Achaeans (Homer)

The Achaeans (Ἀχαιοί, Akhaioí) were one of the four major tribes into which Homer divided the Greeks in the Heroic age. The name was used throughout the Iliad as one of the collective names for the Greeks, and in the Odyssey as denoting a kind of "pure blooded" type of Greek.
==Etymology==
According to Margalit FinkelbergMargalit Finkelberg, "From Ahhiyawa to Ἀχαιοί", Glotta 66 (1988): 127–134. the name Ἀχαιοί/Ἀχαιϝοί is possibly derived, via an intermed iate form *Ἀχαϝyοί, from a hypothetical older GreekAccording to Finkelberg, this derivation does not necessitate an ultimate Greek and Indo-european origin of the word: "Obviously, this deduction cannot supply conclusive proof that Ahhiyawa presents a Greek word, the more so as neither the etymology of this word nor its cognates are known to us". form reflected in the Hittite form Aḫḫiyawā; the latter is attested in the Hittite archives, e.g. in the Tawagalawa letter. However, Robert S. P. Beekes doubted its validity and suggested a Pre-Greek *Akaywa-.R. S. P. Beekes, Etymological Dictionary of Greek, Brill, 2009, p. 181. William DrummondDrummond, William. Origines, Or Remarks on the Origin of Several Empires, States and Cities, p. 45, 186. United Kingdom, Baldwin, 1829. believed the root ak to have signified waterAccording to Drummond: “It seems highly probable, then, to say the least of it, that aché, or oché, was an ancient Greek word, which signified water, and which entered into the word okeanos, as may be inferred from the passage cited from Diodorus. This radical, which might easily vary in sound, and be differently pronounced ach, ag, ak, (and with any other vowel instead of the a,) appears to have been lost as a separate vocable, and is only now to be found in composition. I think, however, that we may trace it in various words which relate to water -agáppoos, aqua currens vel estuosa-arry, littus -öxe-revw, rivos duco-oxéreva, aqueductus--ëyla, ripa---óxeròs, canalis--úypòs, humidus--úypr), mare.”Proceedings of the Tenth Annual UCLA Indo-European Conference, p. 95. Los Angeles, May 21-23, 1998. United States, Institute for the Study of Man, 1999. and suggested that “those whose name was Hellenized into Ἀχαιοί, Achaioi were originally called اقیان, Akaian, lords or rulers.”This etymological connection between “water” and “ruler” is explored further in Mesopotamian studies, where the Sumerian loanword en-si-ak (manager of the arable/irrigated lands) passes into old Akkadian as issi’akkum (territorial ruler). Averbeck, Richard E. "A Preliminary Study of Ritual and Structure in the Cylinders of Gudea," p. 237. United States, University Microfilms International (U.M.I.), 1991; Jacobsen, Thorkild. “The Term Ensi." Harvard University. AnOr (Fs. M. Civil) 9 (1991) 113-121.
==Origins==
Akhaioi was one of the primary terms used to refer to the Greeks by Homer in his 8th century BCE work the Illiad, based upon oral traditions that may have dated to the 12th century BCE.Jensen, Erik. Barbarians in the Greek and Roman World, p. 24. United States, Hackett Publishing Company, Incorporated, 2018. They were mentioned 598 times, often accompanied by the epithet “long-haired” and distinguished from the Danoi, Argeioi and Hellenoi. The tribe is likewise mentioned in the Odyssey, where it appears to refer to a “pure blooded” type of Greek.Thomson, James Alexander Kerr. Studies in the Odyssey, p. 132. United Kingdom, Clarendon Press (1914). There is no known use of the specific ethnonym Ἀχαιοί/Ἀχαιϝοί prior to Homer. 
There was, however, a similar word in the Elamite language: ha-ak-ka-man-nu-iš (Ἀχαιμένης, Akhaiménēs). The Greeks viewed it as a compound of the roots "Ἀχαι" and "μένης." The latter means “moon”Athanassakis and Wolkow, pp. 90, on lines 1–2, 91, on line 5; Kerényi, p. 197 and may have been related to worship of a lunar diety or the accounting of lunar cycles.Smith, s.v. "Mene" It was likewise the nebty name ascribed to the first king of a unified Egypt by Manetho some 1,700 years later.. A slight variation of the name ( Μάνηϛ) was ascribed to a legendary early king of Lydia.Rawlinson, George, History of Herodotus, Volume I, second edition, London, John Murray, 1862. Internet Archive. The word is geographically linked to the tribal kingdom of Parsua during the 9th century BCE and perhaps to the Mēdoi as early as the 11th century BCE.R. Schmitt (1983), “Achaemenid Dynasty,”Encyclopædia Iranica, I/4, pp. 414-426. (accessed on 2 February 2014). Darius I mythologized the term to legitimize his reign after usurping the throne of what was thereafter known as the Achaemenid Empire.Judah and the Judeans in the Achaemenid Period: Negotiating Identity in an International Context, p. 230. Germany, Penn State University Press, 2011. Herodotus states that the moon was the tutelary deity of the Iranian expatriates residing in Asia Minor in the 5th century BCE. 
It thus appears that the name of Homer’s Achaeans is essentially Elamite in its transmission via an Ionian tradition.Miller, D. Gary. Homer and the Ionian epic tradition: some phonic and phonological evidence against an Aeolic "phase". Austria, Institut für Sprachwissenschaft der Universität Innsbruck, 1982. The tradition preserved some specific knowledge about a people known as "Ἀχαι" that the Elamites associated with worship of a moon deity and/or timekeeping based upon lunar cycles. That knowledge appears to originate from an Indo-Iranian source,Baldick, Julian. Homer and the Indo-Europeans: comparing mythologies. United Kingdom, Bloomsbury Academic, 1994.Kuzmina, Elena E. (2007). The Origin of the Indo-Iranians. Brill. ISBN 978-90-04-16054-5. likely the Sintashta culture. 
But Homer did not create the Achaeans solely from Elamite myth. The Achaeans had “a historical and mythological background of which Homer is fully or partly aware,” including their settlements “not only within the borders of the Greek world but also out of them…” Most significantly, Hesiod distinguished them from the Dorians which had come to dominate the Greek world by that time.The Complete Works of Hesiod ( Ησίοδος ) . Illustrated: Works And Days ( Έργα και Ημέραι ) , The Theogony, The Catalogues of Women and Eoiae, The Shield Of Heracles and Others., “Fragment Eight.” N.p., Strelbytskyy Multimedia Publishing (2021). And there was a similarly named people occupying the region several hundred years earlier.
===Ethnography===
Many scholars have identified the 15th century BCE Ahhiya (LÚ URUa-aḫ-ḫi-i̯a-a) Core with Mycenaean Greece.Latacz, Joachim. Troy and Homer: towards a solution of an old mystery, p. 218. United Kingdom, OUP Oxford (2004).Güterbock, Hans G. (April 1983). "The Hittites and the Aegean World: Part 1. The Ahhiyawa Problem Reconsidered". American Journal of Archaeology. 87 (2): 133–138.Melchert, Craig. “Mycenaean and Hittite Diplomatic Correspondence: Fact and Fiction.” Classical Inquiries, Harvard (2020). Classical Inquiries Verbal endings of the Hittite "ḫi-" conjugation function as simple presents [tenses],Jäntti, S.A.O. "Geminate Stops in Anatolian: Evidence and Typological Implications." University of Leiden (2013) MA Comparative Indo-European Linguistics and by the late Babylonian stage of the Akkadian languageSchmidt, Martina. "Some Remarks on Language Usage in Late Babylonian Letters." Open Linguistics 2017; 3: 378–395. "aḫ" meant "rule."The name of Xerxes I translates as 𒄴𒄭𒅈𒋙 (aḫ-ḫi-ar-šú, literally "ruling over heroes”).Tavernier, Jan (2007) Iranica in the Achaemenid Period (ca. 550–330 B.C.): Lexicon of Old Iranian Proper Names and Loanwords, Attested in Non-Iranian Texts, Peeters Publishers. The aḫ-ḫi element is also found in the Hurrian language variant spoken by the Mittani.Homan, Zenobia. Mittani Palaeography, p. 206. Netherlands, Brill, 2019.
Forrer believed the Achaeans were directly associated with the term "Land of Ahhiyawa" mentioned in the Hittite texts,. which lay to "the west.";; . It appears to have been called Ahhiya in the earliest recordsTranslation of the Sins of Madduwatta and was involved in geopolitical matters on the western Anatolian coast during the Hittite era,Translation of the Tawagalawa Letter . and the majority scholarship is now of the opinion that "Ahhiya/Ahhiyawa" referred to the Mycenaean world, or at least to a part of it. Edwin Guest believed that the Achaeans and the Hellenes formed two great divisions of the Greek people, with the former constituting a dwindling ruling class over the more numerous uplanders.Guest, Edwin. Origines celticæ. United Kingdom, Macmillan & Company (1883). Others have concluded that the Achaeans were the same people as the Mycenaeans.Middleton, John. World Monarchies and Dynasties. United Kingdom, Taylor & Francis (2015).
But there was a concurrent Egyptian tradition that associated the Mycenaean lands in Greece with the tnj (transliterated as Tanaju), generally held to be the DanaoiA Companion to the Archaeology of Early Greece and the Mediterranean, p.1220. United Kingdom, Wiley, 2020. and prime candidates for members of the Sintashta culture culture. Protopsaltis says that their migration "can be traced from the steppes of the Ukraine to Greece. They made stopovers in the Troad territory, the Aegean Islands, and Thrace, where they received some Trojan and Aegean cultural elements, which were manifested in their Lerna settlement. Around 2100 BC, it is believed that a group of Danaoi destroyed an old community near Lake Lerna in Argolid and established their own settlement. During the same period, the destruction or displacement of other settlements took place: Argos, Corinthia, Attica, and in the Cycladic Islands. Groups of Danaoi were located in Boeotia, Phocis, in the valley of the Sphercheos River, Achaea, Phthiotis, Larisa, and Crete."Protopsaltis, Demetrios. An Encyclopedic Chronology of Greece and Its History. United States, Xlibris Corporation, p. 50-61 (2012). The chronology suggests destroyed settlements belonged to Achaeans of the Korakou culture, which Blegen cautioned were more likely to have been subject peoples of the Mycenaean state rather than its rulers."The [Korakou] civilization thus briefly outlined may be conceived as slowly evolving through four or five centuries. Before attaining its culmination, however, it was extinguished, and, as we have seen, the period ends at Korakou with the total destruction of the settlement. The evidence of the pottery indicates a complete break in continuity of civilization; almost no elements of Early Helladic culture seem to have survived the catastrophe. Accordingly, if the earlier inhabitants were not entirely exterminated or driven out, they were at least brought into complete subjection. This conquest was apparently carried out by a more powerful race coming from the north...The new culture, which immediately established itself on the site of the old, was of a more aggressive and more vigorous type...Here we may be dealing with the forerunners of the architects who produced the great fortification walls of Tiryns and Mycenae." See Blegen, Carl William. Korakou: A Prehistoric Settlement Near Corinth, p. 122-126. United Kingdom, American School of Classical Studies at Athens, 1921. The Egyptians appear to place the Achaeans in the Cyclades at the turn of the 13th century BCE.Woudhuizen, Frederik Christiaan (2006). The Ethnicity of the Sea Peoples (Ph.D.). Erasmus Universiteit Rotterdam, Faculteit der Wijsbegeerte. 
It is possible this was an instance of an Indo-Aryan elite ruling a subject people, much as which occurred with Hattians and the Mittani. Both the Danaoi and Achaean tribal names are etymologically linked to “water” in different proto-languages,Avestan dānu = river. Haarmann, Harald. On the Trail of the Indo-Europeans: From Neolithic Steppe Nomads to Early Civilisations. Germany, marixverlag, 2021.Paleo-European substrate ak = water. Pronk, Tijmen. "Proto-Indo-European *a". Indo-European Linguistics 7.1 (2019): 122-163. Web. possibly an indication of mixed heritage. Homer's contribution to the Greek éthnos was to gather together the disparate subject peoples of the Mycenaeans under the umbrella of a new identity.Skinner, Joseph E.. The Invention of Greek Ethnography: From Homer to Herodotus. United Kingdom, OUP USA, 2012.
By the 5th century BCE the Greeks began encountering unrecognizable shadows of their former selves, and Murray believed that "if a Greek of the fifth century, like Aeschylus or even Pindar, had met a group of the real Hellenes or Achaioi of the Migrations, he would have set them down as so many obvious and flaming barbarians."Five Stages of Greek Religion (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1925) Hekataios located the H ni okhoiHewitt notes the “obvious” Greek etymology.Hewitt, B.G. Reader in Caucasian Languages School of Oriental and African Studies, London University (1994). “The Caucasus: Presentation to the Defence Committee” . in modern-day Abkhazia, where the 5th century BCE ScylaxArnaldo Momigliano, The Development of Greek Biography, p. 29. Harvard UP, 1971. and/or the 3rd century BCE Periplus of Pseudo-Scylax placed the Akh-aioi - translated as Achaeans - subsequently located by Melikishvili near modern-day Sochi.Wright, John, et al. Transcaucasian Boundaries, p. 193. United Kingdom, Taylor & Francis, 2003. 
In the 4th century BCE Herodotus spoke of the Hypachaioi of Cilicia - translated as "sub-Achaeans"The Philistines and Other Sea Peoples in Text and Archaeology, p. 14. United States, SBL Press, 2013. or "half-Achaeans"Astour, Michael C.. Hellenosemitica: An Ethnic and Cultural Study in West Semitic Impact on Mycenaean Greece, p. 68. Netherlands, E.J. Brill, 1965. 
— equated with the Denyen and known to the Hittites as Ahhiyawa//Hiyawa, a Mycenaean state on the Anatolian coast rather than in the Peloponnese.Finkelberg, Margalit. Greeks and Pre-Greeks. Aegean Prehistory and Greek Heroic Tradition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005. .Jasink, Anna Margherita and Marino, Mauro. “The West-Anatolian origins of the Que kingdom dynasty.” (2007).Fischer, Robert. Die Ahhijawa-Frage. Mit einer kommentierten Bibliographie. Dresdner Beiträge zur Hethitologie 26. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag (2010). ISBN 9783447057493. This strongly implies a migration of Achaeans from the Peloponnese to Cilicia prior to the formation of any "Greek" identity.Bryce, Trevor, and Baker, Heather D.. The Routledge Handbook of the Peoples and Places of Ancient Western Asia: From the Early Bronze Age to the Fall of the Persian Empire, p. 167. United Kingdom, Routledge, 2009.Journal of Greek Archaeology Volume 3 2018. United Kingdom, Archaeopress Publishing Limited, 2018. In the 3rd century BCE Aristotle listed the Achaioi amongst the nations of Pontus, one of “many foreign races inclined to murder and cannibalism, for example among the tribes of the Black Sea the Achaeans and Heniochi”Aristotle. Aristotle in 23 Volumes, Vol. 21, translated by H. Rackham. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. (1944).and one of “those who do not scruple to kill men, and afterward to feed upon their flesh.”Bryant, Jacob. A New System, Or, An Analysis of Ancient Mythology: Wherein an Attempt is Made to Divest Tradition of Fable; and to Reduce the Truth to Its Original Purity, p. 217. United Kingdom, J. Walker, W. J. and J. Richardson, 1807. And toward the end of the 1st century BCE Strabo located the Achaei just south of the Azov Sea, describing their lands as extending about five hundred stadia (approximately 50 miles) along the Black Sea coast.Exploring the Hospitable Sea: Proceedings of the International Workshop on the Black Sea in Antiquity Held in Thessaloniki, 21-23 September 2012. United Kingdom, Archaeopress, 2013. Abkhazworld.
===Revisionism===
The theory of “barbarized” Hellenic Achaeans to explain the existence of their Pontic etymological counterparts appears to have begun in the 1st century BC, attributable to Pseudo-Scymnus and repeated by Appian in the 1st century CE, an alternate folk etymology concurrent with the legend recounted by Strabo of “the Phthiotic Achaeans in Jason's crew [that] settled in this Achaea.”The Greek Colonisation of the Black Sea Area: Historical Interpretation of Archaeology, p. 281-282. Germany, F. Steiner (1998). “There has also been some unconfirmed speculation that these groups, or at least the nearby Achaioi (cf. Achaeans) were Greek migrants escaping the Mycenaean collapse," but archaeology does not recognize this.”Colavito, Jason. Jason and the Argonauts Through the Ages., p.149. United States, McFarland, Incorporated, Publishers (2014). 
The east coast of the Black Sea was loosely termed as Κολχίς (Colchis),
described as “more a geographical than political term, and even then with uncertain boundaries.” Dzhanashia, S. shavizghvispiretis saistorio geograpia [The historical geography of the Black Sea coast], in shromebi VI [Works VI], 250-322. Tbilisi: Mecniereba (1988). The southernmost portion is the present-day Adjara - known as აჭარა (Ach’ara) in the local language. This area was home to the Colchian culture in the middle Bronze AgeKikvidze, Zaal. Traditional Ecological Knowledge in Georgia: A Short History of the Caucasus, p. 80-81, 88-89, 94, 96-97, 101-102, 105. United Kingdom, Taylor & Francis, 2020.Sagona, Antonio. The Archaeology of the Caucasus: From Earliest Settlements to the Iron Age, p. 449-474. United Kingdom, Cambridge University Press (2018). and was known to the Greeks at least as early as the 8th century BCE.Giorgadze, Marine and Inaishvili, Nino (2015). "The Colchis Black Sea Littoral in the Archaic and Classical Periods." Essays on the Archaeology and Ancient History of the Black Sea Littoral. Belgium, Peeters, 2018. Greek colonization began in the mid-6th century BCE with the establishment of the city of Phasis. The name is “clearly not Greek” and is believed to be the name of the supreme deity in the Colchian pantheon.Tsetskhladze, Gocha R. “Greek Colonization of the Eastern Black Sea Littoral (Colchis) .” Dialogues d'histoire ancienne Année (1992) 18-2 pp. 223-258. Not surprisingly, there are no enumerations of Pontic tribes that predate this event, though 8th century BCE records of the Urartu identify this as the land of Qulha.A Companion to the Achaemenid Persian Empire, p. 357. United Kingdom, Wiley (2021). One of the names of the Mycenaean polity of Ahhiyawa/Hiyawa in Cicilia was QueTrevor Bryce, The land of Hiyawa (Que) revisited, Anatolian Studies 66 (2016): 67–79. or Quwê.Younger, K. Lawson. A Political History of the Arameans: From Their Origins to the End of Their Polities, p. 463. Georgia, SBL Press (2016).
Guest unambiguously considered the Achaean Greeks to have been immigrants from Scythia, “the vague designation given by the Greeks to the entire, huge, east European territory which extended between the Carpathian mountains and the River Tanais (Don)…inhabited by a mixed conglomeration of peoples and groups of peoples, originally nomads from central Asia, who had begun to penetrate westwards early in the second millennium BC…[who] probably spoke an Indo-European, basically Iranian tongue…[reflecting] their confusion between ruling classes (which were small, and composed of people who could be strictly regarded as Scythians) and subject peoples (who were many, and diversified).”Grant, Michael. The Rise Of The Greeks. United Kingdom, Orion (2012). Mycenaean DNA from the Peloponnese "show a contribution of Steppe ancestry (ca. 20%), which can only be interpreted as the arrival of peoples from the north." Jamieson likewise traced Greek origins to Scythia but pointed to the Pelasgians rather than the Achaeans as the source.Jamieson, John. Hermes Scythicus: Or, The Radical Affinities of the Greek and Latin Languages to the Gothic: Illustrated from the Moeso-Gothic, Anglo-Saxon, Francic, Alemannic, Suio-Gothic, Islandic &c. To which is Prefixed a Dissertation on the Historical Proofs of the Scythian Origin of the Greeks. United Kingdom, Printed at the University Press, for Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, & Brown, London, 1814.
==History==
Some scholars believe the name Ἀχαιοί originally designated a pre-Greek people and that the name Δαναοί was brought by Proto-Greeks from a region north of the Black Sea.Caskey, John Langdon. The End of the Early Bronze Age in the Aegean. Netherlands, E.J. Brill, 1986.Sakellariou, Michel. Peuples préhelléniques d'origine indo-européenne (Athens: Ekdotiki Athinon, 1977)Crossland, R.A. indo-European Origins: The Linguistic Evidence. Past & Present, Volume 12, Issue 1, November 1957, Pages 16–46, https://doi.org/10.1093/past/12.1.16Porzig, Walter: Die Gliederung des Indogermanischen Sprachgebiets. Pp. 251. Heidelberg: Winter, 1954. Paper, DM. 35. There is some evidence that the Achaeans preceded the Danaoi to the Peloponnese by several hundred years, forming the Korakou culture of the Early Helladic II.Kušnareva, Karinė Ch, and Kushnareva, K. Kh.. The Southern Caucasus in Prehistory: Stages of Cultural and Socioeconomic Development from the Eighth to the Second Millennium B.C.. United Kingdom, University of Pennsylvania Press, Incorporated, 1997Sagona, Antonio. The Archaeology of the Caucasus: From Earliest Settlements to the Iron Age. United Kingdom, Cambridge University Press, 2018The Danioi who settled Larna constructed an elaborate tumulus over the pre-existing House of the Tiles, “showing respect for their predecessors that one would not expect of invaders of a different culture.” This suggests if not a related then at least a familiar peoples. See Coleman, John E. An Archaeological Scenario for the "Coming of the Greeks ca. 3200 B.C." The Journal of Indo-European Studies, v. 28, no.1–2, pp. 101–153 Academia.edu It is possible the story of Cecrops is a mythological reference to the migration and settlement of the Achaeans,Butler, Howard Crosby. The Story of Athens: A Record of the Life and Art of the City of the Violet Crown Read in Its Ruins and in the Lives of Great Athenians, p. 10. United Kingdom, Century Company, 1902.The Oxford Classical Dictionary, p. 203. United Kingdom, OUP Oxford, 2012.Goodrich, Samuel Griswold. A History of All Nations: From the Earliest Periods to the Present Time; Or, Universal History: in which the History of Every Nation, Ancient and Modern, is Separately Given, p. 13. Illustrated by 70 Stylographic Maps, and 700 Engravings. United States, Miller, Orten & Mulligan, 1855. who appear to have initiated the Bronze Age in the Peloponnese.Rutter, Jeremy, "The Eutresis and Korakou Cultures of Early Helladic I-II", brewinate, January 2017. If accurate the period of their ascendancy was from 2650-2100 BCE. Significantly, the period known as Early Minoan terminates in 2100 BCE.McEnroe, John C. (2010). Architecture of Minoan Crete : Constructing Identity in the Aegean Bronze Age. web: University of Texas Press.
===Mycenaean subjects===
While there is no consensus on the historicity of the Homeric epics,Rutter, Jeremy B., "Troy VII and the Historicity of the Trojan War", Dartmouth College it is generally recognized that the Catalogue of Ships was derived from a late Bronze Age source and that it accurately described the loose union of Greek city-states ruled by hereditary families under the overlordship of a High King (, wanax) characteristic of the Mycenaean era.Tartaron, Thomas F.. Maritime Networks in the Mycenaean World. United Kingdom, Cambridge University Press, 2013.Simpson, R. Hope, and Lazenby, John Francis. The Catalogue of the Ships in Homer's Iliad. Kiribati, Clarendon P., 1970. The Achaeans resided in individual territories dominated by a megaron from which they were governed.Chadwick, John. The Mycenaean World. United Kingdom, Cambridge University Press, 1976. Each territory was divided into several sub-regions headed by its provincial center, and each sub-region was further divided into smaller districts known as da-mo. The wanax presided over all as the supreme religious, military and judicial authority, with a deputy figure known as the ("the leader of the people") at his side a military aristocracy known as the ("companions" or "followers") in support and a number of local officials that exercised authority over the districts ((, '"governor"), po-ro-ko-re-te (, "deputy") the da-mo-ko-ro (damokoros, "one who takes care of a damos") and a council of elders chaired by a ke-ro-si-ja (cf. γερουσία, ). The great mass of people where known collectively as da-mo,. watched over by royal agents and obliged to perform duties and pay taxes to the megaton. Occupying the lowest rung of the social ladder were the slaves, do-e-ro, (cf. , ).
The Mycenaean elite were focused on the redistribution of goods, commodities and labor by a central administration, with preserved Linear B records in Pylos and Knossos indicating strict monitoring of industries and commodities, the organization of land management and the rations given to the dependent personnel.. They organized their workforce and resources for the construction of large scale projects in the fields of agriculture and industry, and the magnitude of some projects indicates that this was the result of combined efforts from multiple megarons. They imported raw materials, such as metals, ivory and glass, and exported processed commodities and objects made from these materials, in addition to local products: oil, perfume, wine, opium, wool and pottery.. Based on archaeological findings in the Middle East, they had strong commercial and cultural interaction with the Canaanites, Kassites, Mitanni, Assyrians, and Egyptians..... A chief export was olive oil, a multi-purpose product. Cyprus appears to have been the principal intermediary.; ; ; . Trade with Troy is also well attested, while Mycenaean trade routes expanded further to the Bosphorus and the shores of the Black Sea.. Commercial interaction was also intense with the Italian peninsula and the western Mediterranean, with goods exported to southern Italy, Sicily, the Aeolian islands, Sardinia.; ; ; .; ; ; ; ; ; . and southern Spain.; ; .Trade with the Hittite lands in central Anatolia appears to have been limited..
It appears likely that it was this trade which drew še–er–ta–an–nuThe name is surprisingly similar to the Egyptian tnj-Tanaju, and it has been speculated that the tribe was “associated with the Mycenaean frequenting of the Bay of Naples and the lower Tiber as well as the Lunigiana,” i.e., wandering Danoi. See Mosetto, Mario. Origins of European Peoples: Part One: Ancient History. United States, AuthorHouse UK, 2018. (Sherden)Huehnergard, John. A Grammar of Akkadian (Third Edition)., p. 277. Netherlands, Brill, 2018. from Sardinia to the region as early as the 14th century BCE.D’Amato, Raffaele, and Salimbeti, Andrea. Sea Peoples of the Bronze Age Mediterranean C.1400 BC–1000 BC, p. 13. United Kingdom, Bloomsbury Publishing, 2015. Though termed “pirates” by their contemporaries, their actions suggest they were seeking to take control of the copper trade centered at Alishiya.Emanuel, Jeffery P. (2014). “Sea Peoples, Egypt and the Aegean: The Transference of Maritime Technology In the Late Bronze-Early Iron Transition (LH IIIB–C).” Aegean Studies, No. 1, 2014, 21-56.Halayqa, I.K. (2010). “The Demise of Ugarit in the light of its connections with Hatti.” Ugarit-Forschungen, ISSN 0342-2356, No. 42, 2010, p. 297-330. In the mid 13th century they attacked the lowlands of the Peloponnese and again about 50 years later... It was at this point the Mycenaean civilization centered on the Peloponnese seems to have broken and the Achaeans themselves enter Egyptian history.
===Egyptian Ekwesh===
It is in this context then that the Achaeans “and other uprooted coastal residents” (šrdn-Sherden; šklš-Shekelesh; trš-Tyrrhenians; rk-Lukka; plšt-Peleset; djnjnjw-Denyen; ṯkr-Tjeker; wšš-Weshesh) of what appears to be a disrupted trading networkLockard, Craig A.. Societies, Networks, and Transitions: A Global History, p. 68-69. United States, Cengage Learning, 2020. migrating from west to east over the course of several generationsA. Leahy, “Sea Peoples”, in the Oxford Encyclopedia of Ancient Egypt, ed. Donald Redford (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), 257. to become “competitors for power” against the Great Powers of Hattusa, Babylonia, Assyria and Egypt. The Egyptians called these migrating Achaeans ikš (Ekwesh).
The earliest textual reference to the Mycenaean world is in the Annals of Thutmosis III (ca. 1479–1425 BC), which refers to messengers from the king of the Tanaju, circa 1437 BC, offering greeting gifts to the Egyptian king, in order to initiate diplomatic relations, when the latter campaigned in Syria. Tanaju is also listed in an inscription at the Mortuary Temple of Amenhotep III. The latter ruled Egypt in circa 1382–1344 BC. Moreover, a list of the cities and regions of the Tanaju is also mentioned in this inscription; among the cities listed are Mycenae, Nauplion, Kythera, Messenia and the Thebaid (region of Thebes).
 
During the 5th year of Pharaoh Merneptah, a confederation of Libyan and northern peoples is supposed to have attacked the western delta. Included amongst the ethnic names of the repulsed invaders is the Ekwesh or Eqwesh, whom some have seen as Achaeans, although Egyptian texts specifically mention these Ekwesh to be circumcised. Homer mentions an Achaean attack upon the delta, and Menelaus speaks of the same in Book IV of the Odyssey to Telemachus when he recounts his own return home from the Trojan War. Some ancient Greek authors also say that Helen had spent the time of the Trojan War in Egypt, and not at Troy, and that after Troy the Greeks went there to recover her.For example, in Euripides, Stesichorus, and Herodotus; HELEN wsu.edu
===Luwian Hiyawa===
There is circumstantial evidence that the Achaeans colonized the plains of Cicilia prior to the Bronze Age collapse. In the reign of Šuppiluliuma II (1207-1178) there are documents that refer to "Hiyawa-men" present in the Lukka lands to receive a consignment to be shipped to Ugarit on the orders of the Hittite king.Bryce, Trevor. The Routledge Handbook of the Peoples and Places of Ancient Western Asia: The Near East from the Early Bronze Age to the Fall of the Persian Empire, p. 11. United Kingdom, Taylor & Francis, 2009. The kingdom of Quwê was a Syro-Hittite Assyriaian vassal state at least as early as the 9th century BCE in the lowlands of eastern Cilicia with a capital at Adana.Trevor Bryce, The land of Hiyawa (Que) revisited, Anatolian Studies 66 (2016): 67–79Younger, K. Lawson. A Political History of the Arameans: From Their Origins to the End of Their Polities, p. 463. Georgia, SBL Press (2016). The Urartians similarly called Colchis “the land of Qulha” (MATUKu-ul-ha-i-di transliterated in Greek as Ko^xiç)Over the Mountains and Far Away: Studies in Near Eastern History and Archaeology Presented to Mirjo Salvini on the Occasion of His 80th Birthday, p. 241. United Kingdom, Archaeopress Publishing Limited, 2019. The Cilician polity was said to have been called Hiyawa in Luwian. This is the region spoken of by Herodotus in the 4th century BCE as occupied by the Hypachaioi. or “half-Achaeans"
The Christian chronicler Eusebius of Caesarea stated that "Mopsus reigned in Cilicia’' in the years 1184/83 BCE.Mopsus regnauit in Cilicia a quo Mopsicrenae et Mopsistae (i.e. Mopsucrene and Mopsuestia): Eusebius, quoted by Jerome, noted in Lane Fox 2008:215 and note 23. Mopsus appears in Greek myth as an Argonaut who died on the return trip from Colchis.Apollonius. Jason and the Argonauts. United Kingdom, Penguin Publishing Group, 2014. Some researchers believe this is the Ahhiyawa of Hittite records, and that it indicates an Achaoi migration prior to the formation of a Greek identity by Homer in the 8th century BCE.
===Classical Achaeans===
Historically, the members of the Achaean tribe inhabited the region of Achaea in the northern Peloponnese. Both Herodotus and Pausanias recount the legend that the Achaeans (referring to the tribe of the Classical period) originally dwelt in Argolis and Laconia. As Strabo noted however, this is not what Homer meant by the term Achaean.Strabo, VIII, 6. Supposedly, the Achaeans were forced out of those lands by the Dorians, during the legendary Dorian invasion of the Peloponnese.Herodotus VIII, 73. As a consequence, the Achaeans went to the region known as Aegialus and forced the Aegialians (by now known as the Ionians) out of their land.Herodotus VII, 94. The Ionians took temporary refuge in Athens, and Aegialus became known as Achaea. Pausanias VII, 1.Herodotus I, 143–147. 
The Achaeans cemented their common identity in the 6th century BCE in response to the rising power of Sicyon to the east and Sparta to the south, and during the 5th century BCE in response to the expansionism of the Achaemenids.Economou, Emmanouil M. L.. The Achaean Federation in Ancient Greece: History, Political and Economic Organisation, Warfare and Strategy, p. 12. Germany, Springer International Publishing, 2020. Herodotus described them as unified nation composed of 12 city-states: Pellene, Aegeira, Aeges, (Achaea) Boura, Helike, Aegion, Rhypes, Patrai, Pherae, Olenos, Dyme and Tritaia.Walbank, Frank William. The hellenistic world. Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 1993. The rise of Macedonia in the late 4th century BCE seems to destroyed this first Achaean League, with the Macedonians eventually controlling so many of the member city-states that the Achaean federal government had virtually ceased to function.Larsen, J.A.O. Greek federal states: their institutions and history. Oxford: Clarendon Press (1968).
After Macedon's defeat by the Romans in the early 2nd century BC, the League was able to finally defeat a heavily weakened Sparta and take control of the entire Peloponnese. However, as the Roman influence in the area grew, the league erupted into an open revolt against Roman domination, in what is known as Achaean War. The Achaeans were defeated at the Battle of Corinth in 146 BC) and the League was dissolved by the Romans.Waterfield, Robin. Taken at the Flood: The Roman Conquest of Greece. United Kingdom, Oxford University Press, 2014.
==Mythology==
According to the foundation myth formalized by Hesiod, their name comes from their mythic founder Achaeus, who was supposedly one of the sons of Xuthus, and brother of Ion, the founder of the Ionian tribe. Xuthus was in turn the son of Hellen, the mythical patriarch of the Greek (Hellenic) nation.Apollodorus, Library I, 7.3.
Both Herodotus and Pausanias recount the legend that the Achaeans (referring to the tribe of the Classical period) originally dwelt in Argolis and Laconia. According to Herodotus, the Achaeans were forced out of those lands by the Dorians, during the legendary Dorian invasion of the Peloponnese.Herodotus VIII, 73. As a consequence, the Achaeans went to the region known as Aegialus and forced the Aegialians (by now known as the Ionians) out of their land.Herodotus VII, 94. The Ionians took temporary refuge in Athens, and Aegialus became known as Achaea. Pausanias VII, 1.Herodotus I, 143–147.
Pausanias says that 'Achaean' was the name of those Greeks originally inhabiting the Argolis and Laconia, because they were descended from the sons of the mythical Achaeus, Archander and Architeles. Pausanias VII, 1.7. According to Pausanias, Achaeus originally dwelt in Attica, where his father had settled after being expelled from Thessaly. Achaeus later returned to Thessaly to reclaim the land, and it was from there that Archander and Architeles travelled to the Peloponnesus. Pausanias VII, 1.3. It was supposedly for this reason that there was also an ancient part of Thessaly known as Phthiotic Achaea.
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==References==
Category:Ancient Greece