Ahhiyawa

Ahhiyawa is the designation used in Hittite cuneiform inscriptions to refer to a political entity in western Anatolia during the Late Bronze Age. The name appears in 14th-century BCE tablets from Hattusa and surrounding archives, where Ahhiyawa is described as a major power that engaged in diplomacy with the Hittite empire and, at times, in conflict or alliance with the city Wilusa, widely identified with Troy. The exact geographic extent of Ahhiyawa is not certain, but most scholars place it along the coast of western Anatolia, near the Troad. The people of Ahhiyawa are generally linked with the Achaean Greeks in later sources, and the term is usually interpreted as the Hittite rendering of the ethnonym Achaeans or as a proto-Greek-speaking polity.

Key texts mention a king of Ahhiyawa and correspondents addressing the Hittite king, indicating a complex interstate system typical of the period. The relationship to Wilusa has been a central topic in debates about Bronze Age Anatolia–Greece interactions, with some evidence of proposed marriage alliances and military actions referenced in the tablets.

Scholars broadly view Ahhiyawa as the western counterpart within the Hittite sphere, providing early evidence for cross-cultural contact between the Aegean world and Anatolia. While the identification with the Mycenaean Greek world is widely accepted, precise linguistic and political details remain uncertain. The term highlights the broader Bronze Age connectivity shaping the Eastern Mediterranean before the rise of classical Greece.