History of Egypt, Chaldea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria in the Light of Recent DiscoveryKing, L. W. (Leonard William)
History
History of Egypt, Chaldea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria in the Light of Recent Discovery
King, L. W. (Leonard William)
Egypt -- History -- To 332 B.C.; History, Ancient
After that date we cannot hope to find any certain evidence of
connection, for by that time the Mycenaean civilization had probably
come to an end. In the days of the XIIth and XVIIIth Dynasties a great
and splendid power evidently existed in Crete, and sent its peaceful
ambassadors, the Keftiu who are represented in the Theban tombs, to
Egypt. But with the XIXth Dynasty the name of the Keftiu disappears from
Egyptian records, and their place is taken by a congeries of warring
seafaring tribes, whose names as given by the Egyptians seem to be forms
of tribal and place names well known to us in the Greece of later days.
We find the Akaivasha (_Axaifol_, Achaians), Shakalsha (Sagalassians of
Pisidia), Tursha (Tylissians of Crete?), and Shardana (Sardians) allied
with the Libyans and Mashauash (Maxyes) in a land attack upon Egypt in
the days of Meneptah, the successor of Ramses II--just as in the later
days of the XXVIth Dynasty the Northern pirates visited the African
shore of the Mediterranean, and in alliance with the predatory Libyans
attacked Egypt.
Prof. Petrie has lately [History of Egypt, iii, pp. Ill, I12.] proffered
an alternative view, which would make all these tribes Tunisians and
Algerians, thus disposing of the identification of the Akaivasha with
the Achaians, and making them the ancient representatives of the town
of el-Aghwat (Roman Agbia) in Tunis. But several difficulties might be
pointed out which are in the way of an acceptance of this view, and it
is probable that the older identifications with Greek tribes must still
be retained, so that Meneptah’s Akaivasha are evidently the ancient
representatives of the Achai(v)ans, the Achivi of the Roman poets. The
terminations _sha_ and _na_, which appear in these names, are merely
ethnic and locative affixes belonging to the Asianic language system
spoken by these tribes at that time, to which the language of the Minoan
Cretans (which is written in the Knossian hieroglyphs) belonged. They
existed in ancient Lycian in the forms _azzi_ and _nna_, and we find
them enshrined in the Asia Minor place-names terminating in _assos_
and _nda_, as Halikarnassos, Sagalassos (Shakalasha in Meneptah’s
inscription), Oroanda, and Labraunda (which, as we have seen, is the
same as the [Greek word], a word of pre-Hellenic origin, both meaning
“Place of the Double Axe”) The identification of these _sha_ and _nal_
terminations in the Egyptian transliterations of the foreign names, with
the Lycian affixes referred to, was made some five years ago,[2] and is
now generally accepted. We have, then, to find the equivalents of
these names, to strike off the final termination, as in the case of
Akaiva-sha, where Akaiva only is the real name, and this seems to be
the Egyptian equivalent of _Axaifol_, Achivi. It is strange to meet with
this great name on an Egyptian monument of the thirteenth century B.C.
But yet not so strange, when we recollect that it is precisely to that
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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