Contemporary textual references to Mycenaean maritime activity or to the interactions of Mycenaeans with people and places beyond the Aegean are few. They include sporadic references in the Linear B archives, and a small number of mentions of Mycenaeans in Egyptian, Hittite, and Canaanite texts (Bennet 2008: 181; Cline 2009: 175-79).
There are several possible explanations for the near silence of the Linear B archives on exchange within the Mycenaean world and without. One has to do with the narrow temporal scope of the documents, because the tablets were meant as temporary records and so only those referring to current or very recent activities were preserved. Based on the seasonality of the activities and plants mentioned and not mentioned in the Pylian tablets, it is believed that the destruction of the palace occurred in spring and that the activities recorded therein do not extend back further than six months or so (Chadwick 1994: 19192). If that is the case, we might imagine that most maritime activity involving palatial oversight would have been in hiatus over the winter. Shipbuilding (Pylos tablets Vn 46 and Vn 879), however, would be ongoing in preparation for the return of major maritime endeavors in the spring. A second explanation is that the palaces did not control maritime trade and thus would not be expected to record an activity outside of palatial purview. It is hard to believe, however, given the attention to building and manning ships, and the priority placed on acquiring and controlling access to raw and exotic materials that could only have arrived by sea, that there would be no meaningful palatial involvement in maritime matters. A third possibility, mentioned already, is that there was an interruption of maritime trade toward the end of the thirteenth century, cutting off seaborne imports. The disturbances that led several palaces to enhance their fortifications and excavate access tunnels to external subterranean springs may also have severed overland communications. Despite these hypothetical disruptions, the Linear B archive at Pylos seems to record normal palatial activity, including feasts and sacrifices, maintenance of palatial industries with their dependent workers, and collection of agricultural goods that seem not to be in short supply.
Mycenaean Greece appears in Egyptian texts as Tanaja, and in Hittite and Canaanite texts as Ahhiyawa and related terms (Cline 2009: 178). The Aegean List from Kom el-Hetan ensures that the Egyptians were aware of the Mycenaean palatial centers, and the combination of copious Mycenaean fineware and the painted papyrus depicting Mycenaean soldiers at Amarna helps to counterbalance the absence of mention in the Amarna archive. The Mycenaean Greeks are sometimes counted among the Ekwesh (= Ahhiyawa?) listed in the Mernep-tah Stele commemorating the victory of Merneptah (reign circa 1213—1203) over a combined force of Libyans and mercenaries from the northern seas, and they may have formed part of the loosely organized marauders that harnesses III repulsed circa 1176 BC, according to the Medinet Habu inscription. The recently identified references to Mycenaeans in the archive at Ugarit add support to the contention that Mycenaeans did voyage beyond Cyprus to Levantine shores.
More extensive than these, however, are a number of Hittite documents that have real historical significance. Presuming that Ahhiyawa refers to a Mycenaean kingdom to the west of the Anatolian coast — and there is plenty of debate on whether that center was located at Mycenae, Thebes, Rhodes, or elsewhere — it is possible to follow the Mycenaeans causing mischief in the western provinces of the Hittite Empire in the fourteenth and thirteenth centuries from their coastal base at Millawanda (Miletos; Latacz 2004: 73—128; Niemeier 1998, 2003). The Ahhiyawa are first mentioned (in the earlier form Ahhiya) in the Madduwatta Letter, sent by Arnuwanda (reign circa 1400—1375 BC) to a rebellious vassal chief of the same name to complain of his traitorous activities. The letter recounts that Attarasiya, the “man of Ahhiyawa" and possibly the equivalent of the Helladic name Atreus, joined Madduwatta to raid Alashiya (Cyprus), a Hittite dependency (Bryce 2005: 129—35; Neimeier 2003: 104). Here we have unambiguous evidence of Mycenaeans participating in a naval raid, covering more than 500 kilometers in straight-line distance to reach Cyprus' westernmost shores. For the better part of the next two centuries, the Ahhiyawa enter the documentary record periodically in both peaceful and hostile interactions. For a time, the king of Ahhiyawa was accorded the title “My Brother," in the formulaic language of Near Eastern royal diplomacy, for example when Hattusili III (reign circa 1265—1240) remonstrated with the king of Ahhiyawa over the harboring of a fugitive; later in the thirteenth century, the Mycenaeans lost control of Miletos and the name of the king of Ahhiyawa was erased from diplomatic documents. It is difficult to overestimate the importance of the Hittite texts as a unique source of information about Mycenaean activity in the Aegean, and more generally regarding the political geography of Asia Minor and the eastern Aegean. Their usefulness is fully realized when the archaeological record, particularly at Miletos, is seen to corroborate some of the events and relationships described in the texts. Miletos is the subject of a brief case study in Chapter 7.
Early Greek literary texts, particularly the Odyssey of Homer, are often called upon for insight on Mycenaean seafaring. We must be skeptical about attempts to read Bronze Age realities into a work set in writing half a millennium after the demise of the palaces, particularly as a growing consensus perceives the world that Homer describes as an Iron Age one (Bennet 1997; Morris 1997; Raaflaub 2006). Nevertheless, it is worth asking whether Homer's descriptions of the conditions of seafaring might apply to the Bronze Age. To what extent did ships and navigational technology (e. g., celestial navigation) change between the Late Bronze and Late Geometric periods? Had winds, currents, and other environmental conditions (such as harbor silting or built harbor constructions) changed in significant ways? Equally important is the possibility that persistent traditions of seafaring knowledge and certain maritime mentalites that had survived for centuries might be recoverable from Homer. These topics are explored in Chapters 3 and 4.
World History
