Telipinu (or Telepinu) Proclamation is a
Hittite edict, written during the reign of King
Telipinu, c. 1525-1500 BCE. The text is classified as CTH 19 in the
Catalogue of Hittite Texts.
The edict is significant because it made possible to reconstruct a succession of Hittite Kings. It also recounts some important events like
Mursili I's conquest of
Babylon
Babylon ( ) was an ancient city located on the lower Euphrates river in southern Mesopotamia, within modern-day Hillah, Iraq, about south of modern-day Baghdad. Babylon functioned as the main cultural and political centre of the Akkadian-s ...
of which no other Hittite document exists. Little more than the names of the successors of Telipinu is known for a period of about 80 years.
Van Seter argues that the edict is a legal, rather than a historical text, laying out rules for royal succession in the Hittite Kingdom. Lawson criticizes this approach by saying that a quasi-legal text may also be a historical one. Mario Liverani observes that the edict should be interpreted carefully, for it is a lot more useful in understanding the situation at the time it was written than in reconstructing the past history.
[Liverani, Mario ''Myth And Politics In Ancient Near Eastern Historiography'', Cornell University Press, 2007 {{ISBN, 0801473586]
References
External links
Telipinu Proclamation
16th-century BC literature
Edicts
Hittite texts
First Babylonian Empire
Akkadian literature