Homer's Hittite Background

On Homer's Trojan War · Homer's Heritage · Homer's "Illiad" as it was misspelled - a Quoran asked on accuracy · Homer's Hittite Background

From Hittite to Homer
by Mary R. Bachvarova (Author)
https://www.amazon.com/Hittite-Homer-Mary-R-Bachvarova/dp/1108994105/

A Hittite Version of the Trojan War?!
Lantern Jack, 28 Nov. 2021
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Ao2sps9bR4

1:13 ObjectionS, your honour.

1) Hattusha might have ended prior to the Trojan war.
2) Hattusha sometimes had a tense relation to Troy, and Greeks didn't exactly lay territorial and sovereign claims to Troy.
3) Walter Leaf argued BOTH Troy AND Achaean Greece were "satrapies" under Hattusha. That would make the Trojan war a civil war within the Hittite Empire ... but this was argued before we could say Hattusha ended c. 20 years before the Trojan War.

13:21 There is one Greek word that could originally mean "Hittite" ethos - the original meaning being "tax" or "duty" in "tax/customs" sense ... Heth would become Eth by dissimilation of aspiration.

And obviously, if Hittites were tax collectors either in Greece or even just Troy, one can very readily understand why the memory was erased, only the Bible recalls them.

Similarily, assume Babel was a real event, a real fiasco for the first empire builder, and there is very probably a deliberate erasing of the memory, and - again - only the Bible recalls it.

34:30 Milawata letter - I look it up and find it's from c. 1240 BC.

Since Troy was destroyed in 1179 BC, this letter would be talking about an earlier conflict, which might have led up to the Trojan War.

Tawagalawa letter - c. 1250 - would have been about "avoiding the Trojan war" - which would have been more feasible while Hattusha remained a power.

34:39 "If you want to believe in a Trojan war, have it it!"
34:47 "Troy six was destroyed in 1300 maybe, but that probably was an earthquake."
34:57 "Troy seven A was destroyed seemingly in some kind of war in 1180, that would be too late for the Hittites"

Exactly - too late for the Hittites and the carbon 14 date matches the historic date according to Eratosthenes.

1200 destroying Hattusha would be the reason this war is not recorded in Hattusha.

Apart from Greeks picking the part of looters for themselves, why not believe them if they inculpate themselves, we also have the fact that Achaean unified Greece breaks down some of these times, and - well, the ship catalogue seems too boring for simple story telling and also a great explanation of how local loyalties then came to take the upper hand over a disappearing central authority.

49:52 Resuming the discussion,
1) the professor Mary Bachvarova concentrates on epics of a certain type (some of which unhistorical, like destruction of Akade) being present in a melting point of oral traditions, like the ones recorded for some reason by Hittites
2) she states that the walls of fallen Troy were nearly immediately objects of veneration
3) that Greeks came to venerate them too
4) that festivals of oral performances came to form epic traditions
5) and the one in Miletus helped the transition from Aeolia to Ionia.

Miletus as well as Troy certainly adored Apollo.

She refuses to identify the events of the actual war leading to the fall of Troy VIIa with the events in the Greek tradition of Trojan war, but she also refuses to disidentify them.

She notes that different versions of epics exist in relation to different audiences - and that a mixed audience, pro-Greek and pro-Trojan, is necessary to understand the focus of the Iliad.

All this is perfectly compatible with Homer assembling to a whole, focussed on Achilles and Hector, epic traditions starting with the actual war of Troy.

It can be noted, it is not easy to prove destruction of Akkad non-historic.

The location of Akkad is unknown.

Two explanations could be:
a) it was destroyed, as claimed by the epic
b) it was renamed Babilu, after Sargon had conquered an earlier Babilu in what's now Turkey (Çinar).

A compromise could be, it was destroyed, and its rebuilding was named Babilu.

52:36 So, an epic formula about "steep Wilusa" recorded in Hittite as an incipit matches an epic formula in Homer "steep Ilion" ... (Ilios ap' eine) ...

This would mean, after the war, the method of epic performance being already in place, and formulas about Ilion too, the memory could quickly crystallise into epics.

We don't have an uncontrolled oral transmission, which would end up like a telephone game, but one controlled by the confiding of it to specialists.

Susan Sherratt was in 2010 publishing THE TROJAN WAR: HISTORY OR BRICOLAGE?
in Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies
Vol. 53, No. 2 (2010), pp. 1-18 (18 pages)
Published By: Oxford University Press
https://www.jstor.org/stable/43655704

I think the question is posed both right and wrong.

The right part is, not involving "symbol" or "fable" as an alternative.

The wrong part is, putting history and bricolage as mutually exclusive.

In this case, it is very probable that history was highly contaminated by bricolage from epics about other historic (or sometimes non-historic) events.

I have myself argued some Anatolian (originally Hittite) nobility being absorbed into the nobility that was audience for Homer's and pre-Homeric epics, and that scenes originally in battle of Kadesh found their way into a war purporting to be just the Trojan one.

As the memory of the Hittites was actively suppressed, this is even probable. A noble commemorating an ancestor fighting at Kadesh in that case couldn't name the locality Kadesh. He had to relocate the story into a non-Hittite (at least purportedly) context.

Another formula is by Mary Bacharovna traced to between 1150 and 1050 - in other words soon after the actual destruction of Troy VIIa.
Iliou proparoithen
Iliou has to be four syllables, I-li-o-o, with first I long, and last o naturally short, but involved in a long syllable by position, before pr- in proparoithen.

53:59 "at the point where contraction between like vowels and adjacent syllables is starting to happen in Greek"

In other words, after -oio had become -o-o, but before it had become -ou.

What if the formula is even earlier, while -oio generally remained -oio, but in this case it is -o-o because of dissimilation since we have -i - just before the genitive ending?

The Mycenaean Greek ending was -oio, but for the words in Classic -iou, do we know Mycenaean Greek had *-ioio or could in theory Mycenaean Greek have had -io'o instead, to avoid repeating the yod sound?