Tikunani (or Tigunānum) was a small

Hurrian The Hurrians (; cuneiform: ; transliteration: ''Ḫu-ur-ri''; also called Hari, Khurrites, Hourri, Churri, Hurri or Hurriter) were a people of the Bronze Age Near East. They spoke a Hurrian language and lived in Anatolia, Syria and Northern ...

city-state in

Mesopotamia Mesopotamia ''Mesopotamíā''; ar, بِلَاد ٱلرَّافِدَيْن or ; syc, ܐܪܡ ܢܗܪ̈ܝܢ, or , ) is a historical region of Western Asia situated within the Tigris–Euphrates river system, in the northern part of the F ...

around the middle of the second millennium BC. The name refers to both the kingdom and its capital city. Tigunānum is the older form of the name, appearing in texts excavated from Mari around the 18th century BC. Tikunani is best known for a

cuneiform Cuneiform is a logo-syllabic script that was used to write several languages of the Ancient Middle East. The script was in active use from the early Bronze Age until the beginning of the Common Era. It is named for the characteristic wedge-sha ...

document from the reign of Tunip-Teššup (a

-named king, contemporaneous with

Hattusili I Ḫattušili (''Ḫattušiliš'' in the inflected nominative case) was the regnal name of three Hittite kings: * Ḫattušili I (Labarna II) * Ḫattušili II * Ḫattušili III It was also the name of two Neo-Hittite kings: * Ḫattušili I (Laba ...

of the

Hittites The Hittites () were an Anatolian people who played an important role in establishing first a kingdom in Kussara (before 1750 BC), then the Kanesh or Nesha kingdom (c. 1750–1650 BC), and next an empire centered on Hattusa in north-centra ...

, around 1550 BC) containing a list of names of

Habiru Habiru (sometimes written as Hapiru, and more accurately as ʿApiru, meaning "dusty, dirty"; Sumerian: 𒊓𒄤, ''sagaz''; Akkadian: 𒄩𒁉𒊒, ''ḫabiru'' or ''ʿaperu'') is a term used in 2nd-millennium BCE texts throughout the Fertile C ...

soldiers; see

Tikunani Prism The Tikunani Prism is a clay artifact with an Akkadian cuneiform inscription listing the names of 438 Habiru soldiers of King Tunip-Teššup of Tikunani (a small North Mesopotamian kingdom). Robert D. Biggs, Review of Mirjo Salvini's ''The Habir ...

. Cuneiform tables from Tikunani were illegally excavated in the late 1980s, possibly in the area around Diyarbakir or Bismil, but more likely from the region of the Upper Ḫabūr river. These texts are largely unpublished and in private collections; they were studied by M. Salvini and by

W. G. Lambert Wilfred George Lambert FBA (26 February 1926 – 9 November 2011) was a historian and archaeologist, a specialist in Assyriology and Near Eastern Archaeology. Early life Lambert was born in Birmingham, and, having won a scholarship, he was edu ...

in the late 1990s. Lambert's research was not published, however it has been dealt with in partial form via the work of A. R. George, appearing as an appendix of his 2013 ''Babylonian Divinatory Texts Chiefly in the Schøyen Collection''. Salvini assumes that Tikunani was a Hurrian-Akkadian state in northern Mesopotamia, which later merged into the Mittani Empire. There is a tablet, in Akkadian, from a Hittite king named only by the title "tabarna" and written to a vassal king, Tuniya (possible 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 Hahhu who have been dealing with the

Mitanni Mitanni (; Hittite cuneiform ; ''Mittani'' '), c. 1550–1260 BC, earlier called Ḫabigalbat in old Babylonian texts, c. 1600 BC; Hanigalbat or Hani-Rabbat (''Hanikalbat'', ''Khanigalbat'', cuneiform ') in Assyrian records, or ''Naharin'' in ...

. The tablet is thought to date to the reign of Hittite ruler Hattusili I though that is not certain.Mirjo Salvini: ''Una lettera di Hattušili I relativa alla spedizione contro Ḫaḫḫu''. In: ''Studi Micenei ed Egeo-Anatolici''. Vol. 34, 1994, S. 61–80

References

Hurrian cities {{AncientNearEast-stub