Wilusa was a city in the north-west of Anatolia, and during the Late Bronze Age it was a part of the Hittite Empire, or at least a vassal, for Hittite records refer to it as a major player in the Assuwa Confederation, a league of cities and states united to oppose Hittite rule. It’s position by the Dardanelles gave it great power over trade through that important corridor, and therefore great wealth too. What makes this city of particular interest is that the Greek version of the name was Wilios, also rendered as Ilios, but their other name for it was Troia, which in English is known as Troy. While the link will probably never be proven, most accept that Wilusa was the Troy of Homer’s famous epic poem, the Iliad.
Regardless of how much historical fact there might be in the Iliad, any city in Wilusa’s position would have periodically found itself in armed conflict, either with local rivals or with bigger powers further afield such as the Hittites or Achaeans, and in such circumstances the other states of the region might have been allied with them, or been allied with their opponents. This set claims to depict troops from a wide range of such states, and we will look at each in turn here.
Beginning with the first two figures in our top row, the box tells us that these men are Pelesets. The Pelesets are identified as one of the groups known as the Sea Peoples by the Egyptians, and are often thought today to be the ancestors of the Philistines. Their location during this early period is not known, but like other Sea Peoples they may have come from western Asia Minor, the Aegean, or the islands of the eastern Mediterranean, so their involvement in the affairs of Wilusa makes perfect sense. The archer wears just a kilt and the tiara-style headdress that is so associated with the Sea Peoples, including the ‘feather’ crown (possibly leather strips). His bow is his only weapon, and he carries a quiver on his back for his arrows. The second man is much more elaborately dressed, as he has a cuirass, perhaps metal or leather, over what we assume is a tunic. His headdress is the same as his comrade’s, but his expensive armour hints at what the trident in his hand tells us for certain – he is a senior officer. The trident was a symbol of his authority – indicating his mastery over the sea – and not a serious weapon used in combat except in an emergency. This figure, like the first, seems perfectly authentic, but the question has to be asked – why did Linear-A include two of this pose when such men would have been exceptional?
Moving to the third figure in this row, we are told that this man is a Luwian. Generally this is understood today to be a linguistic grouping, though they may have had some form of political entity in south-central Anatolia, which would mean they were likely to be within the Hittite Empire proper. This man wears a helmet made of fabric or leather covered with rows of boar’s tusks as protection, topped by a plume and with cheek pieces, which was a familiar type of helmet. He wears a tunic, over which he has a cuirass that again might be metal or leather, and a wide belt. On the lower legs he wears greaves which would have been of linen or fabric, as there is no detail or sign of an opening, so cannot have been stiff enough to prevent removal over the foot. Such items were worn, but often under a protective stiff metal greave at the front, though there is none here. He carries a sword and oval shield with a crescent cutout at the base, both of which look good, and he is in a nice, aggressive advancing pose.
Row two begins with two figures described as ‘Warriors of Troas’. Troas (later renamed Alexandria Troas), is a town 20 km south of Hisarlik, the presumed site of Troy, and in the early modern period some mistakenly thought that it was the site of Troy itself, but its proximity means it would certainly have been involved with Troy at some periods. The first man is bare-chested and wears a kilt and an elaborate crested helmet. He carries a long spear (35 mm = 2.5 metres) in length and is also armed with a sword. His colleague also has a sword, though a fair bit longer, and he holds a round shield with a central grip. He wears a tunic and a boar’s tusk helmet similar to that of the Luwian. Both these men are in good, fighting poses and very nicely animated.
The row concludes with a ‘Wilusa mercenary’, and he too is in a nice charging pose. He wears on his head a remarkable helmet with two pairs of horns (not clear in our photo), which reflects the many depictions of helmets with horns often found in art of the wider region. Over a short tunic he has a cuirass that is engraved to suggest bands of plate metal round the trunk – a sort of smaller version of the famous Dendra armour, but only reaching to the waist. His wardrobe continues with a pair of drawers and cloth coverings on his lower legs, over which are strapped solid greaves protecting the shin. His shield is an oval with small cutouts on each side, and his sword looks typical of the period, but he has no scabbard, nor any sort of baldric, belt or other place where he might put the naked sword away.
And so to the final row, which begins with two ‘Lukka allies’. The spearman is quite a heavy infantryman, wearing an elaborate cuirass and thick belt over a tunic and kilt. His helmet has a crest and boasts no less than six horns protruding from it, and he also has greaves over fabric coverings on his lower legs. He has a sword, but his primary weapon is the spear, and he has an oval shield with a large cutout section at the bottom. He seems to move forward purposely, or else actually stabbing at an enemy. His archer friend wears just a tunic and apparently trousers (a surprise), and has odd tubes round both lower legs which have no sign of fixing or openings, so again must be soft to allow removal over the foot, although the detail implies they are solid metal, which would be impractical. His crested helmet is less exotic, and has a mere two horns sticking out, but a very fine plume from the top. His sword hangs from a baldric, and his arrow case from his waist belt. These men are Lukkan, from an area of Anatolia called Lycia, which at times provided troops for Hittite armies as well as acting on their own behalf.
Figure three is a soldier from Mira, in western Anatolia, of which very little is known except the names of some kings. He has a long, sleeveless tunic and soft fabric coverings on his lower legs, with sandals on the feet. He also has some sort of sash across his trunk for which we could find no evidence, and which seems to serve no purpose unless it is supposed to indicate some sort of authority. His boar’s tusk helmet is particularly tall, though it has only a short plume at the top. Unlike most of the others, this man is relaxed, casually resting his axe on his right shoulder and holding his large proto-dipylon shield on the ground.
Finally we come to the last, and most enigmatic, figure. Linear-A describe him as a Wilusa warlord, and he is clearly not actively involved in any fight. He wears a cap with a very long neck curtain at the back, a longish robe engraved with a chequer pattern, and a sort of poncho/cape amalgamation, plus short boots with turned-up toes in the Hittite fashion. When we first looked at this figure, our eye was immediately drawn to the odd arrangement of his robe, which has the hem above the knee on the right leg, but down below the calf on the left. We instinctively felt this asymmetrical design was wrong, and it would appear that he is based on a Seal of Tarkasnawa, King of Mira. This figure has also been reproduced in modern form in the book ‘Bronze Age Greek Warrior’ listed below, where he is labelled as a ‘Hittite ambassador’, and clearly he is being used to represent an elite in society. However, the designer of this figure has failed to understand the robe that he wears, and has turned it through 90 degrees, so while the original and the Rava interpretation show the robe correctly – high at the front and low at the back – here it is high on the right and low on the left, so a terrible interpretation of the source material. He rests his hand on something by his left hip which might be a sword, but is extremely short if so, and in his right hand he seems to hold a cane, but as we discuss below, this has been badly damaged on this figure.
As usual with the Linear-A 3D printed figures, these are beautifully sculpted. The detail is amazing, even down to the earrings of the warlord, and the faces are lovely and expressive. Of course, the method of production allows for some great, natural poses without compromise, so we find poses here with edged weapons and shields, yet nothing requires assembly, and everything is completely lifelike and realistic. The weapons are all as slender as they should be, and the bows have not been given a bowstring, which meets with our approval as these cannot realistically be made thin enough to be accurate yet resilient. We did find some of the weapons were quite bent (we chose the best examples for our photo), although we found that placing the bent figures in hot steam did cause them to resume their proper shape. The cane of the warlord, however, was snapped as well as bent, hence why it appears as it does above.
On the face of it this is a selection of many different troops from different areas, any of whom might have fought with or against Wilusa. However, details of warriors from any of these areas, including Wilusa itself, are almost none-existent for the Late Bronze Age, and the above figures are largely based on what we know from Hittite and Mycenaean sources, which undoubtedly had their influence on western Anatolia. Consequently, we feel the individual labels should be largely ignored, and while the helmets of the Peleset are characteristic, in general most of these figures could safely be described as ‘Anatolian Warriors’, with no meaningful sub-division necessary. Many and perhaps all of them may well have fought for the Hittites at battles such as Kadesh, but with so little information known today we cannot offer any sort of authoritative view on their accuracy except to say that everything here seems reasonable (apart from the warlord's robe of course), and it is highly unlikely anyone can prove them to be wrong. How typical they are is of course also impossible to say, but they do make an exotic and striking picture of warriors from this little-known period, and they are very well produced in some great poses. Should you wish to depict or game battles from this traumatic period, in the decades before the Late Bronze Age collapse, then these are probably as good a set of figures as you could hope to find.