Saturday 26 September 2020

Ashkelon invasion

This is a transcript made by the archaeologist Georges Perrot, of the Luwian inscription engraved on the 3,200-year-old, 29-metre-long limestone frieze which was discovered in Turkey in the 19th c. The stone with the original inscription was later destroyed...

This inscription is the longest known hieroglyphic inscription from the Bronze Age. When the text was eventually translated, it turned out to be a story about the "Sea People" naval expedition to Ashkelon in modern-day Israel (Illustration: Sea People by Giuseppi Rava)

The inscription tells the story of King Kupantakuruntas, who became king of Mira and ‘guardian of Troy’ after his father Mashuittas’s death, and was the brains behind the capturing of Ashkelon and turning it into a major army and navy base...You can read more about it in Rediscovered Luwian Hieroglyphic Inscriptions from Western Asia Minor...

Now recent genetic study "Genetic History of the Near East (Iron & Classical Ages)" - Haber at al. 2020 has shown that at that exact time the area around Ashkelon had a large influx of "Southern European and Western Anatolian DNA"...

You can read more about it in "A Genetic History of the Near East from an aDNA Time Course Sampling Eight Points in the Past 4,000 Years"

The important bit is that authors of the study say that "...according to ancient Egyptian texts and archaeology, the Sea Peoples conquered the Levant but failed to conquer Egypt. Therefore, we tested whether the Eurasian gene flow to Lebanon during the Iron Age had also reached ancient Egypt."

"The results of the measurement of the Steppe ancestry in both regions suggests that...either ancient Egypt did not receive the Eurasian gene flow that the Levant received during the Iron Age or that the Eurasian ancestry was replaced in Egypt later..."

Which matches the historical records from the area...

3 comments:

  1. Longtime lurker here - majored in Ancient Mediterranean Studies at uni. I unlurk here to offer some warnings.
    Fred Woudhuizen has been active in the Luwian circuit for some time now and he's never left the fringe. In this case he's dealing with James Mellaart. This latest "inscription" Beyköy 2 is evaluated Vladimir Stissi Talanta 50 (2018), 87-123. Stissi concludes that Beyköy 2 is a hoax.

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    1. Thanks very much for your comment. I am no expert on Luwian studies, so I will leave the fighting over the authenticity of the inscription to the experts...I just thought it was very interesting how recent archaeological and genetic data related to the Sea People, kind of confirms what this inscription says...But who knows...

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  2. Luvilerin ardillari şu anki Zaza olarak adlandırılan Anadolu halkıdır......

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