Vincebamur a victa Graecia – The Annexation of Kizzuwadna and its Consequences through the Prism of Comparative Philology
The annexation of Kizzuwadna by the Kingdom of Hattusa in the early 14th century BCE is not directly addressed in any historical narrative preserved in the archives of Hattusa. Nevertheless, the reconstruction of this political event can benefit from indirect evidence that can be gleaned from the cuneiform sources found in Hattusa. Thus, we know that Nikkalmadi, the wife of Tuthaliya I, had a Hurrian name, while her frequent mentions in Hittite sources contrast with the rare appearance of the previous consorts of Hattusa kings in the same corpus. Therefore, claims have been made that a dynastic marriage played an important role in Hattusa’s political expansion (de Martino 2011: 9 with ref.). The purpose of this presentation is addressing new philological data that are relevant for reconstructing the impact of Kizzuwadna’s annexation on central Anatolian culture. First, it is assumed that the transfer of the Kizzuwadna ritual lore to Hattusa involved a variety of methods, such as copying/adaptation of the pre-existing written texts and interviewing of the ritual practitioners by the scribes (Miller 2004: 511–530, Yakubovich 2010: 277–281). I would argue for the existence of an additional mechanism, namely the imitation of performances in the Kizzuwadna style at the court of Hattusa. Second, although the transfer of Kizzuwadna scribes to the court of Hattusa is not in itself a new idea (see, e.g., Güterbock 1956: 138), the existing linguistic arguments in favour of such a scenario have thus far remained inconclusive. I hope to demonstrate that the Hurrian technical terms borrowed via Luwian and found in Hittite secular texts furnish a proof of this hypothesis. Third, mass migrations or transportations from Kizzuwadna to Central Anatolia derive their only philological support from anecdotal evidence (e.g., Alp 1991: 263). The analysis of HittiteLuwian conjurations emanating from the Taurisa tradition (Mouton and Yakubovich 2021: 38–46) is conducive to reconstructing the resettlement of a Luwian population group to the northeast of Hattusa and its subsequent acculturation, while I contend that Kizzuwadna emerges as its most likely place of origin.
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