3653

Carië (900 - 600 v. Chr.) 

De taal die de Cariërs spraken was mogelijk verwant aan die van de Etrusken en het is mogelijk dat deze oorspronkelijk uit Carië stamden (z. Herkomst van de Etrusken). De Cariërs stonden echter onder sterke invloed van hun Griekstalige buren en cultureel kunnen ze beschouwd worden als een deel van de Griekse wereld.

De overlevering zegt dat Griekse kolonisten uit Trozen aan de oostkust van de Peleponnes onder leiding van een zekere Anthes omstreeks 1200 v. Chr. in de oorspronkelijk door Kariërs bewoonde landstreek kwamen. Op den duur vond er een proces van integratie plaats met de Grieken. In de loop der tijd werd de Ionische invloed steeds sterker. Ook de geschriften van Herodot verschenen in het Ionisch. Vervolgens werd Halikarnassos buitengesloten van de Dorische Hexapolis. 

Caria and the Carians are mentioned for the first time in the cuneiform texts of the Old Assyrian and Hittite Empires, i.e., between c.1800 and c.1200. The country was called Karkissa. They are absent from  the Egyptian texts of this period.

After a gap of some four centuries in which they are mentioned only once (below), the first to mention the Carians is the legendary Greek poet Homer. In the Catalogue of ships, he tells that they lived in Miletus, on the Mycale peninsula, and along the river Meander. In the Trojan war, they had, according to the poet, sided with the Trojans (Homer, Iliad, 2.867ff). This is a remarkable piece of information, because in Homer's days, Miletus was considered a Greek town; the fact that it is called Carian indicates that the catalogue of ships contains some very old information. In the fifth century, the Greeks thought that the Carians had arrived in Caria from the islands of the Ionian Sea, whereas the Carians claimed to be indigenous. Homer confirms their story.

It is also confirmed by modern linguistics: the Carian language belongs to the Hittite-Luwian subfamily of the Indo-European languages. It is related to Lycian and Lydian, the languages spoken to the southeast and north of Caria. Had the Carians arrived in their country from the west, their language would have been closer to Greek.

It seems that the Greeks settled on the coast in the dark ages between c.1200 and c.800, where they and the Carians mixed. The Roman author Vitruvius mentions fights at Mycale (On architecture 4.1.3-5). According to the Greek researcher Herodotus of Halicarnassus (fifth century BCE), the inhabitants of Miletus spoke Greek with a Carian accent (Histories 1.142). Herodotus himself is also a good example of the close ties between the Carians and Greeks: his father is called Lyxes, which is the Greek rendering of a good Carian name, Lukhsu. Because of his descent and birth place, Herodotus is one of our most important sources.

Caria is, like Greece, a country of mountains and valleys, poor in agricultural and other resources - in comparison with Egypt and Babylonia a backward country. Hilltops were fortified and there were several villages in the valleys, but there were hardly any cities. Because of their disparate country, the Carians were divided; when they learned to read and write, every village used its own version of the Phoenician alphabet.

What united the Carians, however, was their religion. One of their ritual centers was Mylasa, where they venerated a male supreme god, called 'the Carian Zeus' by Herodotus. Unlike his Greek colleague, this Zeus was an army god. One of the Carian goddesses was Hecate, who was responsible for road crossings and became notorious in Greece as the source of witchcraft. Herodotus calls her Athena and tells that her priestess got a beard when a disaster was appending (Histories 8.104). On mount Latmos near Miletus, the Carians venerated Endymion, who had been the lover of the Moon and had procreated as many children as there are days in the year. Endymion was sleeping eternally, a story that the Greeks told about Zeus' father Kronos.

The first reference to Carian mercenaries can be found in the Bible: in 2 Kings 11.4, we read about Carians in Judah. (This may look strange, but it fits the picture: according to 2 Samuel 8.18, king David had a guard of Cretans.) The books of Kings were probably composed in the sixth century, but the information stems from older sources; this is the only mentioning of the Carians in the dark ages.

The Carians, however, were especially famous because they served the Egyptian pharaoh. Our main source is, again, Herodotus. He tells us that the first to employ these men was pharaoh Psammetichus I (664-610; Histories 2.152), probably at the beginning of his reign. Some circumstantial evidence supports Herodotus' words, because archaeologists have discovered several settlements in the western part of the delta of the Nile that were founded by people from the Aegean. These settlements can be dated in the seventh century.

The Carians remained active in Egyptian service. They are known to have fought against the Nubians (in modern Sudan) in c.593; on their return, they visited Assuan and left inscriptions. According to an Egyptian stele now in Cairo, they played an important role during the coup d'état of Amasis (570), who gave the Carians a new base near the Egyptian capital Memphis.

When the Persian king Cambyses invaded Egypt in 525 BCE, the Carian contingents were still there, serving king Psammetichus III. According to Herodotus (Histories 3.11), they sacrificed children before they offered battle against the invaders.

They managed to switch sides, however. (They were not the only ones: even the commander of Egyptian navy, Wedjahor-Resne, deserted his king.) In Egyptian sources from the Persian age, we still find Carians, now serving a new lord. One of the latest examples is an Aramaic papyrus dated to January 12, 411. Seven years later, the Egyptians became independent again; this time, the Carians were unable to switch sides. The collaborators must have been dismissed.

--

Meanwhile, their homeland had been subjected to the Lydian king Alyattes, and, later, to the Persians. This happened after the Persian king Cyrus the Great had defeated the powerful king of Lydia, Croesus, who had had some influence in Caria. Thi is usually dated to 547, but this is probably inaccurate. Next year, the Lydians revolted, but Cyrus sent his general Harpagus, who subjected them again. This time, he also took the Greek cities on the coast and then moved to the south, where he subdued the Carians and the Lycians.

The Carians offered their services to their new masters. They are mentioned in cuneiform documents from Borsippa in Babylonia and from the Persian capital Persepolis. When the Macedonian king Alexander the Great conquered the Achaemenid empire, he discovered a Carian settlement in the neighborhood of modern Baghdad. These Carians can not have been deported from their homeland, but must have formed a military colony, because it was a very strategic place, commanding the Silk road.

Initially, the Carians seem to have retained some kind of independence. In the Behistun inscription, which was made in 520 BCE, they are not mentioned among the nations subject to king Darius I the Great, but an inscription that was made about five years later, known as DPe, does mention them (go here for these Empire texts.)

After 499, they joined the revolt of the Ionians against the Persians. (go here for Herodotus' story and a brief comment.) They were twice defeated by the Persians, but in a third battle they annihilated their enemies - not even their generals survived. Although Darius and his successors have claimed overlordship, it seems that the Carians were always able to keep some degree of independence. The Persians knew that they were good soldiers, and after all, their country was poor, so there was no need to really conquer it.

However, the Persians were present. In 1974, archaeologists have found a threelingual  inscription from the time Artaxerxes IV Arses in Xanthus (in the southeast) and one of the languages was Aramaic, the language of the Persian bureaucracy. The center of the Persian administration in Caria was Halicarnassus. The Carian queen Artemisia loyally supported the Persian king Xerxes when he invaded Greece in 480.

However, after 469/466, parts of Caria were conquered by the Athenians. They remained more or less loyal to these Greeks until 412, when they returned to Persia. Again, they retained some freedom.

Anatolië (600 - 500 v. Chr.)

laatst bijgewerkt: 08-09-08

colofon