Achaeans = Ahhijawa, of course

I wrote earlier as if both Achaeans and Trojans were Vassals under Hittites Empire.

This is of course more or less the position not just of Walter Leaf (whom I had consulted) but also of Emil Forrer (whom he would have been basing himself on). There is also a recent doctorate in Tuebingen University by Joachim Latacz. Which I have not yet read.*

• 1) Achaeans = Ahhijawa
  
  I see either Mykenai or Orchomenos or both after each other as capital of Achaean Empire.
  
  Thebai I see as a Canaanean enclave and as therefore interesting to Assyrians or interested in Assyrians, though they were later assimilated.
  
  
• 2) Ilios = Wilusa (-usa is replaced by -ios), Troy = Tarwisa
  
  
• 3) Paris Alexandros = Alaksandu
  
  In the Alaksandu tractate the word "[...]ap-pa-li-u-na-aš" appears. To me this sounds like Apollyon was the original either name or by-name of the deity of Troy, which Greeks later worshipped in Delphi as Apollon. Another name of the Devil. Even if in Greece he was not "chief god" of Olympic Pantheon.
  
  
• 4) Lycians = Lukka, and far from seeing this as an impediment to identifying Ilios with Wilusa, I see this as an asset. If Lycians were SW Anatolia, and Troy NW, I simply suppose Lycians were indeed SW but also much of the W.

Of course, I am being conservative after assimilating the position of Leaf as if it had stood uncontested.

And I have not read the contestations either in full.

I was just watching a programme about the Hittites, 2004 : The hittites: A civilization that changed the world : narrator Jeremy Irons, where the pottery is so reminiscent of Greek pottery in being pictorial and in amphora shape, where this particular amphora shown was so Cretan in showing youths dancing over the back of bulls, the Hittite helmets shown in the programme are exactly the Mycenean helmets, the Hittite cities have the same kind of gate as Mycenae and Troy ... and of course the ultimately evil Teshub worship is very close to the worship of Zeus and Jupiter.

I wonder if Mursili's prayer (in that documentary) means that Teshub could not possibly have approved of his father Suppiluliuma's sins or instead that he repents on behalf of a father who acted without Teshub's approval for his misdeeeds, an approval he could have given to others and even to Suppiluliuma if he had waited. In the latter case, it is a diabolic cult. Not meaning Mursili need have meant it as badly as that himself, but he was instructed by the priesthood and the traditions.

That is what I meant by Homer de-diabolising (partly) the religion, and by Zeus of Pergamon - with a cult going back to well before Homer, to the times just after the Trojan war, when founded by Hercules' grandson Telephos (sounds a bit like Telepinu ...), and being closer to Teshub - being more than other main deities of Pagan Grecoroman pantheons, more than say Jupiter Capitolinus, Satan (cfr the Apocalypse and the Letter of Christ to the Church of Pergamon).

To return to the first sentence, it seems Achaeans were not always part of Hittite Empire - one Hittite ruler adressed the ruler of Achaeans as brother - exactly as he would with the Pharao. But that is the kind of thing that can change over time.

So, while knowing about these Pagans, pray God have mercy on their souls, and that we may imitate their virtues insofar as appropriate but not their Pagan error. And trust Homer on his history,** but not on his theology.

Hans-Georg Lundahl
Nanterre University Library
St Catherine of Alexandria
25-XI-2013

*Joachim Latacz.
Wilusa (Wilios / Troia).
Zentrum eines Hethitischen Gliedstaates in Nordwest-Kleinasien.
http://www.uni-tuebingen.de/troia/deu/lataczwilusa.pdf

** Though he was incomplete by not mentioning Hittites. I attribute this to a condemnatio memoriae, like when Lenin statues were dismantled all over Russia in 1990.