Tunna, also Dunna or Atuna, was an ancient
Anatolian city. In
classical antiquity Tunna was known as
Tynna. Today it is known as
Porsuk Hüyük or
Zeyve Höyük.
Bronze Age
In
Bronze Age, Tunna or Dunna was a city under
Hittite rule. The major deity of Tunna was the goddess Ḫallara. Additionally, the
storm god with the
epitheton
An epithet (, ), also byname, is a descriptive term (word or phrase) known for accompanying or occurring in place of a name and having entered common usage. It has various shades of meaning when applied to seemingly real or fictitious people, di ...
''piḫaššašši'' was also venerated at Tunna.
Iron Age
In
Iron Age, the city of Tunna was part of a city state called Atuna by the
Assyrians. It is sometimes doubted Atuna really is identical with Tunna or if it lay far more north, right south of the
Halys river. Doubtlessly, Atuna lay within the region called Tabal by the Assyrians, not to confuse with the state of
Tabal which itself was located in the Tabal region and gave its name to the larger region. Three kings of Tunna are known: Ušḫitti, Ashwis(i), and Kurti.
Ušḫitti
Ušḫitti was a king of Tunna ruling ca. 740 BC. He is only known from Assyrian sources. Ušḫitti of Tunna was tributary to the Assyrian king
Tiglath-Pileser III in 738 and 732 BC.
Ashwis(i)
Ashwisi is only mentioned in the
Hieroglyphic Luwian inscription of
Bohça, naming him the father of the succeeding king of Tunna, Kurti. It is not known if Ashwis(i) himself was king. However, based on the inscription of his son Kurti he can be dated to the 3rd quarter of the 8th century BC. Ashwis(i) may or may not be identical with Ušḫitti mentioned in Assyrian sources.
Kurti
Kurti was a king of Tunna mentioned in both Hieroglyphic Luwian and Assyrian sources. He ruled from 732 or at least 718 to 713 BC.
In 718 BC, the territory of Tunna was enlarged. The Assyrian king
Sargon II
Sargon II (Neo-Assyrian cuneiform: , meaning "the faithful king" or "the legitimate king") was the king of the Neo-Assyrian Empire from 722 BC to his death in battle in 705. Probably the son of Tiglath-Pileser III (745–727), Sargon is general ...
gave the Neo-Hittite state of Šinuḫtu to Kurti of Atuna after deporting Kiyakiya (Assyrian Kiakki), the king of Šinuḫtu, who withheld tribute from the Assyrians and conspired with king Mita of
Muški
The Mushki (sometimes transliterated as Muški) were an Iron Age people of Anatolia who appear in sources from Assyria but not from the Hittites. Several authors have connected them with the Moschoi (Μόσχοι) of Greek sources and the ...
(
Midas of
Phrygia
In classical antiquity, Phrygia ( ; grc, Φρυγία, ''Phrygía'' ) was a kingdom in the west central part of Anatolia, in what is now Asian Turkey, centered on the Sangarios River. After its conquest, it became a region of the great empires ...
).
In 713 BC, Kurti himself conspired with Mita of Muški but confronted with the fate of Ambaris, king of Tabal, who conspired with
Urartu and Muški and therefore was deported to Assyria by Sargon II, Kurti changed sides to Assyria again.
Kurti himself left a Hieroglyphic Luwian inscription in Bohça. The inscription informs about Kurti's hunting success and how he was favored by the storm god Tarḫunza and by the stag god
Runtiya, who gave territories and wild animals to him. The inscription of Bohça may or may not have been used as a mark of Kurti's hunting territory.
In 2017, Zsolt Simon argued that the
Luwian name Kurti (Kurtis) reflects the name ''Gordios'', and that this name was borrowed from
Phrygian language into the Luwian, and not the other way around, as proposed by other scholars. So Kurti may have belonged to the Phrygian ethnicity.
[Zsolt Simon (2017)]
Kurtis: A Phrygian Name in the Neo-Hittite World.
News from the Lands of the Hittites. Scientific Journal for Anatolian Research 1 (2017) 113-118
Literature
* Piotr Taracha: ''Religions of Second Millennium Anatolia''. Harrassowitz, Wiesbaden 2009.
* Trevor Bryce: ''The World of the Neo-Hittite Kingdoms: A Political and Military History''. Oxford University Press: Oxford, New York 2012.
* Christian Marek, Peter Frei: ''Geschichte Kleinasiens in der Antike''. Verlag C.H.Beck, Munich 2010.
* Annick Payne: ''Iron Age Hieroglyphic Luwian Inscriptions''. Society of Biblical Literature, Atlanta 2012.
* Gwendolyn Leick: ''Who's Who in the Ancient Near East''. Routledge, London 1999, 2002.
References
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Hittite cities
Syro-Hittite states