Alashiya
Encyclopedia
Sovereign state
A sovereign state, or simply, state, is a state with a defined territory on which it exercises internal and external sovereignty, a permanent population, a government, and the capacity to enter into relations with other sovereign states. It is also normally understood to be a state which is neither...
which existed in the Middle and Late Bronze Age
Bronze Age
The Bronze Age is a period characterized by the use of copper and its alloy bronze as the chief hard materials in the manufacture of some implements and weapons. Chronologically, it stands between the Stone Age and Iron Age...
s, and was situated somewhere in the Eastern Mediterranean. It was a major source of goods, especially copper
Copper
Copper is a chemical element with the symbol Cu and atomic number 29. It is a ductile metal with very high thermal and electrical conductivity. Pure copper is soft and malleable; an exposed surface has a reddish-orange tarnish...
, for Ancient Egypt
Ancient Egypt
Ancient Egypt was an ancient civilization of Northeastern Africa, concentrated along the lower reaches of the Nile River in what is now the modern country of Egypt. Egyptian civilization coalesced around 3150 BC with the political unification of Upper and Lower Egypt under the first pharaoh...
and other states in the Ancient Near East
Ancient Near East
The ancient Near East was the home of early civilizations within a region roughly corresponding to the modern Middle East: Mesopotamia , ancient Egypt, ancient Iran The ancient Near East was the home of early civilizations within a region roughly corresponding to the modern Middle East: Mesopotamia...
. It is referred to in a number of the surviving texts and is now thought to be the ancient name of Cyprus
Cyprus
Cyprus , officially the Republic of Cyprus , is a Eurasian island country, member of the European Union, in the Eastern Mediterranean, east of Greece, south of Turkey, west of Syria and north of Egypt. It is the third largest island in the Mediterranean Sea.The earliest known human activity on the...
, or an area of Cyprus. This was confirmed by the scientific analysis
Archaeological science
Archaeological science, also known as archaeometry, consists of the application of scientific techniques to the analysis of archaeological materials. Archaeometry is now considered its own scientific field. The UK's Natural and Environmental Research Council provides funding for archaeometry...
of the clay tablet
Clay tablet
In the Ancient Near East, clay tablets were used as a writing medium, especially for writing in cuneiform, throughout the Bronze Age and well into the Iron Age....
s which were sent from Alashiya to other rulers.
The texts
The name of the state translated as "Alashiya" is found on texts written in EgyptianEgyptian language
Egyptian is the oldest known indigenous language of Egypt and a branch of the Afroasiatic language family. Written records of the Egyptian language have been dated from about 3400 BC, making it one of the oldest recorded languages known. Egyptian was spoken until the late 17th century AD in the...
, Hittite
Hittites
The Hittites were a Bronze Age people of Anatolia.They established a kingdom centered at Hattusa in north-central Anatolia c. the 18th century BC. The Hittite empire reached its height c...
, Akkadian
Akkadian language
Akkadian is an extinct Semitic language that was spoken in ancient Mesopotamia. The earliest attested Semitic language, it used the cuneiform writing system derived ultimately from ancient Sumerian, an unrelated language isolate...
, Mycenean
Mycenaean language
Mycenaean Greek is the most ancient attested form of the Greek language, spoken on the Greek mainland, Crete and Cyprus in the 16th to 12th centuries BC, before the hypothesised Dorian invasion which was often cited as the terminus post quem for the coming of the Greek language to Greece...
(Linear B
Linear B
Linear B is a syllabic script that was used for writing Mycenaean Greek, an early form of Greek. It pre-dated the Greek alphabet by several centuries and seems to have died out with the fall of Mycenaean civilization...
) and Ugarit
Ugarit
Ugarit was an ancient port city in the eastern Mediterranean at the Ras Shamra headland near Latakia, Syria. It is located near Minet el-Beida in northern Syria. It is some seven miles north of Laodicea ad Mare and approximately fifty miles east of Cyprus...
ic. A number of the Amarna letters
Amarna letters
The Amarna letters are an archive of correspondence on clay tablets, mostly diplomatic, between the Egyptian administration and its representatives in Canaan and Amurru during the New Kingdom...
are from the King or ministers of Alashiya. These mostly concern the amount of copper that has been sent from Alashiya and requests for silver
Silver
Silver is a metallic chemical element with the chemical symbol Ag and atomic number 47. A soft, white, lustrous transition metal, it has the highest electrical conductivity of any element and the highest thermal conductivity of any metal...
or ivory
Ivory
Ivory is a term for dentine, which constitutes the bulk of the teeth and tusks of animals, when used as a material for art or manufacturing. Ivory has been important since ancient times for making a range of items, from ivory carvings to false teeth, fans, dominoes, joint tubes, piano keys and...
in return. One letter refers to 500 talents of copper (probably about 12.5 tons) and makes excuses as to why so little copper has been sent. Pharaoh
Pharaoh
Pharaoh is a title used in many modern discussions of the ancient Egyptian rulers of all periods. The title originates in the term "pr-aa" which means "great house" and describes the royal palace...
is also referred to by the King of Alashiya as his "brother", indicating that the king regarded himself as an equal, probably because of the economic power of his kingdom. Papyrus Anastasi IV, written several centuries later, also refers to copper (as well as cows) sent from Alashiya to Egypt.
Any place identified as Alashiya must therefore have had sizable copper production during the Late Bronze Age. There are a number of other clues in the texts. The Amarna letters contain references to a ship belonging to the King of Alashiya and the men of Lukki (probably part of the Sea Peoples
Sea Peoples
The Sea Peoples were a confederacy of seafaring raiders of the second millennium BC who sailed into the eastern Mediterranean, caused political unrest, and attempted to enter or control Egyptian territory during the late 19th dynasty and especially during year 8 of Ramesses III of the 20th Dynasty...
, similar to pirates) seizing villages in Alashiya.
In other correspondence, the King of Ugarit pleads for help from the King of Alashiya to protect Ugarit from the Sea Peoples. Another document from Ugarit records the banishment of two princes to "the land of Alashiya". One further text found at Ugarit may contain a further clue to the location of the capital city of Alashiya, as it could imply that the city was located on a mountain. However, this word has more usually been translated as shore.
The extant ending of the Story of Wenamun
Story of Wenamun
The Story of Wenamun is a literary text written in hieratic in the Late Egyptian language...
records how Wenamun, a priest of Egypt, had been blown off course on the sea journey from Byblos
Byblos
Byblos is the Greek name of the Phoenician city Gebal . It is a Mediterranean city in the Mount Lebanon Governorate of present-day Lebanon under the current Arabic name of Jubayl and was also referred to as Gibelet during the Crusades...
to Egypt and ended up on Alashiya. Wenamun reports that he was almost killed by an angry mob, but was rescued by Hatbi, the "princess of the town".
Some of the last texts referring to Alashiya are from the Hittite Empire (based in modern Turkey
Turkey
Turkey , known officially as the Republic of Turkey , is a Eurasian country located in Western Asia and in East Thrace in Southeastern Europe...
) and boast of quelling Alashiya by force. However, with all such military reports it is difficult to assess the true outcome.
Identification
Alashiya therefore needs to be situated somewhere where there was sizable Bronze Age copper production, on the coast, and in the East Mediterranean.Some scholars have suggested sites and areas of Syria
Syria
Syria , officially the Syrian Arab Republic , is a country in Western Asia, bordering Lebanon and the Mediterranean Sea to the West, Turkey to the north, Iraq to the east, Jordan to the south, and Israel to the southwest....
or Turkey
Turkey
Turkey , known officially as the Republic of Turkey , is a Eurasian country located in Western Asia and in East Thrace in Southeastern Europe...
, but it is now generally (although not universally) agreed that Alashiya refers to at least part of Cyprus. Specifically, it was generally argued that the site of Enkomi
Enkomi
This article is about the town and ancient settlement near Famagusta. For the suburb of Nicosia , see: Engomi.Enkomi is a village near Famagusta on Cyprus. It is the site of an important Bronze Age city, possibly the capital of Alasiya...
was the capital of the kingdom of Alashiya, which covered the entire island of Cyprus.
The identification of Cyprus with Alashiya was confirmed by the 2003 publication by Goren et al. of an article in the American Journal of Archaeology
American Journal of Archaeology
The American Journal of Archaeology , the peer-reviewed journal of the Archaeological Institute of America, has been published since 1897...
detailing the petrographic and chemical analysis of a number of the Amarna and Ugaritic letters sent from Alashiya. These examinations of the provenance of the clay used to create the tablets indicate that Syria could not be the location of Alashiya, while clay on Cyprus is a good match.
However, this analysis showed that the clays did not originate anywhere near the site of Enkomi and that suitable clays are close to the sites of Kalavasos
Tenta, Cyprus
Tenta or Kalavasos-Tenta is a neolithic settlement in Cyprus, 4 km south of Kalavasos in the Larnaca District. Tenta was discovered in 1947 by Pophyrios Dikaios, and was excavated by the British archaeologists Ian Todd from 1976 to 1984. Excavations were carried out each summer from 1976...
and Alassa
Alassa
Alassa is a village in the Limassol District of Cyprus, located north of the Kouris Dam, on the main road from Limassol to Kakopetria....
(itself a possible cognate of Alashiya). These sites, especially Kalavasos, were also important Late Bronze Age sites and are located close to sources of copper.
Moreover, Armstrong argues that there is considerable evidence for regional variation and that there is no evidence for a centralized, island-wide political authority on Cyprus during the Late Bronze Age.
It is therefore currently unclear whether the kingdom of Alashiya comprised the whole of Cyprus, with the capital city moving location (probably starting with Enkomi), or was always sited at Kalavasos, or whether Alashiya comprised only one region of Cyprus .
Sources
- Armstrong, K. M. 2003 Settlement Hierarchy and The Location of Alashiya on Cyprus. Unpublished MA dissertation, University of CincinnatiUniversity of CincinnatiThe University of Cincinnati is a comprehensive public research university in Cincinnati, Ohio, and a part of the University System of Ohio....
. - Buttrick, G. A. and C. M. Laymon. 1971 The Interpreter's One Volume Commentary on the Bible, pp.13-14. ISBN 0-687-19299-4.
- Goren, Y., Bunimovitz, S., Finkelstein, I. and Na'aman, N. 1993 "The Location of Alashiya Petrographic analysis of the tablets". American Journal of ArchaeologyAmerican Journal of ArchaeologyThe American Journal of Archaeology , the peer-reviewed journal of the Archaeological Institute of America, has been published since 1897...
107:233-255 - Knapp, A. B. ed. 1996 Near Eastern and Aegean Texts from the Third to the First Millennia BC. (Translations of all 122 Bronze Age and early Iron Age texts referring to "Alashiya"). ISBN 0-9651704-2-X
- Knapp, A. B. 1997 The Archaeology of Late Bronze Age Cypriot Society. ISBN 0-85261-573-6
- Schwemer, D. 2008 The Storm-Gods of the Ancient Near East: Summary, Synthesis, Recent Studies (part II). Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2008.
- Wachsmann, S. 1986 "Is Cyprus Ancient Alashiya? New Evidence from an Egyptian Tablet". The Biblical ArchaeologistNear Eastern Archaeology MagazineNear Eastern Archaeology is an American magazine dedicated to the publication of art, archaeology, history, anthropology, literature, philology, and epigraphy of the Near Eastern and Mediterranean worlds from the Palaeolithic through Ottoman periods. The magazine is written for a general audience...
49(1):37-40