New early Mycenaean palace find at Sparta

[Duncan Head]

Then again, one would have to look very hard for an Athens and a Pylos on Crete ...

True, but are Athenai and Pylos the only Greek (or indeed Eteocretan  ) names that might be rendered as "Tanaia" and "Wilis"? The latter struck me as sounding more like Wilios/Ilios/Wilusa than Pylos. I know nothing about Egyptian transliterations - is P > W common?

[Patrick Waterson]

I know nothing about Egyptian transliterations - is P > W common?

I think you do yourself a disservice, though B and W seem interchangeable in Egyptian (e.g. 'WenAmon' can just as easily be understood as 'BenAmon').  Slightly complicating the picture is a tendency to transcribe the Egyptian 'u' (the chick) as 'w', as in Wepawet, the Opener of the Ways, whereas the name's pronunciation seems to be closer to "Oop-out" and may even originally have been an onomatopoeic rendering of the cry of the Ethiopian wolf (the deity's symbol).

Back to the Kom Ombo cities: 'Wilis' gives us two likely candidates, namely Elis and Pulos (Pylos).  The real question would seem to be whether Egyptians would, given the W-B crossover, have used a 'B' for a 'P'.  In addition to the customary Grimm's Law guesses, we are told in a rare volume entitled Ancient Egypt Speaks that during the 18th Dynasty the character for 'P' (the square') was usually pronounced as 'V' - which would explain why 'Amenhotep' is transcribed by Greek historians as 'Amenophis' - the original being putatively pronounced 'Amenhoev' (the 't' being silent).  This suggests that a name with a straight 'P' could have been a challenge for the 18th Dynasty Egyptian, and 'Vilis' a likely pronunciation for 'Pulos'.  This could give us an easy equivalent for 'Wilis' without having to worry unduly about 'B' and 'W' interchanges, assuming a slight lack of precision when originally dictating the foreign name to a scribe.  (Variant pronunciation seems to have been fairly common: Biridia, governor of Megiddo in the Amarna letters and Shalmaneser III's nemesis 'Biridri' at Qarqar, variously wrote that he was defending 'Makida' and 'Magiidda'.  This may have been the result of differing scribal transcription rather than Biridia having a cold. )

In choosing between Elis and Pylos, I am swayed by three considerations: firstly, it is unlike Egyptians to include a redundant or silent initial letter, which tips the scales against Elis (or for that matter Ilion).  This might be offset by the early Greek usage of an initial diagamma, so it is not necessarily conclusive.  Secondly, Pylos has records showing the appropriation of resources for the heq-ta [e-ke-ta] and the heq-resu [e-ke-re-wo], indicating that it was contributing resources both to an Egyptian governor (who ranked with the Pylian king) and to the Vizier of Upper Egypt (who outranked the king).  It would be curious if the Egyptians were to omit a realm which was so clearly under their thumb in favour of one which might not have been.  Thirdly, Pylos was or recently had been one of the prestige kingdoms of the era, a point which Nestor in the Iliad was fond of reminding his listeners.

This causes me to rate 'Wilis' as 90% likely to be Pylos and perhaps 10% likely to be Elis.

True, but are Athenai and Pylos the only Greek (or indeed Eteocretan  ) names that might be rendered as "Tanaia" and "Wilis"? The latter struck me as sounding more like Wilios/Ilios/Wilusa than Pylos.

The overriding problem with 'Wilusa' is that it is on neither Cyprus nor Crete, unless the scribes of Hattusas or modern decipherers thereof managed to get their geography totally wrong.   Eteocretans incidentally seemed to give their cities dreary-sounding names like Dreros and Praisos, which seem to be unrepresented on the Kom Ombo statue base.

And that still leaves Cythera.