ANATOLIA,c.2300–1750 B.C.

Abstract

INTRODUCTORY The period with which this chapter is concerned is of particular interest to the historian, for it is during these five and a half centuries or so that the greater part of Anatolia came to be dominated by newcomers from the north, speaking a variety of Indo-European languages, and having a culture, religion, economy and customs which had little in common with those of the earlier populations. During this period were laid the foundations for the historical kingdoms of the later second millennium, but their beginnings are hidden by the veil of illiteracy, lifted (but only in Central Anatolia) in the fourteenth and thirteenth centuries B.C. To visualize events during the later centuries of the third and the beginning of the second millennium—the Early Bronze Age 3 and Middle Bronze Age 1 periods of the archaeologist—we are almost entirely dependent on evidence from excavation and exploration, since the earliest written records—the so-called Cappadocian texts—do not appear till the very end of the period with which we are concerned. Being mainly concerned with trade and litigation, they shed only occasional light on the political conditions in Central Anatolia. Historical texts are extremely few. We have seen, as the end of the second Early Bronze Age approached, a sequence of migratory movements culminating in a great invasion, perhaps of Indo-European newcomers, which divided the peninsula diagonally into two almost equal parts, causing immediate and unmistakable changes in the south and south-western regions. Widespread destruction is followed by an overall decline in material culture. Throughout the wide cultural provinces of the previous period, the entire Konya plain and the southernmost part of the south-west Anatolian region, evidence of settled occupation becomes rare, and one may suspect a corresponding relapse into nomadic conditions.