Achaeans: who were they and what do we know about this ancient culture?

In many sources of Ancient Greece and some of Egypt, Anatolia and nearby territories there appears a people known as the Achaeans who are credited with having participated in the famous war against Troy, the same one where a wooden horse was used to overthrow her.

However, despite the fact that much is said about them in both the Iliad and the Odyssey, it is not clear who they were and exactly where they could be said to have lived.

Who were the Achaeans? Were they a line of Greeks? A Balkan ethnic group? An ethnic group from the Peloponnese? Mycenaean? All these are questions that many historians have asked based on archeology, various sources and testimonies from Classical Greece, questions that arise when trying to get to know this people.

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Who were the Achaeans?

The Achaeans (from the Latin “Achaei” and this in turn from the Greek “Ἀχαιοί”, “Akhaioí”) is the name they receive different peoples of Classical Antiquity. It is one of the collective names used to refer to the whole of the Greeks in the Odyssey and in Homer's Iliad, along with two other terms to refer to the inhabitants of most of what is now Greece: Danaos and argives. In addition to these Greek sources, the Achaeans appear in the Bible although referred to as acaicos.

But apart from in literature, the Achaeans existed or, at least, it was the name that was used to refer to the inhabitants of Achaia, a region that is located north of the Peloponnese. The city-states of this region formed a confederation called the Aquean League, an alliance that was truly influential between the 3rd and 2nd centuries BC. C.

Originally the Achaeans were an Indo-European people who inhabited the southern Balkans from 2000 BC. C. and that, later, would give rise to the Mycenaean civilization, although in academic historiography it is preferred to refer to them as "Mycenaean" proper. This Bronze Age town is believed to have left the Balkans to Greece around 1800 BC. C., being one of the first Indo-European settlers to reach this peninsula.

There different kingdoms would be constituted, being notable those of Mycenae and Tirinto. Later, around 1400 BC. C., these Achaeans "peacefully" conquered the island of Crete and introduced some innovations, fundamental for the later civilization Greek: the chariot, the horses, the weapons forged in bronze and a greater sumptuousness and protocol in the funeral ceremonies of the nobles.

The Achaeans of the Peloponnese had a social organization that revolved around the family through kinship and they were governed by a political system led by a warrior prince. Among its most important deities are the goddess Potnia and the god Poseidon, king of the seas.

Myth of the appearance of the Achaeans in Achaia

In Greek mythology perceived cultural divisions among the ancient Greeks were depicted as legendary lines of descendants who were identified in kinship groups, each line derived from an ancestor that gave name to that line. Each Greek "ethnic group" was named after one of their heroic ancestors:

• Aqueos that of Achaeus.
• Give us Danao's.
• Cadmeos the one of Cadmus.
• Eolios that of Aeolus.
• Jonios the one of Ion.
• Dorios for Doro.
• Helenos that of Helén.

The myth tells that Cadmus of Phenicia, Danaus of Egypt and Pelops of Anatolia made their way into mainland Greece, being assimilated and transformed into Greeks.. Helén, Graikos, Magnis and Macedonia were children of Deucalión and Pirra, who were the only survivors of the great flood. The ethnic group was originally named after the eldest son, the Graikos graikoi (the word "Greek" comes from here) but was later renamed by another of his sons, Helén, who had proven to be the most strong.

The children of Helén and the nymph Orséis were Doro, Juto and Eolo. The sons of Juto and Creusa, daughter of Erecteus, were Ion and Achaeus who this was the creator of the race of the Achaeans. When Achaeus' uncle Aeolus in Thessaly died, Achaeus made himself lord of Phthiotis, which was renamed Achaia.

The Achaeans and the Mycenaeans

Some experts have identified the Achaeans as the Mycenaeans, a culture related to the Greeks and that in fact there is evidence that they spoke a very ancient dialect of the Greek language. Others are of the opinion that the Achaeans did not enter Greece before the Dorian invasions of the 12th century BC occurred. C.

As described by Homer, the Achaeans were a people who came from the continental islands and western Greece such as the island of Crete, Rhodes and other nearby islands, except the islands Cyclades. It is curious that these islands coincide precisely with those where the Mycenaean culture developed between the fourteenth and thirteenth centuries BC. C. according to the current opinion of modern archeology.

Another reason why it is believed that Mycenaeans and Achaeans must have been the same is the fact that they had as capital administration of its territories of influence precisely the city of Mycenae, which was considered by the colonized peoples as the Cretans. The influence of the Mycenaeans spread through Asia Minor, the Iberian Peninsula and Ancient Egypt.

Cultural characteristics of the Achaeans-Mycenaeans

Taking the idea that the Achaeans were Mycenaean, the main cities of this town were Mycenae, their capital administrative, Tirinto, Pilos, Athens, Tebas, Yolcos and Orcómeno, besides having settlements in Macedonia, Epirus and some Aegean Islands. Based on the story and part of the myth, the feat most renowned by the Achaeans would be their 10-year siege of Troy, a city that held great military and economic power and that posed a serious threat to Mycenae.

The Achaeans were organized into three social classes, not very different from those of the rest of the cultures of Greece. The most privileged class was that of the high administrative positions in the palace who exercised political-military power; below them were citizens, the only ones who were required to pay taxes but who had some rights; and that of slaves, which were used exclusively in palaces and religious buildings.

The Achaeans-Mycenaeans buried their nobles with all kinds of treasures and seated them in curious hexagonal-shaped tombs, distributed like a honeycomb.. The burial of the warrior class was more humble, simply taking away the weapons and armor that they had used in life. However, those who had been war heroes were cremated and their ashes were placed in urns that were decorated with bright and beautiful gold masks.

Since the heyday of the Mycenaean and Minoan cultures coincided in the same century, historians believe that both ethnic groups became involved in some conflict that would lead to the subsequent disappearance of the Achaeans, although this is also a matter of debate. What is known is that after the fall of Mycenae due to the action of the Dorians, the survivors dispersed to several Greek islands and they also reached the Anatolian peninsula, present-day Turkey.

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Where does its name come from?

Today the Greeks refer to themselves as "Hellenes" and, in fact, the official name of their country, modern Greece, is that of the Hellenic Republic. Modern Hellenes share common traits and identity that define them as a fairly homogeneous nation, most of them having Greek as their mother tongue as well as a rich gastronomy, customs and traditions, shared by their ancestors and that have survived the Turkish influence to which for so many centuries they were submitted.

However, this idea of ​​a single nation has not been around forever. In classical antiquity Greek culture was divided into a set of city-states and its inhabitants, although conscious of being similar, did not have an idea of ​​a united nation or ethnic group as we understand it today. Thus, to refer to themselves they used different names such as Ionians, Dorians, Aeolians and, also, Achaeans, designating with these words the inhabitants of the different territories of Greek civilization classical.

Nevertheless, the idea that "Achaeans" was used as a synonym for the Greeks of the time is controversial. There are testimonies that would indicate that more than another name used to call the whole of the Greeks as Homer did, it should be a their own culture, a people who happened to live in the lands of present-day Greece and who shared Greek traits but were not exactly that. In fact, there are documents from other civilizations that give some force to this hypothesis.

The Hittites

The Hittites were a people that settled mostly on the Anatolian peninsula, in a country they called Hatti. In some of its texts it is mentioned that to the west there was a nation called Ahhiyawa. A letter is the first document in which this country is mentioned, in which the violations of the treaty of the Hittite vassal Madduwatta who is also called Ahhiya are summarized.

Another important document is that of the Tawagalawa letter, written by a king whose historiography has not been able to find out who he was but must have lived between the 14th and 13th centuries BC. C. The letter was addressed to the king of Ahhiyawa, treating him as an equal and suggesting that Miletus, called Milawata in Hittite, was under his control. It also refers to an earlier Wilusa episode, which involved hostilities from Ahhiyawa.

This Ahhiya has been identified with the Achaeans of the Trojan War and Wilusa would be the name by which the Hittites referred to the city of Troy. In fact, there is some similarity between the names of the acropolis of Troy, Wilion (Ϝιλιον), later Ilion (Ίλιον) and the name Wilusa in Hittite.

Equally, this remains an open debate since, beyond the phonetic similarities between the Hittite term Ahhiyawa and Akhaioi Greek (pronounced / ajéi /), there is still no conclusive evidence, even after it was discovered that Mycenaean Linear B was in actually an ancient form of Greek and, therefore, the Mycenaeans spoke this language, being able to be classified as Greek linguistically talking.

The egyptians

Another civilization that apparently made contact with these Akkadians was the Egyptian. During the fifth year of the reign of the pharaoh Merenptah, the existence of a confederation of peoples from Libya and the north is mentioned in several sources that would have attacked the western Delta. Among the ethnic names of the invaders is that of "Ekwesh" which, according to some historians, would have been neither more nor less than the Achaeans themselves.

In fact, Homer mentions an attack by the Achaeans in the Egyptian Delta. Herodotus, another great classical thinker, states in his first book that Helena had been led to Egypt during the Trojan War and that the Greeks later went to the African nation to get it back.

The Aquea League

We cannot finish talking about the Achaeans without mentioning one of the most important political alliances in Classical Greece. The Aquean League (in Greek “τὸ Ἀχαϊκόν”, “tò Achaïkón”) was a confederation of cities in the Achaia region. At its peak, the League came to control the entire Peloponnese peninsula, with the exception of the southern Laconia region. This socio-political alliance would come to an end with Roman rule over Greek lands, leading to its dissolution in 146 BC. C. after the Aquean War.

The existence of this league is quite long. There was a first in the V century BC. C., fruit of the union of four cities and hardly intervened in armed conflicts during this century. Later, in the time of Herodotus (484-425 BC. C.), the league was already a little more extensive, it consists of twelve city-states: Egira, Egas, Hélice, Ripes, Bura, Egio, Pelene, Patras, Faras, Dime, Óleno and Tritera. Ripes and Egas disappeared practically immediately, being replaced by Cerinea and Leontio. It is not known what the relations between these cities were and it was surely a religious league rather than a political one.

In principle the Aquean League had the city of Helix as its headquarters and Poseidon as a tutelary god (as a patron saint). However, when this city was destroyed by a tsunami in 373 BC. C. the seat was transferred to Egio and the devotion towards the god of the seas was lost, being replaced by Zeus and Demeter as new tutelary gods.

In 338 a. C. during the battle of Queronea the league fought alongside Athens and Thebes, but was defeated by the Macedonians. After that, she was very weakened, so much so that she could not even take advantage of the advantageous event that was the death of Alexander the Great and the start of the Lamian war. In fact, it was so weak that it couldn't hold out much longer and ended up dissolving. Demtrius Poliorcetes and Cassander of Macedon imposed garrisons on the cities and the cities ended up being politically separated.

Resume

The Achaeans awaken a lot of mystery in historiography because it is not really known what they were. As we have seen, some consider it to be one of the many names that were used to refer to the whole of the Greeks, while others attribute an existence to it purely literary and others believe that Achaeans and Mycenaeans were synonymous terms and others only see as something "Achaean" the name that received the political-religious league constituted north of the Peloponnesus

Be that as it may, his name went down in history and much has been written about his possible origin, his cultural traits, what they believed in, what great historical events they participated in, and whether or not they were really the same as the Mycenaean. The debate is still open and that fuels even more the flames of curiosity and the desire to know more about the true Achaeans.

Bibliographic references:

• Hernández, Gonzalo Fernández. The history of Greece from its origins to the Dorian invasions., P.38, in Boletín Millares Carlo 27 (2008): 35-52.
• Joachim Latacz (2003), Troya y Homero: towards the resolution of an enigma, p.181. Barcelona: Destination editions. ISBN 84-233-3487-2.
• Huxley, G. L. Achaeans and Greeks (1960); Güterbock, Hans G. "The Hittites and the Aegean World: Part 1. The Ahhiyawa Problem Reconsidered "American Journal of Archeology 87.2 (April 1983), pp. 133-138; and Machteld J. Mellink, "Part 2. Archaeological Comments on Ahhiyawa-Achaians in Western Anatolia ", pp. 138-141.