The Coming of the Greeks. Indo-European Conquests in the Aegean and the Near East

(lu) #1
Umman Manda and the PIE Speakers

des Halys gelegenen Teil Kleinasiens, insbesondere auch Kap-
padokien." 9
As Houwink ten Gate has pointed out, 10 the various warriors
mentioned at Section 54 of the code were very likely chari-
oteers. The phrase, "the archers, the carpenters, the
LU.MESH.ISH," 11 seems to be in apposition to the roster, and
, the three specialties could only have been found together in a
corps of charioteers. In the chariot forces from Nuzi, there is a
similar association of carpenters, archers, and drivers.
For our purposes, the most tantalizing reference to the Um-
man Manda appears in a text known as "The Kuthaean Legend
of Naram-Sin." Here we are told of a great and devastating
sweep made by the Umman Manda, beginning in eastern An-
atolia and proceeding all the way to "Dilmun, Magan, Me-
luhha, and all the countries in the midst of the sea." 12 Sumer-
ologists and Assyriologists customarily identify these place
names with lands along the Persian Gulf and with India. The
Legend of Naram-Sin was a constantly changing (and growing)
piece of folk history, and so it is not clear at what time this
particular episode was attached to it. The text here cited dates
from the seventh century B.C. A thousand years earlier, in the
Old Babylonian period, the legend had a very different shape
and is not known to have mentioned the Umman Manda or the
devastating sweep to India. 13 I t is thus barely possible that at



  1. J. Lewy, Fonchungen zur alien Geschichte Vorderasiens (Leipzig:
    Hinrichs, 1925), 3.

  2. "The History of Warfare according to Hittite Sources," 56.

  3. The Sumerogram is translated by Neufeld as "pages," by Hou-
    wink ten Gate as "squires," and by Friedrich as "Wagenlenker."

  4. O. Gurney, "The Sultantepe Tablets, iv. The Cuthaean Legend
    of Naram-Sin," AS 5 (1955): 101 (line 6 0 of the text).

  5. For the fragmentary text of the legend in Old Babylonian
    times, see J. J. Finkelstein, "The So-Called 'Old Babylonian Kutha Leg-
    end,' " JCS ii (1957): 83-88. The thirteenth-century text at Hattusas
    mentioned the Umman Manda, but seems to have contained no reference to
    Dilmun, Magan, and Meluhha; for the Hittite "epische Erzahlung von
    Naramsin," see Giiterbock, "Die historische Tradition bei Babyloniern und


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