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

Appendix Two

THE UMMAN MANDA

AND THE PIE SPEAKERS

Cuneiform records of the second and first millennia from time
to time refer to umman manda, a term that has been understood
by some scholars as referring to Indo-Europeans. For Emil For-
rer, the term was nothing other than the Akkadian name for
"the Indo-Europeans," 1 but this interpretation has its difficul-
ties. The Akkadian ummanu(m) means "horde" or "troops," 2
but the meaning of manda is unclear. Benno Landsberger sug-
gested that the word was a variant of minde, an adverbial par-
ticle signifying uncertainty. 3 On that interpretation, the two
words together would initially have meant "horde (or people)
of uncertain origin," and only later became a proper name. The
more likely possibility is that "manda" was itself a proper
name. Most translators render the two words as "Manda horde"
and believe that the term was all along a particular ethnic des-
ignation.
In cuneiform sources most names for peoples came from the
lands they occupied, and so it is likely that Manda began as a
vague term for an area somewhere beyond the perimeter of
Mesopotamia: just as Hurrians were "the people of Hurri" and

1. E. Forrer, Sooojahre Nienschheitsgeschichte im Alien Orient nach den
   letzten Ausgrabungen und den neuesten Erkenntnissen (Zurich, 1947; privately
   printed; vol. 4 of Forrer's Forschungen), 21.


2. The Meissner-Von Soden Akkadisches Handworterbuch translates
   ummanu(m) as "Menschenmenge, Heer, Arbeitstruppe."


3. B. Landsberger and Th. Bauer, "Zu neuveroffentlichten Ge-
   schichtsquellen der Zeit von Asarhaddon bis Nabonid," ZA 37 (1927):


4. The Chicago Assyrian Dictionary offers the following, s.v. minde:
   "adv.; perhaps; possibly; who knows? who can say?"

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