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The Hittite Title tuhkanti-

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 December 2013

O. R. Gurney
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Extract

The so-called Tawagalawas Letter – the longest and most controversial document in the Ahhiyawa dossier – opens with the well-known incident in which (as hitherto understood) Tawagalawas sends a message to the Hittite king demanding recognition as a vassal and requesting the dispatch of the tuhkanti- to conduct him into the royal presence. The king dispatches the TARTĒNU, one of his sons, but Tawagalawas refuses to go with him and demands immediate recognition on the spot. The demand is refused and the king protests to the king of Ahhiyawa in this letter about the insult inflicted on his representative.

Dr. Itamar Singer has shown, in an article later in this volume, that the applicant for vassaldom was most probably not Tawagalawas at all but Piyamaradus, whose activities are the subject of the rest of the document. The present article however is concerned rather with the rank of the envoy sent by the Hittite king.

Information

Type
Research Article
Information
Anatolian Studies , Volume 33 , December 1983, pp. 97 - 101
Copyright
Copyright © The British Institute at Ankara 1983

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References

1 Forrer, E.. Forschungen I, 2. Heft (Berlin, 1929), 99. n. 1Google Scholar.

2 0LZ XXVll, 1930, 288Google Scholar.

3 Die Ahhijavā-Urkunden (1932), 36–8Google Scholar.

4 Götze, , RHA XII/54 (1952), 9Google Scholar; Gurney, , The Hittites (1952), 48Google Scholar; Page, D. L., History and the Homeric Illiad (1959), 11Google Scholar; Klengel, H., Geschichte Syriens I (1965), 90Google Scholar n. 25; Bin-Nun, S. R., RHA XXXI (1973). 13Google Scholar; Bryce, T. R., Orientalia 48 (1979), 92Google Scholar.

5 Liverani, M., Oriens Antiquus I (1962), 254Google Scholar.

6 Nougayrol, J., Le Palais royal d'Ugarit, IV (1956), pp. 47–8, 42 and 44 respectivelyGoogle Scholar.

7 For an almost complete translation see Garstang, and Gurney, , The Geography of the Hittite Empire (1959), 66–9Google Scholar. §7 (obv. 40–47), of which a separate duplicate tablet is preserved (ABoT 57, CTH 97), is certainly a text of Hattusili, explicitly inserted into an earlier treaty by means of a transitional passage in the first person (§6). But since the beneficiary of this section, d LAMA-aš (read Kurunta, as shown by Houwink ten Cate and Gordon, E. I., see JCS XXI, 71 nn. 4, 6Google Scholar) is known to have been appointed by Hattusili as the first king of Tarhuntassa (formerly read Dattassa), the earlier treaty itself must also have been composed by Hattusili. Yet the treaty is in the name of Ulmi-Teshub, a personage who is mentioned in KUB XXI 37Google Scholar in connexion with the civil war that brought Hattusili to the throne. Undoubtedly the simplest explanation for these facts is to suppose that Ulmi-Teshub and Kurunta are two names for the same man, as suggested by Güterbock, , JNES 20, 86Google Scholar n. 3. See also n. 10, below.

8 Now edited, with commentary, by Imparati, F., “Una concessione di terre da parte di Tudhaliya IV”, RHA XXXII (1974)Google Scholar.

9 Laroche, E., “Un point d'histoire: Ulmi-Teššub”, RHA VIII/48, 40 ffGoogle Scholar.

10 Laroche supposed – and others have followed him – that Ulmi-Teshub was the successor of Kurunta and that KBo. IV 10 is the new treaty made with him on his accession, the old treaty with Kurunta being taken over and incorporated with simple substitution of the new name, rather in the way that the stipulations from an old treaty by Suppiluliuma were taken over and reworked by Hattusili for his new treaty with Benteshina (KBo. I 8 obv. 28 ff.). Presumably Laroche thought of the later paragraphs, §§ 10–15, as new clauses added on this occasion, though he does not make this clear; this was certainly the view of von Schuler, E., Anadolu Araştirmalari II (Bossert-Gedenkschrift, 1965), 457Google Scholar. If so, however, these paragraphs too must have been composed by Hattusili, since they refer to “the boundaries that I have set for him and what I afterwards gave him”. There is no part of this treaty that can be ascribed to Tudhaliya. The case is quite different from that of the Benteshina Treaty, the “I” of which is Hattusili throughout. But if the author of this supposed new treaty substituted the name of Ulmi-Teshub for that of Kurunta in the earlier paragraphs, why did he leave this name unchanged in § 7? This would be an unaccountable lapse.

11 Gordon, , JCS XXI (1967), 71Google Scholar n. 6; Houwink ten Cate, , Anatolian Studies presented to Hans Gustav Güterbock (1974), 138 n. 54Google Scholar; Imparati, op. cit. (n. 8), 142–4.

12 von Schuler, E., Anadolu Araştirmalari II (Bossert-Gedenkschrift), 455–64, especially 461Google Scholar.

13 MissJewell, E. R., in her dissertation The Archaeology and History of Western Anatolia during the second millennium B.C. (Philadelphia, 1974)Google Scholar has pointed out (p. 230) that if the list of witnesses had dated from the reign of Hattusili we might have expected to find the name of Tudhaliya GAL MEŠEDI (see below) among them.

14 Götze, A., “Hittite courtiers and their titles”, RHA XII/54 (1952), 1 ff.Google Scholar, especially p. 4 (on ủtryn = Hurr.(?) *ušriyanni) and p. 9 n. 23.

15 Bin-Nun, S. R., “The offices of GAL.MEŠEDI and tuhkanti in the Hittite kingdom”, RHA XXXI (1973), 5 ff.Google Scholar, especially p. 15.

16 Laroche, , RAss. XLVII (1953), 78 n. 6Google Scholar; Goetze, , JCS XI (1957), 58 n. 60Google Scholar.

17 So Bin-Nun, op. cit., p. 14 (top).

18 Gurney, CAH 3 II, Part I, 672. The title may have been conferred rather than inherited, possibly together with a throne name; cf. Bin-Nun, op. cit., 18. No new name, however, was conferred on Nerikkaili.

19 Sommer, op. cit., 37.

20 Götze, loc. cit. (n. 14).

21 Klengel, H., Geschichtc Syrians I (1965), 53 ff. and 90 n. 22Google Scholar.

22 The statement “only a son or a descendant of the king of Carchemish shall be sole tuhkanti” (i.e. to the Hittite king) would be contradicted by the preceding clause “whoever is to my Majesty tuhkanti”, implying that the appointment was in fact open to others. The structure of the sentence clearly requires that “he alone” should refer back to this clause, as seen by Goetze and Klengel.

23 KUB XIX 25 i 10–12Google Scholar, translated by Goetze, , Kizzuwatna (1940), 14Google Scholar.

24 Goetze's restoration [na-aš A-N] A does not fill the lacuna. Dr. Bin-Nun overfills it and takes no account of the collation by Klengel, who saw traces of a head of a vertical after the “hook”. The addition of the particle -za fills the space exactly and enables the lacuna in line 19 to be restored as [ṧe-ik-kán-za] (cf. Goetze, , JCS XXII, 8–9)Google Scholar.

25 Accus. of direction, see Friedrich, , Staatsverträge II, 40Google Scholar, with n. 1. The verb is used of mounting a chariot (X 18 I 12, 22) or a horse (VII 25 I 6).

26 Laroche, , Les Hiéroglyphcs Hittites (1960)Google Scholar, s.v. no. 382, 2 (with the new reading za for i).

27 AS XXX (1980), 148–9Google Scholar.

28 KBo. XII 8 obv. I 10, XVIII 19 rev. 15, KUB XXIII 39:1, 61 rev. 4.

29 On this composition see Hoffner, H., Orientalia 49 (1980), 316–7Google Scholar, and for the rev. Riemschneider, K., JCS XVI (1962), 110 ff.Google Scholar, especially 118–20. The fact that Tudhaliya appears here as GAL MEŠEDI refutes Dr. Bin-Nun's claim that this office is always held by the king's brother. She has overlooked this text. There is room for XXIII 61 in the right column of either XIX 8 or XIX 9.