Musker und Phryger: Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte Anatoliens vom 12. bis zum 7. Jh. V. Chr.

• Author: Beckman, Gary
• Position: Book review

Musker und Phryger: Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte Anatoliens vom 12. bis zum 7. Jh. V. Chr. By ANNE-MARIA WATKE. Beihefte zum Tubinger Atlas des Vorderen Orients, series B, vol. 99. Wiesbaden: DR. LUDWIG REICHERT VERLAG. 2004. pp. xvi 389, maps. [euro]45 paper.

Scholars have long identified the Anatolian ruler Mita of Maku known from Assyrian cuneiform texts of the eighth century B.C.E. with his contemporary Midas of Phrygia attested in classical sources. Consequently, many have also equated the population of MuKku with the Phrygians, despite significant differences in the temporal and geographic distribution of references to the two peoples. That is, the Assyrians speak only of the Maku, while the later Greeks mention only Phrygians. In the volume under review, revision of a 2002 dissertation presented to the Philosophisch-Historische Fakultat of Stuttgart University, Anne-Marie Wittke seeks to resolve this problem through a thorough examination of all ancient textual material relevant to Mu[section]ku and Phrygia, for neither of which, however, are useful native records available.

The author's methodology is straightforward: in separate sections for Mu[section]ku and for Phrygia she presents the relevant passages--Akkadian, Urartian, Hittite, Hieroglyphic Luwian, Phoenician, Greek. Latin, or Hebrew--mostly in the transliteration and translation of the original standard editions by other writers, for philology is not her primary concern. Her commentary on these texts focuses on geographic questions, as befits a study produced in conjunction with her preparation of Kane B IV 8 ("Ostlicher Mittelmeerraum and Mesopotamian urn 700 v. Chr.") of the Tiibinger Atlas des Vorderen Orients. She also discusses the archaeology of central Anatolia. taking into account the recent redating of the destruction layer at Gordion to ca. 830-800.

Concerning the Mugku, whose language remains unknown and whose political structure she characterizes as that of a chiefdom (p. 180). Wittke assigns them at least partial responsibility for the collapse of the Late Bronze Age states of Iguwa and Alg/zi (Hittite)/Alzu (Assyrian) (p. 179) on the upper Tigris. By the second half of the eighth century, she suggests, the Mugku had been displaced to the west, to the region of the southern Halys bend, likely as a result of Assyrian pressure, where they were ultimately absorbed by an expansionist Phrygia (p. 129). In a phenomenon common in the development of geographic names (cf...