Tunna

Tynna (; ), possibly also known as Dana, was an ancient Anatolian city located at the foothills of the Taurus Mountains, near the town of Ulukışla and the Cilician Gates in southern Cappadocia.

It is known in the present-day as Porsuk Höyük or Zeyve Höyük in Asiatic Turkey.

Name

The name of the city was or () during the Hittite Empire.

In Classical Antiquity, the city was known as (; ).

History

Bronze Age

Tunna might have been founded during the Hittite Old Kingdom by the sons of the king Ḫattušili I, some time during the late Middle and early Late Bronze Age.

Beginning with the reign of the Hittite king Šuppiluliuma I, Tunna was referred to in state treaties of the Hittite Empire as the cult site of the goddess Ḫallara, who headed the local pantheon.

According to a bronze tablet and the Ulmi-Teššub treaty, Tunna was a location in the region of Tarḫuntašša in the Ḫūlaya River Land where the hypostasis of the storm god Tarḫuntaš bearing the epithet of () was venerated, with () possibly meaning .

Tunna was mentioned alongside Ḫupišna and Zallara in a Hittite local deity list, and a Chief of the Cooks was responsible for the cult inventory of the country of Tunna.

The Hittite magician Tunnawi or Tunnawiya might have been a native of Tunna, as suggested by the meaning of her name, meaning or . Tunnawi appears to have lived in the early 14th century BC, and she was the author of a ritual against impurity, a ritual for the royal couple, a birth ritual, and a ritual of the cattle.

Due to its strategic location at the Cilician Gates, Tunna was located on one of the main routes which in ancient times connected the Anatolian Plateau to the Syro-Mesopotamian region.

Iron Age

Identification

=Atuna

=
Although Tunna has been suggested as a possible location for the capital of the kingdom Atuna, this latter kingdom was instead likely located further north, in northern Cappadocia.

Since Atuna later obtained the territory of the Tabalian kingdom of Šinuḫtu, it was likely in the region immediately south of the Halys river's southernmost bend, to the immediate north of Šinuḫtu, and to the west of the kingdom of Tabal proper and around the site which the present-day village of Bohça, which was possibly its capital and where the king Kurdis of Atuna had erected a stele.

Phonetically, the name Tunna could not represent a variant of a possible form , since the initial did not disappear in the Luwian language, which also suggests against identifying Tunna with Atuna.

=Tunnas

=
The country around Tunna might have corresponded to the lands of Upper Tunnas () and Lower Tunnas () referred to in an economic inventory from the kingdom of Tabal proper recording the transfer of goods.

History

In the 9th century BC, Tunna was destroyed during the campaign of the Neo-Assyrian king Shalmaneser III in the Tabalian region in 837 BC.

The "silver mountain," Tunni, visited by Shalmaneser III during this campaign might have been identical with the site of Tunna, and the country of Tunna might also have been identical with the country of Tuna mentioned in lead strips from the kingdom of Tabal proper, although this identification is still uncertain.

During the 8th century BC, Tunna was a Tabalian petty city-state ruled by a king named Tarḫunazzas, who was himself a vassal of the king Warpalawas II of Tuwana. In an inscription at the site corresponding to present-day Bulgarmaden, Tarḫunazzas recorded that, in exchange for his services, his overlord Warpalawas II had offered to him the Mount Mudis.

Mount Mudis was a rocky outcrop of the Taurus Mountains near the Cilician Gates, and was likely identical with the "alabaster mountain," Mount Mulî, which the Neo-Assyrian king Shalmaneser III climbed and from where he extracted alabaster during his campaign in the Tabalian region in 837 BCE. The name () was the Akkadian form of a Luwian original name () which had experienced the Luwian sound shift from to .

Based on the close association of Mount Tunni with Mount Mulî in the Neo-Assyrian records, both of these mountains were located close to each other, in the northeastern end of the Bolkar and Taurus Mountains, where are presently located the silver mines of Bulgarmaden and the gypsum mine at Porsuk-Zeyve Höyük.

New defensive structures were built at Tunna during the reign of Warpalawas II.

Another petty-king of Tunna who was vassal of the kings of Tuwana might have been Masauraḫissas, who possibly reigned in the middle or late 8th century BC, and who is known from an inscription by his general Parḫwiras. Masauraḫissas's name might possibly have been a Luwianisation of a Phrygian name .

List of rulers

* Tarḫunazzas (),
* Masauraḫissas ? (), )

Classical Antiquity

During the Hellenistic period, Tunna became known as Tynna (; ), and was mentioned by Ptolemy.

Tynna was located in the neighbourhood of Faustinopolis, and remained inhabited through Roman times.

References

Sources

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* Gwendolyn Leick: ''Who's Who in the Ancient Near East''. Routledge, London 1999, 2002.
* 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.
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{{DGRG, title=Tynna

Populated places in ancient Cappadocia
Populated places in ancient Cataonia
Former populated places in Turkey
Hittite cities
Syro-Hittite states
Roman towns and cities in Turkey
History of Niğde Province