Miletus Turkey
76 CE to 87 CE
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Artifacts of the Minoan civilization acquired by trade had arrived at Miletus beginning at about 1900 BCE.
For some centuries, the location has received a strong impulse from that civilization, an archaeological fact that tends to support but not necessarily confirm the founding legend—that is, a population influx from Crete.
According to Strabo: “Ephorus says: Miletus was first founded and fortified above the sea by Cretans, where the Miletus of olden times is now situated, being settled by Sarpedon, who brought colonists from the Cretan Miletus and named the city after that Miletus, the place formerly being in possession of the Leleges.”
The Leleges were a distinct Anatolian tribe according to Homer, but Leleges were an early name for the Carians, according to Herodotus; they were overcome by the Carians, according to the fourth-century BCE historian Philippus of Theangela, On Carians and Leleges, who suggested connections of the Leleges also in Messenia, in mainland Greece.
Minoan colonies are established in the seventeenth or sixteenth century BCE at Ialysus (Triánda) in Rhodes and at Miletus on the western coast of Anatolia, near the mouth of the Maeander River in ancient Caria.
...the territory of Miletus south of the Maeander River, thus extending for a north-south distance of about one hundred miles (one hundred and sixty kilometers).
Its habitable area consists principally of three flat river valleys, the Hermus (modern Gediz), Cayster (Küçük Menderes), and Maeander (Büyük Menderes), that lead down between mountain ranges of five thousand to six thousand feet (fifteeen hundred to eighteen hundred meters) to empty into deeply recessed gulfs of the Aegean coast.
It will come to be known in the tenth century BCE as Ionia.
Miletus, which may first have been a Minoan colony, is first mentioned in the Hittite Annals of Mursili II as Millawanda.
Millawanda in about 1320 BCE supports the rebellion of Uhha-Ziti of Arzawa.
Mursili orders his generals Mala-Ziti and Gulla to raid Millawanda, and they proceed to burn parts of it (damage from LHIIIA:2 has been found on-site: Christopher Mee, Anatolia and the Aegean in the Late Bronze Age, p. 142).
In addition, the town is fortified according to a Hittite plan (ibid, p. 139).
Millawanda is then mentioned in the "Tawagalawa letter", written by a Hittite king (generally accepted as Hattusili III) to a king of Ahhiyawa around 1250 BCE and part of a series including the Manapa-Tarhunta letter (about 1295 BCE) and the Milawata letter (about 1240 BCE), all of which are less securely dated.
The Tawagalawa letter notes that Milawata has a governor, Atpa, who is under the jurisdiction of "Ahhiyawa" (a growing state probably in LHIIIB Mycenaean Greece, or possibly in western Anatolia); and that the town of Atriya is under Milesian jurisdiction.
During the LHIIIA:2 period, kings of "Ahhiyawa" began to come to the attention of the Hittites, possibly as rulers of the "Achaean" states.
They rise in LHIIIB almost to the status of the Great Kings in Egypt and Assyria.
The Manapa-Tarhunta letter also mentions Atpa.
Together the two letters tell that the adventurer Piyama-Radu had humiliated Manapa-Tarhunta before Atpa (in addition to other misadventures); a Hittite king then chased Piyama-Radu into Millawanda and, in the Tawagalawa letter, requested Piyama-Radu's extradition to Hatti.
The Hittite king refers in this letter, to former hostilities between the Hittites and the Ahhiyawans over Wilusa, which had now been resolved amicably: "Now as we have come to an agreement on Wilusa over which we went to war..."
The Milawata letter mentions a joint expedition by the Hittite king and a Luwiyan vassal (probably Kupanta-Kurunta of Mira) against Milawata (apparently its new name), and notes that Milawata (and Atriya) are now under Hittite control.
Probably the only Greek-speaking communities on the west coast of Anatolia at this time are the walled Mycenaean colonies at Miletus and ...
Piyama-Radu is mentioned in the Manapa-Tarhunta letter (aroud 1295 BCE) and, in the past tense, in the Milawata letter (around 1240 BCE).
The Tawagalawa letter further mentions Miletus (as "Millawanda") and its dependent city Atriya, as does the Milawata letter; and its governor Atpa, as does the Manapa-Tarhunta letter (although that letter does not state Atpa's fiefdom).
The letter bears a conversational style which has commonly been associated with Hattusili III (1265-1235 BCE).
Oliver Gurney in "The authorship of the Tawagalawas Letter" (Silva Anatolica, 2002, 133-41) argues that the letter belongs to his older brother Muwatalli II (1295-1272 BCE), but if the Milawata letter postdates this letter, and if that letter is taken as a letter of Mursili II (1322-1295 BCE), then the Tawagalawa letter might belong to Mursili in the late 1300s BCE, but after the end of his annals.
The Hittite king in this letter refers to former hostilities between the Hittites and the Ahhiyawans over Wilusa, which had now been resolved amicably: "Now as we have come to an agreement on Wilusa over which we went to war..." Wilusa is often identified with Troy VIIa in archaeology (destroyed in around 1190 BCE), and with legendary Troy of the Greek Trojan War cycle.
Mycenaeans had assumed control of such places on the western coast of Anatolia as Miletus, which Minoans had colonized before them.
Greek myths relate that the city was founded by a hero named Miletus, who fled Crete to avoid being forced to become the eromenos of King Minos (according to Antoninus Liberalis, after Nicander (Metamorphoses XXX 1-2).
These myths further relate that the hero Miletus found the city only after slaying a giant named Asterius, son of Anax; and that the region known as Miletus was originally called 'Anactoria'.
Miletus is first mentioned in the Hittite Annals of Mursili II as Millawanda, which supports the rebellion of Uhha-Ziti of Arzawa in about 1320 BCE.
Mursili orders his generals Mala-Ziti and Gulla to raid Millawanda, and they proceeds to burn parts of it (damage from LHIIIA:2 has been found on site: Christopher Mee, Anatolia and the Aegean in the Late Bronze Age, p. 142).
In addition the town is fortified according to a Hittite plan (ibid, p. 139).
Millawanda is next mentioned in the "Tawagalawa letter,” written by a Hittite king (generally accepted as Hattusili III) to a king of Ahhiyawa around 1250 BCE, part of a series including the Manapa-Tarhunta letter and the Milawata letter, all of which are less securely dated.
The Tawagalawa letter notes that Milawata has a governor, Atpa, who is under Ahhiyawan (today known as Achaean) jurisdiction; and that the town of Atriya is under Milesian jurisdiction.
The Manapa-Tarhunta letter also mentions Atpa.
Together the two letters tell that the adventurer Piyama-Radu had humiliated Manapa-Tarhunta before Atpa (in addition to other misadventures); a Hittite king then chased Piyama-Radu into Millawanda and, in the Tawagalawa letter, requested Piyama-Radu's extradition to Hatti.
The Milawata letter mentions a joint expedition by the Hittite king and a Luwiyan vassal (probably Kupanta-Kurunta of Mira) against Milawata (apparently its new name), and notes that Milawata (and Atriya) are now under Hittite control.
Mycenaeans, apparently displaced from the Greek mainland by the invasions of around 1200, have assumed control of places on the western coast of Anatolia such as Miletus, which Minoans had colonized before them.
Slavery, according to the poems of Homer, is evidently an integral part of ancient Greek society by 1200.
The Mycenaean citadel of Pylos had counted among its female slaves "Mil[w]atiai,” women from Miletus, in the last stage of LHIIIB, which ended around 1200.
Homer records also that Miletus had been a Carian city during the time of the Trojan War (Iliad, book II).
On mount Latmos near Miletus, the Carians worship Endymion, who is the lover of the Moon and had fathered three hundred and sixty-five children, and who, like the Greek Kronos, sleeps eternally.