Minor and the Isles, Tjakaray, Shakalsha, Danaau and Washasha,
successors of Pisidian and other Anatolian allies of the Hittites in the
time of Rameses II, and of the Lycian, Achaean and Sardinian pirates
whom Egypt used sometimes to beat from her borders, sometimes to enlist
in her service. Some of these peoples, from whatever quarters they had
come, settled presently into new homes as the tide receded. The Pulesti,
if they were indeed the historic Philistines, stranded and stayed on the
confines of Egypt, retaining certain memories of an earlier state, which
had been theirs in some Minoan land. Since the Tjakaray and the Washasha
seem to have sprung from lands now reckoned in Europe, we may count this
occasion the first in history on which the west broke in force into the
east.
Turn to the annals of Assyria and you will learn, from records of
Tiglath Pileser I, that this northern wave was followed up in the same
century by a second, which bore on its crest another bold horde from
Asia Minor. Its name, Mushki, we now hear for the first time, but shall
hear again in time to come. A remnant of this race would survive far
into historic times as the Moschi of Greek geographers, an obscure
people on the borders of Cappadocia and Armenia. But who precisely the
first Mushki were, whence they had originally come, and whither they
went when pushed back out of Mesopotamia, are questions still debated.
Two significant facts are known about their subsequent history; first,
that two centuries later than our date they, or some part of them, were
settled in Cappadocia, apparently rather in the centre and north of that
country than in the south: second, that at that same epoch and later
they had kings of the name Mita, which is thought to be identical with
the name Midas, known to early Greek historians as borne by kings of
Phrygia.
Because of this last fact, the Mushki have been put down as
proto-Phrygians, risen to power after the fall of the Cappadocian Hatti.
This contention will be considered hereafter, when we reach the date of
the first known contact between Assyria and any people settled in
western Asia Minor. But meanwhile, let it be borne in mind that their
royal name Mita does not necessarily imply a connection between the
Mushki and Phrygia; for since the ethnic "Mitanni" of north Mesopotamia
means "Mita's men," that name must have long been domiciled much farther
east.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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