Hawkins has correctly deciphered the inscription, which identifies
the sculptedfigure as a man called Tarkasnawa, king of the land of
Mira.^2 Now we know that Mira was one of the Arzawa lands, and
the likelihood is that this monument lay on its northern boundary.
Beyond it, the Hittite texts tell us, was another Arzawan kingdom,
called Seha River Land, which had a land called Lazpa as its
dependency. Most scholars agree that Lazpa is the island called
Lesbos by the Greeks. And Wilusa seems to have lain close to this
country–which increases the likelihood of its identification with
the region of Troy, called the Troad in Classical texts.
There is one other promising-looking identification. A number
of Hittite texts refer to a land called Milawata or Millawanda, which
lay alongside or extended to the Aegean sea. It seems very likely
that Milawata was the Bronze Age forerunner of the Classical city
Miletos, built at the mouth of the Maeander river. Excavations have
revealed an extensive Bronze Age settlement on the site which came
under strong Greek influence during the last part of the fourteenth
and thefirst decades of the thirteenth century. As we shall see, there
is good reason to believe that a Greek king was overlord of this
Figure 6.1 Classical Miletos, Lion Harbour.
THE SETTING FOR AN EMPIRE 51