Dodanim

Dodanim or Rodanim? Clues for a Translation Dispute

In Hebrew, “-im” is a suffix that means plural, or in other words implies the Dodan-im were a people, and not a specific person. We can assume that Dodanim are a people from a place, potentially named Dodan, but not necessarily being named after the people. While there are cities such as the previously mentioned Dodona, which may later have links to these people being founded after the Bronze Age, there is also the Illyrian Kingdom of Dardania which likely post-dates the Dodanim. In Egyptian records of Aegean names, among the Hittite allies we are given the name “Dardanayu” bringing back the DRDN sequence.

Within scholarship there is a hotly contested debate concerning a supposed copyist error that flips D and R in the Torah, with the Samaritan Pentateuch, their version of the Torah, recording the name as Rodanim - the major river ‘Rhone’ in France likely comes from a similar root. In Hebrew the letter D is ד and the letter R is ר so there is likelihood someone speaking Hebrew got confused. Taking all these factors together it is extremely probable that post-Bronze Age writers already had a contention regarding the true name of the Dodanim/Rodanim, and by then the name had already been lost, especially for those speaking Semitic. It is possible “R-D-N stems from dropping the first D in D-R-D-N, but beyond this we really cannot provide an answer to the D versus R debate.

What can be said about the Island of Rhodes, the supposed traditional location of these D/Rodanim, is that prior to the 16th century BCE there was a race called “Telchines” on the island who were assimilated, or wiped out by the Minoans. Only one hundred years later in 1500 BCE the Mycenaeans invaded, increasingly muddying the complete picture of the island's ethnic make-up.¹ The aforementioned Danaus also leaves his mark on the island, as well as the Dorians, truly making it one of the stronger mysteries in the ancient world that requires better archeology. Sadly, with many of these peoples mentioned sites falling under Turkish and Greek control, it is unlikely we will see much progress in our lifetimes.

Whatever the case, Greek legends put Rhodes as a participant in the Trojan War’s coalition of Greek forces under a leader named Tlepolemus.² Tlepolemus descends from the line of Argives, through his mother Alcmene; the Argives being code in this case for the pre-Greek Myceneans, rather than Greeks proper. From Tlepolemus’s participation in a pan-Hellenic coalition of Greeks and his mother’s descent from Argolis it becomes obvious Tlepolemus is a King during the Mycenaean period of Rhodes, and doesn’t record the potential original inhabitants of the island, let alone the Minoan period.

Interestingly, the other two names given to the joint military force during the Trojan War are Argives, appearing 182 times in the Iliad (compared with Danaans appearing 138 times) and Achaeans appeared the most with over 598 mentions. Clearly the primary forces representing Greece in the period of the Trojan War would have been Danaan Doric migrants, the Achaeans and the Proto-Ionic Mycenaeans of mainland Greece out of the city of Argos. From the overrepresentation of the word Achaean it is evident that they were the major Greek force, and likely leaders of a coalition that attacked Troy, or Wilusa, around the end of the Bronze Age, squaring away with the Ionians and Dorians as later dominant cultures.

There is a fragmentary, yet critical, Hittite text from the 13th century BCE titled the ‘Tawagalawa Letter’, that addresses a supposed Ahhiyawan King, sent by an unknown Hittite King; most probably Hattusili III or Muwatalli II. What is striking about this letter is that the Hittite King asks for the cooperation of the local unidentified Ahhiyawan King in suppressing a rebellious leader named ‘Piyamaradu’, likely the Arzawan leader ‘Piyama-Kurunta’. This Piyamaradu was based out of his capital Apasa, or what in Greek was the major city of Ephesus, located in what were considered the “Lukka Lands”. Piyamaradu allies himself to the Great King of Ahhiyawa, forming a coalition between his own Ephesus, the capital of Anatolian Achaea which would been centered around Wilusa, or Troy, and the Ahhiyawan vassal city known as ‘Millawanda’.

This Millawanda is none other than the well known Miletus, who in conjunction with Ephesus and Halicarnassus form the backbone of Greek Anatolia. Piyamaradu’s own daughter is even married off to the ruler of Miletus, Atpa, showing a clear genealogical fusion of these ethnicities around the later Bronze Age. The Ahhiyawan’s therefore assimilated into the broader Greek culture by the time of archaic Greece - 750 BCE through 146 BCE, the year of the Roman conquest.

Many authors³ have concluded from readings of Hittite texts in conjunction with material evidence showing Mycenaean contact with Anatolia that the term ‘Ahhiyawa’ refers broadly to the Mycenaean world, or at least some major tribe of proto-Greeks. Even within the biblical context the term “Ahhiyawa” could represent a cognate of “Achaea” and “Yawan” - or Javan - forming something closer to the term Achaeyawan.

It should be mentioned that while in the previous map of the Greek languages from our section of Javan, Argos was Doric; that map is roughly around the 6th century BCE, well after this period and even after Homer’s writing. During the Bronze Age Argos was certainly speaking Linear B - Linear B descended in some form from the earlier Minoan, ‘Linear A’ - a syllabic script used in Mycenae, as the Doric culture had yet to rear its head.

We can also glean bits of interesting information from other Greek epics about Mycenaean Bronze Age Greece. According to Homer’s Odyssey, “There is a land called Crete....They have not all the same speech, but their tongues are mixed. There dwell Achaeans, there great-hearted native Cretans, there Cydonians, and Dorians of waving plumes, and goodly Pelasgians” This quote provides us one of the earliest looks into the ethnic status of Crete. While two of the major Greek tribes, Achaeans and Dorians are present, we also have Pelasgians, or Proto-Greek “Mycenaeans”, as well as the native Cretan culture. These ‘native Cretans’ are definitively Greek speaking, but likely represent an ethnic mix of the Pre-Greek Minoan civilization - a civilization with reported links to Egypt, just like Danaus, with Minoan pottery being found at sites along the Nile. Nilus is also a reported progenitor of Danaus's wife Europa.

From all of this diverse evidence we can discern that Minoan and Mycenaean Greece prior to the Archaic period represents a complex melting pot of cultures, ethnicities, and languages. It should be mentioned that the earlier “four Greek tribes” are more like the four ‘natively Greek’ Greek tribes, and there were plenty of other assimilated tribes such as the Cadmeans of Thebes, Pelops of Anatolia and Hellenes from their eponymous founder Hellen - Hellenes becoming the main word for unified “Greek” peoples. Cadmus was a Phoenician prince, giving us an example of a “Shemite” who is subsumed under a Javanite tribe, or nation. Cadmus is also said to have brought the alphabet to Greece from Phoenicia, which is where scholarly sources place the invention of writing. In addition the Greeks separated Dorus and Danaus, the latter coming from Egypt as indicated in his epic and likely ruling over the Doric populace as elites.

Within academia there has often been a tendency to view the Dorian migration to Greece as a forced invasion. This supposed “Dorian invasion” has absolutely no archeological evidence that would provide corroboration for any violent transition between Proto-Greeks and Dorians. What is more likely is that both Pre-Greek Minoan, Proto-Greek Mycenean/Pelasgian, as well as Achaeans who dwelled on Crete, were all subsumed into the “Dorian” culture. This would include the aforementioned Danaus and his offspring who curiously disappear from the records, implying their identity culturally fuses with some element of the Greeks, probably Dorians. 

In later periods the Dorians dominate the island of Crete, and Rhodes, in much the same way Ionic Greeks eventually come to dominate the federation of Greeks; their Lingua Franca being Ionic, with well known Doric’s such as Herodotus even writing in Ionic. It is acknowledged in Greek records that Dorians competed with the Achaeans and Ionians for control of southern Peloponnese, the precise location of the city of Argos. It should be noted the timeframe for this supposed Doric invasion, or migration, would be around the Bronze Age Collapse, sometime between the year's 1200 and 1150 BCE, which saw an upheaval in the majority of previous nations. A discussion of this collapse and its relation to the Exodus will follow in coming chapters.

While it is unclear how the Dorians, Danaus, and the Dodanim connect this is mostly due to our lack of records relating to the early Dorian migration phase, or to Danaus’s flight from Egypt - potentially under a different name. It’s possible there is some link between the tribe called Dardani located near modern Albania, but these Dardani were Illyrians. It’s possible both these Dardani and Dodanim had some connection, but it’s just as likely both of these groups  are related to the confusingly named “Dardanoi” of the Dardanelles. As discussed these Dardanoi were a “co-branch” of the Trojan royalty, who in later periods were entirely conflated with Trojans but were equivalent Kings in a sort of alliance.

It’s possible that the Trojan Kingdom actually had a system quite similar to the Spartan “Twin Kings” who came from different but equal lineages of Sparta. It’s likely these “early Dorians” are somehow related to the Dardanoi and potentially the later Dardani who clash with Macedon - another related Dorian people. Essentially all of these people during the Mycenaean period could be considered “Paleo-Balkan”, but the Mycenaeans in the south being “more Greek” than the “Greeks” themselves. The Greeks culturally would be closer to the Thraco-Illyrians of the Dardanelles, but eventually fuse into the “Mycenaean Achaean” culture becoming what we now know as Greek.

To conclude with a possible explanation for these odd historical conflations I would posit first that the Dodanim should have been called “Dordanim”; at least relative to their own native name. Second, I would correlate this term to a generalized “Proto-Greek” people that fuse into the native Achaean culture of the Aegean after the fall of Troy variously becoming known as “Dorians”. Third I would align all of the supposed place names of the Dodanim, Dorians, Danaus, Dardanoi, Dardani, Danaans and others with being roughly contiguous to the same cultural zones. Fourth, and finally, I would posit the term “Dordanim” as a portmanteau of the “Dor” and “Dan” -im. This would make our identification of Dodanim a variously mixed group of Dorians, Dardanoi and Danaus’s Danaans.

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While this is the final child of Javan, we will return for one short section regarding the Greek world. It should be clear how many of the ancient “races” of Greece would fit into the Table of Nations, and how the Table does a better job organizing these groups than traditional theory.

In the words of Moshe Chaim Luzzatto in Derech Hashem (The Way of God):
The advantage of knowing things within the framework of their parts - according to their divisions and the structures of their relationships - over their knowledge without distinction is like the advantage of seeing a garden beautified by its flowerbeds, enhanced by its paths and planted in specific rows, over seeing a thicket of reeds or a forest growing mixed together. For in truth, the perception of many parts about which we do not know their connections or true places in the structure of all that is constructed by them is nothing but a heavy and joyless burden to the intellect that desires to understand [it].

The entire goal of this work is in line with the principals of outlined in Derech Hashem, and the tradition in a line of great Rabbanim such as Joseph Karo (who laid out the Table Set of Jewish law in the Shulchan Aruch) Issac Luria (who systematized Kabbalah into the modern form of Lurianic Kabbalah) Rashi (who created a complete organized commentary of the entire Tanakh) Maimonides/Rambam (who systematized Jewish halacha in his Mishneh Torah) Saadia Gaon (who organized Jewish prayer in the Siddur, but was not the first, nor the last to do so, merely a critical link) Judah ha-Nasi (who redacted the entire Mishnah) or even Ezra the Scribe himself (who essentially wrote the book of Ezra, and possibly many others, and transcribed much of the original Hebrew texts we have today). Judaism is a history of learning, teaching, relearning, and continually augmenting our understanding of ancient information. By organizing, and categorizing everything in its proper place, as we learn from Luzzatto in Derech Hashem, we create a beautiful garden with walkable paths rather than a ceaseless jungle that is impossible for all, but experts to traverse.

The next post will wrap up our sections on Greece, and lead us to the final three children from Japheth’s lineage. These will be split up into a few posts, but will slot into some of the earlier unknowns from previous sections, and much of the picture will start to come together.

I hope you learned something from this weeks post, and could past some, or any, of that information onto others.

1. Higher Resolution Map

2. Iliad 2.653–654

3. Windle 2004, pp. 121–122; Bryce 1999, p. 60.