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Wolf-Dietrich Niemeier

Excavations at Miletus’s Mycenaean cemetery yielded four bronze swords. The sword at the far left is Mycenaean in style, while the other three are Hittite—providing further evidence to identify Miletus as the Milawanda mentioned in Hittite texts. In the late 13th century B.C. the Hittites conquered Milawanda/Miletus, which was a vassal state of Ahhiyawa/Achaea—or the Mycenaeans of the Greek mainland. The Trojan War described by Homer may well have been another such conflict between the Mycenaeans and the Hittites—with the Greeks attacking the Hittite vassal state of Troy/Ilios/Wilusa.