Tlos, Oinoanda and the Hittite Invasion of the Lukka lands. Some Thoughts on the History of North-Western Lycia in the Late Bronze and Iron Ages

Abstract

Summary: The present article contains observations on the invasion of Lycia by the Hittite king Tudhaliya IV as described in the Yalburt inscription. The author questions the commonly found identification of the land of VITIS/Wiyanwanda with the city of Oinoanda on account of the problems raised by the reading of the sign VITIS as well as of archaeological and strategical observations. With the aid of Lycian and Greek inscriptions the author argues that the original Wiyanawanda/Oinoanda was located further south than the city commonly known as Oinoanda situated above İncealiler. These insights lead to a reassessment of the Hittite-Luwian sources concerning the conquest of Lycia.Keywords: Lycia, Lykien, Lukka, Hethiter, Luwier, politische Geographie, griechische Epigraphik, lykische Epigraphik IntroductionEver since the beginning of research in Hittite political geography, two methodological approaches have basically been used. The first is mainly to collect toponyms known from Greek, Roman, Byzantine or even later sources and to identify them with Hittite places. This approach has been applied by Garstang, Forrer and others in their early works on Hittite geography. 1 This method has produced convincing results in the Levant and parts of Mesopotamia, but in Asia Minor the results of scholars were differing and often lacked convincing  Max Gander: Historisches Seminar der Universität Zürich, Fachbereich Alte Geschichte, Karl Schmid-Str. 4, CH-8006 Zürich, E-Mail: max.r.gander@gmail.com  1 Hrozný (1919); Forrer (1926). For the problematics of this approach even for classical sites, s. Robert -Robert (1977). power.2 The heavy criticism of Smith 3 against Forrer, Hrozný, Mayer and Garstang at first did not find support in the scholarly community. 4 The belief that cumulative evidence of several toponyms in the same region was enough was deep-rooted and widespread. 5 This method however lost much of its credibility when Goetze in 1940 showed that Kizzuwatna did not, as assumed by Hrozný, Garstang, Forrer and others, lie in the Pontos area but rather covered most of classical Plain Cilicia, 6 and therefore, all the respective equations given by these scholars were obviously wrong.Goetze, in his own work, tried much more to understand Hittite geography from within. He examined the relations between different cities and countries, and tried to come to a relative geography. 7The possibilities and the disadvantages of both the approaches are evident. The thorough investigation in the primary sources, taking into account the texts, the monuments and the location of roads and settlements is the starting point of any study devoted to Hittite political geography. However, since there are very few fixed points in Hittite geography, this kind of approach alone can only provide glimpses of a relative geography which do not allow for a clear identification of new sites.On the other hand, the disadvantages of the name equations that may produce whole series of wrong identifications has been mentioned above. Although one...

Parerga to the Stadiasmus Patarensis (16): The Roads, Settlements and Territories

“…Furthermore, an unpublished Tetrarchic milestone from 32 Şahin 2011, 58;cf. Marksteiner -Wörrle 2002, 561. 33 Goodchild 1950, 83-84 and Fig. 1.…”