. . . Luwian-Phoenician
inscriptions dating to the Iron Age mention a Mopsos who founded a dynasty in
the region. Thus, in the bilingual inscription of Karatepe (approximately
eighth century), [The Karatepe inscription was unearthed in 1946-1947. Proposed
dates range from the ninth to seventh centuries.] a certain Awarikus, called
“king of the Dammiyim” in the Phoenician text and “king of the city of Adana”
in the mirror Luwian text, is said to belong to “the house of Muksas,” rendered
in the Phoenician as MPSH, that is Mopsos. The “lineage of Mopsos” (‘shph
mpsh) is now also documented in another bilingual (Luwian-Phoenician)
inscription from Çineköy, in the same area, offering further proof of the link
between this name and a dominant dynasty in Cilicia. The inscription reads: “[I
am] Warikas, son of [. . . ], descendant of [Muka]sas, king of Hiyawa.” [The
inscription was discovered in 1997 and is safely dated to the eighth century]
This name is also attested in Lydian onomastics as Moxos, and a man
named Muksu appears in the Late Bronze Age in the Hittite letter to
Madduwattas (ca. 1400), once more in association, it seems, with the region of
Ahhiyawa. The antiquity of this personal name on both sides of the Aegean is
also shown by its appearance in Late-Bronze Age Greece in two Linear B texts,
although the origin or status of the person cannot be deduced from these texts.
[K N X 1497 [mo-ko-so] and YP Sa 774 [in Gen.: mo-ko-so-jo]]
Finally, Mopsos was remembered in local foundation tradition (cities and
oracles), which Archaic myth and later Greek historians and mythographers
collected.
Although the case of Mopsos and
the complex network of traditions and scattered pieces of evidence about him
make it difficult to trace with any precision the trajectory of this name and
its bearer(s?), the linguistic evidence seems to point to the Greek origin of
the name. The Phoenician MPSH seems to follow the rendering of the name
by Greek-speakers in Cilicia, with the expected later Greek development of the
labiovelar (still attested in Mycenaean, *Mokwso-) as labial
/p/, in contrast to the Hittite and Luwian versions (of the name (Moks-)
with a velar stop /k/. (Carolina López-Ruiz, When the Gods Were Born: Greek
Cosmogonies and the Near East [Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press,
2010], 41-42)
