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April 15, 2009
Something Worth Following: The Tayinat Excavations
Archaeologists from the University of Toronto think their excavations at Tayinat shed additional light on the "dark age" between the Late Bronze Age and the Iron Age in the east Mediterranean.
Ancient sources — such as the Homeric epics and the Hebrew Bible — depict an era of widespread famine, ethnic conflict and population movement, most famously including the migrations of the Sea Peoples (or biblical Philistines) and the Israelites. This is thought to have precipitated a prolonged Dark Age marked by cultural decline and ethnic strife during the early centuries of the Iron Age. But recent discoveries — including the Tayinat excavations — have revealed that some ruling dynasties survived the collapse of the great Bronze Age powers."Our ongoing excavations have not only begun to uncover extensive remains from this Dark Age, but the emerging archaeological picture suggests that during this period Tayinat was the capital of a powerful kingdom, the 'Land of Palastin'," says Timothy Harrison, professor of Near Eastern Archaeology at the University of Toronto and the director of the project. "Intriguingly, the early Iron Age settlement at Tayinat shows evidence of strong cultural connections, if not the direct presence of foreign settlers, from the Aegean world, the traditional homeland of the Sea Peoples."
[snip]
In addition, fragments of monumental stelae — stone slabs created for religious or other commemorative purposes — carved in Luwian (an extinct language once spoken in what is now Turkey) hieroglyphic script, were found. They are thought to have once stood on stone platforms in the courtyard. [Psysorg.com]
I can't tell from the article but I wonder if the words "Land of the Palastin" are on one of the Luwian steles Harrison and his team uncovered.
The Tayinat project has a website. As that site tells us, "Tell Ta’yinat forms a large low-lying mound located 45 kilometres west of Antakya (ancient Antioch) in Southeastern Turkey." There is also information on the Tayinat Iron Age temple and some good pictures on their website. The University of Chicago excavations first exposed this temple in the 1930s but the University of Toranto team has exposed far more of the complex. Alas, the website has no pictures of the stelae but then I couldn't read them if it did.
I may have more to say on all this later.
Via Jim West and the ANE-2 list.
Posted by Duane Smith at April 15, 2009 2:39 PM | Read more on Archaeology |
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Comments
That sure piques my interest, considering my strong suspicion of a giant but invisible "Aegean" language family in the area. This Peleset/Palestine idea also is something more or less along the lines of what I was suspecting to have happened after long ago being inspired by the irritating historical gap of this period and area to deductively fill in the blanks on my own.
I'm also curious about the linguistic demographic at this time. I personally suspect that Minoan was a dead language already, used only for priestly purposes many centuries before the Dark Age. The above sounds like Luwian would now have taken over here as a language for these religious purposes. And for that matter I guess it must have also been spoken in regular day-to-day life in the community or as a diplomatic language. But... part of the riddle I would like solved is how the prehistory of the Etruscan language would fit exactly within these turbulent events. I wonder... nah.
Thanks for this link treasure! Always something to read.
Posted by: Glen Gordon at April 15, 2009 11:55 PM
I actually paid a visit to U of T's Department of Near & Middle Eastern Studies, and asked one of the professors there when any sort of publication regarding the Luwian Hieroglyphics would be coming out. Unfortunately, the professor I asked wasn't working on the Ta'yinat excavations, but he did say that there should be something out in the next few months - September/October at the latest.
While searhcing U of T's Ta'yinat site, I happened to come across one Luwian name that a previous excavation done by the University of Chicago had found: Halpa-(pa)-runta-a-s(a). The bracketed "pa" is because one article on the site includes it ( http://www.utoronto.ca/tap/past.htm ), but another doesn't ( http://www.utoronto.ca/tap/2000.htm ). I'm inclined to think that means that the name was "Halparunta(a)sa, with a possible long "a" in the penultimate syllable; the added "pa", in this case, being just to clarify that "yes, the previous sign ends with 'pa', and is not just a determinative." (Determinative, just like the the Sumerogram "MUNUS" before a Hittite woman's job.)
I'm really looking forward to when that publication comes out, though!
Posted by: Casey Goranson at May 7, 2009 2:36 PM
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