132 Trevor R. Bryce
Homer in theIliad(2.867) refers to the Carians as “speakers of a barbarian language”—a
description that, for what it is worth, clearly distinguishes these Carians from
immigrant Greeks.
Whether or not ancestors of the later Carians played a significant role, or any role, in the
western populations of Hittite Anatolia, there is no doubt that Luwian-speaking groups
had become a substantial component of these populations in the Late Bronze Age. Other
groups yet to be found in either the written or archaeological records may have occupied
the region as well, either within the Arzawa complex or beyond it.
We can, however, identify in the Hittite texts a sub-group, or sub-groups, belonging
to the western Anatolian Luwian-speaking populations called the Lukka people, inhab-
itants of a region called Lukka or the Lukka Lands. Occasional references to Lukka are
also found in Egyptian texts, and a late reference to it appears in a tablet from Ugarit
in Syria. The scattered pieces of information we have about the Lukka people indicate
that these nominal subjects of the Hittite crown were often rebellious, and apparently
notorious for their buccaneering enterprises in the waters and against the coastal cities
of the eastern Mediterranean. From reports of their activities in Hittite texts, groups
of Lukka people seem to have scattered widely through western and southern Anato-
lia. However, the name Lukka (Lands) indicates that there was a specific Lukka region,
a Lukka homeland, which included coastal territory. It lay in Anatolia’s southwestern
corner, extending from the western end of Pamphylia through Lycaonia, Pisidia, and
Lycia (Classical names). We know of no political organization within Lukka, or any
type of coherence, political or otherwise, among the people so called. Some may have
settled temporarily, or permanently, in states with more formal political organizations.
I. Singer (1983: 208) aptly describes Lukka as “a loose geographical designation for
southwestern Anatolia, used for a group of ethnically and culturally related communities
and clans.”
Greeks in Anatolia
The country called Lycia in Classical sources occupied part of the Late Bronze Age
Lukka Lands. Very likely, the Greek name “Lycia” preserves the old Bronze Age form
“Lukka”—but unwittingly. The Greeks assigned various false etymologies to the name, all
of them Greek, the best known of which derives the name from the wolves (Greeklykoi)
who had guided the goddess Leto and her children Apollo and Artemis to the country in
flight from the goddess Hera (Antoninus Liberalis 35.3). Migrants from the Greek and
Aegean worlds had probably begun settling in Lycia by the end of the second millen-
nium. There may well have been a Cretan component among the new settlers, to judge
from Herodotus (1.173), who relates that Lycia was originally inhabited by immigrants
from Crete called the Termilae. The fact that, in their own language, the Lycians called
themselvesTrmmili ̃ and their countryTrmmisa ̃ may give some credence to Herodotus’
statement. However, native Anatolian elements almost certainly continued to make up
a substantial proportion of Lycia’s population in the first millennium, as evidenced by
the Lycian language, which was closely akin to Bronze Age Luwian, by the Anatolian
names of a number of Lycian cities, and by the Anatolian, more specifically Luwian,
names of a number of their deities (such as Trqqas=Luwian Tarhunda, the Storm God).