More about the disturbances caused by sea-borne raiders in the eastern Mediterranean emerges from a series of letters between Ugarit and Cyprus circa 1200 bc. The letters more or less speak for themselves and can be quoted with minimal commentary; a few polite, but essentially immaterial phrases have here been omitted:
Ras Shamra L 1 (Letter of the King of Cyprus to his vassal the King of Ugarit)
Thus (speaks) the King: Speak to Hammurabi, the King of Ugarit!. . . Concerns what you wrote: "They have seen enemy ships on the seas." Well, if they really have seen ships, then you should arm yourself as best you can. Now your own troops and ships - where are they? Are they not with you? Some enemy or other will be attacking you from the west. Surround your cities with walls! Bring troops and chariots within them! Wait on the enemy! In this way you will be as strong as possible.
(n. b. that the King of Cyprus quotes from an earlier letter from the King of Ugarit to him; note also that they are speaking of sea-borne invaders.)
Ras Shamra 20.238 (Letter of the King of Ugarit to his overlord the King of Cyprus)
To the King of Cyprus, my father, speak! Thus (speaks) the King of Ugarit, your son:... My father, enemy ships have now come. The enemy have burnt my cities with fire and done terrible things in the land. Doesn't my father know that all of my master's, my father's, troops (i. e., the King of Ugarit is politely avoiding saying "my troops"), are in the land of Hatti (i. e., the hittite kingdom)? And that all my ships are in the land of Lycia? They have not yet come back. Thus, the land here lies (bare). May my father know of this thing. Just now (it has been) seven enemy ships which came. They've done terrible things to us! From now on, when enemy ships appear, would you tell me about it, so that I will be informed?
(N. b. that a vassal always addresses his overlord as "my father" - this is a polite address, not an acknowledgment of paternity. Note again the emphasis on sea-borne invaders, their raids, as well as the Hittite king's transfer of Ugarit's fleet to the Lycian coast.)
Ras Shamra 20.18 (Letter of an official on Cyprus to the King of Ugarit)
Thus (speaks) Eshuwara, the Commandant of Cyprus: Speak to the King of Ugarit!. . . Concerns the matter of how the enemy did unto those citizens of your land as well as to your ships the following: they carried out a surprise attack
(Continued)
Against those citizens of your land. But do not complain to me! And now the 20 ships, which the enemy have not yet carried into the mountains, are not taking up positions. Instead, they have hastily gone away; and we do not know where they are. For your information, for your protection I have written to you. May you realize this!
Note here that the sea-borne invaders, like the Vikings in a later age, were perfectly capable of pulling their ships up onto land and proceeding on foot. It was not just sea-borne attacks. This explains why the Hittites summoned land troops from Ugarit (as in the second letter) and how the sea-borne raiders could devastate cities like Carchemish (according to ramses III) which lay well inland. The reliefs which accompany ramses III's inscriptions on the invasion actually show the invaders with ox-drawn carts carrying wives and children: an entire people was on the move (J. B. Pritchard, The Ancient Near East, II [Princeton, 1975], fig. 44).
Later on, only it was along the coast of the eastern Mediterranean (at least in the three clear cases). In Greece the survivors of the catastrophe were left to rebuild. In those regions of Greece where there is good archaeological evidence, the number of settlements drops sharply from the thirteenth century BC to the twelfth and eleventh. The drastic reduction in the population of Greece provides a testament to the Mycenaean kingdoms’ long-term success at maintaining prosperity: without these kingdoms to manage affairs, the steep decline set in. The same holds for the material culture of the survivors. In the Mycenaean period many luxury goods - including items in precious metal - are attested both in the archaeological record (see Figures 2.4 and 2.9) and in the texts. In the period immediately after the catastrophe there are almost no metal objects of any kind in the archaeological record - to say nothing of objects in precious metal.
The sharp reduction in population as well as the absence of powerful states capable of keeping intruders out opened the way for new peoples to enter Greece. The most successful of the newcomers were the Dorians. They were already in existence in the thirteenth century since the Linear B tablets mention a man called Dorieus - i. e., “Dorian” - in the Kingdom of Pylos (Fn 867). Whether this was a genuine name (in much the same way as “Scott” today is a genuine name, rather than an ethnicon for someone from Scotland as it originally was) or still an ethnicon (that is to say, whatever the man’s real name was, people just called him “that Dorian fellow”), there is no way of telling. But the name does show that Dorians had some sort of contact with the Mycenaean kingdoms already in the thirteenth century BC.
The positive evidence for the entrance of Dorians into the former territory of the Mycenaean kingdoms is linguistic, not archaeological. Although Dorians
And Mycenaeans were both Greeks, they spoke different dialects of Greek. In the thirteenth century BC, people wrote (and presumably spoke) Mycenaean Greek on the Peloponnese and Crete; people were speaking and writing Doric Greek in those same places a few centuries later. Doric Greek was a conservative dialect. Among other things it preserved original Greek /ti/ whereas Mycenaean Greek was a progressive dialect in which original Greek /ti/ had already, by assibilation, become /si/. Since Doric Greek could not possibly have developed from Mycenaean Greek, Dorians must have immigrated onto Crete and the Peloponnese after the thirteenth century.
Thus far there is no positive archaeological evidence for the entrance of any new peoples into Greece in the period in question. Either the Dorians adopted the material culture of the pre-Dorians on the Peloponnese (and thus remain invisible in the material record) or unambiguous evidence for the former’s presence has yet to be found. The archaeological evidence does, however, help suggest a date for the immigration of the Dorians. Two of the most important Dorian cities on the Peloponnese were Corinth and Sparta. Both are new, postMycenaean foundations; and both were founded in the second half of the tenth century BC. This suggests that some Dorians, at least in the period 950-900 BC, were settling the areas in which they would thereafter live. The other major Dorian city on the Peloponnese was Argos, but since it was continuously inhabited from Mycenaean times on down, it is impossible to determine at what point in time the Dorians settled there. Another major area of Dorian settlement was the Dodecanese in the southeast Aegean. The two major islands here, Cos and Rhodes, were inhabited in Mycenaean times, but largely deserted in the period immediately following. In the tenth century these islands were resettled, evidently by Dorians. All in all, the evidence suggests that some Dorians were settling the regions which in later times would be theirs around the tenth century BC.
The conventional name for the entrance of the Dorians onto the Peloponnese and elsewhere is the Dorian Invasion. This term misleads since the process involved may largely have been peaceful; and other terms such as “Dorian Migration” are not obviously better since many groups of Dorians may have participated in a series of spurts and bursts rather than in one large migration. All the same the positive linguistic evidence simply admits of no other explanation than the entrance of newcomers, however one chooses to imagine the process.
The Dorians, however, did not enter into completely unpopulated lands. Argos, to take one example, had remained settled from Mycenaean times but became “Dorianized” at some point and a glimpse of the process is visible in its tribal structure. The population of a Greek state was usually divided into tribes. In almost all Dorian states there still exist traces of the presence of three tribes: Hylleis, Dymanes, and Pamphyli. In Sparta this system of three tribes was never altered; but in other states (such as Corinth) later tribal reforms sometimes replaced these tribes with new ones, and only a few relics allow one to deduce the original presence of Hylleis, Dymanes, and Pamphyli (in
Corinth’s case, for example, the presence of a place called “the Hylleis’ Harbor” in one of its colonies, namely Corcyra - Thuc., III 72; for the method, see chap. 5). In Argos there are the three tribes plus a fourth called Hyrnathii (IG IV 517, 600, 601, 602). One can easily imagine that the pre-Dorian inhabitants were ranged next to the Dorians in this fourth tribe. In Sicyon before the sixth century there stood next to the three Dorian tribes a fourth called Aegialeis (Herodotus, V 68) - presumably the same thing had occurred as in Argos. In neither case do the pre-Dorians seem to have suffered any discrimination: in Sicyon one member of the Aegialeis accompanied a sacral embassy to Delphi (i. e., served in a prestigious official capacity); and another member allegedly rose to high rank in the course of a successful military career (BNJ 105, Fr. 2 and Hdt. VI 126). In these cases the pre-Dorians were simply “Dorianized” and added to the ranks of the Dorians. The Dorians did not always extend this liberality to those whom they conquered (Sparta, notably, deviated from it: see chap. 6), but it does seem to have been deeply ingrained in the Dorians’ traditions to accept into their ranks other peoples: the name of the third Dorian tribe, Pamphyli, means literally “people from all (sorts of) tribes” - i. e., it was a catch-all denomination for grouping together people of all manner of origin: the process of Dorianizing non-Dorians had started almost at the very beginning of the Dorians’ existence. Finally, the one concrete effect of Dorianization which one can still see was linguistic: the pre-Dorians began speaking Doric Greek (instead of their original dialect of Greek).
The Dorians, however, were not the only newcomers to enter Greece during the so-called Dark Age after the downfall of the Mycenaean kingdoms. Along the northern rim of the Peloponnese dwelled in classical times a people called the AchaiOi (i. e., Achaians); the region was called Achaia after them. However, another people called Achaioi had settled in another region called Achaia in southeastern Thessaly. This type of settlement pattern - when splinters of the identical people end up in two widely separated regions - arises when a people migrates either at two distinct times (and takes two distinct paths) or when a people splits up at a cross-roads in the course of one migration. In this case, one group of Achaioi wandered southwards along the Pindus Range and onto the Peloponnese while another group of Achaioi crossed the Pindus from west to east and ended up in southeastern Thessaly (see chap. 1).
World History
