Zalpuwa, traditionally also thought to be Zalpa, was a still-undiscovered Bronze Age city in Anatolia of around the 18th century BC. Its history is largely known from the Proclamation of Anitta, CTH 1. [1] [2] It has now been proposed that the Zalpa mentioned in the Annals of Hattusili I, CTH 4, was a different city located at Tilmen Höyük, in the Karasu River Valley south of the Taurus Mountains by Tubingen and Chicago Universities recent excavations. [3]
Zalpuwa is the setting for an ancient legend about the Queen of Kanesh, which was either composed in or translated into the Hittite language: [4]
"[The Queen] of Kanesh once bore thirty sons in a single year. She said: 'What a horde is this which I have born[e]!' She caulked(?) baskets with fat, put her sons in them, and launched them in the river. The river carried them down to the sea at the land of Zalpuwa. Then the gods took them up out of the sea and reared them. When some years had passed, the queen again gave birth, this time to thirty daughters. This time she herself reared them."
The river at Kanesh (Sarımsaklı Çayı) drains into the Black Sea, which seemingly supported the argument that the city was located near the Black Sea.
"Zalpuwa" is further mentioned alongside Nerik in Arnuwanda I's prayer. Nerik was a Hattic language speaking city which had fallen to the Kaskians by Arnuwanda's time. This portion of the prayer also mentioned Kammama, which was Kaskian as of the reign of Arnuwanda II. The conclusion until recently, was to locate Zalpuwa in a region of Hattian cities of northern central Anatolia: as were Nerik, Hattusa, and probably Sapinuwa, and Zalpuwa was thought to have been founded by Hattians, like its neighbours.
Around the 18th century BC, Uḫna the king of Zalpuwa invaded Neša, after which the Zalpuwans carried off the city's "Sius" idol. Under Huzziya's reign, the king of Neša, Anitta, invaded Zalpuwa. Anitta took Huzziya captive, and recovered the Sius idol for Neša. Soon after that, Zalpuwa seems to have become culturally and linguistically Hittite.
Arnuwanda's prayer implies that Zalpuwa was laid waste by Kaskians, at the same time that Nerik fell to them, in the early 14th century BC.
İkiztepe on the Kızılırmak Delta near the Black Sea coast was suggested as a possible location for Zalpuwa. [5]
In 1990, J. M. Córdoba identified Zalpa with Tell Hammam et-Turkman, on the Balikh river, and this proposal was commented as possible by French scholars Nele Ziegler and Anne-Isabelle Langlois in 2016, [6] [7] as well as Eva von Dassow in her (2022) essay. [8]
The city of Zalpa was formerly equated by scholars with Zalpuwa in Anatolia, located to the north of Ḫattuša near the Black Sea. But the Zalpa mentioned in the Annals of Hattusili I has now been proposed as being at the site of Tilmen Höyük, in the Karasu River Valley south of the Taurus Mountains, which had a palace and temple that were violently destroyed near the end of the Middle Bronze Age II. This North Syrian Zalpa was called Zalwar in Old Babylonian texts. The military exploits of Hattusili I, a Hittite king who reigned in the latter part of the seventeenth century BC, are described both in Hittite and Akkadian in clay tablets, now in the Catalogue of Hittite Texts, excavated in Hattusa, the Hittite capital, and mention that he destroyed the city of Zalpa (written Za-al-pa in Hittite and Za-al-ba-ar in Akkadian). [3]
The Hittites were an Anatolian people who played an important role in establishing first a kingdom in Kussara, then the Kanesh or Nesha kingdom, and next an empire centered on Hattusa in north-central Anatolia. This empire reached its height during the mid-14th century BC under Šuppiluliuma I, when it encompassed an area that included most of Anatolia as well as parts of the northern Levant and Upper Mesopotamia.
Kültepe, also known as Kanesh or Nesha, is an archaeological site in Kayseri Province, Turkey, inhabited from the beginning of the 3rd millennium BC, in the Early Bronze Age. The nearest modern city to Kültepe is Kayseri, about 20km southwest. It consisted of an Upper city, and a lower city, where an Assyrian kārum, trading colony, was found. Its ancient names are recorded in Assyrian and Hittite sources. In cuneiform inscriptions from the 20th and the 19th century BC, the city was mentioned as Kaneš (Kanesh); in later Hittite inscriptions, the city was mentioned as Neša, or occasionally as Aniša (Anisha). In 2014, the archaeological site was inscribed in the Tentative list of World Heritage Sites in Turkey. It is the place where the earliest record of a definitively Indo-European language has been found, Hittite, dated to the 20th century BC.
Hattic, or Hattian, was a non-Indo-European agglutinative language spoken by the Hattians in Asia Minor in the 2nd millennium BC. Scholars call the language "Hattic" to distinguish it from Hittite, the Indo-European language of the Hittite Empire. The Hittites referred to the language as "hattili". The name is doubtlessly related to the Assyrian and Egyptian designation of an area west of the Euphrates as "Land of the Hatti" (Khatti).
The Hattians were an ancient Bronze Age people that inhabited the land of Hatti, in central Anatolia. They spoke a distinctive Hattian language, which was neither Semitic nor Indo-European. Hattians are attested by archeological records from the Early Bronze Age and by historical references in later Hittite and other sources. Their main centre was the city of Hattush. Faced with Hittite expansion, Hattians were gradually absorbed into the new political and social order, imposed by the Hittites, who were one of the Indo-European-speaking Anatolian peoples. The Hittites kept the country name unchanged, which also became the main designation for the Hittite state.
Hattusa was the capital, during two periods, of the Hittite Empire in the late Bronze Age. Its ruins lie near modern Boğazkale, Turkey, within great loop of the Kızılırmak River. Hattusa was added to the UNESCO World Heritage Site list in 1986.
Hattusili I was a king of the Hittite Old Kingdom. He reigned ca. 1650–1620 BCE, or ca. 1640–1610 BCE. Excavations in Zincirli Höyük, Southern Turkey, suggest that a complex there was destroyed in the mid to late 17th century BCE, possibly by Hattusili I in a military campaign, which could confirm the middle chronology dating for his reign. This destruction was recently radiocarbon-dated to sometime between 1632 and 1610 BCE. This event could have been part of Ḫattušili's campaign against Zalpa in order to disrupt an exchange network connected to Aleppo that previously linked the Euphrates, North Syria, and Central Anatolia. Aslihan K. Yener dates destruction of Level VII Palace at nearby Alalakh, located around 100 km southeast of Tilmen Höyük, in the second year of Hattusili's reign, 1628 BCE.
Anitta, son of Pitḫana, reigned ca. 1740–1725 BC, and was a king of Kuššara, a city that has yet to be identified. He is the earliest known ruler to compose a text in the Hittite language.
The Anatolians were Indo-European-speaking peoples of the Anatolian Peninsula in present-day Turkey, identified by their use of the Anatolian languages. These peoples were among the oldest Indo-European ethnolinguistic groups and one of the most archaic, because Anatolians were among the first Indo-European peoples to separate from the Proto-Indo-European community that gave origin to the individual Indo-European peoples.
Kussara (Kuššar) was a Middle Bronze Age kingdom in Anatolia. The kingdom, though apparently important at one time, is mostly remembered today as the origin of the dynasty that would form the Old Hittite Kingdom.
Alishar Hüyük was an ancient Near Eastern city. It is near the modern village of Alişar, Sorgun.
The Kaska were a loosely affiliated Bronze Age non-Indo-European tribal people, who spoke the unclassified Kaskian language and lived in mountainous East Pontic Anatolia, known from Hittite sources. They lived in the mountainous region between the core Hittite region in eastern Anatolia and the Black Sea, and are cited as the reason that the later Hittite Empire never extended northward to that area. They are sometimes identified with the Caucones known from Greek records.
Sapinuwa was a Bronze Age Hittite city at the location of modern Ortaköy in the province Çorum in Turkey about 70 kilometers east of the Hittite capital of Hattusa. It was one of the major Hittite religious and administrative centres, a military base and an occasional residence of several Hittite kings. The palace at Sapinuwa is discussed in several texts from Hattusa.
Nerik was a Bronze Age settlement to the north of the Hittite capitals Hattusa and Sapinuwa, probably in the Pontic region. Since 2005–2009, the site of Nerik has been identified as Oymaağaç Höyük, on the eastern side of the Kızılırmak River, 7 km (4.3 mi) northwest of Vezirköprü.
The following is a list of regions of Ancient Anatolia, also known as "Asia Minor," in the present day Anatolia region of Turkey in Western Asia.
Purushanda was an Anatolian kingdom of the early second millennium prior to the common era. It was conquered by the Hittites sometime between 1650–1556 BCE.
The prehistory of Anatolia stretches from the Paleolithic era through to the appearance of classical civilisation in the middle of the 1st millennium BC. It is generally regarded as being divided into three ages reflecting the dominant materials used for the making of domestic implements and weapons: Stone Age, Bronze Age and Iron Age. The term Copper Age (Chalcolithic) is used to denote the period straddling the stone and Bronze Ages.
Ḫatepuna or Ḫatepinu was a Bronze Age Anatolian goddess of Hattian origin, also worshiped by Hittites and Kaška. She was regarded as the wife of Telipinu, and like him was likely an agricultural deity. In a different tradition, her husband was the male form of the grain deity Ḫalki. It is presumed that she can be identified with the anonymous "daughter of the sea" who appears in two Hittite myths.
Tell Hammam et-Turkman is an ancient Near Eastern tell site located in the Balikh River valley in Raqqa Governorate, northern Syria, not far from the Tell Sabi Abyad site and around 80 km north of the city of Raqqa. The Tell is located on the left bank of the Balikh and has a diameter of 500 m and is 45 m high. 500 m north is the modern village of Damešliyye.
Tilmen Höyük is an archaeological mound located near the town of Islahiye, in the Gaziantep province of Turkey. It is 225 meters in diameter and 21 meters high on the shores of Karasu River. It is located on the western edge of the Sakçagözü Plain. It is very near the Amanos Mountains.
Šulinkatte was a Hittite god of Hattian origin. He was regarded as a war deity. Additionally, he could fulfill the role of a protector of palaces and houses. In the local tradition of Nerik, he was regarded as the father of the weather god of Nerik. He first appears in texts dated to the fifteenth or fourteenth century BCE. His main cult center was the sparsely attested city Tamarmara, but he was also worshiped elsewhere in ancient Anatolia, for example in Hattusa and Nerik. Fragments of a Hattic song celebrating him are also known.
