The Ahhiyawa Texts

Twenty-six texts found in the Hittite capital of Hattusa dating from the fifteenth–thirteenth centuries B.C.E. contain references to a land known as “Ahhiyawa,” which most scholars now identify with the Late Bronze Age Mycenaean world. The subject of continuing study and controversy since they were first published in 1924, the letters are still at the center of Mycenaean-Hittite studies and are now considered in studies and courses concerned with Troy, the Trojan War, and the role of both Mycenaeans and Hittites in that possible conflict. This volume offers, for the first time in a single source, English translations of all twenty-six Ahhiyawa texts and a commentary and brief exposition on each text's historical implications. The volume also includes an introductory essay to the whole Ahhiyawa “problem” as well as a longer essay on Mycenaean-Hittite interconnections and the current state of the discipline.

Gary M. Beckman is Professor of Hittite and Mesopotamian Studies at the University of Michigan. He is the author of numerous books, including Hittite Diplomatic Texts (Society of Biblical Literature), the co-author of The Epic of Gilgamesh (Norton), and the co-editor of Text, Artifact, and Image: Revealing Ancient Israelite Religion (Brown Judaic Studies). Trevor R. Bryce is Professor Emeritus and Honorary Research Consultant, School of History, Philosophy, Religion, and Classics, at the University of Queensland. His books include The Kingdom of the Hittites and Life and Society in the Hittite World (both from Oxford University Press) and Hittite Warrior (Osprey). Eric H. Cline is Associate Professor and Chair of the Department of Classical and Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations, and Director of the GWU Capitol Archaeological Institute, at The George Washington University. Recently he has written Biblical Archaeology: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford University Press), co-authored Ancient Empires: From Mesopotamia to the Rise of Islam (Cambridge University Press), and edited Oxford Handbook of the Bronze Age Aegean (Oxford University Press).