Antissan civilisation
The Antissan civilisation was a culture present on the coastline of the Medius Sea in western Messenia, which flourished roughly between 1800 BCE and 800 BCE, contemporaneously with the Messenian civilisation. At its height, the influence of the Antissans was felt across a region extending from what is today central Zeppengeran to the central coast of Helminthasse, and reaching northwards as far as the foothills of the Aphrasian mountain range between Helminthasse and Elland.
Etymology
The term Antissan, first attested in Old Messenian literature, is derived from antuas, “man” or “human being”, and does not specifically refer to any political entity within the region, although it is sometimes conflated with Antos, one of its more significant cities, located in southern Siurskeyti.
History
The Antissans first developed around the Skellish Bay around modern Alcasia and Soeria, consolidating into literate kingdoms under influence and pressure for the Messenians. Some of the Antissan states were founded as democracies, also drawing on (more recent) Messenian practices, where the tectons assumed collective power themselves.
What distinguished the Antissans was the consolidation of most of their cultural sphere under a single state in the 17th century BCE, the kingdom of Dammuri. According to literature such as the Harhan text, Dammuri was expanded considerably in this time by the narrator king Harhan's father Pushad, who conquered major Antissan cities in what is now western Zeppengeran such as Usar, mentioned as Pushad's first conquest, and Tarhuli, which later became the capital of Dammuri. By the mid-15th century BCE Dammuri pushed west onto the Sunnic coast in Siurskeyti, and north into the central Ellish plains. Complex Palthachism arose in Dammuri, along with a priesthood that wrote down and codified mythology and rituals into a standard set, broadly unified across the Dammurite lands. Great temples and cities were built in the 'High Dammurite' period of the 15th to 13th centuries BCE. Struggles with the Castopolite Empire to the east, however, sent Dammuri into a decline.
The twelfth century BCE saw the resurgence of Dammuri after the usurpation of Larhinus established the Larhine Empire. The further institutionalisation of Palthachism came up against attempts by Larhine emperors to establish an imperial cult centred on themselves, though neither gained supremacy over the other. With a greater interest in maritime trade and exploration, Antissan culture spread to the Median islands now known as Mirrey and Kellarey between 1120 and 1100 BCE. Larhine government expanded tremendously, but this also came alongside increasing political instability, including usurpations by military commanders such as the slave Agatrus. Heavy taxation and inequality of wealth and power became common causes for complaints by the ordinary population, while the intrigue-ridden rulers proved increasingly ineffective. This combined lethally with the Hilima Eruption in 855 BCE to produce total political collapse.
The complex parts of Antissan society quickly vanished by the seventh century BCE, with only holdouts of order, like the Tarkians (a hybrid culture with the megalith-builders of Sunnia), laying claims to semblances of court or religious etiquette. In the Antissan heartland, new religious ideas produced the early forms of Siriash, which would be adopted by the Neokos Empire when it conquered the region; indeed – at least partly through Siriash, which retained Antissan as a liturgical language, the Neokos would assimilate enough from the Antissans that their later Sirianised culture may be fairly termed Paltho-Antissan.
Society
Early Antissan society was quite similar to its Old Messenian counterpart, with a phagistic sacred king (ḥaššū) honoured by equally revered tectons in a distinctive palace economy, a practice also found in the Sagan civilisation and elsewhere along the Great Golden Arc. In the course of the culture's expansion however imitations of Messenian democracies, where the technicians held conciliar (panku) or oligarchic power, prevailed, and the typical ruler was reduced to a first-among-equals, or an executor elected and censured by the public. The biographies of Dammurite kings describe their entry to the polity as mercenaries and election by the tectons. This respublican order was also quickly overturned by the rise of the priesthood as political kingmakers, concurrent with the codification of Palthachism and its elevation to a state religion; its moderation of the ruler's powers was less frequent because of the new way in which religion was practiced, but kings continued to push for their powers, and this culminated in the imperial cult of the Larhines, although the state of ritual priests rather than tectons as the new ruling and holy class was well-established by this point.
The rise of trade, finance, and record-keeping gave systems of credit and debt a major role in Antissan society. The main lenders were the Palthachist temples, whose shifting of their economic presence to finance is thought to have diminished the tectons.
Of all the ancient cultures on the Median coast, the Antissans were probably the most warlike and martial (even to the extent of permitting female combatants, the courseraine orders). The military aristocracy was the other great holder of power besides the priesthood, and there have been suggestions that Palthachist organisation and practice evolved to curb or moderate the aggressive culture of the warrior elite. However, the bloody power struggles of the Larhine Empire could only testify to the limited success of this effort.
Culture
Language and literature
The Antissan language was written in an alphabet derived from the late Saganic-Karabugha script that also inspired the Messenian alphabet; after the Larhine period it came to adopt Messenian under the Neokos, concluding in its final fossilisation as Liturgical Antissan. The Antissan alphabet was standardised quickly due to the culture's unification under the Dammurites.
There was a notable influence from Messenian literature and titulature. Many public offices and institutions in the Antissan state took Messenian titles or calques thereof, such as tuntaras, the title of an early type of respublican executor, from euthynter ('corrector'), and Messenian vocabulary could be seen in other areas. The style in which Antissan chronicles were composed is clearly influenced by the Messenian politologies, describing not just past events but their close relation with the state that narrates them.
Religion
Palthachism was an evolution of Proto-Messenian mythology, sharing broadly similar themes and niches for its deities. Centred on the supreme sky-couple of Nepis the sun-god and Fenya the moon-goddess, Palthachism ultimately developed into an extensive tiered pantheon of greater and lesser deities which readily accommodated the hedge-faiths of the lands which were conquered by Dammurite armies. The process both allowed for the continued worship of local minor gods as lesser figures within the pantheon or as manifestations of existing Palthachist deities – the latter similar in principle to the emergence of aspect deities in Lestrian Pyranism – and the expansion of responsibilities of some gods to cover specific important aspects of Dammurite life. A particularly prominent example was the responsibility of the earth-god Tehnu for the activities of soldiers and the planning and execution of war; this was no small matter in a society which at various times was dominated or even ruled by military figures, and temples to Tehnu were both common and, in many locations, lavishly decorated and appointed.
Under the Dammurites, Palthachism acquired a secluded priesthood that attended to shrines rather than the tectons of early Messenians and other Median cultures; this evolution was in turn exported to the Castopolites, but there priests had less of a role in the Messenian pantheon. The orthodoxy of publicly-practiced Palthachism, which demanded obedience to the pantheons and orderly performance of rituals, ran up against more esoteric practices that tried to investigate the power of the Asmedons maligned in the official mythologies. The main communal ritual in Palthachism, parkuyatar, was meant to purify Asmedonic corruption and deviation (at least on part of the warlike elites), but soon turned into an opportunity to explore it instead; these formed the basis for cults that eventually gave rise to Siriash after the fall of Antissan civilisation.