On the Nature of Hittite Diplomatic Relations with Mycenaean Rulers

The paper is written as a part of project ‘The Trojan Catalogue (Hom. Il. 2.816-877) and the Peoples of western Anatolia in the Late Bronze Age and Early Iron Age. A Study of the Homeric Text in the Light of Hittite Sources and Classical Geographical Tradition’ (2015/19/P/HS3/04161), which has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement No 665778 with the National Science Centre, Poland. The origins of the vast discussion concerning Ahhiyawa of Hittite texts go back to Emil Forrer’s lecture in Berlin and his two renowned articles on the topic published in 1924. It can be summarized as follows: today the majority opinion is that the term has primarily “a vague ethno-geographical connotation, referring to the Mycenaean world and people living there (including Mycenaean settlers in the Aegean coastal area of western Anatolia and on the adjacent islands), rather than to a specific political unit in Anatolia or elsewhere”,3 though the sources of the 13th century BC refer also to a Mycenaean kingdom and its rulers.