INTRODUCTION It Is Not Clear When Caria and the Carians Enter Into

CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

It is not clear when Caria and the Carians enter into ancient History. This is dependent on equating classical Caria with the land of Karkiya/ Karkisa mentioned in Hittite sources. This supposition, eminently suit- able from a purely linguistic point of view (karkº in Karkisa, Karkiya is practically identical to the Old Persian word for ‘Carian’, kºka-), is complicated by the uncertainties regarding the exact location of Karkisa/ Karkiya on the map, a problem intimately bound to the complex ques- tion of Hittite geography, a topic still subject to controversy despite the great progress made in recent years. In any case, no information about the language of the land of Karkiya/Karkisa can be obtained from Hittite sources, so that even if the equation could be conﬁrmed, its value for the study of the Carian language would be very limited. The only relevant (but overly generic) datum is that Karkiya/Karkisa is a land located in the western region of Anatolia, an area occupied by Luwian population groups, and thus consistent with the clear similarities between Carian and Luwian, Lycian and other Indo-European Anatolian dialects that can now, since the decipherment of Carian, be clearly traced (see Chapter 10). Classical Caria, the country situated in western Anatolia between Lydia and Lycia, must therefore be the starting point of the research on Carian language. It is during this period that we ﬁnd both direct documentation of Carian and a wealth of information about this land and its inhabitants in indirect, mostly Greek, sources. Particularly meaningful are the consistent ties that we can establish between various types of records on Carian and the Carians regarding one of the most remarkable characteristics of Carian language documentation: the fact that the greatest number of Carian inscriptions have been found in Egypt, and not in Caria itself. From Greek sources, we know that Carian and Ionian mercenaries were employed by the pharaoh Psammetichus I (664–610) for consol- idating his throne (Herod. I, 151). According to Herodotus, these mercenaries were based in the Delta area, near Bubastis (Herod. II, 154). It is no coincidence then that the oldest datable Carian document from 2 chapter one

Egypt, a bilingual inscription on a statuette of the goddess Neith (E.Sa 2) from the times of Psammetichus I, can be traced to Sais, another Egyptian city situated on the Delta. A further connection can be drawn between Carian documents and historical facts under the reign of the grandson of Psammetichus I, Psammetichus II (595–589): a well-known Greek graffito from Abu Simbel attests the participation of foreign mercenaries in his Nubian campaign (593/592, see below p. 31 for this dating), and this information is consistent with the existence of Carian graffiti in Abu Simbel and in other locations further to the south (Buhen, Gebel el-Sheik el- Suleiman). Under Amasis (568–526), Ionian and Carian settlements were moved from the Delta to the city of Memphis (Herod. II, 154), where a ‘Carian quarter’ (KarikÒn) and a ‘Greek quarter’ (ÑEllhnikÒn) existed for many years (Aristagoras of Milet apud Stephan of Byzantium, s. v. ÑEllhnikÒn). Once again this event can be linked to epigraphical evidence: the most important sub-corpus of Carian inscriptions is the collection of funer- ary stelae found in Saqqâra, one of the necropoleis of Memphis. As for the rest of Carian inscriptions found in Egypt—mostly graffiti— from Thebes, Abydos, Silsilis, etc.), no connections can be established with historical facts, and we can only assume that they are the marks of Carian visitors, similar to Greek graffiti found in these and another parts of Egypt. Caria itself does not offer such striking results. The Carian inscriptions found in Caria are far less numerous than those from Egypt, come from different cities, and appear more heterogeneous, both in content and in form, thus constituting a very fragmentary and incom- plete view and lacking a clear connection with historical facts.1 In fact, the sole inscription that gives any indication of a link to the history of Caria is the bilingual inscription from the temple of the god Sinuri (C.Si 2), which can confidently be interpreted as a decree enacted by the Carian dynasts of the Hekatomnid era, Idrieus and Ada, whose joint reign is dated in the period 351/350–344/343. But not even this inscription has any real implications for Carian history: it is simply part of a wider corpus of regulations of a local syngeneia—mostly in Greek— produced by the satrapal couple. In the case of another of the most

1 This is not the place for a history of Caria. I refer the reader to Hornblower (1982).