Kingdom of Arzawa

Arzawa in the second half of the 2nd millennium BC (roughly from late 15th century BC until the beginning of the 12th century BC) was the name of a region and a political entity (a "kingdom" or a federation of local powers) in Western Anatolia. The core of Arzawa is believed to have been located along the Kestros River (Küçük Menderes), with its capital at Apasa, later known as Ephesus. When the Hittites conquered Arzawa it was divided into three Hittite provinces: a southern province called Mira along the Maeander River, which would later become known as Caria; a northern province called the Seha River Land, along the Gediz River, which would later become known as Lydia; and an eastern province called Hapalla.

It was the successor state of the Assuwa league, which also included parts of western Anatolia, but was conquered by the Hittites in c. 1400 BC. Arzawa was the western neighbour and rival of the Middle and New Hittite Kingdoms. On the other hand, it was in close contact with the Ahhiyawa of the Hittite texts, which corresponds to the Achaeans of Mycenaean Greece. Moreover, Achaeans and Arzawa formed a coalition against the Hittites, in various periods.

According to Hittite sources, the capital of the Kingdom of Arzawa was Apasa (or Abasa), corresponding with later Greek Ephesus.

The languages spoken in Arzawa during the Bronze Age and early Iron Age cannot be directly determined due to the paucity of indigenous written sources. The current consensus among scholars is that the linguistic identity of Arzawa was predominantly Luwian, based, inter alia, on the replacement of the designation Luwiya with Arzawa in a corrupt passage of a New Hittite copy of the Laws, which appears to reflect a change in the name of the region. However, one scholar has recently argued that Luwiya and Arzawa were two separate entities, because Luwiya is mentioned in the Hittite Laws as a part of the Hittite Old Kingdom, whereas Arzawa was independent from the Hittites during this period. He also argued that there was no significant Luwian population in Arzawa, but instead that it was predominantly inhabited by speakers of Proto-Lydian and Proto-Carian, although both are considered to be in the Luwic branch of the Anatolian languages.

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