The Ancient East | Page 9

Philistines, and a group hailing apparently from Asia Minor and the
Isles, Tjakaray, Shakalsha, Danaau and Washasha, successors of
Pisidian and other Anatolian allies of the Hittites in the time of
Rameses II, and of the Lycian, Achaean and Sardinian pirates whom
Egypt used sometimes to beat from her borders, sometimes to enlist in
her service. Some of these peoples, from whatever quarters they had
come, settled presently into new homes as the tide receded. The Pulesti,
if they were indeed the historic Philistines, stranded and stayed on the
confines of Egypt, retaining certain memories of an earlier state, which
had been theirs in some Minoan land. Since the Tjakaray and the
Washasha seem to have sprung from lands now reckoned in Europe, we
may count this occasion the first in history on which the west broke in
force into the east.
Turn to the annals of Assyria and you will learn, from records of
Tiglath Pileser I, that this northern wave was followed up in the same
century by a second, which bore on its crest another bold horde from
Asia Minor. Its name, Mushki, we now hear for the first time, but shall

hear again in time to come. A remnant of this race would survive far
into historic times as the Moschi of Greek geographers, an obscure
people on the borders of Cappadocia and Armenia. But who precisely
the first Mushki were, whence they had originally come, and whither
they went when pushed back out of Mesopotamia, are questions still
debated. Two significant facts are known about their subsequent history;
first, that two centuries later than our date they, or some part of them,
were settled in Cappadocia, apparently rather in the centre and north of
that country than in the south: second, that at that same epoch and later
they had kings of the name Mita, which is thought to be identical with
the name Midas, known to early Greek historians as borne by kings of
Phrygia.
Because of this last fact, the Mushki have been put down as
proto-Phrygians, risen to power after the fall of the Cappadocian Hatti.
This contention will be considered hereafter, when we reach the date of
the first known contact between Assyria and any people settled in
western Asia Minor. But meanwhile, let it be borne in mind that their
royal name Mita does not necessarily imply a connection between the
Mushki and Phrygia; for since the ethnic "Mitanni" of north
Mesopotamia means "Mita's men," that name must have long been
domiciled much farther east.
On the whole, whatever their later story, the truth about the Mushki,
who came down into Syria early in the twelfth century and retired to
Cappadocia some fifty years later after crossing swords with Assyria, is
probably this--that they were originally a mountain people from
northern Armenia or the Caucasus, distinct from the Hatti, and that,
having descended from the north-east in a primitive nomadic state into
the seat of an old culture possessed by an enfeebled race, they adopted
the latter's civilization as they conquered it and settled down. But
probably they did not fix themselves definitely in Cappadocia till the
blow struck by Tiglath Pileser had checked their lust of movement and
weakened their confidence of victory. In any case, the northern storms
had subsided by 1000 B.C., leaving Asia Minor, Armenia and Syria
parcelled among many princes.

SECTION 6. ASIA MINOR
Had one taken ship with Achaeans or Ionians for the western coast of
Anatolia in the year 1000, one would have expected to disembark at or
near some infant settlement of men, not natives by extraction, but
newly come from the sea and speaking Greek or another Aegean
tongue. These men had ventured so far to seize the rich lands at the
mouths of the long Anatolian valleys, from which their roving
forefathers had been almost entirely debarred by the provincial forces
of some inland power, presumably the Hatti Empire of Cappadocia. In
earlier days the Cretans, or their kin of Mycenaean Greece in the latest
Aegean age, had been able to plant no more than a few inconsiderable
colonies of traders on Anatolian shores. Now, however, their
descendants were being steadily reinforced from the west by members
of a younger Aryan race, who mixed with the natives of the coast, and
gradually mastered or drove them inland. Inconsiderable as this
European soakage into the fringe of the neighbouring continent must
have seemed at that moment, we know that it was inaugurating a
process which ultimately would affect profoundly all the history of
Hither Asia. That Greek Ionian colonization first attracts notice round
about 1000 B.C. marks the period as a cardinal point in history. We
cannot say for certain, with our present knowledge, that any one of the
famous Greek cities had