For the program of the conference “The kingdom of Kizzuwatna”, held in Leiden on 23-25 March 2023, visit this page.
In the midst of the ritual offerings of the twelfth day of the CTH 475, namely the “Ritual of Pi/alliya, King of Kizzuwatna” that concerns the installation of the Hurrian Storm-god Teššob and his spouse the goddess Ḫebat in a new place of worship, one can read that two of these offerings were made for Teššob, for (his) šarrašši, and for Ḫebat, for (her) allašši. These two Hurrian words are used to describe the qualities and status of being respectively king and queen. Together with the term evrišši, they were utilised to mark the peculiar nature of the divine and human sovereigns that raises them above the others. They also seem to differentiate between different kinds of kingship, especially between the sovereignty of the male ruler and that of the female ruler. The unique character of the documentation on Kizzuwatna (we have at our disposal mainly texts from the archives of the Hittite capital Ḫattuša and other Hittite cities) makes it clear that the Hittites from a certain period onwards began not only to preserve texts of Kizzuwatnean and North-Syrian descent that made use of šarrašši, evrišši and allašši, but even to make use in texts in Hittite language of these Hurrian words or similar terms belonging to the sphere of kingship that refer to a common way of conceiving the sphere of power. This paper examines the occurrences of šarrašši, evrišši and allašši inside the textual documentation aiming to illustrate the usage and meaning of these terms in the ideology of kingship.
In the last decades a large increase of archaeological documentation from the south-easterly coast of Anatolia leads to interpret this district as a very important trading area, particularly in terms of relationships with the Aegaean-Mycenaean world.
Since the very few Mycenaean pottery found at Mersin/Yumuktepe published by J. Garstang (1953), the coastline of Cilicia has provided new evidence in order to reassess the relative chronology and distribution patterns of imported and locally-made Aegean pottery in Cilicia.
This papers aims at focusing on two different investigative levels. The first one is to examine the main Mycenaean pottery assemblage found in three sites of Cilicia, Mersin/Yumuktepe, Tarsus/Gözlükule and Soloi. A priority questioni is to define the main pottery classes for each site according the local stratigraphical context. A specific focus is on the circulation of typological and stilistic classes which could be related to Mycenaean fabric produced in Rhodes. Of great interest also in historical processes is the chronology of Rhodian imports which can be dated to LH II and IIIA. There is a gap around LH IIIA2 and IIIB early, well documented in three main sitrs, and ita can be explained in terms of a deep changes of the relationships betweem the Kingdom of Kizzuwatna, their Hittite allies and the Mycenaean counterpart. In the next LHIII B late and LH IIIC a local Mycenaean pottery production is attested in southern Cilicia, and it can related to the presence of Aegean people in this area, maybe moved from Dodecannese.
The second investigative level regards the possible role played by Kizzuwatna in the production and circulation of perfumed oils towards the Hittite kingdom. By an archaeological perspective the presence of a specific pottery classses of bottles, i.e. Red Lustrous Wheel-made Ware (RLW), could be a solid evidence for reconstructing the production of perfumed oils, particularly requested by the Hittite elites. Recent chemical investigations on some RLW products from Cilicia invite to consider this area as an important district in production and circulation of oil and perfumed oils. The archaeological evidence provides general hints on the alleged locations of olive tree groves in Kizzuwatna, according to the Hittite texts (Singer 1987 and Vigo 2014). In this respect, it is attempted to evaluate a direct responsibility by Mycenaeans, maybe from Rhodes, in the introduction of oil (perfumed) industry in the Kingdom of Kizzuwatna.
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This work suggests to trace the history of diplomatic relations between the Kizzuwatna and the ancient Hittite kingdom during the 15th and 14th century BC. To do so, it is essentially based on the treaties which took place between the two political entities. The corpus is composed of sources of Hittite origin only. This work will highlight the nature of these diplomatic relations through the concepts of « dependence », « interdependence » and « influence ». Firstly, it is necessary to retrace the period of decline that preceded the reign of King Telepinu in order to understand the context of the Kizzuwatna’s independence. Thus, it will be possible to understand the need for the Hittites to use diplomacy. Subsequently, this study proposes to analyse the different treaties following a historical approach so as to study the diplomatic relations between the two kingdoms. It is also important to show the involvement of the Mitanni in the evolution of these relations. So as to achieve this, the work finally suggests a study of relations before and after the change of alliance of the Kizzuwatna. The challenge here is to demonstrate the importance of diplomacy for the Hittites but also the importance that the Kizzuwatna will take in the geopolitical context of the Near East and Anatolia.
The itkalzi-Ritual is documented from several cuneiform tablets discovered at Hattusa and Sapinuwa. It was originally composed in Hurrian language and in a 22-tablets recension. The ritual patrons were King Tuthaliya II/III and his wife Queen Tadu-Heba.
Other reduced recensions, both in Hurrian and in Hittite, are documented and they preserve a ritual that could be performed for any other patron. The ritual shows clear Kizzuwatnean characters, but also elements that seems to derive from a Mittanian tradition.
This contribution aims at rediscussing some toponyms allegedly used to denote the region of Kizzuwatna (and, more generally, the later Cilician area) in documents from Egypt: Qdy/Qt, Ḫw3t, Qḏ(w)dn/Qjgwdn/Qḏw, and Danuna. Qdy/Qt is attested in documents from Thutmose III until Ramses III, mostly records of military campaigns or topographical lists, but also in some papyri: pAnastasi II (Merneptah) and pAnastasi III-V (Merneptah-Seti II) describing importation of beer from Qode (Breyer 2010, 83-84), a topic also mentioned on an ostracon of the period of Ramses II (oGardiner 310). Anyhow, Z. Simon (2011) convincingly excluded that this term can be referred to Kizzuwatna or the later Cilicia. Ḫw3t is attested only in a topographical list of Ramses II at Luxor and has been interpreted by Edel (1975) as referring to the area of Cilicia (explaining the name with the later Neo-Assyrian Ḫuwê). Qḏ(w)dn/Qjgwdn, probably the only toponym truly referring to Kizzuwatna, is mentioned in the “Poem”, the “Bulletin” (together with the toponym Qdy, thus supporting Simon’s idea), and in the “Treaty” of Kadesh. Only once (in the letter KBo XXVIII 25, written by Ramses II to Ḫattušili III), according to Edel’s interpretation (Edel 1994, vol. 2, 139), the region could be indicated with the toponym Danuna (Neo-Hittite Adanawa); the same, very debated toponym (according to Laroche 1958 already mentioned in EA 151, letter of Abimilku to the pharaoh) is further attested in the account of the battle fought by Ramses III against the Sea People and in the “Onomasticon of Amenemope” (21st-22nd dyn.). All these toponyms will be carefully set in their historical context and problematized according to the more recent studies, stating the current status quaestionis and posing further questions.
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The paper intends to offer an overview of the treaties involving the Land of Kizzuwatna, especially as regards its relations with the two major powers, Hatti and Mittani. Three texts in particular will be analyzed in more detail: the treaty between Pilliya and Idrimi of Alalah, the treaty between Zidanta II of Hatti and Pilliya, and the treaty between Tuthaliya I of Hatti and Šunaššura.
Albrecht Goetze (1940: 5f.) said: „The deities worshiped in Kizzuwatna are Ḫurrian“, and this opinion is still partly acceptable today. Of course, after more than eight decades it is clear that this “Hurrian” milieu must be seen as a “mixture” of Syrian and (western) Hurrian traditions. One has also to take into account that there is a strong Luwian component, which even may predate the Hurrian tradition (Hutter 2021: 154f.). A recent look by Susanne Görke (2022) on the Hurrian and Luwian elements in religious texts from Kizzuwatna preserved in the Hittite archives also showed that the reception of texts from Kizzuwatna in Hattusa was not limited to the Hurrian milieu. It is quite suitable to quote Andrea Trameri (2020: 351) “that the composite background of the local traditions does not only stand on two main components, one Syro-Hurrian and chiefly Ḫalabite, and one Anatolian (namely Anatolian-Luwian), but is the more complex outcome of a regional elaboration of these traditions – still preponderant – enriched by the inclusion of exclusively local traits.”
In my presentation I try to focus on these “exclusively local traits” and ask whether it is possible to find traditions that are transmitted as separate texts, but are contained only in those texts from Kizzuwatna which are dominated by a Hurrian milieu. Looking at “centres” such as Kummanni, Lawazantiya or Mount Manuzi, one finds some divine names associated with “Hurrian” gods, but in some cases one might surmise that these “lesser” gods in the documentation of the Hurrian or Hittite texts in the Hittite Empire originally represented local gods independent of the (secondary) Hurrian milieu of Kizzuwatna. Perhaps some motifs in the “Kizzuwatnaean rituals” may also represent such regional traditions, secondarily interwoven or combined with Hurrian ritualistic elements. Of course, since the textual sources were collected in the Hittite context, these local elements are no longer available as religious sources of their own right, but searching for them can give an idea of the religious complexity in Kizzuwatna in the middle of the second millennium BCE.
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The Hittite annexation of Kizzuwatna resulted in the first massive cultural influence into the Hittite realm. This happened at the time of Tudhaliya I./II. His wife Nikkalmadi bore a Hurrian name. Though we know very little about this woman it is believed that she was a Kizzuwatnean princess and her marriage to Tudhaliya was a diplomatic wedding, possibly in the context of concluding the Sunassura Treaty. Asmunikkal, the daughter of Tudhaliya and Nikkalmadi, and wife of Tudhaliya’s successor Arnuwanda I., bore a Hurrian name, too.
Unlike her mother she apparently was involved in her husband’s exercise of government. She is mentioned together with Arnuwanda as author of some texts (especially CTH 222.91; CTH 260; CTH 375), and one text even names her as the sole author (CTH 252). She is the first Hittite queen whose name appears on seal impressions together with her husband’s name; there even exists a seal impression with only her name (Bo 90/239), but this is likely due to a partial damage of the impression. Also later Hittite queens play a more or less significant role and several of them occur on seal impressions together with their husbands.
The aim of my paper is to investigate if the growth of involvement of Hittite queens in the administration beginning with Asmunikkal can be ascribed to Kizzuwatnean cultural impact.
The present paper will examine the geographical aspect of Kizzuwatna, as reflected in the written, predominantly cuneiform, sources. To date, dozens of toponyms belonging to or connected with Kizzuwatna have been identified in the Hittite and other manuscripts. The genres of these texts vary, ranging from political treaties, through border descriptions, legal disputes, to magic rituals and festival instructions. Together, they provide a good deal of information on gods, places and officials of Kizzuwatna.
The paper will provide an exhaustive list of the toponyms linked to Kizzuwatna, alongside a discussion on the nature of these attestations and their contribution to our understanding of the geography and history of Kizzuwatna.
This will be complemented by an attempt to paint a view of Kizzuwatna from Hattusa, i.e. the examination of the power relations between the two political entities as reflected in the language of space and geography.
A group of Luwian Hieroglyphic inscriptions from the northern Levant and Syria attests to the existence between the 11th and early 8th centuries of a kingdom of Palastin, centered in the Northern Levant. Due to the formal similarity between the names Palastin and Philistines/Plšt and material cultural features shared with Philistia proper, most scholars contemplate the possibility that groups of Philistines settled in the Northern Levant and gave rise therein to a Philistine kingdom. The question remains, however, of why such “northern Philistines” eventually appropriated linguistic and epigraphic customs belonging to Hittite imperial traditions with no evidence of external interference. Taking epigraphic evidence at face value, and on account of recent archaeological results, this paper aims to reconsider the Palastin/ Philistines relationship. I will tentatively propose that, if such relationship existed, it was probably more nuanced and indirect than hitherto assumed and dictated by the need to reshape an elite identity by reshuffling old and new cultural features.
This abstract is a result of the project PALaC, that has received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (grant agreement n° 757299).
In Hittite Anatolia, the dead played an important role in the life of their living relatives. Rituals from Kizzuwatna illustrate this phenomenon in a colorful manner: in spite of the fear they provoked, the dead were invoked, talked to, worshipped and fed. This paper will explore in context the variety of interactions between the living and the dead as shown in the Kizzuwatna ritual texts.
The Late Bronze Age kingdom of Kizzuwatna, which was initially a buffer state between Mittani and Hatti, and later a province of the latter, was poorly researched archaeologically for a long time. Corresponding findings were only known from Tarsus-Gözlukule and Mersin-Yumuktepe. Only the more recent excavations at the above-mentioned sites as well as at Soli Höyük, Adana-Tepebağ, Sirkeli Höyük, Tatarlı Höyük and Kinet Höyük now make it possible to draw a more precise and differentiated picture of the region in the second half of the 2nd millennium. The paper will give an overview of current research and the most important recent findings, which reveal the rapidly growing state of knowledge. Nevertheless, many questions still remain unanswered for which only further excavations can provide answers.
According to the widespread traditional view, a Hurrian speaking population group is to be assumed in Kizzuwatna (e.g., most recently, Yakubovich 2022: 20: „It seems likely that the Hurrian speakers had already been present in Kizzuwadna at the time of Luwian migrations“). Nevertheless, surprisingly enough, this assumption has never been investigated profoundly. Having no reference for a Hurrian population in Kizzuwatna or any text reflecting a local Hurrian vernacular, there is only one way to (dis)prove this hypothesis: a linguistic investigation of their alleged local traces. There is indeed a long tradition that assumes Hurrian influence in the vocabulary and grammar of Kizzuwatna Luwian and provides Hurrian etymologies to local onomastic material. At first glance, they prove the traditional view. However, recent research has challenged the foundations of this view since it was pointed out that the grammatical influence does not exist (Simon 2016) and the Hurrian words in Kizzuwatna Luwian are either ritual termini technici or Kultur-/Wanderwörter (Simon 2020), in other words, they neither require nor prove the presence of a Hurrian speaking population. Therefore, a full-scale linguistic investigation is in order, which will be provided in this talk updating these preliminary investigations, extended by a critical discussion of the onomastic material and embedded into a general, historical and sociolinguistical framework. It will be argued that none of the alleged Hurrian linguistic traces provide solid evidence for the presence of a Hurrian speaking population group in Kizzuwatna.
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An in-depth diachronic study of Luwian and Hurrian cultural-religious elements in North-Central Anatolia is needed in order to discern particular stages of the Southern and South-eastern influences and their changing characteristics through different periods in Hittite history. We can differentiate between three distinct, even though overlapping, phases of these influences. The earliest harks back to social, political and religious conditions of the land of Hattuša before Hattušili I as probably the first Hittite king took the throne in the second half of the 17th century BCE. It is poorly attested in the surviving sources but still traceable in personal and divine names till the end of the Old Hittite period. The second phase dates to the Old Hittite through the Empire period and can be associated with the Lower Land as evidenced by the cult of deities originating from this region and the Luwian names, including Muwattali and Tudhaliya (the latter being the name of a sacred mountain in the vicinity of Tuwanuwa that along with Arnuwanda became a dynastic name), prevailing in the new royal family in the early phase of the Empire period that seized power after the coup d’etat of Muwattali I around the middle of the 15th century BCE. Our knowledge of this phase is to a large extent based on the cuneiform Luwian texts from the archives of Hattuša. In these two early phases Hurrian elements can hardly be confirmed. The capture of Kizzuwatna by Tudhaliya II at the turn of the 15th and 14th centuries gives us a date ante quem non of the third phase. From that time onwards, Luwio-Hurrian or purely Hurrian elements originating from Kizzuwatna are well-attested in religious and magical texts, the dynastic pantheon, royal ideology, iconography etc.
Une fois le Kizzuwatna devenu partie intégrante de l’état hittite, les souverains de Hattusa semblent ne plus y avoir porté attention, sauf dans de rares cas. Ce n’est qu’à la fin du XIIIème siècle que cette région, ou au moins certaines localités, réapparait dans la documentation : on y trouve des indices d’une situation complexe et compliquée. Les causes de celle-ci peuvent être de trois ordres : 1) naturelles, dues à des problèmes climatiques, 2) de politique interne, dues à des contrastes dynastiques, 3) de politique extérieure, dues à des agressions d’origine diverse. J’ai essayé, dans une sorte d’enquête policière, d’examiner tous ces indices, afin d’identifier le ou les coupables.
Among the half-dozen Hurrian fragments discovered at Kayalıpınar, the site of ancient Šamuḫa, the most substantial is KpT 1.11. The text of this fragment recounts an intriguing tale, apparently historical, whose principal setting was the land of Kizzuwatna; the tablet itself was probably written where it was found. Like the other Hurrian fragments found at Kayalıpınar, it was written in a fine Middle Hittite hand, and it may be dated to the reign of Tudḫaliya II, who resided in Šamuḫa during the later years of his reign. But what was the historical context of the tale it tells? What kind of text is it? And what tale does it tell?
The text features a first-person narrator and a second-person addressee, who were surely identified in the lost half of the tablet. It mentions several place names, including Alalaḫ, Kizzuwatna, Mittani, and Winuwanda, suggesting a setting in the early 14th century, perhaps as early as the reign of Tudḫaliya I. It narrates the deeds of Eḫli-Tenu and Ilī-Šarruma (otherwise unknown), who traveled into the mountains and down to the sea, then parted ways, perhaps eventually reuniting in Kizzuwatna. The tale also features other personages, as well as deities who include Teššob and Kizzuwatnean Ḫebat. The composition exhibits what appear to be literary features, and it is written using both paragraph rulings and sentence punctuation.
A viable hypothesis addressing the questions above must account for a Hittite-trained scribe recording a composition in Hurrian, on a tablet found in Šamuḫa, narrating events in Kizzuwatna, as well as positing an identity for the “I” who narrates and the “you” who is addressed. In this paper I shall present the text, with translation where possible, and discuss features indicative of genre, mode of composition, author, and historical context. On that basis I shall venture a hypothesis to explain what KpT 1.11 may be and whose story it may tell, to whom.
When different cultures come into contact, interactions between the respective religions and cultic practices may also occur, which can result in the attempt to equalize deities belonging to the respective cultural milieus. During the reorganization by the Royal Family of the Hittite religious system with the creation of the so-called “Dynastic Pantheon” in a Hurrian sense, several gods with Kizzuwatnean origins started to play a new important role in Hattusa. This paper offers an in-depth analysis of some gods of the Hurrian-Luwian context of Kizzuwatna, which were imported into the socalled State Pantheon. Since the TeAI project “Teonimi e pantheon nell’Anatolia Ittita” deals with the analysis of cuneiform documents written during the II millennium BCE in Hittite Anatolia, the current focus will be mainly on single Kizzuwatnean gods and their names, whose linguistic and philological data may ascertain the aspects of their role as a bridge between the two cultures. While the preference of the Hurrian cult by the Royal Family appears evident, the “adoption” of Kizzuwatnean deities involved different questions, both about what deities were chosen, and the modes of adoption of those gods. Through a renewed formal analysis of those theonyms, the TeAI project aims to a rigorous and comprehensive description of the interactions between these cultures of the Bronze Age Anatolia.
For a long time, it was assumed that the majority of the available Luwian fragments in cuneiform transmission come from Kizzuwadna (Hutter 2003: 250). This assessment changed with the demonstration that many incantations of the Kuwattalla tradition, the largest group of Hittite-Luwian ritual texts available to date, display non-trivial resemblance to the incantations of the Tunnawiya tradition (Mouton and Yakubovich 2021: 28–32, cf. already Laroche 1959: 146–151). Since the Tunnawiya tradition is commonly localized in the Lower Land (Hutter 2003: 247–248) it seems logical to assign the same origin to the core of the Kuwattalla tradition. Furthermore, it was argued that another large group of Luwian incantations is associated with the area of town Taurisa to the northeast of Hattusa (Mouton and Yakubovich 2021: 38–46). Under such conditions, one may wonder what are the formal criteria of assigning a particular Luwian fragment to Kizzuwadna. A minimalist approach would imply limiting Kizzuwadna provenance to those texts where the name of the country (or its part) appears in the incipit/colophon: this would limit the corpus to a handful of incantations in the Zarpiya ritual (CTH 757) and a small Hittite-Luwian fragment KUB 35.8.
The goal of this presentation is providing a positive balance to the negative conclusions regarding the Kizzuwadna Luwian texts, addressed in the previous paragraph. Just as one can to reduce this corpus by comparative-philological analysis, so it is possible to affirm the relationship of some texts to the same corpus by comparative-philological means. This holds in particular for the rites associated with the Old Woman Silalluhi, which were secondarily attached to the Kuwattalla tradition. I intend to compare these rites at various levels with their counterparts in the Hittite ritual texts that assuredly come from Kizzuwadna. If my preliminary conclusions hold, this will also be conducive to maintaining the hypothesis that the incantations of certain other Kizzuwadna rituals, notably those associated with the Old Woman Mastigga, were likewise translated from Luwian. Finally, I intend to examine the role of Kizzuwadna scribes in the transmission of Hurrian loanwords into Hittite via Luwian.
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The pottery of Cilicia in the Late Bronze Age II is characterized by extensive production of the so-called Drab Ware with Hittite / Central Anatolian origin. Another feature of this period is the increasing appearance of pre-firing pot marks, often but not always, on Drab Ware. Examples of pot marks have been found so far at Mersin-Yumuktepe (1), Tarsus-Gözlühöyük (37), Kinet Höyük (53)1 and Soli Höyük (21).2
A comparable amount of pot marks has been found during the excavations on Tepebağ Höyük, Adana. Of the 61 pot marks, 39 can be securely dated to the Late Bronze Age II. Their number and their findspot – most scholars agree that Adaniya / Adana was the capital of Kizzuwatna3, at least before it probably was transferred to Kummanni, and that it was located at Tepebağ Höyük, Adana4 – attest to their significance for the history of Kizzuwatna.
Pot marks, especially those from Cilicia, have been discussed controversially. While some argued that they are an indicator of Hittite administrative and socio-economic control5 others maintained that the inter- and intraregional variations are too substantial for this line of interpretation and they therefore represent different communities of practice.6
In this paper, we will analyze the Late Bronze Age pot marks of Adana and discuss their contribution to the interpretation of (Cilician) pot marks. Finally, possible relations to the pot marks of Central Anatolia and / or the Northeastern Mediterranean (Hala Sultan Tekke, Ugarit) will be evaluated.
1 Glatz 2012, Tab. 13.
2 Yağcı 2017.
3 E. g. Novák and Rutishauser 2017, 134. Cf. Glatz 2020, 209: Tarsus.
4 E. g. Novák and Rutishauser 2017, 137.
5 E. g. Gates 2001; Yağcı 2017.
6 Glatz 2012; 2020, 242–245.
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