthermore the treaty is signed on the Wilusan side by Alaksandu. Paris, son of Priam and prince of Troy in the Iliad, was also named Alexander.
Something funny was going on between the Hittites and their Wilusan vassal at this point, though, and the same Hittite king who signed the treaty was forced at some point to send soldiers to the region to bring Wilusa to heel. Again we see the Ahhiyawans, who apparently sought a treaty with Wilusa at this time, typically cemented with a dynastic marriage.
We even have a letter written by the Hittite king to a king of the Ahhiyawa asking them to aid the Hittites and not the rebellions Wilusans, wherein both kings are cast as equals. The Ahhiyawans would therefore not be some backwater civilization but a major player in the politics of the region.
The letter talks of a rogue warlord operating in Hittite territory named Piyamaradu, who sought an alliance with the Ahhiyawans to aid his cause. The warlord is not linked to Wilusa specifically in the letter but the timing fits, and the name looks a lot like Priam, the elderly king of Troy.
Piyamaradu must indeed have been old by this point, appearing in multiple other Hittite sources and apparently a thorn in their side for decades. Putting all this together a timeline starts to emerge of a Hittite version of the Trojan War.
In this version, Priam seeks Trojan independence from the Hittites and looks to his western neighbors the Greeks for aid. A treaty of some sort exists between the two peoples, but then the Hittites send an army to Troy to subdue the rebellion before it ever starts.
Peace breaks out, confirmed by Priam’s son Paris who commits to a treaty with his Hittite masters. But the Greeks are not so easily dissuaded, and in any case there is the marriage to consider, and the territory ceded by Troy to Mycenae to secure their support. Suddenly it seems that this is territory that Troy is no longer prepared to give up.
The Iliad talks of Paris stealing Helen, a Greek princess famed for her beauty, and the Greeks attacking his city to gain her back. If the deal the Ahhiyawans struck with Wilusa included not just the marriage but also territory, an Aegean island or two or perhaps a foothold in Anatolian Hittite territory, then a protracted war makes a lot more sense.
The problem is that these are only theories: we do not even know for sure that the Trojan War ever happened. But, in combing through the fragmentary documents which survive from the Hittites, we might just have found another source, not from the Greek oral history but from the other side of the conflict.
Header Image: Turns out we may know about the Trojan War from the Hittites, and the mysterious people to the west they called the Ahhiyawans. Source: Unknown Author / Public Domain.
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