Die Ahhijawa-Frage, mit einer kommentierten Bibliographie.

• Author: Marcuson, Hannah
• Position: Book review

Die Ahhijawa-Frage, mit einer kommentierten Bibliographie. By ROBERT FISCHER. Dresdner Beitrage zur Hethitologie. vol. 26. Wiesbaden: HARRASSOWITZ VERLAG, 2010. pp. vii + 125. [euro]29.80 (paper).

Robert Fischer's Die Ahhijawa-Frage, an adaptation of the author's master's thesis, is a short historiographical overview of the decades of scholarship devoted to the Hittite place name "Abbiyawa" or "Abbiya": Emil Forcer first proposed in 1924 that this "Athiyawa" was in fact the Homeric Axata, or Greece. Forrer's assertion provoked an intense debate, which--although most Hittitologists now agree that the people of Abbiyawa were likely the Mycenaean Greeks--lasts to this day. The connection to the classical world has drawn the attention of many scholars, and given rise to publications on related linguistic, geographical, historical, and archaeological phenomena. In Fischer's introduction he professes the goal of providing an account of the controversy surrounding the problem. and the long search for a solution, without judgment or evaluation.

The book is first divided into his analysis (pp. 1-66) and an annotated bibliography (pp. 69-124): the analysis is further broken up into eight short chapters. In chapters 1 and 2, "Forschung, Literatur, Kontroverse" and "Einiges aus dens Umfeld der Abbijawa-Frage," Fischer outlines the Abbiyawa question. its primary difficulties, and the origins of the feud. summarizing Forrer's initial publications and Ferdinand Sommer's very negative response. In chapter 3. "Wo liegt Abbijawa?" he continues chronologically, addressing scholars' subsequent attempts to locate Abhiyawa either in Greece or in some place emphatically not Greece. Chapter 4. "Historischer Hintergrund der Abbijawa-Frage." begins with a basic dating of Hittite-Abbiyawa relations from the textual material, moves on to briefly discuss the archaeological evidence from that time--in the main pointing out that quite a bit of Mycenaean pottery has been found on the Anatolian west coast--and concludes with an exploration of possible Aniyawan locations and arguments made for or against them: Cilicia, Pamphylia, Crete, Cyprus, Rhodes, and again finally Mycenaean Greece.

Chapter 5, "Axatoi and Aria," returns to the issue of names: Fischer discusses proper names similar to "Abbiyawa" occurring outside the Hittite tradition, with focus on Axatoi and Aria, whose meaning he analyzes from the Greek textual evidence. Chapter 6, "Sprachlicher Hintergrund der...