Topada rock inscription

Coordinates: 38 ° 29 ′ 35.1 ″  N , 34 ° 28 ′ 49 ″  E

Topada​

Turkey

Topada inscription stone

The rock inscription from Topada , also rock inscription from Karapınar , local name Yazılıkaya ( rock described in Turkish ), in central Turkey is an inscription in Luwian hieroglyphics and probably dates from the 8th century BC. It is the largest known Luwian rock inscription.

location

Inscription stone in the rock barrier

The inscription rock is located about three kilometers northwest of the village of Ağıllı in the Acıgöl district of the Turkish province of Nevşehir . The name in the literature refers to Topada, the earlier name of the place Acıgöl, which is about seven kilometers north. Occasionally it is named after the village of Karapınar, about seven kilometers to the east. From Ağıllı, a gravel road leads slightly downhill through the fields to the rock monument. The stone is part of a five to eight meter high trachyte cliff that runs from northwest to southeast and closes off an overlying plateau. The inscription is on the broad side facing south and on the narrow side facing south-west. Another line of inscription with the scribe's signature on the rock to the east was lost before 1986.

inscription

Narrow side

Beginning of the inscription with Wasusarma's name and title

The inscribed broad side of the stone is 3.18 meters wide and 2.78 meters high, the inscribed narrow side measures 1.46 by 2.00 meters. The text is written on eight lines separated by lines. They run across the broad and narrow sides and can be read bustrophedon , starting in the upper right corner. On the rock to the right of the inscription was the one-line signature of the scribe, which was lost between 1968 and 1986 due to violent breaking out.

The text describes political and military activities that likely took place in the area, mainly fighting with a town called Parzuta or Parzata . The otherwise unknown city is presumably located in the west near the Tabal border. The inscription consists of the following parts: introduction with name and title, narrative part and conclusion with thanks to the gods and curse formula. The author is Wasusarma , the last king of the neo-Hittite kingdom of Tabal . Wasusarma, Assyrian water towers, ruled in the second half of the 8th century BC. BC and was a contemporary of the Assyrian ruler Tiglat-Pileser III. According to Assyrian sources, he was liable to pay tribute. Wasusarma first introduces himself as the great king, hero, son of Tuwati, great king, hero . Then he first describes the basic situation:

In Parzuta, eight more or less important kings welcomed
me, but three kings were gracious to me: Warballawa, Kijakija and Ruwata, but the charioteer
I had sent (they?) With the royal cavalry
and built fortifications as my border guard.

In Warballawa is known by stelae and inscriptions king of Tuwana , Kijakija, also known as the author of the stele of Aksaray , prevailed in Šinuḫtu while Ruwata (s) otherwise is not known. Tuwana corresponds roughly to the area around today's Niğde , Šinuḫtu is suspected to be around Aksaray , so both south of the inscription site and west of the Tabalic heartland. In the following the Great King reports on the fighting. After the Partute ruler attacks the borders of Tabal, does the Tabal cavalry invade his territory, pillage places and abduct the movable property ^? , Women and children in addiction ^? . A battle is mentioned that the king wins thanks to the help of Tarhunza , Sarruma and other gods whose names are illegible. Three years followed, during the course of which the royal cavalry, the first among the first, gave him (Parzuta's) one stroke at a time . After some river crossings and the repeated deportation of women and children, the Partute cavalry advanced again towards the border, but Tarhunza stole the victory, so that they did not make a conquest, but Tarhunza, Sarruma, ... and ... gave me the victory. Thereupon the king promises further worship to the gods and expresses his expectation of future support. The conclusion is a common curse formula:

Whoever touches this treaty:
if he (is) a king
, Tarhunza, Sarruma, ... and ... should touch himself and his country;
if, however, he (is) a person of lesser rank
, Tarhunza, Sarruma, ... and ... should touch himself and his house.

The inscription has a number of linguistic and epigraphic features. Initially, this includes a number of characters that appear considerably older than would correspond to the assumed date of origin. Similar to the inscription from Suvasa , which is also assigned to Wasusarma, individual characters appear only here. It is generally assumed that these archaic signs, which have stylistic similarities to inscriptions from the Hittite period , are supposed to indicate that the Hittite traditions were more strongly maintained in Tabal than in most of the late Hittite states. The use of the traditional title Great King points in the same archaic direction . The enumeration of the gods is also a reference to ancient Ethite traditions. The view of Piero Meriggi , who, according to the epigraph, considers the inscription to be actually archaic and accordingly dates Wasusarma and the kings mentioned considerably earlier, is generally rejected.

Research history

The inscription was discovered in 1908 by Rudolf Franz, a German teacher in Istanbul. He sent impressions to the Hittite scientist Hans Gustav Güterbock , who placed them in the Near Eastern Department of the Berlin museums . During the First World War , the German archaeologist W. See made casts for the Beirut Museum. There she saw Bedřich Hrozný , the researcher of the Hittite language , who also studied the inscription on site in 1934. Further investigations and publications on the text come from the Near East archaeologist Helmuth Theodor Bossert (1934), the Polish-US-American ancient orientalist Ignace Gelb (1939), the Italian classical philologist and Indo-Europeanist Piero Meriggi (1957), the Hittiteologist and collector of Luwian inscriptions John David Hawkins (2000), the British ancient orientalist Annick Payne (2012) and finally by Horst Ehringhaus (2014), who researches the Hittite and Luwian rock monuments in Turkey.

literature

• Eberhard P. Rossner: Rock monuments in Turkey. Volume 1: The Hittite rock reliefs in Turkey. An archaeological guide. 2nd, expanded edition. Rossner, Munich 1988, ISBN 3-924390-02-9 , pp. 119-124.
• John David Hawkins: Corpus of Hieroglyphic Luwian Inscriptions. Vol. I: Inscriptions of the Iron Age. Part 2: text. Amuq, Aleppo, Hama, Tabal, Assur Letters, Miscellaneous, Seals, Indices. (= Studies in Indo-European Language and Culture 8). de Gruyter, Berlin et al. 2000, ISBN 3-11-010864-X , pp. 451–461, plates 250–253.
• Annick Payne: Iron Age Hieroglyphic Luwian Inscriptions . Society of Biblical Literature, Atlanta 2012, ISBN 978-1-58983-269-5 , pp. 54-59
• Horst Ehringhaus: The end that was a beginning. Rock reliefs and rock inscriptions of the Luwian states of Asia Minor from 12. to 8./7. Century BC Chr. Nünnerich-Asmus, Mainz 2014, ISBN 978-3-943904-67-3 , pp. 33-40.

Web links

Commons : Topada  - collection of images, videos and audio files

• hittitemonuments.com

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c d e} German translations quoted from Horst Ehringhaus: The end that was a beginning. Rock reliefs and rock inscriptions of the Luwian states of Asia Minor from 12. to 8./7. Century BC Chr. Nünnerich-Asmus, Mainz 2014, ISBN 978-3-943904-67-3 , pp. 35-38