Tikunani Explained

Tikunani (or Tigunānum) was a small Hurrian city-state in Mesopotamia around the middle of the second millennium BC. The name refers to both the kingdom and its capital city. Assuming it does refer to the same city, Tigunānum is the older form of the name, appearing in texts excavated from Mari and Shemshara around the 18th century BC.[1] [2] [3]

Sources

All known sources are of unknown provenance. It has been suggested that they were illegally excavated in the 1990s. The cuneiform tablets bear a colophon which indicates they are part of a palace archive.[4] Three tablets and two prisms, one administrative and one the Tikunani Prism are held in a private collection and have been published. Eleven tablets, five omen compendia, five administrative, and one lexical are held in the Schøyen Collection and have been published.[5] [6] Fifteen omen tablets are held in Japan in the Hirayama collection, yet unpublished. Two tablets, one omen and one administrative are held in separate private collections and have been published.[7] [8]

It has been reported that about 450 further Tikunani tablets were held in a private collection, of which 17 have been published. Those tablets have since been sold at auction and their whereabouts unknown. Before the sale they were transliterated by W. G. Lambert. Those transcriptions are slowly making their way into publication. The collection included about "20 letters, 360 administrative texts, about 40 legal texts, 20 divinatory texts, a broken royal inscription, and a number of fragmentary school texts".[9] [10]

One of the private collection tablets, in Akkadian, from a Hittite king named only by the title "tabarna" is written to a vassal king, Tuniya (possibly the same as Tunip-Teššup), the ruler of Tikunani. In the letter the king extorts his vassal for support him in an attack against the city of Ḫaḫḫum who have been dealing with the Mitanni. The tablet is thought to date to the reign of Hittite ruler Hattusili I (c. 1650–1620 BC) though that is not certain.[11] [12] It has been suggested that this is a modern forgery.[13] In the annals of Hattusilli I it is recorded that ruler Tunip-Teššup sent him a "silver chariot".[14]

Location

It was speculated that the location of Tikunani was in the area around Diyarbakir or Bismil,. Later work suggested that the region of the Upper Habur River that lies off the Euphrates River as the probable region of provenance.

Tikunani Prism

The Tikunani Prism is a clay artifact, 8½ inches tall with a square base roughly 2 by 2 inches, with an Akkadian cuneiform inscription listing the names of 438 Habiru soldiers of King Tunip-Teššup of Tikunani (a small North Mesopotamian kingdom). This king was a contemporary of King Hattusili I of the Hittites (around 1620 BC). It is of unknown provenance and is currently held in a private collection.[15]

The discovery of this text generated much excitement, for it provided much-needed fresh evidence about the nature of the Habiru (or Hapiru) and their possible connection to the Biblical Hebrews. However, the majority of Tunip-Tessup's Habiru soldiers recorded in the text had Hurrian names that could not be explained in any Canaanite language (the family which Hebrew belongs to) or any other Semitic language. The rest of the names are Semitic, except for one Kassite name.[16]

Further reading

External links

Notes and References

  1. Nicla De Zorzi, "Teratomancy at Tigunānum: Structure, Hermeneutics, and Weltanschauung of a Northern Mesopotamian Omen Corpus", Journal of Cuneiform Studies, vol. 69, pp. 125–50, 2017
  2. https://diposit.ub.edu/dspace/bitstream/2445/129784/1/9788491682387%20%28Creative%20Commons%29.pdf#page=127
  3. Eidem, J., "The Shemshāra Archives 2: The Administrative Texts", Royal Danish Academy of Sciences and Letters, Historisk-filosofiske Skrifter 15, 1992 Copenhagen
  4. Pongratz-Leisten, Beate, "Production of Knowledge in Contact Zones: Mari and Tigunānum in the Old Babylonian Period", Material Worlds: Interdisciplinary Approaches, Archaeopress, pp. 33-41, 2016
  5. A. R. George, "Babylonian Divinatory Texts Chiefly in the Schøyen Collection. With an Appendix of Material from the Papers of W. G. Lambert", CUSAS 18 = MSCCT 7, Bethesda, CDLI Press, 2013
  6. Civil, M., "The Lexical Texts in the Schøyen Collection" CUSAS 12, Winona Lake, 2010
  7. Akdoğan, R. and Wilhelm, G., "Ein Täfelchen über Gerstenrationen aus Tigunanu(?)", AoF 37, pp. 159–62, 2010
  8. De Zorzi, Nicla, "Another Teratomantic Tablet from Tigunānum", Wiener Zeitschrift Für Die Kunde Des Morgenlandes, vol. 107, pp. 11–18, 2017
  9. https://eprints.soas.ac.uk/32845/1/Weeden-FsDeMartino5.pdf
  10. George, A.R., "Babylonian documents from North Mesopotamia", in A.R. George (ed.) Assyrian Archival Texts in the Schøyen Collection and Other Documents, Cornell University Studies in Assyriology and Sumerology, 34. Bethesda, Md, pp. 95–108, 2017
  11. Collins, Billie Jean, "Ḫattušili I, The Lion King", Journal of Cuneiform Studies, vol. 50, pp. 15–20, 1998
  12. Mirjo Salvini, "Una lettera di Hattušili I relativa alla spedizione contro Ḫaḫḫu", in Studi Micenei ed Egeo-Anatolici, vol. 34, pp.61–80, 1994
  13. Ünal, Ahmet, "Word Play in Hittite Literature?", Hittite Studies in Honor of Harry A. Hoffner Jr. on the Occasion of His 65th Birthday, edited by Gary Beckman, Richard H. Beal and Gregory McMahon, University Park, USA: Penn State University Press, pp. 377-388, 2003
  14. Miller, J. L., "Ḫattušili I’s Expansion into Northern Syria in Light of the Tikunani Letter", In G. Wilhelm (ed.), Akten des IV. Internationalen Kongresses für Hethito-logie, Würzburg, 4.-8. Oktober 1999: 410–429. Wiesbaden, 2001
  15. [Robert D. Biggs]
  16. Mirjo Salvini, "The Ḫabiru Prism of King Tunip-Teššup of Tikunani", Istituti editoriali e poligrafici internazionali, Rome, 1996

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