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:''This article is about the ancient people of the Achaeans. See Achaea (MUD) for the MUD.''
The 'Achaeans' (in Greek , ''Akhaioi'') is one of the collective names used for the Greeks in Homer's ''Iliad'' (used 598 times) and ''Odyssey''. The other names are the 'Danaans' (, used 138 times in the ''Iliad'') and 'Argives' (, used 29 times in the ''Iliad''). In the historical period, the 'Achaeans' were the inhabitants of the region of Achaea, a region in the north central part of the Peloponnese. The city states of this region formed a confederation known as the Achaean League which was influential during the 3rd and 2nd centuries BC.
The Homeric Achaeans would have been a part of the Mycenaean civilization that dominated Greece from ca. 1600 BC, with a history as a tribe that may have gone back to the prehistoric Hellenic immigration in the late 3rd millennium BC.
Some Hittite texts mention a nation lying to the west called '''Ahhiyawa'''. An important example is the ''Tawagalawa Letter''^[1] written by an unnamed Hittite king of the empire period (14th century B.C.) to the king of ''Ahhiyawa'', treating him as an equal and suggesting that Miletus (''Millawanda'') was under his control. It also refers to an earlier "''Wilusa'' episode" involving hostility on the part of ''Ahhiyawa''. In the earliest reference to this land, in a letter outlining the treaty violations of the Hittite vassal Madduwatta^[2], it is called ''Ahhiya''. Ahhiya(wa) has been identified with the Achaeans of the Trojan War and the city of Wilusa with the legendary city of Troy (note the similarity with ''Ilion'', the name of the acropolis of Troy). However the exact relationship of the term ''Ahhiyawa'' to the Achaeans beyond a similarity in pronunciation is hotly debated by scholars, even following the discovery that Mycenaean Linear B is an early form of Greek; the earlier debate was summed up in 1984 by Hans G. Güterbock, Oriental Institute^[3]

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See also

Notes

External links

See also

★ Achaea, Achaea (province)

★ Aegean civilization

★ Mycenaean Greece

★ Historicity of the Iliad

★ Mycenaean language

★ Homer

★ Troy

★ The 'Achaean League' was a confederation of Greek city states in Achaea, a territory on the northern coast of the Peloponnese. An initial confederation existed during the 5th through the 4th century BC.

Notes

1. Translation of the Tawagalawa Letter
2. Translation of the Sins of Madduwatta
3. Hans G. Güterbock, "Hittites and Akhaeans: A New Look" ''Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society'' '128'.2 (June 1984), pp. 114-122. Bibliography.

External links

★ Sites and Photos: Mediterranean and Classical Archaeology Images

★ Detailed cultural studies of Minoan Crete and relations with the mainland "Mycenean" tribes of Achaians at http://ancientgreece-earlyamerica.com .