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Mursil and Myrtilos

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 December 2013

Extract

Seven years ago I wrote: ‘to claim the Pelopids as “Hittites” is really to appeal too much to the imagination as an aid to the writing of history.’ But it is dangerous to be too unimaginative.

The name of Oinomaos' treacherous charioteer, whom Pelops afterwards cast into the Myrtoan sea, and to whom as the ταράξιππος Pelops thereafter made offering at his grave and cenotaph, was Myrtilos. The same word, in the form Myrsilos, was not uncommon as a personal name in Asia Minor. Herodotus mentions it as a name for Kandaules; and the tyrant of Mytilene is well known.

The recent discoveries of Dr. Winckler at Boghaz Kyöi have revealed to us an archive of cuneiform tablets, consisting of letters, despatches, and royal decrees of the well-known Hittite kings of the fourteenth century B.C. whose names have hitherto been known to us, on the authority of their Egyptian transcriptions, as ‘Seplel’ or ‘Saparuru,’ ‘Maurasar,’ ‘Mautenro,’ and ‘Khetasar.’

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Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © The Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies 1909

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